Christof Bogacs Interview - Lex Luthor: Diabolical Genius and Earth To Chris Cleevy

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
Your ears do not deceive you. You have just entered the cryptid creator corner brought to you by your friends at Comic Book Yeti. So without further ado, let's get on to the interview.

[00:00:11] - [Speaker 1]
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[00:00:55] - [Speaker 2]
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Cryptic Creator Corner. I'm Byron O'Neil, your host. I can't say exactly why. It will remain a mystery, I guess, but Jimmy and I have been covering a lot more middle grade and You books on the show this year. And it's got me thinking about the differences in approach for a book from that angle as a writer.

[00:01:15] - [Speaker 2]
So answers are forthcoming, thankfully, because last time today's guest was on, we were talking about their book Under Kingdom, a You fantasy graphic novel. And today, we'll be chatting about their newest projects, Lex Luthor, Diabolical Genius. I feel like I need to put a moo in there for that one, you know, and Earth to Chris Cleavey, both of which target younger audiences. So please welcome Sydney's comic scribe, the writing wonder from Down Under. I I can't even say it and deliver that line without laughing myself.

[00:01:46] - [Speaker 2]
Christophe Bogoch, how are you doing, my friend?

[00:01:49] - [Speaker 3]
Wonderful. No, really wonderful. Always a, always a treat to talk to you. And that intro was very, very, very good. I am, I also cackled that I'd, yeah, I just, admittedly a lot of my career initially was built up just me really writing the novelty that I was Australian.

[00:02:06] - [Speaker 3]
I would bring everyone like Tim Tam flitter, like a popular Australian biscuit. And even now I'll, I'll ham it up if I have to.

[00:02:13] - [Speaker 2]
I've never had one. So what does the Tim Tam taste like? Is there, I mean,

[00:02:17] - [Speaker 3]
So I honestly, what I've realized is, and this is kind of depressing, but the reason that like Australia, my friends always want me to bring Australian stuff is I think it has less to do with like Australia having any great like food innovation and more to do with the fact that America just has really bad food regulations on, like, consumer products. But it's essentially like a how do you I'm trying to think how to describe it. It's like it's basically like it's a chocolate biscuit. It has like a it has so chocolate coated. It has like a crunchy biscuit center and then another like layer of like creamed chocolate in it as well.

[00:02:57] - [Speaker 3]
And then it's kind of like the Oreo in the sense that like there's so many variations. So there's always like seasonal variations and like, yeah. So a lot of the time it's like when you buy, buy them to someone, you get like the standard, and then you might get like some of the variants. So very, very, I would say like Oreo coated.

[00:03:14] - [Speaker 2]
Interesting. That's really cool. Yeah. Unfortunately our food system is falling apart. We don't have enough food inspectors, so I'm sure you've heard about like how we're all dying from terrible foodborne illnesses about right now.

[00:03:27] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. I, so I'm seeing the wonderful, Marie, the, the artist of Under Kingdom and their husband, Rob, in a couple of weeks when I'm in Chicago and Rob specifically was like, hey, can you get me this cream? This like beard cream because they came visit me last year and he fell in love with his beard cream. But the funny thing is that like the beard cream is just like this, our standard, like one of our chain, like brands. So I'm just like, how rough is it in The States that this, like this, you know, fairly generic thing is just better.

[00:04:01] - [Speaker 3]
It's wild.

[00:04:02] - [Speaker 2]
No, it's legit. So I'm off on a tangent here, but my family, my son just graduated from high school and he and my wife went to Europe on his like senior graduation trip. And so they did this whole cruise thing. But one of the things she was planning on doing was stocking up on sunscreen because when she and I were over on a river cruise, I think that was like a decade ago, we discovered just how much better like German sunscreen is than anything we have here in The States because apparently we have all kinds of regulations that I'm sure protect, the companies and not the consumer as to exactly what, what chemicals can go into it or not. I think some of those thankfully have been released.

[00:04:44] - [Speaker 2]
But yeah, anyway. Yay, America. All

[00:04:47] - [Speaker 3]
right. All

[00:04:49] - [Speaker 2]
right. Well, let's get into Lex Luthor, Diabolical Genius. To give people a snapshot here, Lex's father, Lionel, is thrown into prison, and Lex becomes the heir to the corporate crime empire. Superman shows up, as he would, throws a wrench into the works, derailing his evil plans. And, he needs revenge, so he sends in his trusted bodyguard, Slade Wilson, to kidnap Lois Lane.

[00:05:13] - [Speaker 2]
Shenanigans ensue. So I was getting some Phineas and Ferb, doctor Doofensmirch sort of vibes from this, like playing a junior mastermind with, you know, a comedic angle. You clearly have an affection for legs. So what was the inciting spark for you with this story?

[00:05:30] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think it kind of came from a place of, I mean, isn't a big spoiler given it's like, you know, it's, it's being revealed in the marketing, but it's, it's, it's in a lot of ways, Alex versus Batman story. And it, that kind of came out of the fact that like, don't, there's just not that many to my knowledge, maybe I'm missing some, but Lex versus Batman stories. When I was first getting into the comics, there was one written by Andy Diegel and I can't for the life of me remember that the artist, but it was called Batman rules of engagement and it was him versus Lex and I can't remember like if the book was like I can't re I don't remember much about the book but I remember reading it being like why aren't more people doing this? I mean why aren't there more more stories about these characters coming head to head because number one you know, obviously, they're both billionaires.

[00:06:18] - [Speaker 3]
They're both kind of moving those circles, so you would assume there'd be overlap in their lives based on that. But number two, they're kind of two sides at the same coin, I think, in a lot of ways. So what I like about what really drew me to Lex is that there's like a pettiness to him that I really, I think relate to. I, you know, I think a lot of the time with, with villains, they're just, they they're headed very similar circumstances to the hero and they just make a different choice. And I think in a lot of ways, the choices they make are maybe a bit more relatable than the choices the heroes make.

