Adam P. Knave Interview - Space Hell

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[00:00:54] Hello and welcome to Comic Book Yeti's Cryptid Creator Corner- A Comic Book Interview Podcast. And, you know, despite being over 500 episodes on the podcast, there are still plenty of comic book creators that I haven't had a chance to talk to yet. And that's right. We have a first-time guest tonight for this episode.

[00:01:15] He is a Eisner and Harvey Award-winning editor and writer who writes prose fiction and comics and has just been involved in a ton of amazing projects. He and DJ Kirk Bride have a new comic book, Space Hell, with artist Felipe Sabrero. It's lettered by Frank Svetkovic.

[00:01:42] It is on Kickstarter right now and will be on Kickstarter until November 20th. We're going to talk all about it. I'm very excited. Please welcome to the podcast, Adam P. Knave. Adam, how are you doing? Hey, I'm doing pretty good. How about you? Yeah, no complaints. I'm doing all right. Excited to talk to you about this. I think Byron, you know, who is the current editor-in-chief and the head yeti in charge at Comic Book Yeti,

[00:02:12] I think first pointed me in the direction of Space Hell when he first heard about it and said, hey, this sounds like it would be something up your alley. And I had, I guess, looked over your and DJ's like social media stuff that had posted about it. And when the Kickstarter went live, I had checked that out. And I know I had reached out to you at some point and then my schedule just got kind of very busy. But I'm glad we were able to make this work.

[00:02:37] And you were kind enough to send over, you know, the script so I could get a sense of the project. And I'm not going to give anything away, but I'm just going to tell listeners, this is awesome. Like if you like any type of space horror, you know, cosmic horror type of stuff.

[00:02:56] I mean, this gave me a really great sense of like the claustrophobia that I felt like when I would watch something like Alien or even The Abyss. I know that's not space, but it's deep underwater. It's close enough. Yeah, underwater and space things are very similar. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, a little like kind of like event horizon feel. Just trying to give listeners a sense of like what this is. But I love this story.

[00:03:25] I love kind of it's grounded in this relationship of Ming and Callum who find themselves kind of on the only two people working in deep space on a space station. Callum's kind of like the tech guy. Ming's the pilot. And yeah, I absolutely, absolutely love the script. Cannot wait. Thank you so much. To see all 24 pages. So just phenomenal. Phenomenal. So why don't you tell me a little.

[00:03:55] Tell me. So listeners, they hear from they hear my obnoxious voice enough. Tell them. Tell listeners like what is space cell all about? You've worked with DJ Kirkbride before. Me and DJ have been working together since, ooh, going on 20 years now? Close to? Wow. We actually met way back. And Wheeler, I'm drinking from a Too Much Coffee Man mug. We met way back on Too Much Coffee Man magazine. Too Much Coffee Man magazine.

[00:04:25] Shannon Wheeler had a little magazine for a little bit. And then, you know, he worked on Pop Gun, dragged me into it. We've been working together for ages. Yeah. And one of the things we like doing is just, you know, we'll have phone calls where we're just going, what do we want to do? You know, like what's an idea? What's a stepping stone? And I kind of mentioned that we hadn't done, of all the things we've done in comics, we hadn't done horror. And I got my start with professional prose writing horror shorts. So I was thinking, why don't we just do that? Like, we haven't done it.

[00:04:55] Let's go back and try some horror. So we kind of just circled around that for a little bit. And, you know, you stumble on a name like Space Hell, you know you've got something worth looking into. It's just one of those titles that you go, this will look good on a cover. Yeah. And yeah, it does. Like on the Kickstarter page. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of, you know, Frank and Felipe just knocking it out of the park for us. Absolutely. And it's black and white. Yeah. But I love the red.

[00:05:24] In terms of like that logo design or cover design for Space Hell, you know, space is just outlined in red, but hell is more filled in, but there's like cracks and blanks. Yeah. That was all Frank's vision. It looks great. Oh, it looks phenomenal. Oh, no. We love working with Frank. We work with him all the time. But yeah, we said, let's try some horror. We landed out in space because of things like Alien, because of, you know, there is

[00:05:53] so much more horror available sometimes in things like space or underwater, where even if you want to do kind of like, well, a diehard sort of situation, you know, like one of those like, oh, it's the abandoned, the people on the abandoned space station, right? Every great science fiction series has that episode. And it's always a fantastic episode. And part of that is because no matter what horror is going on, you are also at most a few feet

[00:06:21] away from death regardless at all times because you're in space. Yeah. Right. It adds this element of just kind of crushing in on you and the walls just feel tighter. And once we kind of, you know, okay, let's kind of build the story. And like we always wanted to do, which is ground it. Yes, there's horror. Yes, there's, you know, terrible space hellions. But really, it's a story of this couple.

