J. Holtham and Michael Lee Harris Interview: Motherfucking Monsters

[00:00:00] Your ears do not deceive you. You've 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.

[00:00:10] Hey everyone, this is...

[00:00:13] Hi Byron.

[00:00:14] Who is this?

[00:00:15] I'm your fairy godmother.

[00:00:17] I have a fairy godmother?

[00:00:18] Of course you do.

[00:00:20] I'm 50 years old, why haven't you shown up before?

[00:00:22] I appear when I'm needed.

[00:00:24] And I didn't need you in all these years?

[00:00:27] Do you want my help or not?

[00:00:29] Um...

[00:00:30] Sure.

[00:00:31] Exactly.

[00:00:32] I was just about to pitch our Patreon.

[00:00:34] Why would I need help with that?

[00:00:36] Because you're an idiot sometimes.

[00:00:38] That's hurtful.

[00:00:40] What were you going to put on there?

[00:00:42] We do comic stuff?

[00:00:43] So something along those lines?

[00:00:45] And this is why I'm here.

[00:00:48] You do know what people put on Patreon most of the time, right?

[00:00:52] Honestly, no.

[00:00:54] People need something a little bit spicy to entice them to support you.

[00:00:59] Nobody wants to see me shirtless.

[00:01:01] I doubt that's true.

[00:01:03] You are in pretty good shape considering your age.

[00:01:06] Thank you.

[00:01:06] Let's see.

[00:01:07] A little spicy.

[00:01:09] I've been bugging Jimmy to figure out what he's going to do.

[00:01:12] I know lately he's been playing around with his **** all the time.

[00:01:16] He loves to take it out and show it off.

[00:01:18] There's even a specific TikTok channel now.

[00:01:20] How's that sound?

[00:01:21] Not a bad start.

[00:01:22] People like Jimmy.

[00:01:23] What else you got?

[00:01:24] I told a story recently about being in a strip club with some of the four horsemen when I was working for WCW back in the day.

[00:01:30] I picked up an infection on my-

[00:01:32] Woo!

[00:01:33] From the experience, I hate strip clubs.

[00:01:36] Is that better?

[00:01:37] Getting there?

[00:01:38] But maybe spicy shouldn't include infections you get in strip clubs.

[00:01:42] That's not sexy.

[00:01:44] We'll workshop it.

[00:01:46] Like I need more meating.

[00:01:47] At least tell them where to find it while we figure this out.

[00:01:51] Mother goddess, help this poor man.

[00:01:52] You can find us on Patreon at cryptidcreatorcornerpod.

[00:01:56] I'll put it in the show notes.

[00:01:58] Anything else you'd like to remind me that I'm bad at?

[00:02:01] How much time do you have?

[00:02:03] Why do you look like Rosario Dawson anyway?

[00:02:05] I appear the way you want me to look.

[00:02:07] Okay, that's disturbing.

[00:02:09] Wait, have you been showing up in my dreams?

[00:02:12] I'll never tell.

[00:02:14] And we're done here.

[00:02:16] Y'all, Jimmy, the Chaos Goblin strikes again.

[00:02:20] I should have known better than to mention I was working on my DC Universe meets Ravenloft hybrid D&D campaign on social media.

[00:02:27] My bad.

[00:02:28] He goes and tags a bunch of comics creators we know, and now I have to get it in gear and whip this campaign into shape so we could start playing.

[00:02:34] Another friend chimes in, are you going to make maps?

[00:02:38] It's fair to say it's been a while since I put something together so I guess, question mark?

[00:02:43] It was then that I discovered Arkhamforge.

[00:02:45] If you don't know who Arkhamforge is, they have everything you need to make your TTRPG more fun and immersive.

[00:02:52] Allowing you to build, play, and export animated maps, including in-person Fog of War capability that lets your players interact with maps as the adventure unfolds while you, the DM, get the full picture.

[00:03:04] Now I'm set to easily build high-res animated maps, saving myself precious time and significantly adding nuance to our campaign.

[00:03:12] That's a win every day in my book.

[00:03:14] Check them out at arkhamforge.com and use the discount code YETI5 to get $5 off.

[00:03:20] I'll drop a link in the show notes for you.

[00:03:22] And big thanks to Arkhamforge for partnering with our show.

[00:03:25] I think I'm going to make Jimmy play a goblin warlock just to get even.

[00:03:29] Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of the Cryptic Creator Corner.

[00:03:32] I'm Byron O'Neill, your host for our Comics Creator Chat.

[00:03:35] I'm joined by two newcomers to the show today, Jay Holtham and Michael Lee Harris.