[00:06:51] - [Speaker 3]
So like, it's always to be, to be petty and to get angry at the world and to get revenge. I mean, such a human feeling. I think what I love about fiction is being able to express that in like a safe way. And, know, so what I really, yeah, what I really connect with with Lex over the irony that he's a rich white dude, but in a lot of ways, he feels like he's an underdog because he's just a normal kid in a world where there's like a guy flying around shooting lasers from his eyes. So, so I think he also appeals to our need of like seeing ourselves as like the, the sympathetic protagonist and the, and the underdog, even when we're maybe not objectively the underdog.

[00:07:40] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. I mean, he's way more approachable. I think especially in a younger, like middle grade kind of niche here. You know, it's one of the things that I've been thinking about with middle grade writing at the big two and how he can take kind of the heart of a character's personality structure that we're already very familiar with, you know, here with Lex and all that he represents and how the teenage version of them will find themselves within a framework that really opens up narrative possibilities because they're not fully fledged, you know, they're it's okay to make mistakes and that's all right. Whereas, I mean, Lex is the diabolical genius, you know, he's he has to be foiled by Superman or, okay, Batman, this case, somebody, you know, has to spoil his plans.

[00:08:24] - [Speaker 2]
But otherwise, perfectionist is kind of what we would associate with him, you know? And this allows you to explore him in a way where flawed is acceptable.

[00:08:35] - [Speaker 3]
A 100%. This is interesting because it kind of brings me to a revelation I had when I was writing Under Kingdom, the idea of like, it was like a big cognitive shift for me because I, for the longest time I kind of saw middle grade as like, you're dropping things out, right? You can't swear, you can't have too much violence. You can't do this, you can't do that. That, and that is not, I think a good way to look at middle grade at all.

[00:08:57] - [Speaker 3]
And that, but it was the way I kind of looked at it. And then I had this amazing flip when I was working on Under Kingdom and that flip was like, oh my goodness, grade kind of frees me from a lot of stuff. And in the Under Kingdom example, was like when I was working on that book, initially kind of thought, oh, it's going to be an adult book and it always became Breaking Bad with monsters. And I didn't want to do that. So when I made, when Marie suggested, Hey, let's do this middle grade.

[00:09:23] - [Speaker 3]
I kind of realized I had the freedom of like, Oh, I don't have to deal with like the morality, these big, hard, ugly choices because it's the kids because it's free of that because kids don't do that. And with legs, I think it's a similar thing where he's like, yeah, he's evil, but he's also like a kid. So he's like, I guess, capability and imagination for like wicked things is not the same as an adult, you know, and he is, he still kind of has that inherent goodness in him that hasn't left yet. So I think that's kind of the freedom of writing him as a middle grade character is that you don't have to, you don't have to fully divulge into like nihilism and a takedown of billionaires. Well, obviously like the book is critical of billionaires.

[00:10:04] - [Speaker 3]
How can you not be? But, know, I think if it was him as an adult, my concern would be like, it'd be really hard to just not make it another, you know, billionaires, a terrible book. And I think, I think it's great. Obviously we need those books, but I think it's, it's, I love about this version of Lex is a bit of freedom to explore what his life is like, and almost like allow the reader for a minute to feel like they're on the billionaire's team for a bit.

[00:10:30] - [Speaker 2]
Well, you've been in the game for, I think it's eight years or so now, and as somebody who, I guess that would be considered middle career, but let's Yeah. Go with And is it easier then for you as you're as you're pitching stuff to because I know you've worked with in other DC anthologies before. So are you finding yourself just kind of gravitating to that middle grade pocket at DC because of what you just laid out, you know, because you're able to explore them in a different way.

[00:11:00] - [Speaker 3]
Mean, I think the my answer, and maybe this is like, again, because, yeah, I'm I'm I'm easy and I would describe myself as like early mid career, if that makes sense, but I'm still very much in mindset of for the most part, anything a publisher throws at me, I will happily take and and and make a deal of. So kind of where I'm at with DC is very much like, you know, obviously me and Valeria want to do more Lex and I'm also, you know, I've I've been talking to editors there. I really want to do more. I'm just anything they can throw at me. I'm I'm excited to take on.

[00:11:30] - [Speaker 3]
So I think a lot of the time is, I mean, to me, I kind of define my career as like, and making the most unexpected opportunities. I mean, I didn't expect kind of to do middle grade initially. Like I was, when I was first starting out, I was all doing like, you know, pitching adult stuff. Even now it's, you know, I want to do more adult stuff, but a lot of my opportunities are kids stuff. So I do my best to kind of really make a meal of that.

[00:11:52] - [Speaker 3]
So that's kind of what my motto is, is like, you give me, I want to show, you know, I want to show both the editors I'm working with and my collaborators, but also the audience is like, hey, I'm taking this seriously. You're giving me your time and your money and I want to like, you know, do the best I can with, with whatever it is I'm given. So I think that to me there's, I've tried to find my career like adaptability.

[00:12:13] - [Speaker 1]
Got it. That pocket,

[00:12:16] - [Speaker 2]
I was thinking about this, of taking a hero, a villain, as they are a young adult, like fledgling, as we've been talking about. It's you amplify their characteristics. That's just kind of natural to do that. You know? It's kind of a a fun approach in the book that comes off a little bit, you know, cartoonish.

[00:12:36] - [Speaker 2]
You know, Superman has those sort of exaggerated Samoan, you know, size. Like, it's a there's like more Wreck It Ralph than less spandex gym rat, you know, in terms of, like, kind of how the silhouette works, you know, and you have to meet Lex in that way since you've established Superman that way. So what was your approach to magnifying the character to the whole cast really to keep that balance?

