Michael Walsh Interview - Exquisite Corpses

[00:00:00] 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.

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[00:01:29] Head to 2000AD.com and click on subscribe now or download the 2000AD app and why wait? Start reading today. I'll put links in the show notes for you. Predator is my favorite movie of all time. Don't judge me. And as a childly 80s, there's just something entrancing about a good hunting movie with humans as the prey. I've seen them all. Who can forget Jean-Claude Van Damme's Oscar worthy Hard Target or Redger Howard chasing her iced tea in the woods and surviving the game?

[00:01:58] Okay, fine. Maybe Hunger Games just better call these sin on an example. But it's been a while since I saw something in that niche that got me this excited. Let me tell you, Tiny Onion is bringing the heat in May with Exquisite Corpses. A giant 60-page first issue that kicks off a world of high-octane horror. To set the stage, every five years on Halloween, the wealthiest families in America play a deadly game to see who gets to ultimately call the shots.

[00:02:23] Twelve of the deadliest people in the world, each representing one family, are dropped into a small town for a winner-takes-all blood pack. Lucky for me, I've got Corpse Crew Captain. Not sure if that's your actual title, but we like alliteration on here, so we're going to go with it. First-time guest, Eisner-winning artist and writer Michael Walsh hanging out with me to break it all down. Michael, so glad to have you on the show. I'm sure life has been a fast-forward about now with all the promotional trail stuff going on.

[00:02:49] Thank you so much for having me, Byron. Yes, it has been. Last week was the lead-up to FOC, which was yesterday, so I was in overdrive doing a lot of promotion and press for leading up to the final order cutoff of the release for Exquisite Corpses. And as you can tell from the sound of my voice, I also caught a cold from my son who's in daycare, so just doing my best to get through day by day right now.

[00:03:16] Yeah, that's the sound of inevitability in your voice and in your nostrils. Yeah, yes, yes, totally. Well, there's been a lot of buzz about Exquisite Corpses. I posted a quick blurb about having read the preview copy that you sent over on Blue Sky and was being prompted immediately as to which killers I thought would win, which blew my mind about the buy-in that it's already receiving as a concept.

[00:03:42] Does it feel like anything else you've ever worked on before? No, there's a... And so many different things about this book feel different and feel electric and big and special. A lot of times when you do a creator-owned book, you're not really afforded the luxury of a really long lead-up.

[00:04:05] You're not really afforded the amount of facilitation that a team like Tiny Onion can give in terms of promotion and press and editorial presence. Tiny Onion has become such a huge machine that's able to function almost as well as something like a Marvel or DC editorial team. There's three or four of the best editors in comics working at Tiny Onion right now.

[00:04:33] They've got a design team. They've got a press team. They're so great. And so it really felt like, in terms of the quality of production, something like a big two book. But me and James were able to tell our own story in the way that you only can with a creator-owned book. So that was just one of the small things that felt different.

[00:04:55] It felt different because we were able to assemble this incredible group of writers and have an actual writer's room experience like you would have on a Marvel or DC event book. And that's something, again, that you never really afforded the luxury of having on a creator-owned. We were able to bring all of the writers of this book into a room and go beat by beat and flesh out 13 issues over the course of a weekend in a writer's room in Buffalo. Like, all together, face-to-face. And that was electric.

[00:05:23] It was just like we all sat in that room. And as soon as we started playing off of each other's ideas, I think everybody in the room knew that we were creating something that was going to be massive. And it was going to turn heads. And it was going to get attention. And it was going to feel like an event comic. And I think early on, I had said to James, like, this feels like, you know, the first really big horror event comic in comics. Yeah. And we were talking about that.

[00:05:51] And I remember at some point I said, well, why don't we just tell people that's what it is? Because that's, I think, what this is going to be. And it seems so far like that's what it's turning into. So, I mean, that's our hope for the book. Obviously, we want everything that we do to have that kind of resonance with a big audience. But at the base and at the core, for me and for James both, it's always just about making a good book.

