Matt Harding talks Batman: The Brave and the Bold

[00:00:00] Your ears do not deceive you. You've just entered the Cryptid Creator Corner

[00:00:04] brought to you by your friends at Comic Book Yeti. So without further ado, let's

[00:00:09] get on to the interview. Hey Yeti, what's shaking? I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I! Did you just really say Fuyo? You gotta get off TikTok, man. I had you! This is Byron O'Neill, your host for today's episode of the Cryptic Creator Corner. Today I'm joined by comics creator Matt Harding, who is now dying, I'm sure, to get to talk about his new Yeah, because I mean, it, you know, it's a huge deal for someone who's been reading comics his entire life, you know, so it it events. So when I eventually got to talk about it, and when the cops came, like, it had like Kelly Jones cover in here. And there's a one of my favorite artists of all time is Christian Ward. There's a Christian Ward cover.

[00:03:02] Oh, wow. It's just like, yeah this one. So I talked with her a little bit, but the response that people had was super cool. Like I did not expect it and it was very welcoming and kind.

[00:04:20] It was a good, it was kind of the same thing. I would go to a 7-Eleven or something like that, and they'd have a lot of Marvel. Batman was more already a legendary mythological figure already. He was more everywhere else. The comics were adult. When I was a kid, they were like, oh,

[00:05:42] Batman just killed somebody. I forget what exact't it wasn't as big into the asriel arcs personally, but yeah, he was uh, yeah He was um, I think They might the first one that I really really liked the first huge massive like batman run was the one where uh, we're gotham Uh, he gets hit with that with that earthquake and it's uh You know, they uh with no man's land. That's what it was called. Um

[00:07:04] That was where I was like, oh yeah, Batman's cool. He's like Clint Eastwood or something, like when Clint Eastwood was cool. But yeah, that was like my Batman era, I think. My very Batman era. To me, what really defines the Batman universe are the Rose Gallery,

[00:08:20] the villains, right? Do you have a favorite villain?

[00:08:25] Yeah, I do. Yeah yeah i'm a huge killer croc fan that's that's all yeah. How are you with your favorite rendition of killer croc. I actually there was a recently there was a more of a kid's book and i'm gonna space and forget the title of it was really interesting recently I don't know if you saw the the reptilian line. Oh the Liam Sharplin. Yeah. Yeah That was really I like Liam took that I'm so impressed with what what Liam has done because he's you know It would be very easy to to maintain his artistic style that he's done for 30 years

[00:11:02] But you know, he's he's really pushing it. He's gone in a completely different direction

[00:12:04] amazing person. He's such a nice dude. I got a chance to interview him a while back. So yeah, he's great. And he showed me his process for doing that comic. And it was in Liam fashion, he kind of

[00:12:12] was like, Oh, it's easy. You know, like, this is a this is this easy thing I do. But he'll take like,

[00:12:16] he has all these textures, you know, he'll take a texture, and he'll put it up. And he'll, he'll

[00:12:22] start etching out the scene in the in this texture, like reptilian, and he'd be pulling out all these shapes from textures and work from a page just like that. He'd be pulling the panels out of it. So it'd be like 11 by 17. I could talk about his process because it's super fascinating forever, but he'd have like an 11 by 17 page of just texture and he'd be pulling the panels out of that.

[00:13:41] And I'd ask him, how are you doing this?

[00:13:45] He was showing me how he did it and I was like things because that you could have, it was like motion comics where you could have things moving around and you know, like fading in and out and stuff. And so the way he was telling stories and that was just crazy. What time period was that? Thanks. So that was, Made Fire went out of business three years ago

[00:15:01] and it was in business for about 10 years.

[00:15:04] So what would that be?

[00:15:05] Like 2010 to 2020? door. So, speaking of Made Fire, I had worked with Ben Abernathy, who was the executive editor over at DC for the Batman series. Because after Made Fire, he went to that. And he's done a great job over there. And they've been doing this series, Brave and the Bold. And

[00:16:21] they were looking for stories that they would slot in to fill areas. Like if somebody, i think a story was later something so they want to move it up into this issue so i found out about a month before it's coming out that it was gonna be coming out early which was which was cool enough. Yeah for sure. Yeah yeah the brave in the bowl has gone through so many iterations and started in nineteen fifty five and you know kind of as an anthology format how.