[00:13:01] - [Speaker 3]
Totally. And so the with the DC young reader stuff, you know, it's not canon, but they stress that the characters still need to be the characters. So that kind of creates a really fun tension where the way I, I kind of approached it with characters is you have kind of the core of who they are, and then you might pick at threads that kind of pull and drag a little bit away from the core, but the core is still very much there. So with like Superman, to me, he's still very much like, you know, kind, do good and cares about people kind of Superman. But I the elements that we kind of stretched out were number one, like the big himbo elements a little bit.

[00:13:36] - [Speaker 3]
And then number two

[00:13:37] - [Speaker 2]
Yes.

[00:13:38] - [Speaker 3]
You know, he is a character that cares a lot about other people. So we kind of kind of turn that in on itself a little bit with like, hey, maybe he's like a little neurotic. He cares maybe a little bit too much about what like Lois thinks of him and some and that can maybe affect his actions in like a bad way or lead him to be maybe a little bit more impulsive than like mainline Superman. So yeah, it's really about like you keep the core intact, but maybe find a few little threads to pull at to kind of and that is it to me, that's kind of how I define my mark on the characters is like, Hey, it's the character, but also like, Oh, these bits are here as well.

[00:14:14] - [Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah. I gotcha. I mean, you did that with Slade. I'm a Deathstroke fan. So it's a very interesting role for Slade.

[00:14:21] - [Speaker 2]
He's not exactly a father proxy, but he does provide a little bit of that paternal parody for Lex and his sister Lina, you know, you know, because Lionel's in jail. So characteristically, that relationship has been one of classic emotional abuse, toxic conditional worth dynamics, you know, and and they're downplayed in this a little bit because, I mean, that may be a little bit heavy handed for the audience, but, you know, it gives the children space to respond to the bad parenting trauma without the full on adult baggage. So is it, was that Slade's role primarily? You wanted to kind of make him like that?

[00:15:00] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. I mean, I think I will say with Slade, maybe that's like the one exception to the rule of the characters where I kind of had a role I wanted to fill, and then I picked Slade to fill that role. So, you know, the, like, the grizzled veteran bodyguard kind of trope. Right? Like, agent six from generator wrecks or a butler from from Adam as Fowl kind of come come to mind.

[00:15:22] - [Speaker 3]
So, obviously, I still wanted to do right by the character. I mean, there's like a deathstroke thread on a subreddit of Reddit that has been talking about the book, they've been very, very kind. So that really meant a lot that the the fans yeah. The fans kinda responded well to my take on the character. But yeah, it was a little bit of like, I did kind of need a role to fill, but I also, again, wanted to be true to the character and to speak of like the pulling the thread, the thing I kind of like really pulled with Slade is like uses a katana.

[00:15:49] - [Speaker 3]
So I was like, what if he's just awake? What if he loves Japanese? You know, what if that extends beyond just the use of the katana and then he's so that hence, like his obsession with anime and anger when Lina wants to watch anime with dubs instead of subs and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, so I think Deathstroke is definitely probably the character I took the most liberties with.

[00:16:12] - [Speaker 2]
So explain to me the Artemis Fowl reference, because you'll have to forgive me here. Wasn't no. It's not a common touchstone for writers here in America, you know, and I'm not sure if that's just at that time, like, anti heroes weren't the protagonist of choice, or maybe it's the comparisons that it gets to now the much maligned Harry Potter or, like, the strength of other homegrown competition at the time, Percy Jackson. I'm not sure what it is, but please elaborate on that because I'm just not familiar with the property as much.

[00:16:42] - [Speaker 3]
No. That's such a good point. Yeah. So, I mean, Artemis Fowl to me is kind of like the growing up, there was a lot of, like, evil genius fiction or kid genius fiction and stuff, you know, like peeking the brain, sex lab or, you know, Phineas and Verb dimension, all that kind of stuff. So I think Artemis Fowl was kind of like, I think at the pinnacle of that.

[00:17:04] - [Speaker 3]
So it's basically about this kid, Artemis Fowl, his dad goes missing, I believe goes missing or is he imprisoned? Sorry, it's been a while since I read the book, but basically his dad's out of the picture and he and his family is in financial ruin and he so he realizes his fairies are real. So he's gonna kidnap one and make them pay him a lot of gold to get that fairy back. So it's very so like Lex took a lot of inspiration from that, from Artemis Fowl. I think Artemis Fowl is kind of interesting because obviously Disney did a movie of it a couple of years back that was not good.

[00:17:40] - [Speaker 3]
Think because they kind of didn't know what to do with this character that was like openly a criminal. And as the books go on, he softens a little bit and stuff, but in the first book, he's definitely like, he is, you know, like a full mustache twirling criminal for the most part. So, yeah. And I think Adamas felt kind of interesting. All that kind of like British European stuff is interesting because it tends to do very well here in Australia, obviously, because we're quite, you know, European still in a lot of ways.

[00:18:10] - [Speaker 3]
But I I have noticed the stuff that does well in America from Britain and The UK is this stuff that like is aggressively British, almost like postcard British, like Harry Potter's a good example of that. Right? Because it is Oh, yeah. Obviously, you know, it's there's a scandal noted as they say, but yeah, it depended to postcard where Adam is foul, you know, is very just like it draws on Irish mythology. It's very, but it, I, yeah, it never really feels postcard.

[00:18:41] - [Speaker 3]
He never really makes a big deal of like, where in Ireland is this is what that's like, you know, there's a leprechaun, a pot of gold and all that kind of stuff. Whereas to me, Harry Potter most likely does it in a way that feels a little bit like more digestible to an American audience. Whereas yeah, just don't think

[00:18:58] - [Speaker 2]
I just,

[00:18:59] - [Speaker 3]
it just happens to be, you know, the author's diary. So it just happens to be in Ireland, you know, and drawn on his life experience, but it doesn't really try and like, yeah, particularly make it digestible to an overseas audience.