[00:06:16] And I think with this book, as we've been working on it and building it up and building the game, it just feels like we are building a really, really good book. That first issue is some of the best work I've ever done in my career. I love what James has done with the writing and with the characters and the personality and the depth he's given to all of the civilians in this book. Within, you know, there's like six or seven main civilians that we're going to be following throughout the series.

[00:06:44] And by the end of the first 60-page issue, I feel like you have insight into all of them and who they are at the start of this book. And maybe even some hints about where their character arcs are going to go. Well, I want to dig into the form language here of the killer characters as that's kind of your wheelhouse on the project. You've got 12 killers on the remit that each needed to have their own unique visual identities as there are no planned flashbacks, as I understand it.

[00:07:12] So you need immediate character buy-in, like from the jump. Did you start with a list of archetypes? Walk me through kind of that creative process of creating them. Yeah. So it was very different for each killer. When I first got on the phone with James about this project, it was just a really quick call with him. He called me up and said, hey, I'm putting together like a bigger infrastructure for Tiny Onion. I want my first project to be with you. And this is what it is.

[00:07:42] Let's make 12 killers and have them fight to the death. You in? And I said, that sounds amazing. Like, let's start working on these serial killers. And we just kind of started talking on the call. I was sketching a little bit on the call without any kind of prompting. I think on the second day after, I sent James a few sketches for different killers without any kind of backstory written from James.

[00:08:04] It was more just like thinking about this as storytelling through a visual identity of a character. So that I wanted to have these character designs be bold enough that you kind of got a sense of who these killers were just by looking at them. Almost like a fighting game, you know, like a street. You look at the characters in Street Fighter and you're like, I kind of know who this person is and what their what their vibe is. And if they're a good guy or a bad guy, you know.

[00:08:34] And so I wanted to have these designs be as flamboyant as something like Street Fighter or or even, you know, a Marvel book like like the X-Men, where you kind of you look at each of those members of the X-Men and you kind of get a vibe of who they are. I wanted this to have that kind of effect. So I was already designing killers without any kind of backstory or prompting just purely on this visual idea. And obviously, in my head, I'm building a story and building a background for each of these characters as I'm designing them.

[00:09:04] And that can inform how I'm dressing them and their body language. But at the same time, I wanted them visually to kind of speak for themselves. And and then readers can look at them and pull their own ideas about their backstory from the way that they look before they're even being on the page. So I had, I think, about five killers designed within a few days. I think we used three of those killers.

[00:09:27] So in that first batch of killer designs were Fox Mask Killer, Gamer Kid, Rascal Randy, and then two that didn't get used. And Gamer Kid and Rascal Randy went through a few different iterations. But Fox Mask Killer literally just jumped from my head onto the page and then didn't change. I think the only thing that changed in the design of Fox Mask Killer from that initial five minute sketch was that I originally had her mask as a hot orange.

[00:09:57] And then we changed it to a hot pink just to make it even more visually striking. OK, yeah, I definitely get that video game aesthetic from from the jump. I play Brawl Stars. I don't know if you're familiar with it with with my son, you know. Yeah, yeah. And one of my favorite characters is Grom and they have all these skins and that's immediately what it echoes. Yeah, it's skin games, Fortnite, Brawl Stars.

[00:10:23] You know, I'm running around with Grom in his Easter egg Easter bunny costume and he's throwing around bomb eggs all the time. So it's it's got this sort of kitsy, cute in ways aesthetic. But they had the way you've presented it. They're almost Superman drops at times with with the introduction of them. And some of them had that same flash from almost like you'd picture, you know, Chun-Li coming from the side and in a Street Fighter game. Mm hmm. So.

[00:10:53] With that, how how did you make them feel so immediately lived in? I mean, you talked about sort of pulling from some of the ex aesthetic and costumery and stuff. But that was what shocked me is just how so immediately they felt like. Characters you you'd known for a very long time already.

[00:11:15] Yeah, I think I think having the idea and like in my head in the in the in the exquisite corpses canon of my own mind, which is only half of of of of who's creating the canon of exquisite corpses. I have a whole story for these characters, each of these characters, and I have their history and what they've gone through and why they are who they are.