[00:17:41] Restricted were you with respect to characters and have how much did you have to pay attention to continue on all those things.

[00:18:43] And I was told that actually we don't really know

[00:18:49] who's not being used right now. And I was like, well, that's cool.

[00:18:50] What if I just came up with,

[00:18:51] I'll just make a new one or something.

[00:18:53] And I saw the opportunity of course to make a new character

[00:18:56] and I was like, yeah, I'll just make a new character.

[00:18:58] And they're like, okay.

[00:18:59] And then I was like, all right,

[00:19:00] so what character should I use?

[00:19:03] Can I use Batman?

[00:19:05] Can I use Nightwing?

[00:19:05] Can I use this?

[00:19:06] And then they's like, oh, he's immortal. Don't want to forget that one. He's also immortal. And so I started reading his bios and stuff

[00:20:20] and doing some research on him.

[00:20:21] And I was like, how am I going to write a story

[00:20:24] about a guy killing this guy?

[00:20:26] Like, this guy is in there.

[00:20:27] Right.

[00:20:28] He's literally a-list or powers, right? What I'm doing is that one right there. Like the regular yellow costume. So he does a couple of things, like he turns invisible and stuff like that. Anyway, I'm getting off on a huge tangent, but he brought up the signal. The signal actually perfectly fit the villain I had come up with.

[00:21:42] Okay.

[00:21:42] Like they had a me, Hey, send me your short stories. And I sent him

[00:23:00] like 10 of them, you know, like that I had. You know what I mean? Right, yep. And then you tell the people, something's gonna happen to this dog and then they're in it. And they're in it. You know what I mean? So yeah, like I learned kind of quickly how to cover like a lot of ground, you know? Yeah. And so 12 pages, you know, like sure,

[00:24:20] like if I had another, you know, five or six,

[00:24:23] I could have, you know, expanded on it more,

[00:24:25] but I think we did a pretty good job After that story, he actually was like a freelancer for DC at the time. He was assigned it by Ben. He's now in collected editions and he actually does a lot of writing for DC. He had a story in this newest Valentine's Day,

[00:25:41] The Guy Gardner, Had a Lucid Guy Gardner in 10 Days.

[00:25:44] He had a Constantine story in that, Things happening, you know, like he was able to really kind of combat that with how how kind and how energetic he was about about this story and That helped that helped a lot. I Mean overall working for DC was it wasn't just a dream come true Like they they treated me really well Like I got paid before I was even done writing the story like it was immediate, you know, oh wow

[00:27:05] Which is very I mean that you know in the world of freelance. But so far, I'm pretty excited about it. I think it's gonna go well. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, let's take a quick break. What in the Sam Hill is happening right now? What is that? Yuh-wah-ee-huh. You like bards? Yuh-wah-ee-huh.

[00:28:21] Oh, you like band of bards.

[00:28:23] It's not my fault, you humble.

[00:28:25] Yuh-wah-ee-huh.

[00:28:28] That makes sense. Let's get back to the show. For me, after reading through it, the story is nameless. I enjoyed the statement of it. At least for me, this is what I got out of it. Nameless, I think we all feel that way sometimes in the social media area with all these parasocial connection whereas as we get these glimpses into other people's lives and how good their

[00:29:44] lives look and how we want to be a part of their life.

[00:29:47] Because that's so cool. self-publishing and doing covers or a short story drawing, drawing a short story here and there, and little things here and there, and getting worked that way, but never in the big arena. I had given up on it, to be honest. I was like, yeah, it's never going to happen. I'm not going to get that call.

[00:31:02] I was fine with it because I love indie comics and a very unhealthy way and it just kind of worked out. Yeah. Well, you're not just a writer, you just mentioned doing covers and other stuff as well. So is there a freedom in remaining unattached to both ends of this project? Were you glad? Okay, I don't actually have to draw this too.

[00:32:20] Yeah. So the cool thing about doing, that he, so like, because I envisioned, you know, certain scenes and stuff of this. And he, when he turned the roughs in, he nailed it. Like he just nailed it. And I had like no notes. I mean, I think maybe one tiny minor note, but I mean, it was, it was amazing. Like he just, he just did it, you know?