[00:03:40] Jay is a playwright and a TV writer with credits on Jessica Jones, Cloak & Dagger, and Supergirl,

[00:03:44] and is co-executive producer of The Handmaid's Tale, who recently turned his attention to the comics medium,

[00:03:50] writing Night Thrasher, Bishop War College, and Spider-Verse Unlimited, among others.

[00:03:54] His collaboration partner is artist and illustrator Michael Lee Harris,

[00:03:57] whose work you might be already familiar with on Berlin 1945 and Black Hitler.

[00:04:02] They have a new project dropping soon that is part of the larger Horizon experiment from Image Comics,

[00:04:07] a series of five one-shot comic books, each featuring original protagonists from marginalized backgrounds

[00:04:13] set in a popular genre and inspired by pop culture icons.

[00:04:16] Theirs is motherfucking monsters.

[00:04:18] No, it is not a kid's book.

[00:04:20] It is described as an evil dead for blurt.

[00:04:22] I got a chance to read an advanced review copy of this already, and before I started,

[00:04:26] I was wondering if this was going to be like motherfucking monsters, like somebody who's scared,

[00:04:30] or more like motherfucking monsters, like channeling Samuel L. Jackson from On A Plane.

[00:04:35] Clearly after reading it, it's the latter, it's safe to say.

[00:04:39] Absolutely.

[00:04:40] I mean, Snakes on a Plane remains one of my favorite movies,

[00:04:43] one of my favorite film-going experiences,

[00:04:45] and this is absolutely get these motherfucking monsters off this motherfucking college campus.

[00:04:52] And that is the spirit of the whole thing.

[00:04:54] Like, if I could have Samuel L. Jackson read an audio book of it, that would be perfect.

[00:04:59] Oh, that would be incredible.

[00:05:00] We got to work that out.

[00:05:02] Who do we have to call?

[00:05:03] Just call Hollywood.

[00:05:05] You know, eventually the call will get there.

[00:05:06] Sure.

[00:05:07] Well, since both of you are new to the show, let's start with how you got started.

[00:05:10] Jay, I was reading about how your writing career got kicked off with a weird short story about werewolves.

[00:05:15] So clearly the horror bug hit you at a pretty young age.

[00:05:19] So give me a little background.

[00:05:20] Sure.

[00:05:21] My mother was a poet and a librarian.

[00:05:23] So I grew up around books and writing.

[00:05:25] And I was actually sort of a scaredy cat kid.

[00:05:28] I'm not sure how I wound up writing that first story about a werewolf.

[00:05:32] It did not make any sense.

[00:05:33] I don't think it was particularly scary.

[00:05:35] But a few years down the road, I discovered Stephen King.

[00:05:38] And that was sort of a gateway into all things horror.

[00:05:42] And by the time I graduated high school, I was a Fangoria kid.

[00:05:46] Okay.

[00:05:47] So that was always something that I was really interested into.

[00:05:51] Watched a lot of really terrible 80s and 90s horror movies.

[00:05:55] But along the way, I was also doing theater.

[00:05:58] So I started writing plays, studying theater.

[00:06:01] And that's what I did for a long time before I switched over to TV and film and comics now.

[00:06:07] And I've just sort of brought that horror aesthetic kind of everywhere I've gone.

[00:06:13] Well, Michael, I think if I was reading correctly, you kind of grew up in the South or you at least spent a lot of time there.

[00:06:19] At least the interwebs are telling me you're a SCAD grad.

[00:06:21] I have a few friends who graduated from there.

[00:06:23] But that was likely well more than a decade.

[00:06:26] And I'm being generous with my age here before your time.

[00:06:30] So talk me through your journey as an artist and kind of how you found your way into comics.

[00:06:35] Yeah, I went to Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio.

[00:06:39] And then I went to Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.

[00:06:44] And I've been here for, let's just say, you know, years now.

[00:06:50] And so I'm doing a lot of stuff, traveling around, doing cons, doing all the books I can.

[00:06:55] And so this is, I think, my biggest title yet.

[00:06:59] Well, we've already had Porn Sack, Terry, Saber, and Tanana Reeve on talking about their contributions to the Horizon experiment.

[00:07:06] Link in the show notes if anybody needs to catch up on those.

[00:07:09] Aside from Porn Sack knows everybody, which he does, and that's the common refrain, how did you two hook up and cook up this collaboration?

[00:07:17] Through Porn Sack, because Porn Sack knows everybody.

[00:07:20] Right, yep, yep.

[00:07:21] And Porn Sack rolls deep in the comic book world.

[00:07:23] I wasn't particularly familiar with Lee's work before we hooked up on this.

[00:07:27] But Porn Sack was a huge fan, and it was the exactly right marriage.

[00:07:33] Yeah, exactly right.

[00:07:35] Yeah.

[00:07:36] Will Dennis came to visit SCAD, and that's how we met.

[00:07:39] And Will Dennis hooked me up with Porn Sack.