[00:11:39] So when I'm thinking about their designs and trying to integrate little things into into those designs that can OK and read into. Right. And then also, you know, as I'm designing them, I'm going through with James and then we are together kind of figuring out their backstory and trying to integrate these little things. And then on top of those ideas to make them as iconic as possible, I'm trying to make sure that each of the characters only has like two colors to their color identity.

[00:12:05] So they are very costumable. I don't even know if that's a word, but, you know, they're easy to cosplay these guys, because as long as you have those two colors present in a few of the main features, like, you know, I'm expecting to see a bunch of these characters pop up at conventions down the road as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's got to be inevitable. Like the even down to the title cards, I don't know if you design them, but those are so good. I was reading an article yesterday about how colors affect player behavior in games when I'm prepping for this.

[00:12:34] And I know Jordi Blair is handling the color work for the whole project. So talk me through how the team wanted to use color to create an emotive range for each of the killers, because they really stand out in the book and in terms of their introduction from the rest of the continuity. Yeah, so so me and Jordi collaborated on those pages.

[00:12:54] I had I colored the on those pages specifically the killer introductions because I knew that I was going to be using the artwork on the specific panel of the killer introduction on the card art or the card game that's coming. I did the colors on those specific panels because I knew that I was going to be doing that two tone colors with a bit of half tone and then the logo.

[00:13:22] And I wanted to be able to use that big iconic intro panel on the page and on the card. So I was kind of juggling the idea of how can I make this work on the page and on the card. And then I would send those those panels colored by me to Jordi and she would use those base colors as part of the color identity for the families who had chosen these killers to represent them in the exquisite corpses game.

[00:13:49] So there was such a large amount of collaboration between me and Jordi and Jordi is, if not the best, one of the best at what she does with color. She is incredible with tone and atmosphere and just like finding unique solutions to problems, which is what making comic books is. It's all problem solving and she's one of the best. So it was really fun to like I was like I was presenting her with.

[00:14:14] With with an equation to solve, I would send her these really weird colors on a lot of these killer introductions and be like, make this work with the rest of the page. Somehow you can do it, Jordi. And her solutions that she came up with on those pages are so incredible because it would be easy to make those pages almost like feel not like they were gelling together both of the halves of the page because each killer introduction is roughly about half of a page. And then it shows the family introducing them.

[00:14:42] And the way that she's combined the colors from the killer introduction with the family's identities is like, it's beyond amazing. She's so good. But yeah, that was like everything in this book, because it's such a big project, because there's so many moving pieces had to be so considered.

[00:15:01] I think a lot of times when you make a comic book, you're you're just rolling through on intuition and you're surviving on your own instincts and just pushing through to make sure you're hitting those deadlines. But because we had so much run up on this book and we had that luxury, we were able to kind of go back and forth on some things in a way that we're not usually able to on a on a creator own.

[00:15:26] So me and Jordi were able to really jam those pages out together, which was just so fun. And part of the reason that I wanted to do these two color tone introductions as well is because aesthetically, I wanted the book to feel like a risographed or a screen painted concert poster, you know, and I've been calling this book aesthetically a bit of horror punk. A lot of the book is going to revolve, at least in the first half, around getting to this concert.

[00:15:54] That's like a young adult, late high school band called No Life. They're a local punk band. They're throwing a show at the local Legion. And, you know, there's concert posters everywhere for the show. Everyone at the show is going to be dressed up for Halloween. And the DIY zine concert poster aesthetic is something I really wanted to bring into the identity of the book. So I wanted that to be reflective, reflected in the look of the killer reveals as well.

[00:16:23] So that was something I was thinking about as I was designing the two color tone, the overlays and and the way that those specific moments looked in the book. Oh, that's incredible. Yeah. Having spent as much time as I have in the concert industry, I absolutely love that. Yeah. My hometown of Knoxville actually has a company that makes old concert posters out of woodblock. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to send you the link. It's really amazing stuff.