[00:06:47] And they're trying to just sort of refine their relationship after a huge loss, which you just kind of hint at a little bit. Right. Yeah. That really was like the core of it was building it around that. Yeah. And coming around. No, go ahead. Sorry. One of the interesting things is that we, there was never a point, I think, where we've considered doing this in color. Oh, really? It was like from the first days of just envisioning it, it was always black and white, you know, like gray tones and all that. Yeah. And so when we, you know, met Felipe, we just, this was perfect.

[00:07:16] This was going to be a perfect match. And he has just blown us away every inch. Yeah. I mean, the character, you know, there's on the Kickstarter page, there's like some glimpses of it, like some preview pages, some character designs. Yeah. I love the black and white nature of it. I feel like we don't see a lot of black and white comics, like too much anymore, at least not in Western comics. I think maybe it's more common in manga. I don't know how accurate that is, but that's just my sense.

[00:07:44] I know very little, but that's what I think. But I'd really like the black and white. I like the panels. I like that it's in black and white. I do like whenever the color does come in, like in the logo, that red is so very stark. And also, I like how the idea of just the two of them being on the space station and still having, you know, to kind of grapple with what is going on in their personal lives, but

[00:08:11] the mundanity of like working on the space station. And yeah, I mean, that's what has always been the draw for me is something you said about stories set in space because it's, it's space. It's big. There's plenty of it. You could go literally anywhere for infinity in any direction, but everything out there, like, I think it's, I think they, they say it in the book and the movie, The Martian, like everything out in space just wants to kill you, you know?

[00:08:42] And so now you, you have that element to begin with. So many things can, can go wrong. So many simple little things can go wrong to cause the disaster. And now Callum and Ming have found themselves up against some, some type of, of other force. And yeah, there's also just the scale of space is fascinating to me because if you think about it, I've written some like science fiction pulp novels and you get to play with these

[00:09:09] ideas where once you're in space, you do it like planets are big, right? You can see planets from far away, but something like a Buick automobile is not that big compared to a planet. And in space you get just like not that far out and it's completely invisible. You can't see that sort of thing coming. And so, you know, you really do have the eternal darkness and just things leaping out of the dark to play with as well.

[00:09:37] I don't know how most people do horror, like do space stories without it being horror, but it's just like, like it's doing underwater stories. Like it is intrinsically terrifying. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even science fiction stories though, that are not specifically in horror that are geared more towards science fiction, whether or not it's some type of discovery or, you know, an alien story that, that isn't horror based.

[00:10:02] But most of those stories have that moment in it where something happens, where you're in, you're in mortal danger just because of the environment you're in, you know? And, and yeah. Yeah. When you're every day, I think of it this way. If, if you had to go about your job and your, your normal life all day while juggling sticks that were on fire and this was normal for you, don't get me wrong. Like you're a pro, right? You still have to figure that every now and then something would catch fire. They shouldn't.

[00:10:32] Just the math works. Yeah. And then you, you work out in space, you work under water, like you got to figure something terrible is going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. How good it goes. Yeah. You and DJ have worked, you said you have, you have worked together so long. Yeah. You've worked together on different projects for 20 years. How has that collaboration in terms of being co-writers, has it changed and developed over time? Did you guys get into them early on and it's still kind of, you know, you do, you kind

[00:11:01] of work the same way because you work well together. I mean, the old joke we used to give to the sort of thing was I take the vowels, he takes consonants. Um, no, early on, we like any, you know, relationship, honestly, uh, we fought a lot more. You know, there, there was a bit of just control being passed back and forth. And then we kind of quickly worked it out because we, we had a rhythm, we worked well

[00:11:26] together and we do have a system in place now for writing things that works reliably. Um, and it, we both find it fun and it, it evens things out. Neither one of us does all of any job. Okay. And so what is the system? Is it so in general, it's easier to describe with, you know, things like if you think of chapters or single issues necessarily, um, or chunks of pages is that, you know, one of us will do, we'll, we'll talk out the entire story, right?