[00:07:41] Oh, nice.

[00:07:42] Okay.

[00:07:42] We all know everybody now.

[00:07:44] Yeah, that's how that goes.

[00:07:46] Yep.

[00:07:47] Well, what I've truly enjoyed about the Horizon experiment has been the openness to embrace big swings.

[00:07:53] You know, you can take a shot telling the most authentic version of your story, and if it hits, great.

[00:07:58] And if not, you gave it a shot, and the audience just wasn't receptive enough to it.

[00:08:02] That's not dismissive on my part because it has created some absolutely phenomenal stuff this far.

[00:08:07] I've loved them all.

[00:08:08] You know, the log line for this, as I previously mentioned, was evil dead for blurts.

[00:08:13] Okay.

[00:08:13] But what I saw personally was kind of an analysis about historically white-dominated university system with institutionalized mechanisms that are designed to hold people of color back can be satirically scrutinized with humor through a horror vehicle.

[00:08:27] Maybe that's a little highfalutin way to look at it, but that's just me.

[00:08:31] So when you heard, gents, have at it.

[00:08:35] Tell the story you want.

[00:08:36] What ultimately led to this?

[00:08:38] I mean, you really nailed it.

[00:08:41] Like that is exactly, highfalutin or not, exactly what was going on in my brain.

[00:08:45] As someone who lives, who's lived the majority of my life in primarily white institutions, it's always a little uncomfortable.

[00:08:53] There's always a little back and forth of trying to figure that out.

[00:08:56] And this was definitely an attempt to me to sort of reconcile all of those parts of myself.

[00:09:03] And that's one of the things that I love about horror is like horror is such fertile ground for metaphor and to make things very sort of visceral that can be a little intellectual.

[00:09:16] And so approaching it, like that was the guiding spirit.

[00:09:20] And, you know, the guiding spirit for a lot of these is, you know, there are these pieces of media, there are these genres and styles and, you know, classic things that I don't get to see myself in.

[00:09:30] And I wanted to put myself and really authentically put a bunch of black people in that circumstance, in that situation.

[00:09:39] And that's really where, you know, Evil Dead is probably my favorite horror franchise.

[00:09:46] And, you know, hearkening all the way back to the original, that sense of, you know, college students out in the world.

[00:09:54] Like that was really something I wanted to mine and something to dig into.

[00:09:58] So that's, that was really the beginning of it for me.

[00:10:02] Okay.

[00:10:03] Well, to kind of set the stage for the story, JJ is a newbie attending Sheffield College in upstate New York, 100 miles from Brooklyn.

[00:10:10] Got the Beastie Boys songs now in my head.

[00:10:14] He's trying to fit in and he gets invited to a tridel frat house party hosted by this stereotypical white assholes.

[00:10:20] And he's invited along his cousin, OG, her girlfriend, Kaya and the roommate Phoenix, who has also a pocketbook dog muffin.

[00:10:30] And they're visiting him at school.

[00:10:31] And then without giving anything away, all hell breaks loose.

[00:10:36] So Jay, first I'm wondering how much of JJ story here was kind of from your own experience.

[00:10:41] You kind of alluded to a little bit there, but you went to New Paltz college in upstate.

[00:10:45] That's right.

[00:10:46] That Google maps tells me was 80 miles outside of the city.

[00:10:50] So.

[00:10:50] Yep.

[00:10:50] Yep.

[00:10:51] Exactly that about a hundred miles.

[00:10:52] So I was up there studying theater and very far away from my sort of Brooklyn beginnings.

[00:11:00] I was born in Brooklyn and I lived there till I was about 10.

[00:11:03] And then I also lived in Jersey for a while.

[00:11:06] And so that was definitely part of the kernel of it.

[00:11:09] And like that experience for me and just to like how to process that and how to show that.

[00:11:16] Because we're used to seeing the sort of the token black kid in the college setting, but usually they're on the periphery.

[00:11:24] And I wanted to make sure he was the center of this story and driving it.

[00:11:29] And for everyone else, it was also, I played a game called Haunted House board game.

[00:11:39] I'm forgetting what it's called right now.

[00:11:40] But it has all these archetypes similar in some ways to cabin in the woods of like jock and nerd and this and that.

[00:11:47] And I was like, well, what are, what are the modern day black equivalents of those?

[00:11:54] As opposed to just sort of putting black people in those places in, you know, a letterman jacket or whatever.

[00:12:00] It's like, no, but what is, what really is interesting?

[00:12:03] And that's, you know, obviously, last summer when I was working on it, Brittany Griner was all over the news.

[00:12:10] And I was like, that's, that's what a jock looks like now.

[00:12:14] Like, that's what that feels like.