[00:16:50] How did geography exactly play a role? Did it play a significant role in the personalities of the killers? I definitely get I'm from the South. I live in the South now again. So I definitely get those genteel Southern Belle vibes from Lady Carolina for sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Big time. I mean, a lot of that. So when we were developing the book, a lot of times I was focusing on killers. Um, James was focusing on family. I on the families that had hired them and the civilians.

[00:17:20] Then I was focusing a lot on the town itself and developing the settings where characters were going to be and what the town itself felt like atmospherically. Um, so yeah, I think that killers were like half and half. So about half the killers I designed without any thought of the families at all. And then about half the killers were designed with the families in mind. And I think as I was like this about, you know, I designed probably about six of them, uh, before.

[00:17:50] Before James had had, uh, sent me ideas for other killers. And I think when he was, uh, making the killers specific to the families, he had, he had figured out where the first killers that I had designed were going already to like match the personalities of those families. So, you know, it kind of was a mix of both. Each killer kind of came out in a different way. Some came quick, some were fast or some were slower.

[00:18:15] Um, someone like Lady Carolina has a very, very specific plot purpose with her family. So that came from, you know, her visual identity came from that plot purpose. And at first it was like, how can we make Lady Carolina bigger than bigger than just looking like a soldier? Like, cause we've kind of already got that lone gunman character. And then that was where I came up with the idea to have her in this kind of writing outfit,

[00:18:40] this fox hunting outfit, this, this representation, representation of a hunter, but from kind of a different age, which is what that family kind of feels like. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the, uh, the response from the people, when I posted that on blues, blue sky, uh, Neil actually hit me back up when he asked me, okay, who do you think is going to win? I mean, okay, I'm biased. Right. But I went with Lady Carolina and then he, he just elaborated in a way. I just, I thought it was crazy. So here's, here's his quote.

[00:19:09] Choose my favorite based on character bios. I shouldn't root for an oligarch, but I guess I can get behind one who will fight for their own battles rather than send the poor golden money. Green are an excellent choice for someone of her stature. I think she'll last a long time, but not win. And it's just, it's crazy that buy-in and what I think the real strength of the project is, is being able to suck you in into liking the quote bad guys, which transcends this pure

[00:19:36] horror vehicle and plays into America's intrinsic love of sport. And I kept circling back to Stephen King's running man, which was, you know, adapted in the Schwarzenegger movie. Did you have a moment when you were putting this together, when it felt like it just clicked and you, aha, now we've got it. This is the secret sauce that'll suck them in. It felt like it's so, like, I felt that way about this project so fast with James.

[00:20:03] I feel like by the end of that first call, like we were both already, our heads were just spinning with how big this could be, because I think me and James have the same problem in that everything has infinite possibility to both of us. And when he put me and James both together in a room, we just kind of bounce off each other in a way where he says, you know, this could be, this could work like this as a TV show like this. And then I'm saying, well, this could work like this. And then it could be big.

[00:20:32] And we're just kind of, we keep like one upping each other in the size and scope of something. And, um, and, and that's part of what, obviously why I love working with them. And we both are real go-getters and doers and, and people that like kind of just make the work happen when we have the idea instead of things feeling at the real and unattainable. I think we both are so passionate and ambitious that, um, there's nothing that is just an idea to us.

[00:21:01] Like if we see a road to make something viable and possible, I think we both want to be able to take that road. And because of what James has created in tiny onion, that gave us the opportunity to do that. Um, you know, during one of our first calls and we had that kind of moment where it was like, this could be this and this and this. And I was like, these characters feel like they could definitely part, be part of a video game or even a card game. And then, you know, the more that we kept thinking on that idea, the more that that would brood in my subconscious.

[00:21:30] I was like, let's just make the card game. Let's just do it because we have the infrastructure to do it. So why not try? Right. And, and why not learn as we go? And I've got years of experience, um, working on magic, the gathering. I've been drawing cards for them for almost five years now. I've drawn almost 30 men cards. So, um, you know, I've seen how that system works in terms of game development, card development, balancing and stuff.