[00:19:13] - [Speaker 2]
Okay. I think I need to catch up on that before listeners are going to put it in the comments and, you know, say I'm a bad host or

[00:19:19] - [Speaker 1]
something for not having a fortune.

[00:19:21] - [Speaker 3]
It's well worth checking out. And I think what I loved about that is like the the writer whose name I'm going to try and try and pronounce because I'm sure I'm going to say it wrong. But he better said, I want to make like Die Hard for Kids, an action movie for kids. And just like that and the way he approaches kids writing is very kind of like for the most part, no, no holding back, but then also not afraid to be ridiculously silly. In his world, like dwarves eat dirt and then poop it out.

[00:19:49] - [Speaker 3]
Like it's, it's a ridiculous world, but it also like always takes itself super seriously. And that's kind of the way I wanted to approach Lex is like, I'm going to trust, I'm going to present this world seriously to kids and I'm going to trust that they're going to be able to tell when something ridiculous happens. That's funny. You know, like I don't need to tone. I don't need to like make the tone blatant them, like, that they will understand.

[00:20:11] - [Speaker 2]
I mean, the influencers are very obvious now that you mentioned it too. Yeah.

[00:20:14] - [Speaker 3]
No. I a lot of

[00:20:17] - [Speaker 2]
visually, like, Greg, you paid a lot of attention to, like, the scaffolding in Lexkor Tower. You know? You you talked about Die Hard. Well, there's almost that John McClane maze, you know, for for Batman to, who's acting as the primary antagonist to kinda navigate through. So yeah.

[00:20:33] - [Speaker 2]
Totally. It definitely is in the imprint of the book.

[00:20:35] - [Speaker 3]
And I mean, think that's also like the horror thing. Right? Where it's like because Batman, for lack of a better phrase, I guess, is kind of the flasher in this. Right? We've our three characters are kind of running from him.

[00:20:46] - [Speaker 3]
So in order to make that kind of work and for readers to kind of understand, we need to show, alright, this is kind of the environment they're going to be in. This is like, you know, that they're going to be running away in with all its possibilities and all its pitfalls. And then we just throw Batman in and have them in there and then we but yeah. So it was very much like, alright, we need to like, it's like the slasher thing of like, all right, we can just set up the cabin before the guy with a knife comes in and starts metaphorically stabbing everyone, or in this case, throwing batarangs.

[00:21:13] - [Speaker 2]
And it was a really nice way too, I think, to set up some of the characters' own personality traits. Right? Because you're leaning into that element, the Japanese element that was slayed and kind of, you know, the meditation thing. And then you have the the gardens, you know, one is structured, one is not. So Yeah.

[00:21:34] - [Speaker 2]
I I thought it was a very clever way to do that, but, you know, really kind of made the job difficult for Valeria, the artist on the on the series.

[00:21:43] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. No. Valeria Valeria is a saint. He joked that he deserves the denies after doing those pages. And the wild thing was, unfortunately, is why editors exist, is initially my pitch was to have there's three kind of spreads of the tower, so it takes up six pages.

[00:21:59] - [Speaker 3]
My my initial thought was, alright, we can have a two page spread. It'll be people read a verdict plate. It'll be like one big, like, slice of the tower. And my wonderful editor was like, no, that does not work. She was very right.

[00:22:16] - [Speaker 3]
And I think if I'd send that to Valero, he would have right, very rightly had the right to murder me. So, yeah, so that, so fortunately that's kind of turned to three slices, which also cause the slices I really like, and again, I'm I'm big into kind of respecting kids' ability to just go with the flow and read stuff and pick stuff up. But I think also if it was one big tower that would have like a one spread that would have been a lot for like an adult reader to take in, let alone let alone younger readers.

[00:22:44] - [Speaker 2]
But it's a missed opportunity to do one of those foldouts. You know, that would have been really cool. Byron, I

[00:22:49] - [Speaker 3]
have pitched but you better believe I pitched foldouts to to a couple of publishers now for stuff. And every time it's apparently just from a printing perspective, it's really expensive. I mean, my guess is I imagine to, like, try and convince a publisher to do any kind of special printing treatment, you have to, you'd have to be a pretty, a pretty big name just from the extra work and money involved, but you better believe one day I'll know I've made it when I have a fold out.

[00:23:16] - [Speaker 2]
There you go. I mean, there's so much cool, clever stuff you can do. People are coming up with it all the time. Like absolute Martian Manhunter. Like that first issue that was

[00:23:25] - [Speaker 3]
it was incredible. So Yeah. No. Totally. And I think as as digital media, you know, like comic fans in particular are very are very kind of hesitant to move to digital comics.

[00:23:40] - [Speaker 3]
So I think focusing on like, how do we make the most of this physical artifact, especially as printing and shipping goes up and people have to pay more of it, more for it really leaned into like, what can we do with this? Think is, I think that's the solution is like, how do we make these physical artifacts? They're not disposable anymore. Cause at least here, you know, a single issue comic is like $10. So it's not disposable things.

[00:23:59] - [Speaker 3]
So how do we make it kind of like a, you know, item you want to keep and an item that you're really kind of connecting with and interacting with.

[00:24:06] - [Speaker 2]
Which I think is especially important with that age group because they're finding all the data is suggesting that they want to disconnect and they're moving back into physical media. They want records now, which is pretty wild.

[00:24:18] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah, no, a 100%. I think, yeah, it's kind of a rejection of the the digital feudalism of like, oh, nothing. Right? Everything is like you do, you pay for it, but the the corporation could take it away at any time. So I think, yeah, it's really driving a just a love and a fascination with physical media again, which is wonderful.