[00:33:41] And as soon as I saw those roughs, I was like, oh, wow, this is a, this is a real thing.

[00:33:45] This is going to be a, this is going to be a real thing, you know? It'll probably never happen, but it's like my dream pitch. And it's for Kyle Rayner, the Green Lantern, that nobody cares about anymore. But he was my Green Lantern when I was a kid. I didn't care about Green Lantern at all until Hal Jordan went nuts and Kyle Rayner got the ring.

[00:35:03] Yeah, that was kind of like Kyle does not belong there. Like I would not belong there, you know.

[00:36:22] And so I feel like.

[00:36:24] That's why his character.

[00:36:27] And I apologize, this is another thing I could talk about for like an hour. gets hijacked and all this stuff, and he ends up joining this group of people who are all either exiles or rebels against their core. There's the red lanterns and stuff like that. I wanted to put a Ganorton there in the freeze,

[00:37:40] and a couple of random ones I made up who are all Um, Oh yeah. Short series like that. And you know, that basically looking at, at change, you know, as we change, as we age as the catalyst of everything else that happens in the world kind of, you know, forces us to change, so drop him, like essentially have a shooting. Um, that happens, you know, with, with a young black team in like new Orleans.

[00:39:03] And so this kind of pulls him into actually ended up saving some kids as, as fun. Uh, but on shoe was the actor. Uh, yeah, I forgot. I was about to say, I forget the guy's name, but yeah, he, yeah, I think that's who it was. Yeah. I mean, I, I enjoyed it. I mean, I'm not going to call it a cinematic masterpiece, but I, you know, I liked it. Whatever. It was fine. You know, Hey, for the haters, it's coming back. So they got to deal with it.

[00:40:20] Yeah.

[00:40:21] The, the devil in that I think was kind of made them to be that so good.

[00:40:27] So good.

[00:40:28] Yeah.

[00:40:29] Yeah.

[00:41:27] are always like just such an interesting thing to use as a vehicle for narration in any movie. I don't know why. They'd like, I just get sucked into pools as a metaphor, as you know, a visual

[00:41:32] element. Pools are cool. There's just so much you can do with it, you know, with a mirror and

[00:41:38] everything. Yeah, that movie, I mean, I know it wasn't, you know, it wasn't Constantine as

[00:42:44] he'll bring something more to it in the next the next movie. So I think they are doing another one, right?

[00:42:46] Dracula or Constantine?

[00:42:48] Oh, Constantine, sorry.

[00:42:49] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's another Constantine.

[00:42:51] I'm happy to see him in another Constantine.

[00:42:53] Just please not in another Dracula.

[00:42:55] Yeah, yeah.

[00:42:56] I mean, how I mean, anything that Gary Oldman's in,

[00:43:00] he's stealing the show, you know what I mean?

[00:43:02] Yep. Yep.

[00:43:03] Well, I've gotten away from asking this lately.

[00:43:05] I think it's really appropriate for this, with it and you stay a fan and you stay involved and you stay, you always, you know, you're always trying to get better and you're always learning and you don't concern yourself too much with like the money aspect of it or any of that. You're going to eventually, you're going to get opportunities eventually, right?

[00:44:23] For me, my journey has been that I have, try to, they'll make a lot of really cool stuff and then they'll get really frustrated and they'll get really downtrodden,

[00:45:43] and they'll get hit with, you'll get an opportunity. Just don't quit. Persistence pays. It does, yeah. Which you know, I mean, you're doing it right now.

[00:47:01] You're interviewing people for comics, you love comics.

[00:47:06] Oh, I didn that uh, it's not awesome that you had to go through that of course But it's awesome that yeah, you had you had the outlet of comics to help help get you through that, you know Yeah Yeah, and that's you know started I did the baby steps started with kickstarters, right?

[00:48:20] You know do it in the written interviews and you know

[00:48:23] Then it it just kind of came up to this and this has been you know

[00:48:25] This amazing opportunities because I don't get the the opportunity to travel as much 2D artist, coloring is the thing that I'm really, really interested in. But it's just a matter of finding time with life and a teen. And I'm giving this bill that everybody does, it's an excuse. But you are doing it, you're not using it as an excuse. You're doing it right now, you're part of the community. You're doing, you're part of it, right?