[00:21:59] And I've gotten a little bit of the, of, uh, of the inside scoop on how that all works. So I felt not necessarily totally equipped, but like I could maybe start, start thinking up some ideas on how to, how to work out the mechanics of a game and balance it. And, um, and, you know, and, and we just kept, you know, just getting bigger and bigger. And that was, that was the glory. That's the glory of me and James working together is that we really bounce off each other and

[00:22:27] we have some very big ideas and no, neither of us tells each other, no, you know, we're like, yeah, I'll find a way to make that work. Or yes, you can do that. And I will help you do that. And that's kind of where we go. We bounce off of each other. And, um, and the project just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then we had after about, we were both booked up on projects for six to eight months or so after we first had that initial call.

[00:22:53] And then we had a, uh, a story meeting where we were going to meet up in person with the tiny onion crew and do our first summit to hash out everything. Uh, just me and James and that, and that tiny onion, uh, the tiny onion people in Buffalo. And I think at that first, at that first summit where it was just me and James jamming and, and, and me presenting them with a very preliminary version of what would become the, the, the strategy

[00:23:18] card game, everything just worked and went so smoothly and flowed so well that, uh, I think the tiny onion crew were a little bit astonished with, with how, how well it went at that first summit and, and that gave them the confidence to really, really get behind what me and James were doing and, and our vision. And then when we did our second summit, it just really reinforced that.

[00:23:45] I think, um, at the second summit, when we brought in the five other writers or yeah, five other writers, um, at first me and James were not necessarily nervous, but we were unsure about what the, uh, how the personalities would mesh together in the, in the room because sure. Um, you never know if there's going to be a balanced amount of voices. Some people are louder, some are quieter.

[00:24:11] Some people are, um, presenting questions to the group. Some people are meditating on what the story should be. And so, you know, in that room very quickly, we realized that I don't know if it was premeditated by James and tiny onion, or it was just kind of lucky, but, uh, with the group that we had, had brought together, but it was really the perfect balance of different voices and personality types

[00:24:38] that it, it just never stopped. It was just, the ideas were just flowing constantly. And everybody in that moment felt like they were working on something that was going to be special. And we knew that this was going to be a big thing. Um, and you know, it, so talking to, we had two people in that room that were part of, uh, of writers rooms in the television space for a long time. Uh, porn psych, one of the best writers in comics, he's been working in television for a long time.

[00:25:07] And Che Grayson there, you know, they've done a few comics, but primarily Che has worked in the TV space in writers rooms, working on television shows and films. So they brought, um, a bit of a depth of knowledge and experience to the room that was really, really useful in facilitating, uh, um, a constant flow of ideas and, and putting things down on paper. And porn sack had shared a bit of wisdom with me on that first day that in a, in a room like that, there's three types of people.

[00:25:37] There's minders, grinders, and finders. Minders are, are, are people who are a little bit more quiet. They take their time. And then, you know, when they do speak, they have a very, very insightful thing to say about everything that people have been talking about. There's grinders who are constantly talking and they're just grinding out a million ideas at one time. They're putting things on the board.

[00:26:04] They're making sure that the room's never stopping in terms of production. And then the finders are the people that are constantly asking questions about why is this working? Why is this not working? What is the heart of this character? And they're the one that is getting deeper into the ideas, um, as they are presented and making sure that everything's working, um, and will work in terms of character and plot and structure. So you need to have a good balance of all of those types of people in that room to make it work.