[00:24:37] - [Speaker 3]
And I think, yeah, as comic creators, it's thinking about how we kind of lean into that, you know, how we take advantage of that, how we make the books, how we make the book something really special that you do want to, you do want to hold in your hand.

[00:24:51] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. Well, DC editors, you're hearing it here. Let Christophe do it. Add the couple extra pages. We'll pay the extra money.

[00:24:58] - [Speaker 2]
The on the, the topic of pitching, I wanna know when your Kite Man mini series is coming out because you have a a rose gallery, several rose galleries actually that are present and show up at the auction in this book. So tell me about your affection for Kite Man.

[00:25:13] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah, totally. I mean, he's a to me, he's like the perfect so many of the old Batman villains are just like, oh, this is something a kid would think of. Mean, not like the best way possible. Like, there's such a freedom. Like like, he does crimes with a kite.

[00:25:26] - [Speaker 3]
Amazing. No notes. So, Caiman is such a natural such a natural fit. And I think as well with like Tom King's treatment of him of making him both like a tragic character, but also very comedic character. And then that kind of carried over into the Harley Quinn animated series.

[00:25:42] - [Speaker 3]
It was like a very it was like a very easy thing of like, oh, Kite Man would easily fit into this. And then there's the other element of it of like trying to let kids in on adult jokes in a safe way. And by that, I mean, like, in the Tom King thing, he's saying like, yeah, you can't say that in a kid's comic. So he that says, heck yeah. But it's like, I want kids to feel like they're in on the joke and that they get to enjoy the joke of this character as well.

[00:26:07] - [Speaker 2]
So how, how do you do that? How important is that to make sure? I mean, obviously you want kids to connect with a book and it's one of the Ps of mind so often that I see and you, you absolutely nailed it. I think you avoided that was to treat kids with a measure of respect, you know, and they are way more astute than most adults give them credit for. And that's, it really is a peep of mine.

[00:26:32] - [Speaker 2]
We often see that in You middle grade stuff where I just don't feel like they're truly respected for where they're at with, with their intelligence, their emotional intelligence, you know, their, their empathetic, you know, intelligence levels either.

[00:26:47] - [Speaker 3]
No. A 100%. I mean, I think it comes back to the idea of like my big kind of cognitive shift to writing for kids moving away from what can't I do to what does this actually free me to do. Right? What adult cynicism and tropes and and and adult themes does it actually free me of?

[00:27:06] - [Speaker 3]
And I think that is, yeah, very much the way I approach it. Then on the flip side, I also like, I want to be mindful of younger readers and not, you know, so I'm not going to go like full Hickman or anything, but I, you know, I will try and do more, you know, challenging spreads or things that, you know, that aren't just, you know, your, your, your basic kind of easy to read panels. And I think the reason for that is kids are reading so many comics and kids inherently get visual storytelling. I teach workshops across libraries all across my home state. And the thing that always surprises me is the younger the kids are, the better they understand visual storytelling inherently.

[00:27:45] - [Speaker 3]
It's the teens that struggle and the adults that struggle. It's not the kids, not the younger, you know, like kids in that middle grade, they inherently get it. Basically, if you look at like a lot of kids media, like books that are a mix of like images and prose are just so common for kids, you know, that's like most of what kids read. And yet if you try and pitch that to like a publisher for an adult, like it's an illustrated novel, like good luck. It's such a hard sell for adults, even though it's like, it's, you know, almost the standard in kids publishing.

[00:28:16] - [Speaker 3]
So I, point being that kids are so used to the mix of words and images and, know, the kind of the gray areas between like, is this a comic? You know, something like Captain On the Parents was like, is this a comic? Is this not a comic? So I think kids are just on that. They're already there, you know?

[00:28:33] - [Speaker 3]
So it's, they're already way ahead of adults in that regard. So for the most part, you know, I'm trying to make my, the thing, the stuff I write for kids accessible, but I'm never really dumbing it down.

[00:28:46] - [Speaker 2]
Well, with accessibility, let's do the UNO reverse and we'll move through the other project. So Earth to Chris Cleavey, and this is about picking up the idea of mental health and kind of, I think this is the, the most personal thing I've ever seen that you've written.

[00:29:03] - [Speaker 3]
Pardon me.

[00:29:03] - [Speaker 2]
You know, and in the afterward became crystal clear. It was crystal clear. Okay. Reading the book that, that this was part of your own personal journey that, that you're channeling, you know, with, struggling with OCD and it's quite powerful, you know, did you initially set out to tell a version of your own mental health journey or was it more organic and sort of crystallized on its own over time?

[00:29:27] - [Speaker 3]
No. So I think with this, with us, Chris Cleavey, it was very like pretty deliberate, right? So at the time I was kind of thinking about, like, I wanna like like, god, this is gonna sound so conniving. But essentially, like, I was at the stage of my career. It's like, alright.

[00:29:40] - [Speaker 3]
I would like to get an agent, and I wanna make something for the middle grade market because that seems to be where things are shifting. So what story do I have in me that is a good fit for the kind of stories they want? And I kind of thought about my life and then I realized, oh, yeah, there was like close to a decade of my life where I had really bad OCD and was convinced that if I didn't like switch a light on or off or pick the wrong socks to wear that day or whatever aliens were gonna invade, I should probably like investigate that. That might be an interesting story. And that was kind of where it came from.

[00:30:08] - [Speaker 3]
So Chris Cleavey's story is very much my own in terms of how his manifests. The actual like beats of the story, the friend, the setting, obviously in The US, that's all fabricated. But that his kind of journey and how his anxiety and the interweaving of aliens and his mom's new stepdad, that is very, very autobiographical, I would say.