[00:11:56] We'll get on a phone call. We'll go through the entire thing from start to finish. Then let's say for like issue one of a book, one of us goes, you know, after discussing like, well, what should generally be in this? We'll do what we call a beat pass, which is no more than two or three sentences and just the big high level of what goes on each page. And it isn't even necessarily what goes on each page because there'll be changes. And, you know, if you're, if you're cross cutting scenes across pages three and four, you won't

[00:12:25] cross cut them in that. You'll just have these things happen on page three, these things happen on page four. And we, you know, one person lays that out. Then the next person takes that and does an actual script draft making changes to the, you know, again, putting in cross cutting, doing all that stuff going, I didn't realize this beat needs to be changed a little bit, whatever it is. And then we just pass that after that, we just pass the script back and forth until we're both happy making changes. The next issue, the other person does the beat pass and then the other person does the script.

[00:12:55] So if I do the beat pass on issue one, then he'll do the beat pass on issue two. And again, he'll do the first pass of the script on issue one. I'll do the first pass of the script on issue two. So it's always, you know, it's always even. It's always, neither one of us gets to, you know, has to miss any good fun of it. Oh, that, I mean, yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I like listening or hearing from, you know, co-writers and how it works.

[00:13:20] And in terms of like what differences and what seems to work best for people. I'm curious in that, like the 20 years that you have been working together. Like, what is the difference though? If like when you're co-writing versus something like, I think DJs like Aaron boys, I don't. Was that when you edited, but didn't I go right? I ended up editing. Yeah, I ended up editing it, which was not the original plan. It's just he needed someone. But I wasn't happy to pitch in.

[00:13:47] But if you look at things like Bigger Bang, which I had nothing to do with at all, or Airless Year, which DJ had nothing to do with. The funniest bit about that is that when we were at first writing just pretty much only to, you know, we had the occasional short story here and there in comics, but most of it was just writing together. I was always the, let's go big and into space and do fun things and explode things. And that was always my thing. And DJ was always like, let's just do a quiet story, you know, just of like some people in

[00:14:17] a city. We go off and do our own things and we do the reverse. Yeah. And I feel like in the phone of those, like I can do this too. Shut up. You know, it's just, which we didn't plan that. It just happened. Well, what do you think that was? Do you think it was like a matter of like you guys talking about it and like. No, I literally think it was just both of our brains independently deciding that like I could do that too, you know, because we'd had to talk about the, like, I always think about these, these big spacey ideas and he always thinks about the grounded stuff.

[00:14:47] So I just do think like both of our brains completely independently decide just to act out like five-year-olds. That's funny. Did you ever sit down and like look at each other's work and independent projects like that and say like, you know, with like an editor's eye, like, oh, I would have, if I did tackle this, I would have done it this way. Oh, I mean, I, of course I have. I don't, I'm assuming he has to, and we will never speak of that together. Like that's just mean.

[00:15:17] And no, like me and DJ, we used to, and we do now talk pretty much. I think I talked to DJ more than anyone else in my life. And I pretty much have since I've known him to the point where when he first got married, the first time I met his like then new wife was at a convention. And I introduced myself as DJ's other wife. And I was like, please note, I know that I'm the secondary wife. Like I know my place, but that's just how this works. Right. But it is a, it is a very important relationship to DJ.

[00:15:47] Yeah. I mean, you know, and to let her know. Yeah. And again, then, you know, Jen gets it and she's, she's great. Yeah. We love Jen. But yeah, no, me and DJ are just so far in each other's pockets in terms of, you know, just creatively and all that. Right. At this point, I don't know. It's just, it's, it's fun. I'm sure. Sure. And, you know, I think it always shows that folks are having fun.

[00:16:12] Like when you see the work and you're like, oh, this seems, you know, you read a script or you read a finished comic and you're like, man, this seems like effortless. Like I know a ton of work went into it, but I really hope the folks making it, it seemed like they had a good time because the product is really good. When you guys are working on something like Space Hell and talking about it before you even, you know, put pen to paper or their single keystroke and you're just kind of talking about the idea.

[00:16:41] Do you guys have similar influences for, for, you know, for something like Space Stuff or Our Stuff? Okay. There's a lot of crossover, but there's also a wide gulf. Oh, okay. And there, there isn't, there has been in pretty much everything we've ever done. You know, we did like a Neo-Arsyrian thing and like, I'm a big Arsyrian nut. And so is Nick Roggeier, who's the artist on that. And DJ wasn't. He, he just hadn't been tortured by Excalibur as a child. It's fine. It happens. Oh, okay.

[00:17:11] Um, some people, some people run into that movie too early and you know who we are, but you know that that's true. Right. So there is, there is that like weird gulf of, we come at it with a lot of similar things, especially now, right? If we, we go on, we influence each other. Yeah. But there's a lot of difference in, in our backgrounds and how we view things. Um, and again, like we have so much fun just, we will, because we don't come at it with a

[00:17:41] preconceived notion of what we want to do. You know, whenever we have our idea calls, it is always just madness personified. It, tracing back stuff is almost impossible, you know, to where it started and where it ends. Um, like space hell. I, the only thing I really remember was I just thought we haven't done horror yet. Why don't we? Yeah. Um, I don't even think I had like the idea of space. I think it was actually DJ who was like, we can set in space.