[00:12:16] And so that was just sort of the, that was the, how I spun the story together and, and spun the characters out.

[00:12:22] Okay.

[00:12:23] So the rest of the cast were also inspired by these archetypes.

[00:12:28] Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:29] You know, the girlfriend, the, like the hippie, um, every, there's always a little dog somewhere in there.

[00:12:35] You gotta have, you gotta have a little dog.

[00:12:37] And so, yeah, so exactly.

[00:12:41] It was exactly that sort of mindset of what's a Scooby gang.

[00:12:45] Um, but one that comes from Brooklyn.

[00:12:47] Gotcha.

[00:12:48] Yeah.

[00:12:48] Well, there's a lot loaded culturally in the 28 pages or so.

[00:12:52] For instance, you have.

[00:12:53] Two and kissing underneath the shadow of a statue of an old white.

[00:12:58] You've got three important things kind of at play from my read here.

[00:13:03] You have or humor and message.

[00:13:06] So kind of talk me through balancing all these things out, both in the script and, you know, artistically as well.

[00:13:13] I mean, for, I'll let Lee talk about the art, which he does amazingly balancing all of that.

[00:13:18] But for me, I mean, that's, that's the, like the fun part of the trick is balancing those three things and wanting to make sure that, okay, there's enough horror.

[00:13:26] There's enough blood and guts.

[00:13:28] Um, and there's enough humor.

[00:13:30] Um, again, evil dead to weirdly one of the funniest movies I've ever seen still is.

[00:13:36] Uh, and obviously army of darkness as well.

[00:13:39] And so, you know, I'm a big Edgar Wright fan.

[00:13:42] So I, I definitely look to those people to be like, okay, how do you balance that?

[00:13:45] And then in terms of the message, it just always was coming back to like, what's really what's black, how, what, what feels black, what feels real, what feels interesting and feels like something I haven't seen a million times.

[00:13:59] Okay.

[00:14:00] Lee.

[00:14:01] Yeah.

[00:14:02] Uh, as for me, it was great to design an all black cast because normally I get to do the black guy.

[00:14:08] Um, and even when I wrote like a black Hitler saves Hanukkah, there's only one black person in that book too.

[00:14:15] So it was great to kind of experiment and make, you know, different varieties, uh, you know, how I can differently show blackness.

[00:14:21] Um, that was a lot of fun and kind of, you know, my thing manipulating the panels to, um, make the statues seem bigger than they are.

[00:14:30] Like I have a lot of leeway in my work to go, you know, go hard if I want to.

[00:14:36] So I think a couple of times I made statues and I was drawing, I'm like, there's no way this statue that big, but I was like, I don't care.

[00:14:43] It works.

[00:14:44] So, uh, that was a lot of fun.

[00:14:46] Well, humor, humor seems to, to take more of a prominent role in black horror than it does across the genre kind of at large big picture, you know, given the difficulties and real challenges.

[00:14:56] Of black America today.

[00:14:59] Basism seems to loom as a constant threat for God's sakes.

[00:15:03] We've got the Aryan Nazi assholes in masks, chaining white power, nonsense and waving Nazi flags in Ohio.

[00:15:09] And that was like this past week.

[00:15:11] So yes.

[00:15:13] That was very much school.

[00:15:14] Yeah.

[00:15:15] I blew my mind.

[00:15:16] What is it about approaching the horrific through humor that makes it work so often?

[00:15:23] I mean, it's a thing that I think about a lot because I always do find myself like I'm, you know, in TV, I'm an hour long drama writer, but I always wind up writing, um, funny bits in it.

[00:15:35] And there's so much that is, I'd never really quite process it as like a cultural thing, but like being black in America is absurd.

[00:15:43] It's an absurd existence.

[00:15:46] It's an absurd history.

[00:15:49] And kind of the, it's, it's that cliche, like kind of the only way to survive it without actually losing your mind is through humor.

[00:15:57] Um, and I feel like that is, uh, part of what makes, what makes things real, what makes things interesting.

[00:16:04] Like it's one of the reasons I'm attracted to, um, the sort of more tongue in cheek, uh, horror prop, uh, properties and stories.

[00:16:12] And, uh, and there's such a room for that.

[00:16:15] Like horror is so full of like weird bits of dark humor.

[00:16:19] Like you don't think of, uh, a nightmare on Elm street as a particularly funny movie, but the one line that still sticks out to me every time is after Johnny Depp is liquefied, uh, they're bringing in a gurney.

[00:16:30] And for some reason, some extra says you don't need a gurney.

[00:16:33] You need a mop.

[00:16:34] It's like, that's amazing.

[00:16:37] That it, that's just, that is super real and it's super true and authentic to the thing, uh, to the time and to the feeling.

[00:16:45] And so let's, that's something that I really wanted to make sure I captured.