[00:30:31] - [Speaker 2]
So I'm being hella nosy, but what did the aliens look like in in your OCD? Were these standard grays? Were these like the I'm trying to remember. Creatures?

[00:30:39] - [Speaker 3]
I think that yeah. So the salsa very like the aliens in the book are very much created like for the book. I'm trying to remember. I think I feel like they were like your classic grey aliens, I think. But it was really like, and this is kind of the other element that woven to Chris Cleavy, was ever like, whatever scary alien thing I'd seen most recently like that, you know, like it's kind of like the way you see fiction as a kid and it just kind of melds to your fears.

[00:31:05] - [Speaker 3]
Was kind of the other element of it with Chris Cleavy is like the horror of as a child, have no litmus test for what being neurotypically is normal mental health function. Like whatever your mental reality is, you'll use it as everyone's mental reality. So that's the kind of the other element of it, of the book as well with the with the therapy element as well. It's like him learning that, oh, this is actually like something that you can, like, diagnose and put a name on. I mean, really, me, like, never really saw therapist, my OCD, a lot of his experiences with the therapist had drawn from my experiences with, with seeing one later in life for anxiety and kind of the processes involved around that.

[00:31:47] - [Speaker 3]
Again, it's very personal story, but not necessarily autobiographical because it probably, you know, it probably combines experiences from my life over close to like twenty years of like dealing with mental health and how that's evolved for me.

[00:32:02] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. I thought the the development of their friendship, in the book with Chris and Jaden and Flo. I thought it was masterfully done. There's this enough exposition to really define them as separate characters. So they exist in Chris's orbit, but it also ensures they aren't defined and constrained by it.

[00:32:23] - [Speaker 2]
You know, they're able to develop their own personalities independently and have their own interests. You know, Jaden's basketball, you know, Flo is getting into the aquarium stuff, you know, and Flo is the really fascinating one for me because she displays some OCD tendencies with that respect to like very rigid fish keeping practices. And we both know fish keeping practices should be rigid. Your fish die, and that's that's terrible, awful. But, you know, was that intended to illustrate that there are kind of these levels of compulsion, you know, and even when they are present, they don't have to be, like, inhibitory?

[00:33:00] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. That was not the intention with Flo. I know I've had, like, my editor and I think my some other people who've read the book, the artist as well, of read Flo is like maybe, on the ASD spectrum and that wasn't deliberate, not ASD, that's not something I'm qualified to talk about, but what I, for me, I think Flo is just, I think it just really came out of like, we've talked about this off pod before, like I love fish keeping. I don't have a fish tank at the moment, but throughout my life, it's been something I always come back to. So that's kind of where I really built Flo around.

[00:33:31] - [Speaker 3]
It's like, she loves fish keeping. Why does she love fish keeping? Well, likes being in control, having control of this environment. She likes having things to look after, like all those, I think that felt really came out of like, oh, I wanted this character to be into fish keeping. Then the personality kind of sprung out of that.

[00:33:48] - [Speaker 3]
So it wasn't deliberate, but I would say, would also say that it's like a big thing that my wonderful editors at HarperCons really pushed me on was like, how are Chris's friends reacting to what's going on and how are their own individual struggles interacting with that. So for Jaden, it's about learning to, like, talk about his feelings and and, you know, ultimately address his insecurities, even though he kind of comes across as quite a quite a confident person, you know, and and Flo's going through her stuff as well learning that, you know, you you can't control everything and also dealing with her own insecurity. So, yeah, that was kind of the big thing that they really pushed me. It was like these trying to make these characters feel like they're whole, have their own lives that they, you know, without Chris, they'd still be interesting enough to follow. However, we're specifically looking at how their struggles kind of interact with Chris.

[00:34:39] - [Speaker 3]
Chris is in the mingling of it all. Cause this is the other thing that, that as an adult you learn is like so often people to respond to your mental health struggles or whatever struggles you're going through, you know, they're, they're so colored by their own experiences. So I think that's something that's really exciting

[00:34:52] - [Speaker 2]
for the

[00:34:52] - [Speaker 3]
kids to start to learn. It's like, they're not coming in objective, you know, they're coming in with their own struggles and thoughts and history on these things.

[00:35:00] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. And it's that's one of the things that's been really challenging for me going through my own journey with my my, like, physical illness, but is, is how everyone else sort of approaches it. This whole concept of disability was something that I was very reluctant to embrace for a long time. And now I'm comfortable with it, but it takes time. And, it really is fascinating because everybody wants to help you.

[00:35:26] - [Speaker 2]
Everybody wants to, you know, define it in that context of their own personal experience, which makes sense. But it's a very weird bubble to be in because, you know, I find myself trying to give people grace when it's you just want to slap them around a little bit.

[00:35:42] - [Speaker 3]
No, a 100%. I mean, not that it's the same by any means, but I have someone in my life who is an addict. I've started, you know, this year, one of the big things I started doing was going to a support group, for, for people with loved ones of addicts. The wonderful thing about the support group is kind of realise how people are the only people that understand it, the people that have been through it. And you know, mental illness, physical illness addiction, all these things are like huge.

[00:36:08] - [Speaker 3]
They're horrifying. They scare the crap out of us. So I think the really human response and something that I've been trying to teach myself to not do is like the, the very, like the quick responses, like, I want to give advice because that makes me feel like there's a semblance of control. Right. When the reality of there is no, there is no control over these things for the most part.

[00:36:29] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah, sorry. So I think that's kind of where, yeah, where, where it comes from is this just idea of like, everyone wants to give advice, but I, you'd kind of have to learn to just accept, I guess, for lack of better word, chaos or you what's going to happen is what's to happen or you can kind of shape is your, your reaction to it.