[00:18:09] And then one of us said the word space hell because it was funny. I'm like, okay, let's keep going on that. Let's see. You know, we've had ones that circle all the way around. Um, you know, we, we've had conversations where we start off with, let's do this like more detective story. And we end up pitching like a high fantasy book. How did we get from A to B? I couldn't tell you. There's about three hours of like high speed conversation, just laughing and one upping each other on jokes and yes, ending each other. Yeah. And going, what if we did this instead?

[00:18:38] And I like this bit, but this bit fits in over here until just, it feels right. And I don't, I don't know how to describe that outside of it feels right. When you said with, um, a DJ, like, you know, hadn't been bitten by the Arthurian bug or, you know, hadn't seen Excalibur at the appropriate age. I'm assuming, uh, you're talking about the once and future queen. Yes. Um, when you, when it's the other way around, when like you may be DJ wants to work on something

[00:19:06] and it's, you know, you, you can do it, but it's not your thing. How do you find your way in so that, you know, there is that, you know, to make the collaboration like work a little better. Like, do you, do you key in onto certain plot elements you like or character? What is it for you to do that? Like it's freeing. Um, like once a future queen is actually a great example of that because me and Nick were really into Arthurian legend.

[00:19:34] DJ not being into it was freeing. He gave us the permission to make some changes that we probably wouldn't have made because they were a little really far off the beaten path. So a lot of times with something even like space hell, you know, if, and there is actually a, a, I don't want to spoil for anyone, but there is at least one moment in that book where I'm like, I don't, I don't know. Like I'm not seeing it the same way. Um, and I just did not see it the same way DJ did. And he was like, okay, well, this is why I think this is important, right?

[00:20:03] This is, this is what he is seeing in terms of character, in terms of how the story turns, in terms of pacing, what he sees in it. And if I truly had a problem with it, we would talk it out. But usually I could see his point of view or he could see mine and we're just, okay, that works. You know, and we understand at least what we're going for. Um, but there is when you're not the big fan of something and someone is, I actually learned this when I started writing horror pros, when I started writing professionally, I was not

[00:20:32] a big horror pros fan. I didn't read the stuff. And that's what gave me the freedom to actually write it because I didn't worry about, oh, here's this trope. Oh, this is overused. Oh, someone wrote this story like this two years ago. I didn't have any of that in my head. So there is a lot of that kind of freedom that you get when you're the, you know, the heretic, right? Like, and not the true believer because it lets you just, it lets you pitch ideas that

[00:21:02] the people who are fans of a thing won't ever go for because, well, that doesn't work. Why not? Yeah. I never thought of it that way in terms of the idea of it being freeing. Like you're not, you're not weighed down by all of, by, by all of these other things that you've read or seen. Right. Yeah. To, you know, talk a little bit more about, um, uh, about space hell.

[00:21:29] And there's, uh, a couple of more things I kind of wanted to mention and talk about that, that I, I really liked. And in particular in, in the scripting of it, and I, I, I always love seeing other folks scripts. Like I love when a comic book, like the trade paperback will put like an issue script in the back, you know, to kind of see. Oh yeah. Those are always fun. But for, for, for any listeners who like also want to make comics, like I've, I tell people

[00:21:57] before, like if you, you know, there's plenty of books you can read about, like how to construct a comic or write a comic book script, but I think one of the best ways to do it is find a graphic novel or trade paperback that you love that has a script in it. And especially if you can find one and some of them do that have like a script and then thumbnails to, you know, the line art and you can kind of see the whole, the whole progression.

[00:22:26] I mean, Hey, if people don't know comics experience still has the script archive up, uh, me and DJ have two scripts up there. Um, it's a fantastic resource. It's a great resource. Like I love it. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm sorry. But I, I, I know I really like in the script when there, there were things, you know, cause you're, you're telling your, you know, you're telling Felipe, you're telling your artists what you want things to look like.

[00:22:51] And, um, like having to point out things in the script, uh, that, you know, you're going to need later. I love seeing that in a script, like rather than having to recognize it from the page, like just how it's written. It's like, Oh, we're, we need to have this in the background here. Cause it's gonna, it's going to come back up. And I think there were one or two things. And I was like, yeah, there's nothing worse than when you write a script and you get like a couple of pages in and you realize, ah, shit, I never told the artists that they're

[00:23:20] going to have to draw this on page three panel two, because we're going to need it. Page 16 panel four. And this is why we don't send artists our first draft, because I promise you none of those were in the first draft, right? The first draft you're going hard and then you're reading it and you're like, okay, well, we're going to need this. And this works. And what do we need to do to make sure that this is set up? Let's go back and just call it out specifically because otherwise it will not happen.