[00:16:49] All right, let's take a quick break.

[00:16:51] I love comic books.

[00:16:52] Hey, children of the algorithm.

[00:16:54] I wanted to tell you about another great comics related podcast.

[00:16:56] Our friends, Dan, Dwayne and Sienna with comics over time.

[00:16:59] I have a great show that you should definitely check out.

[00:17:02] Dan has been a comic book yeti contributor since before I was around and the show delves deep into comics history, analyzing it from the wider cultural landscape at the time.

[00:17:11] I learned a lot just listening in and they are keeping it fresh too, with Sienna reporting in about the current Marvel offerings.

[00:17:17] I love seeing the next generation excited about comics and it's cool to see a family participating in comics journalism together.

[00:17:23] This season, they are focused on the history of everyone's favorite Hell's Kitchen vigilante daredevil.

[00:17:28] It's a fantastic show that you're going to want to add to your rotation.

[00:17:32] You can find them at comics over time on your favorite podcasting platform or at their website comics over time dot pod bean dot com.

[00:17:40] I'll drop a link in the show notes to make it easy for you.

[00:17:43] He's a daredevil Ned.

[00:17:45] After a string of unexplained disappearances in the southern parts of the United States, retired detective Clint searches for his white trash brother.

[00:18:00] While searching for him, he ends up being abducted by aliens.

[00:18:05] He is now in the arena for big guns, stupid rednecks, an intergalactic cables newest hit show, which puts him and other humans in laser gun gladiatorial combat.

[00:18:15] And his brother is the reigning champion with 27 kills.

[00:18:20] That's the premise for a new book from band of barns, big guns, stupid rednecks.

[00:18:25] I got a chance to see an advanced preview of this book and being from the south, honestly, I was a bit skeptical going in, but they won me over and nothing is more powerful than an initially skeptic convert in my book.

[00:18:36] In Jimmy's words, big guns, stupid rednecks is many things, but it isn't subtle.

[00:18:41] It tells you exactly what it is up front.

[00:18:43] Then it delivers with a great premise, fantastic art and a whole mess of fun.

[00:18:47] I had a great time reading big guns, stupid rednecks and what I thought was going to be an indictment of redneck culture quickly showed it was actually a love letter.

[00:18:55] A family mystery, brother pitted against brother, aliens fighting for profit in a big arena.

[00:19:01] This truly has it all.

[00:19:02] Issue one is out already, but you can still pick up a copy on the band of bards website and current issues are available via your previews or lunar order form or just ask your LCS.

[00:19:11] Don't miss it.

[00:19:12] Let's get back to the show.

[00:19:14] Well, one of the things I got from the book was this idea of JJ selling out and that's probably maybe not the right word, but leaving your family, leaving your community behind in favor of something seemingly better.

[00:19:26] And certainly, and how is how that's wrapped up in the fraternity system?

[00:19:32] And I'll admit, I don't have a great knowledge base about fraternities at all.

[00:19:36] I dropped out of school, worked for rock bands for more than a decade.

[00:19:39] And when I went back to school, I was working as a bouncer and a doorman in a very different place in my life.

[00:19:44] And I fucking hated them because my frame of reference was drunk white assholes trying to get by on fake IDs or, and or daddy's name.

[00:19:52] You know, it's important to JJ's character and his family legacy.

[00:19:56] He's a Kappa Alpha Psi, one of the divine nine historically black fraternities.

[00:20:00] Is there a movement away from black fraternities as a pillar of the community culturally?

[00:20:06] I'm, I'm just trying to.

[00:20:07] Oh, absolutely.

[00:20:08] I mean, if anything, I mean, now that a sister was nominated for the president for the presidency, I feel like the divine nine and all of all of those are much more powerful and much more present.

[00:20:25] And it was an interesting thing bringing that into it because similarly, like at a primarily white institution, those were, you know, dirty white hat frat boys were, that was exactly what I was running into.

[00:20:38] And, you know, on all of the terrible connotations about, you know, date rape and violence and hazing and all of that.

[00:20:45] Um, I, my family does not particularly have a lot of, uh, roots in the black frat culture.

[00:20:52] So that has always been something that's interesting to me and always a little bit of a surprise because yeah, similarly, I'm like, oh, those are a bunch of jerks.

[00:20:58] But, um, you know, black frats have that sort of community building and community sense to it.

[00:21:04] And honestly, that is, uh, I mean, the whole point of this, that is a little bit of an Easter egg for the future.

[00:21:11] Okay.

[00:21:12] Um, for eventually JJ and all of them running into the black frat monster hunters, um, who are perfect and beautiful and also not great.

[00:21:24] Uh, and so like, that is, that's something that I definitely want to talk about because it is exactly right about the selling out.