[00:49:42] Like, that's the thing is like you love it, you know? Yeah, which is one thing I like about comics. Like, I know it sucks that like, you know, none of us are millionaires or whatever. But I think I think that if people were coming into comics and doing it just to be rich, it would kind of destroy the art of it. Yeah.

[00:51:02] I mean, I do think people should get, you know, paid, paid well. But yeah.

[00:51:06] Oh, yeah. Yeah. this community will open their arms and say, let me help you out if you're not a dick. I guess they're not a dick, have you out, right? But it is really, really unique in that way. But I feel like there's just a lot of people who deal with that imposter syndrome.

[00:52:22] That's not me, that's not my problem, it never has been.

[00:53:22] what you were saying for people and just, you know, that, that piece of information, you know, stick with it,

[00:53:24] persistence and, and unfortunately time, I guess.

[00:53:29] Yeah. First of all, let me say that it's,

[00:53:33] it's incredibly commendable, you know, the battle,

[00:53:36] you know, that you, in your attitude about it, you know,

[00:53:39] like for what you had to go through,

[00:53:41] like I can't even imagine like how difficult that,

[00:53:44] that must have been and is, going to reach that. No. By volume. If you look at everything that's out there, that's a different lens. But I think just like an individual book sales number, I don't think we're ever going to those numbers again. Yeah. I'm not an expert on it,

[00:55:01] but I do think that the 90s made it.

[00:55:03] What the 90s did is it was like,

[00:55:06] hey, guess what everybody, you can make comics. announcement the other day about EC and I guess I guess I would call it a rebirth of sorts. So yeah, yeah So there was a only you know has a deal with with the owners of EC I'm not exactly sure of the specific civic because that's all above my pay grade, but sure But I do know that like it's a it's generally something that everybody who's involved is super excited about

[00:57:24] and sci-fi and humor and this and that. And there's tons of stuff that came from that,

[00:57:26] like Saturday Night Live and all this crazy stuff

[00:57:30] that you wouldn't really think was affected by EC,

[00:57:33] but it was, like everything, like Walking Dead

[00:57:37] and just every, like all these people

[00:57:40] were all influenced by EC Comics,

[00:57:44] like the horror comics and stuff that you would find.

[00:57:46] And of course they blown away. And yeah, I mean, the creator list we have on it is stunning, you know, with even more people

[00:59:04] joining up, you know, all the time.

[00:59:05] And so yeah, we continue the legacy of it.

[01:00:22] We actually want to continue the importance of it.

[01:01:27] that I really like about working for him is that he is taking this line and he is making sure that

[01:01:37] enriching the brand of EC. We want it to be the legacy. We want it to be important.

[01:03:00] I guess to put it simply, it's like, yeah, we want to be the best thing we can be. We want to work with the Carlof estate. So the stories in here are owned by his family, um, which is pretty cool. You know? Yeah. And, uh, and yeah, and so I think that's going to be a continuing thing. Um, I think they're going to do three issues and then put it out as a trade.

[01:03:00] Okay.

[01:03:01] Okay.

[01:03:04] Um, but they're, you know, as long as it's selling, they're, they're going to keep going in this, this month, I think it's going to run. And there's an artist named Nick Cagnetti who did Pink Lemonade. Oh, I talked to Nick. Yeah, Nick Screa. Yeah, and he's drawing it and I'm super excited about that one. So I'll send you a message or something for when it's on Kickstarter.

[01:04:21] So if you wanted to like tweet it out or whatever.

[01:04:23] Yeah.

[01:04:25] Other than that, I'm open for work.

[01:04:27] I want to have you on. I really appreciate it. Best of luck with future endeavors. So exciting that you've got the Batman story out that's living a dream. So. Well, and keep me, keep me appraised of what you're working on too. I want to read your stuff. I got to get on it first, but yeah,

[01:05:41] I'll definitely keep you in the loop.

[01:05:42] I appreciate it.

[01:05:43] Cool.

[01:05:44] This is Byron O'Neill and on behalf of us,

[01:05:46] all of us at Common Book Yeti,