[00:23:46] But I, but I, I really love kind of like the, like the, the simplicity, uh, of, of space hellions, but, uh, how like well fleshed out in, in very few pages. I thought that I thought Callum and, and Ming were, um, and so when you guys are constructing your characters, you talk about doing like the different beat sheet, you know, in terms of,

[00:24:11] um, in terms of plot, but with characterization, is it a similar collaboration to kind of like, you know, who these people are that are going to be entering space hell? Oh yeah. That's part of that initial bigger story conversation, you know, is finding out who these people are and what they want, what they don't want, how they, you know, interact because you need that in order to know anything. Right.

[00:24:37] Um, and again, like space hell, our entire goal was we both got our start in writing comics, writing little like eight page anthology things. And then we did the like five years doing a media call, which was 12 to 13 pages, you know? So like we, the, the let's do an entire thing at 24 pages is very familiar territory to us. And I was like writing short stories.

[00:25:03] And so it was one of those, let's just do an entire quick and dirty, like just, you know, horror movie set in space. Let's just strip it down bare bones, you know, nothing fancy, nothing huge. Just take these two people at one point in their lives, put them through a ringer that will bring them to the next point in their lives. Right. That's the simplest kind of construction you can do.

[00:25:25] But that means that we have all of the extra room and space, no pun intended to make them much deeper characters. Right. Because we're not fussing about too much mechanical add on. We're just telling the story. We're telling it hard and fast and we're just moving through the available locations. Um, so a lot of our conversations were kind of who they were. Right.

[00:25:51] And that what we didn't want was we didn't want Callum to be kind of like the, the, the brawny pilot, you know, let's, let's flip that to start. Let's just make them like a nerd of an engineer. Okay. That's fun. You know, but, and just again, like just discussing who they are and how they relate to each other gave us all the opening, you know, that kind of repetitive nature you were mentioning that, that kind of moving through the days of it. Yeah. And frankly, especially given that space, the silences were crucial. Oh yeah. That's a good point.

[00:26:21] Like, you know, there's so much things you can do in a comic where, you know, with whether or not it's like with, with wordless panels or, you know, with the, the, the panel design of the pacing. I'm really curious to see certain sections of the script that I read, like how, how Felipe is going to lay it out. Um, cause there was, you know, some interesting things there. Um, if you look at, if you look up on the, we have page two, um, up on the campaign. Right.

[00:26:51] And if you look like Frank, you know, very much again, it's, it's script. It's Frank knowing his job very, very well, but you can see like, you know, when Ming's just muttering to herself rather than talking to Caleb, those choices, those internal character choices aren't accidental. You know, then that's the thing is like, we're, we're doing this kind of quick and dirty kind of hard and fast thing, but also there's a lot of very careful detail work being like sewn in if you want to look for it. And if you want to like play with it.

[00:27:21] And I think that's just something that both DJ and I always have fun doing. I also really liked the design of the, uh, uh, of, of the hellions and, uh, on the campaign page, you kind of have like a, uh, a glimpse of the, uh, the, the hell ship. I think all that stuff's great. Also like how the hopper makes ship looks like a pole, looks like a Polaroid camera. I love the hopper. I didn't, here's a true fact. Even though I had the camera that looks exactly like that, I kept seeing it as like a staple remover.

[00:27:52] And then I posted it to social media and people were like, Oh, it's like a Polaroid. I'm like, Oh my God, it is. It was just, for some reason that one didn't hit me. Um, no, I, uh, like some of this, like the space station, you know, I know that like we worked with Felipe and kind of refining it. Um, I, it's just, again, it's a great, if you look here, here's a little secret, that's not really a secret, but no one's called it out yet. If you look at the campaign, the image on the campaign of the hell ship has an old design

[00:28:22] of the station in it. And the picture of the station for scale, it uses an old design and we tried to replace it. It just didn't look right. So we just left it with the, it doesn't matter. Um, it's just a cute little Easter egg. Oh, okay. Yeah. But at one point the station could have looked like this other thing. And, you know, we worked with Felipe to kind of get the design that we're all happy with now, but the hopper is one of my favorite things. And that was a thousand percent Felipe. I love it. Yeah. I think it's, I love that ship so much.