[00:36:48] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. I think there's a deep seated, like lizard brain type reaction that a lot of people get when, when they're trying to approach, I'll speak for myself, you know, like my condition. Think it truly, and I've had good friends who have come clean on this and said like, it it's absolutely terrifying. We don't know what to say because the thought enters our head that, you know, that could, you know, without, it could be me, you know, that's going through that. And it's horrifying, You know?

[00:37:16] - [Speaker 2]
And I think there's a lot of power in stories that people can see themselves in as they're struggling with, you know, mental illness or a physical disability, especially at that that teenage, you know, timeframe.

[00:37:28] - [Speaker 3]
Totally. And I

[00:37:29] - [Speaker 2]
Young adult timeframe at Circletor.

[00:37:30] - [Speaker 3]
And I hope, like, if there's one kind of big thing that people take about Chris Cleavey, it's like when you can give when you can give, like, what you're going through a name and a shape, it becomes so much more manageable because there's something about like, you know, humans were such a, without getting like too deep into it or whatever, we're a very communal species. So there's something very healing about knowing that other people have experienced this and that while our experiences of everything are like unique to us, there's a lot of overlap, you know, and OCD is such a good example because it, you can kind of break it down in terms of like, you know, everyone has their compulsions. Yeah. The compulsions are different for everyone, but they all have them, you know, all those kinds of like, it's kind of like, you can start to put these big things that are specific for you in boxes and realize, yeah, everyone's a different, but we all kind of have them. So I think that's kind of like the, for me, the big take home of, or the thing I hope people get out of the book is the idea of like, you know, what you're going through as someone else has been through.

[00:38:29] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. I mean, what really elevated it for me was that it it works on these these multiple thematic levels. You know, here Chris's OCD function as the nucleus, but it's anchored in that universal relatability of a friendship dynamic more than anything So how do you, how do you approach layering a story that's so personal, you know, to your own struggle and translate that into, you know, broad emotional empathy for a general reader?

[00:38:57] - [Speaker 3]
Oh yeah. I mean, think whenever I'm writing anything, my big feeling about personal or autobio, anything like autobio, not that I've done any autobio myself, but a long time ago, I, I edited an autobio comic for Nadia Shammas and the big kind of thing I said to her then, and I kind of take whenever I'm writing about my experiences is don't, you're not trying to like, you're not trying to replicate the memory, trying to replicate how the memory made you feel at the time and how it makes you feel now. So that's kind of what the book is about, right? Like I didn't have a friend dynamic like Chris's, but I didn't know what it was like to, you know, to have friends I really cared about and to have both of us changing and going in different directions and being concerned about what was going to happen with that friendship. So, yeah, so I think for me, it's like, I'm trying to like really replicate how that feeling felt.

[00:39:47] - [Speaker 3]
And when I focus on that, then suddenly I'm free from details because I'm not following a material truth. I'm, I'm, I'm pursuing an emotional truth and that gives me so much more room to play. So that's kind of the way I take it is like, I'm not trying to replicate what happened. I'm trying to replicate how it felt.

[00:40:04] - [Speaker 2]
Okay. Okay. I gotcha. I was, it makes me think of it. I was listening to Jimmy's chat with Christian Ward recently, you know, Christian illustrated establishing a character's want versus need versus what they actually get.

[00:40:18] - [Speaker 3]
So

[00:40:19] - [Speaker 2]
how does that change if it does writing a middle grade book that is based on your own personal experience to some extent, right? There there's that line between, okay, this is autobiographical and not.

[00:40:32] - [Speaker 3]
Totally. I mean, I think like for Chris speaking to that, one need, He wants the, he wants things to go back to what they were before. Right? Which is impossible. That's not going to happen.

[00:40:41] - [Speaker 3]
So what he kind of needs is to learn a way to cope with what's going on. And I think that that idea of learning to cope is when we're talking about stories about mental health, obviously there's, we're in the Western storytelling tradition, know, we use three act structure, you know, everything's kind of derived from that. And the Western story structure is really kind of focused on a coherent resolution. Whereas mental health is not that anyone who's gone through any physical and mental health problems knows that, you know, there's no clean resolution. So I think my, the way I kind of handle it is rather than the character being cured at the end, because that does, that's not what happens.

[00:41:20] - [Speaker 3]
It's not, doesn't feel emotionally authentic. I try and focus with Chris Cleavy in particular, it was like the big kind of turning point or resolution towards the end of the book is like, he has the tools to look after it, to start to look after himself. So I think for me, when we're talking about like mental health or health stuff in books, think it's about like people learning, getting a tool, right? It's a step in the right direction and admittedly getting tools, learning to use them and having to get new tools is like the story of living with mental illness. Know, tools sometimes, unfortunately tools work for a couple of years or for a certain stage of your life and then you need new ones.

[00:41:56] - [Speaker 3]
But I think it's just been like, hey, you can get tools and they will help you navigate this. That's kind of, I think the best kind of place to end a, you know, a story on mental health. And that's very much where I leave it with Chris is like, he's not cured. His world is still full of, full of stuff he has to contend with, but he has this tool and it's starting to work.

[00:42:19] - [Speaker 2]
Was there ever a, an idea to include more of those tools? Cause I've seen how this is done a lot of times in, in the middle grade audience, or even, even with something dealing with mental health, you know, that's targeted towards an adult audience where there'll be a lot of, if, if you feel like you're struggling with this, here's a website, lengthy, you know, to, to go to for help.

[00:42:42] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. I mean, I think like I, you know, if I wanted to write textbooks, I would, I would write textbooks. I mean, this was kind of, I think a bit of a point of tension. I don't know if tension's the right word, but, so wonderful folks at Hubbocons brought in a children's psychologist and she was really great, but obviously like there was a bit of pushback between her and me because she is kind of like wanting to present, you know, the most clinically accurate version of everything, you know, whereas I'm trying to tell a story and I'm trying to share parts of my story, but it's not, you know, so it's something that she really struggled with was how, you know, how Chris would like see the aliens and stuff. And, you know, he was big on like, that's not part of OCD and you don't have these hallucinations and delusions.