[00:21:31] Um, and that's that just that sense of you're leaving your community.

[00:21:35] Um, you're leaving your people to go with some other people and how hard it is to sort of find your own path through all of that.

[00:21:44] Okay.

[00:21:45] And the demonic white dude fraternity, those are the tridels.

[00:21:48] Is there something significant about that choice?

[00:21:51] I mean, or you just had to pick somebody, you know, again, I just don't know.

[00:21:54] Anything about Greek society.

[00:21:55] I just picked it at random.

[00:21:57] Um, it just sounds like, I feel like I might have stolen it from animal house.

[00:22:04] Okay.

[00:22:05] I feel like they might be, they were definitely Delta house.

[00:22:08] So, you know, it's just, just grab some Greek letters and throw it in there and I'm like a frat.

[00:22:14] Yeah.

[00:22:14] I haven't seen animal house, uh, since I was a kid and I wasn't supposed to watch animal house.

[00:22:19] I have not seen it in a while and I'm sure it does not hold up.

[00:22:23] I'm sure it does.

[00:22:24] Well, I want to get into some of the artistic choices in this, the gutter and the background color, which to me was closest to, to Carmen, um, is a definite visual element in the book that has it throughout.

[00:22:37] Um, so where did that come from?

[00:22:40] Um, I was doing a detective book called, um, oh, Gumshoe City.

[00:22:47] Okay.

[00:22:48] And I just, one day I was like, there's all this space and I'm not really doing anything with it.

[00:22:53] So I just colored it.

[00:22:55] And then I was like, I like this.

[00:22:57] I'm going to keep doing this.

[00:22:58] I, I, I, he might, he might've colored it back.

[00:23:01] So I don't know if it exists in the final pages, but I just realized like no one's doing anything with the space.

[00:23:07] So why don't I try to do something with it?

[00:23:08] So I've, I've been trying to implement that when I can, um, and just have a lot of fun with it.

[00:23:14] Just experiment, you know?

[00:23:16] Yeah.

[00:23:17] Well, you have a very instantly unique and memorable style.

[00:23:21] You know, I'm, I'm personally seeing some like Justin Bua with these long elongated facial expressions and some like Ernie Barnes, the way you're using limbs to sort of lengthen out and emphasize character forms.

[00:23:34] It creates like more of a visual depth.

[00:23:36] So who are some of your influences that we'll see in the DNA of motherfucking monsters?

[00:23:41] Oh, wow.

[00:23:43] Um, no, no, sorry.

[00:23:46] That's my cat.

[00:23:48] Um, my cat is not my influence.

[00:23:51] Um, I like a lot of, um, I like Mobius slot.

[00:23:55] I don't know if he's in my work.

[00:23:56] Okay.

[00:23:57] Um, don't tell Jorge I said this, but I like Jorge Corona's work a lot.

[00:24:01] Um, uh, I also like his wife, Morgan beam.

[00:24:06] I don't, um, I like, oh, it's all these names.

[00:24:13] Um, how I'm blanking on it right now.

[00:24:17] Um, if I remember later, I will, I will get back to you on that.

[00:24:22] Cool.

[00:24:23] Um, yeah, I could see it in my head, but I'm bad at names.

[00:24:27] Well, those panel breaks are great.

[00:24:30] Like there's a couple of panels with JJ in them and the family exists beyond the border boundary.

[00:24:35] And it's a really nice trick.

[00:24:37] You use that twice at the bottom of the page.

[00:24:40] So have you found that it doesn't work in other spots?

[00:24:42] Like kind of through experimentation.

[00:24:43] I don't think I've seen it done quite like that before.

[00:24:47] I mean, it's a thing we have to be careful because you have to maintain gutters to remain to, you know, so people can understand where stuff is.

[00:24:54] So there's just places you can't do it.

[00:24:56] Like if you just lose, you'll, you'll just lose the panel.

[00:25:00] Um, if you do it too much, um, there's all sorts of things that you can and can't do with it.

[00:25:06] Um, gotcha.

[00:25:09] Well, you're playing a lot with perspective angles in this.

[00:25:12] Uh, there's one panel with Colin, who's the head of the tried out fraternity brothers extending kind of his hand to OG.

[00:25:17] And it looks like he's in an elevated position above her.

[00:25:22] JJ is smaller than pretty much everybody.

[00:25:25] And in another scene, you have professor Randolph, who is kind of looming over him on the bench.

[00:25:30] You already talked about the size and the gravity of, of the, uh, the statue that's kind of in the courtyard.

[00:25:36] So it felt like an intentional choice to kind of start with the white characters in a certain elevated sort of status, you know, unless I'm completely reading it wrong.

[00:25:46] So.

[00:25:47] Oh, no, no, that's right.

[00:25:48] Okay.