[00:28:52] Yeah, absolutely. I, I do too. I think it's, I think it's great. I like the design. Yeah. I mean, I like the, the character design. I like the design of the, of the hellions. And yeah, it's, yeah. It's all really good. When we first saw Felipe's art, we first, you know, started discussing this all with him. A lot of it just comes down to, he has, and again, I don't mean to be making this sort of joke, but he has a lot of gravity to his art, whereas people feel like they are in a place.

[00:29:20] You know, so as you see art where it's like people are walking and they're, it's not even just like a line tangent type of thing where they're not quite matching up, but it just, you don't feel the weight of them moving through a space, you know, and, and Felipe's like you do, right? If someone's lifting a glass or moving a structure, you feel the weight of what they're doing. They're tangible in a very specific way that I think is crucial to this story specifically. Yeah. I like that. Yeah.

[00:29:47] I can't wait to see more of, more of Felipe's work and, and more of Frank's work. Um, after reading the script, I'm very excited for it. And, um, yeah, it's, it's, it really is listeners. It's fantastic. I love, love the ending of it. And that it's all say I loved it. I just, I thought, I just thought it was really, really well done. I can't wait to see how it all, it all comes out. Um, so Adam, do you still have, you know, time to like,

[00:30:17] like read comics or, you know, is there anything you're reading now that you're really, uh, you know, interested in or excited about that has come your way? I mean, I honestly read a lot fewer comics than I used to. Um, but also I have a day, I don't write for a living. So, you know, I also have a day job and running a Kickstarter is not exactly, uh, a lot of free time. Um, no, none, none, none whatsoever.

[00:30:43] I will say, uh, this is kind of self-serving, but it's true. Uh, Ted Branton, Rostein's worst man is one of my favorite things of the year. It's an absolutely stunning graphic novel. Yeah. A hundred percent. It is. I got to talk to Ted in a row. Oh, great. They came, they came on the podcast to talk about it. Um, I got to see a preview of it and then I did pick it up when, when it officially came out. It's one of, uh, the funniest books.

[00:31:13] I think I definitely have read in recent memory, but in terms of, Hey, Hey Jimmy, can you recommend like a graphic novel that actually made you laugh out loud? I mean, the worst man is like in, in the conversation right away. Oh yeah. No, it's, I mean, they're such fabulous artists and such fabulous writers and they're doing stuff that people just don't get to do often in comics anymore.

[00:31:43] Um, no, I can't think of anything that I could even compare it to Jimmy Olsen, right? Like that's a good, that that's actually a good pull there. There, there, Jimmy Olsen is, is, is very good. Um, but yeah, it's worse. And like the, just the artwork in it, the coloring work in it. Yeah. Worst man. Frank's lettering. Yeah. Yeah. Frank's lettering. Yeah. Worst man is so good.

[00:32:13] Um, yeah. Also I've been enjoying, I haven't read the second issue yet. Uh, but I really enjoyed the first issue of the new Legion relaunch, but I am. Oh yeah. I haven't read that. I am a certified, like I, I have read all, but I think two years of Legion comics in all of his, like everything. Yeah. Oh yeah. You have a, you have a problem. I, I have a big, look, I was, it was like the earliest I was like in high school when the five years later thing happened. And I was like, this is the most mind blowing thing in all of comics. Right.

[00:32:43] Like, uh, that's so, yeah, I, I, I'm a huge Legion sicko. I make no, no apologies for that. Um, no, you don't, you don't, that's all right. But I mean, again, like it, it doesn't mean that I love all versions of it equally. Let's just put it that way. Um, there are some that I've read. I don't enjoy the fact that I've read them. Uh, I've, I mean, I've read years and years of, of green lantern comics and yeah, I'm, I, I get it.

[00:33:12] If you stick around with stuff, like some stuff, some stuff's going to be great. I'm still waiting for, for, for new green lantern to top, uh, Sam Humphrey's run with, with Jessica Cruz and Simon Bass. That is probably the best modern green lantern run. I really liked that. I, I instant, I, I instantly became a huge fan of Jessica Cruz when she was introduced and what Sam and, um, I'm going to forget the name of the artists. I'm going to feel terrible.

[00:33:40] There were a couple artists involved in it and I don't have the books. There were, but yeah, the, the Jessica Cruz, Simon Bass, the like beginning of that. Yeah. I, I probably still have a bunch of them upstairs. I really loved it. Yeah. No, that is, that is one of the great modern runs. Um, yeah. I mean, there's, again, I have like a backlog of stuff. Um, you know, like the new flash run looks amazing. Just haven't gotten a chance to dig it into it yet. Yeah.