[00:43:29] - [Speaker 3]
I'm like, I get that, but it's comics. We need to show these things. It was, that was kind of like, and in the end, I'm really happy with the balance we had. Does get into some of that stuff, but at the same time, like this isn't the point of this book for me, like the role that I, you know, that I ideally would want it to play in, like, let's say a kid reads who has OCD and maybe doesn't know what when they read the book is. I want to be able to be like, Hey, maybe this is me.

[00:43:55] - [Speaker 3]
Maybe I should talk to an adult about that's kind of, it's really meant to be like a starting point, you know, but I, you know, I don't want my, my gripping novel isn't meant to cure people. It's meant to make them feel like they're not alone. That's, you know, so that was kind of the purpose of it. Again, coming back to this idea of like, I didn't want to show a textbook accurate version of OCD. I wanted to tell you how it felt like for me as I keep going through OCD.

[00:44:21] - [Speaker 3]
So that was, you know, again, it's it's about pursuing this feeling. Everything else is negotiable.

[00:44:26] - [Speaker 2]
Interesting. That is that's truly fascinating because this is the I go back to, you know, sensitivity reader because I was talking to Peter Warren about working on Tin Can Society, and I had both he and somebody from the disability community. Really wanted to do that to bring her on, to give her perspective about being engaged and part of the process and everything. But actually having somebody from the clinical side of thing is the weirdest, like, sensitivity reader scenario I think I've heard so far.

[00:44:54] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. No. No. It it makes sense. And I think from there I could be wrong, but I imagine from publishers perspective as well, they might have legal workers they need to tick as well.

[00:45:05] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. But, I think there is a lot of tension when you're dealing with like a clinician. Right? Especially because, know, they they want to make sure that they feel like they're not being misrepresented at all now they're involved in this. I totally get that but reality and fiction are so there's always going to be attention there.

[00:45:23] - [Speaker 3]
Again the way I think each of us of came into it was, you know, with, with very different approaches.

[00:45:30] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, having the different voices involved kind of can only be

[00:45:34] - [Speaker 3]
a good And I want to create

[00:45:36] - [Speaker 2]
slides. Ultimately,

[00:45:37] - [Speaker 3]
it was great that we had her and, it made the book better for sure. But I think, you know, I would be insincere and say, was like tension there. Right? There was pushback to try and like figure out the right balance here. This is hard, always, you know, challenging to do, getting that right balance between being responsible and how we portray something, but then also authentic to my experience.

[00:45:58] - [Speaker 2]
I don't know what the, the analogy is in Australia, but here we would say the proof is in the And I think this is absolutely the best thing you've I written appreciate to that. So whatever that chemistry was, it worked. You know, it's it's really engaging and could be extremely helpful to kids struggling with mental illness or just a physical disability, you know, not just OCD. So congratulations. I think Earth to Crisp Covina is fantastic and it's already hit shelves.

[00:46:27] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah. So it was out, it's out in both Australia and The U S now. So it's been out about two weeks, so still very fresh. So please go to your local bookstore and pick up a copy.

[00:46:38] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah, please do not, not, don't go to Barnes and Noble because they support AI

[00:46:42] - [Speaker 3]
books elsewhere.

[00:46:46] - [Speaker 2]
Oh, it's it's it's awful, but we won't get into that. But before I let you go, let's do my shout out segment. This can be anything that inspired you recently that you'd like to share or an expression of gratitude for someone who did you a solid or just some kind of gratitude for something you're just grateful for simply. I'll go first to give you a moment to think about it. Mine is going out to Dolly Parton.

[00:47:07] - [Speaker 2]
As somebody who's from the South, I'm from Tennessee, from Appalachia, she changed the narrative of what someone from the South actually looks like. We have it's often a caricature, you know, the hillbilly kind of thing. And we're not all like that. There are quite a few people who are, but we're not all like that. And, you know, while the current administration is trying to ban books, she built libraries.

[00:47:29] - [Speaker 2]
She was an advocate for the queer community, leading with love and remaining outspoken amongst the inevitable backlash as she rallied against anti trans legislation. She said black lives matter, and she put her money where, where her mouth was to to line that up. So she was a positive beacon to so many people, and her legacy is one that will not be forgotten, certainly by me. So what else you got?

[00:47:53] - [Speaker 3]
I mean, I look, my best mate who also happens to be my cousin David, is just a wonderful source of light in my life. He's actually the person I dedicated the Lex Luthor book to. He's like the kindest, smartest, best person I know. The thing I really admire about him is that, and I think, you know, in Lex, Lex often uses his intelligence to like dominate people or take control of things. He, yeah, my, David always uses his to, to, to help and to be kind and to be gentle and is just, even though he probably has good answers for people, he never forces answers on anyone.

[00:48:29] - [Speaker 3]
Yeah, I'm just very, you know, this last year has really made me reflect on the wonderful people that I get to call my friends in my life.

[00:48:36] - [Speaker 2]
That is amazing. I love that. Christophe, thanks for hanging

[00:48:40] - [Speaker 1]
out

[00:48:40] - [Speaker 2]
with me today again on the show. It's been a pleasure.

[00:48:42] - [Speaker 3]
Thank you so much.

[00:48:43] - [Speaker 2]
Alright. Absolutely. Well, this is Byron O'Neil. And on behalf of all of us at Comic Book Yeti, thanks for tuning in, and we will see you next time. Take care, everybody.

[00:48:52] - [Speaker 2]
Peace. This is Byron O'Neil, 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.

[00:49:10] - [Speaker 2]
Thanks for listening.

[00:49:20] - [Speaker 0]
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.