[00:25:49] Well, yeah, I have a looser style so I can get away with someone looking eight feet tall in a panel.

[00:25:56] Um, whereas lots of other artists can't, you know, if you have a real strict style, you, you, it just looks weird, but I can, I've been able to play with, you know, perspective anatomy, things like that.

[00:26:06] As far, as far as I can twist it, I will go as far as I can.

[00:26:09] So that was definitely intentional because, you know, uh, if you look at, you know, ancient art, you know, like the statue of David, like his head is way bigger.

[00:26:18] Than a human being's head, but it's like that.

[00:26:21] So you can see it.

[00:26:22] So you, you intentionally change things to emote an emotion or to make clarify things or kind of manipulate, you know, how people are feeling relative to one another.

[00:26:35] Yeah.

[00:26:36] I really love the lighting choices.

[00:26:37] I'm a former theatrical lighting designer, so I pay way too much attention to how lighting is done in comics.

[00:26:43] And this was, was nice and reserved.

[00:26:46] Uh, it, it made the, the facial profiles really, really stand out.

[00:26:50] So it was something I absolutely, I love your work.

[00:26:52] I think it's absolutely fantastic.

[00:26:54] I love the style.

[00:26:55] Thank you.

[00:26:56] Yeah.

[00:26:57] And while we're talking influences, uh, Jay, I know you spent some time writing in the theater space, which you referenced a significant portion of my time working in entertainment for a decade and a half was in the theater.

[00:27:06] So I know my way around.

[00:27:08] Um, and I don't get to talk to many people who are coming from that background, who've kind of made that jump into working in the comics medium.

[00:27:15] Theatrical writing is different than any other medium as you're getting to manipulate three dimensions.

[00:27:21] And you also get the audience to, to potentially be able to interact, you know, you get different vantage points.

[00:27:28] So what did you take from that time in your life and that you could apply to comics?

[00:27:34] I mean, that's interesting because I mean, obviously also, you know, uh, theater is very dialogue driven.

[00:27:40] I work a lot on my dialogue.

[00:27:42] Um, in some ways, weirdly though, it was very much the other way around.

[00:27:46] Um, one of the things that I read, I think it was after grad school was, um, making comics and understanding comics.

[00:27:52] And like, those were both really important to me as a writer, uh, and something that I brought into my theater writing and definitely into my TV, um, and other screenwriting like that.

[00:28:04] Um, it's really a sort of foundational text for me about just about storytelling and communicating story.

[00:28:10] Um, and so that's really more where I come from.

[00:28:15] Um, interestingly, in some ways, you know, making a comic is a massively collaborative process.

[00:28:22] So it's just also that knowledge of collaboration.

[00:28:25] Um, many of the things Lee did with the art, Lee just did with the art.

[00:28:29] Cause I was like, I don't, I'm, I'm just going to write some words and I'm going to give a tone.

[00:28:34] That's what I know how to do.

[00:28:36] Someone else knows how to do the art.

[00:28:38] Uh, and he just ran with it and made it like elevated everything and made it so much more visceral and more interesting in every way.

[00:28:46] So like, that's, that's what I really carry with me the most is just how to collaborate with people and just reminding myself where my job ends and trusting that someone else is going to pick up the ball and run with it.

[00:28:57] Okay.

[00:28:58] Well, we've seen a shift in recent years with black horror across mediums.

[00:29:04] It's reductive to say it's all about sales numbers, but the truth is especially for film and TV adaptation, a monetary return is the paramount consideration from the studio's perspective.

[00:29:14] One of the things that Tanana Reeve was talking about in our interview was, was the desire by studio executives to change a pitch characters race to protect the bottom line.

[00:29:25] And we've seen recent commercial success in the cinema with get out and us.

[00:29:29] So it's clear that people are willing to spend the money.

[00:29:32] What's the temperature to you both in comics with black representation right now?

[00:29:40] Ooh, that's a big one.

[00:29:43] That's a big one.

[00:29:44] Uh, it ain't great.

[00:29:45] To be honest right now.

[00:29:47] It is not, it is not great in my mind.

[00:29:50] Uh, there are some great people working and there's Mark Bernard in there's Rodney Barnes and they're doing like unbelievable work, um, in the field.

[00:29:59] Um, but there are not a lot of other, even generally creators of color doing work and even less books that are led by characters of color.

[00:30:10] Um, right now.

[00:30:11] And it's, it's a real shame.

[00:30:13] Um, and I know, you know, for all of the, the dynamic reasons, uh, it exists, but like, I think, honestly, I just think everyone is being short-sighted and missing out on a huge audience for comic books.

[00:30:25] Yeah.

[00:30:26] A huge audience for sequential art in general.

[00:30:30] Um, you know, the anime has, I mean, a stranglehold on young black culture.