[00:34:09] There's so much stuff that I have that I'm like, I will finish this. I will finish this one, one day soon. Um, but you know, again, like I'm, I'm working a full-time job. I'm trying to write these comics. I'm trying to do freelance editing and occasionally I need to sleep. So sleep's overrated. Adam, it is, but also I'm getting old. I'm getting old now. It's getting harder. I am old. So, um, yeah, it's tough. I, again, like I remember, I remember when I started doing all this stuff and it was,

[00:34:37] you know, I was like, start selling stories. I was in my late twenties. That's fine. Like I can stay up till like two or three in the morning writing stuff, get up like six 37 o'clock, go to work. It's all good. I'm 51. No, that ain't cutting it anymore. Nope. Yeah. We occasionally just need a night or two off. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I usually stay up late sometimes and I think about writing and, uh, I don't get any writing done. I don't also, I also sleep.

[00:35:07] So I don't know what it is I am doing, but it's, you're right. It's not working. Yeah. No, it's like, I've always just had like really bad insomnia and all. I've just, what I used to do was I would let myself get up and go write for a little bit. And that is the worst thing you can do. Cause it just kicks your brain back into gear. No, no. Yeah. Not a lot. And then you're, yeah. I seem to get enough done. It's all fine. Um, but yeah, no, uh, comic wise, I'm trying to think like what else I'd like, I've

[00:35:37] been, you know, rereading a bunch of like, because there were such great trades coming right. There's the, uh, the DC universe, Keith Giffen trade just came out. Oh yeah. All of heck. Again, I am one of the world biggest Giffen fans. So, you know, so I've been doing a lot of that, just kind of picking back up, you know, trades of older stuff. Um, no, that's all trade. There's a, what is it? Is it a DC finest? I think it is.

[00:36:07] Um, that is like the first trade of the Engelhardt, uh, green lantern core run. Oh, okay. Like him and, uh, Joe Stanton. Joe Stanton. Right after. Yeah. So like, okay. That, that's ridiculous comics of my use. I, I, you know, I would like to stop and reread that please. So yeah, that is sadly eating away at the keeping up with new stuff. Yeah. I just actually came across and when I was organizing some of my comics,

[00:36:33] and I came across an issue that I, one year I got signed at Baltimore Comic-Con by Steve Engelhardt and by Joe. And it was the, I guess the second, it's not the first, I think it's the second issue of green lantern core with a truck. I was going to say, please tell me to talk about the cover. I am, I am not going to name names. I'm not going to name names, but I tangentially knew like,

[00:37:01] not like we're good friends, but I knew someone who was going to be writing some green lantern. And I start, I DM them and I'm like, look, I got 20 bucks and the name truck. What will it take? And they were like, shut the fuck up. Like, I don't like truck. Like we're not doing this. And I was like, no, dude, come on. How much, how much to bring back truck? Cause like, yeah, I think this is time. They literally, they stopped talking to me for like three or four months. Like they were just like, I don't want to hear about truck. You need to stop this. I would have done the same.

[00:37:30] I would have brought it up every time. Like, can you please, please bring, you brought everybody else back, you know? Well, I mean, it doesn't help that truck wasn't actually a character. Yeah. He doesn't actually exist. That's, that's the problem. You'd have to actually have someone who knew of the like psychic thing that was truck and gone. That's a great idea. And actually become truck. Yeah. But make it do it. Do green lantern with truck. Make it real meta. You know? I know. Look, I'm saying this.

[00:38:00] If DC wants to call me absolute truck, I'm down. Yes. Yes. He's already built for it. That honestly, I love the absolute line. And because I love the, the, the stuff of like absolute this, but yeah, absolute truck. I'll get t-shirts made just for you and I, Adam. It says it, it'll just be that like green lantern two Oh one or two or two cover and say, right? No, I, I, I, I, I, so chose you got that signed. It is.

[00:38:29] I, I didn't get to go, but I was going to go to a con with Staten and I knew he was taking commissions. I'm like, I'm getting, like, it's, there were six of us who love truck and it is, it is completely irrational, but man, we love truck. We do. And if you're listening to this and you don't know truck, there's no C. It's just T R U K. Look up green lantern truck. You will thank us later. We're not realistically, but we'll hold out hope. Yeah. I just love it.

[00:38:58] It was, I, and I, I got it signed and it's, it's fantastic, but. Perfect. Perfect. Well, Adam, before I let you go, is there anything else you want listeners to know about space hell or any of the other comics you've worked on or anything else they, they, they should check out? Uh, go ahead. You, you have, um, you have, you have, you have a con. I am, I am really just focused on space hell and I'll, I'll be honest with you guys. Like we're asking for a lot of money because comics cost a lot and we want to actually pay people fairly. Right.