[00:30:36] Um, I, and it goes all the way back to the Wu-Tang clan who were all also named after Marvel characters.

[00:30:43] Like there's a, there's a, I think there's a hunger for it and it's just waiting for someone to figure out how to properly tap in.

[00:30:52] Okay.

[00:30:54] We're now 30 years on with the milestone initiative.

[00:30:58] You know, it's weird to me because I thought that was a tipping point.

[00:31:03] I'm I've turned 50 this year.

[00:31:07] And back at that time, I thought, okay, great.

[00:31:09] You know, the door is open.

[00:31:11] The floodgates have happened.

[00:31:14] We're 30 years on and here's where we are.

[00:31:17] Um, so what do you, what do you think will help now move that needle?

[00:31:25] Is it time?

[00:31:27] Is that the, is that, I mean, I think it's just going to take bravery.

[00:31:30] It's just going to take risks.

[00:31:32] I mean, that's why, that's why porn sack is doing this.

[00:31:35] We're excited that, you know, image signed on and has been so supportive.

[00:31:38] Like it's just going to take someone to be like, to, in some ways just say, I'm going to take the risk.

[00:31:44] I'm going to really invest in getting work for communities that don't get to see themselves, uh, and really work in getting them to come and buy the books and experience the books and to feel welcome.

[00:31:57] Um, that's really all it's going to take.

[00:32:00] Okay.

[00:32:01] Well, without giving anything away, roughly, where would you like to take JJ and his family?

[00:32:07] If motherfucking monsters is commercially successful.

[00:32:09] I mean, it's a road book.

[00:32:11] It's supernatural.

[00:32:12] It's, it would be them on the road in some version of the mystery van going to various colleges and fighting various kinds of monsters, uh, until they make me stop.

[00:32:23] Uh, and that would be, that would be the delight for me.

[00:32:27] Um, I'm going to say six seasons in a movie.

[00:32:29] There you go.

[00:32:31] I love that.

[00:32:32] Yeah.

[00:32:33] I think this would be an absolute fantastic serial cartoon.

[00:32:38] I think it'd be so good.

[00:32:38] Yeah.

[00:32:39] Oh yeah.

[00:32:40] This song.

[00:32:41] Adult swim.

[00:32:42] They even still make adult swim.

[00:32:43] Somebody, somebody call.

[00:32:47] Well, I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

[00:32:50] Uh, it's especially important to get pre-orders in on these horizon experiment.

[00:32:54] One shots to signal to the publisher that you want more.

[00:32:57] So call your shop or, or get those orders in online.

[00:33:00] I will beat the drum that I'd be constantly on here, which is if you want to see more representation in the medium, you gotta buy it because it's the almighty dollar.

[00:33:09] Unfortunately, that signals to those publishers that we need more of it.

[00:33:13] So what else have you both got cooking?

[00:33:16] Jay, you had something on Instagram, I believe about being part of the comics creator block party.

[00:33:21] Oh yeah.

[00:33:21] That was a lot of fun.

[00:33:23] A local shop out here in LA, revenge of, uh, hosted their second annual comic creators block party.

[00:33:28] Um, and it was just great.

[00:33:31] It was a big signing.

[00:33:32] There were all these different creators, uh, Mark Wade, um, Scott Koblik, like you name it.

[00:33:39] Um, um, um, Nicole Mames, like everybody was there and it was really fun to be a part of that.

[00:33:45] Um, and yeah, other than that, the only thing I've got on the horizon is the next season of Handmaid's Tale drops in 2025.

[00:33:52] Awesome.

[00:33:53] Lee, what about you?

[00:33:55] I am currently working on a dad book almost as fast as I want to be.

[00:34:00] Okay.

[00:34:01] So, uh, that will be, uh, hopefully cut out next year.

[00:34:05] Um, maybe towards the end next year, we're working on it.

[00:34:08] Uh, and that's what I'm doing.

[00:34:11] Awesome.

[00:34:11] But where can people find you both online?

[00:34:14] Uh, Instagram's the best, and I think only place for me.

[00:34:17] So at Jay Holtham on Instagram.

[00:34:19] Okay.

[00:34:20] Uh, Instagram for me, it's just Michael Lee Harris, my full name.

[00:34:24] Awesome.

[00:34:25] Well, I'll put links in the show notes for both of those.

[00:34:27] This is Byron O'Neill.

[00:34:28] And on behalf of us, all of us at Comic Book Yeti, thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time.

[00:34:32] Take care, everybody.

[00:34:34] Bye.

[00:34:35] This is Byron O'Neill, one of your hosts of the Cryptid Creator Corner, brought to you by Comic Book Yeti.

[00:34:40] We hope you've enjoyed this episode of our podcast.

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