[00:39:26] Me and TJ will actually make no money off of this. Every cent is either towards shipping, printing, or paying Philippe and Frank. Um, because Philippe and Frank do this for a living. And so they need to actually eat and pay rent. Um, and again, we, we, you know, given the book, like we're going to need a lot of people to, you know, pay five bucks to get a PDF of a really good comic. Um, and it's risky. I don't know if we're going to make it, but we're going to give it our all. And, uh, I don't know.

[00:39:55] It's been so much fun working on this book and just getting back to doing horror and playing in like the space end of things and working with Philippe. Yeah. That's it. Like we're having a great time. We, you know, we, we would love it if y'all came along with us and had a great time with us. Yeah. And, uh, I love the script. So I, I, you know, I'm going to be shouting about the campaign listeners. If you're listening to this episode, like right about when it comes out, you should, you know, have two weeks left.

[00:40:24] So plenty of time to, uh, back the campaign and or share this episode, go follow Adam and DJ on and Philippe on social media. You can, you can share it that way. Uh, I will say there are a few digital commissions, uh, rewards where you can either have yourself designed as a hellion, like as a space alien or a character of your choice. So I'm just saying you could get Philippe in a draw truck. Just put it out there for anyone who's listening. There you go.

[00:40:51] If we, I, I would just love the idea of like, he gets 10 digital commissions from this thing and they're all for truck. And he's just like, what has happened? That would be, that would be my dream. I think right there. Yeah. I want you to drink Philippe. I, for my commission, I want you to draw the hopper, but I want it to be truck. Little teeny legs. Yeah. Little tiny legs. Oh, Adam, Adam. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. Uh, shout out to my brother, Bobby. We do this every episode.

[00:41:21] Bobby's, uh, the cryptic creator corners. Number one, most dedicated fan Bobby, uh, let's install my episodes and reads a ton of comics and backs a bunch of stuff. Uh, so Bobby, I'll send you the link for, for space hell. And, uh, you, I don't, I don't think Bobby's a big truck fan, but you know, he might, he might be interested in a digital commission of something. I'll send him the link. Uh, yeah, but listeners check out space hell. I mean, Philippe's artwork, what I've seen looks great. The script is awesome.

[00:41:50] This is a fantastic creative team and it is, it is really just a wonderful scary, uh, at times terrifying one shot outer space horror. I think you're really going to love it. So click on the link in the show notes. It'll take you right to the campaign page and you can back it. You can check it out. Follow Adam DJ. Uh, and I'll put Philippe and Frank's social media links there too. Um, but thank you so much for listening and, uh, rate, review us, do all the

[00:42:19] stuff they tell you to do about podcasts. I really appreciate it. And, uh, yeah. Um, thanks again to Adam a good night and I'll see you next time. Jimmy is too humble to do this. So as his stalwart writer, I, I wanted to tell you about his new graphic novel, Penny and the Yeti with artist Amber Akin. What started as a comic short with his daughter that I've known about for ages now, and it's evolved and has become one of those annoying, can't talk about it in comics things for too damn long.

[00:42:48] Yes, I'm predisposed to be supportive, but after reading an advanced copy of it, I have to admit it's way better than I anticipated. No shade, but it's really good. Remarkably so. Does it have a Yeti? Yeah. Is it cute and adorable? Yeah. But it straight flies in effectively tapping into the all too familiar family dynamics that we all are facing in 2026 and approaching it in a way that doesn't insult the book's target audience. Kids!

[00:43:15] They are way smarter and perceptive than we adults give them credit for. So I really appreciated Jimmy's narrative approach tapping into his own experiences as a dad and a spouse. I can hear his wife saying, Get off your phone, Jimmy, through the pages. She's going to kill me for saying that. It's hitting shelves on April 21st, and I dropped a link in the show notes where you can pre-order a copy today. Yeti or not, here we come with Penny, Perry, Fenton, Maxine, and the magical, mythical, magnificent, Yeti.

[00:43:44] On behalf of us both, we appreciate your support. This is Byron O'Neill, one of your hosts of the Cryptid Creator Corner, brought to you by Comic Book Yeti. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of our podcast. Please rate, review, subscribe, all that good stuff. It lets us know how we're doing, and more importantly, how we can improve. Thanks for listening.

[00:44:11] If you enjoyed this episode of the Cryptid Creator Corner, maybe you would enjoy our sister podcast, Into the Comics Cave. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.