[00:26:32] And we just kind of lucked into having two of each of those people. And that made sure that everything was just, was just honestly just like hitting while we were, while we were working at the story in the room. Um, and then we also in that room, we had the tiny onion group. We had their editorial team and their designers. It was just great having, you know, um, the tiny onion designers and, uh, press people in

[00:26:58] the room during that time because they were able to leave the room, not only knowing what the story was going to be, but they had ideas about how they could properly promote it with the information of what the story was going to be, which is something that you never really get in comics. You so often have those people in the room at the ground level that I think we were able to, and, and Jaslyn Stone, who is incredible works, works at tiny onion. She was able to hit the ground running with, with talking to outlets about what the story

[00:27:26] was going to be and coming up with ways to present this to the audience really early on to tease all the different killers in the game. And, you know, I feel like the fan and audience reaction to this is already so, so strong and the book's not even going to be out for another month. All right, everybody. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Let's face it. The comics landscape is a mess right now. I'm the editor-in-chief of a comics journalism outlet, and I can't even keep track of it all.

[00:27:53] If you are as passionate as I am about indie comics and its creators, you should check out The Lantern Guide. Created on the premise of creating light in the dark, it's going to be the go-to resource to keep you up to date on the projects and the creators that you love. Don't take my word for it. I reached out to my friend Brian Lovell, Poison Ivy artist and indie comics creator, to get his take. Brian, what does The Lantern Project fix? I'm a dude who loves indie comics, and I know personally, like, I get very frustrated

[00:28:21] when something shows up in my social media timeline or something like that, and I feel like I can't keep track of everything. So really, The Lantern Project was born out of that. It was an opportunity for me as a reader to kind of, like, have a place to want to consolidate all the stuff that I wanted to read. All the cool projects from cool creators that seemed interesting and kind of unique to, like, something that I would like, which is really not super represented everywhere else, but it's all over the indies.

[00:28:50] Having a spot to go to that felt like it consolidated a lot of those audiences and a lot of those places where I couldn't just get drowned out in the feed of social media seemed really valuable to me. What's the ultimate goal? It's really our hope with this project that creators feel like they're able to get in front of readers, and readers are able to get books that they actually want to read with a much easier time of keeping track of them. And accessing them.

[00:29:17] The catalog is scheduled for a quarterly release, so head over to thelanterncatalog.com to sign up now so you don't miss your next favorite thing. I'll put a link in the show notes for you. Y'all, Jimmy the Chaos Goblin strikes again. I should have known better than to mention I was working on my DC Universe meets Ravenloft hybrid D&D campaign on social media. My bad. He goes and tags a bunch of comics creators we know, and now I have to get it in gear and

[00:29:45] whip this campaign into shape so we can start playing. Another friend chimes in, are you going to make maps? It's fair to say it's been a while since I put something together, so I guess? Question mark? It was then that I discovered Arkenforge. If you don't know who Arkenforge is, they have everything you need to make your TTRPG more fun and immersive. Allowing you to build, play, and export animated maps, including in-person Fog of War capability

[00:30:11] that lets your players interact with maps as the adventure unfolds while you, the DM, get the full picture. Now I'm set to easily build high-res animated maps, saving myself precious time and significantly adding nuance to our campaign. That's a win every day in my book. Check them out at arkenforge.com and use the discount code YETI5 to get $5 off. I'll drop a link in the show notes for you, and big thanks to Arkenforge for partnering with our show.

[00:30:38] I think I'm going to make Jimmy play a goblin warlock just to get even. Welcome back. I think you need to add another category to that. I'll make sure to let Pornstack know, but you need binders, minders, grinders. And it sounds like the secret sauce here for Tiny Onion is binders. And those are the people who are actually synthesizing it all and trying to market it and everything like that. It sounds incredible. I mean, it's just the groundswell of support and everything that's going on with this.

[00:31:06] And that you and James have been able to create a platform as people who have vision in comics to try to see what something can become. Because I always get frustrated with so many good ideas, so many fantastic stories that ultimately give a five-issue arc and you're done. And I really think it's just because they don't have the infrastructure and in some cases, the vision to see where that IP could go. It's a really tough market right now, too.

[00:31:34] And you got to remember, a lot of people who are doing creator-owned books are just one person. And when you're doing a creator-owned book, generally speaking, when you own 100% of the intellectual property, you're not getting paid out your royalty until a month or two after the book comes out. So you're operating on your own savings most of the time. You are paying, you know, if you're writing and you're trying to pay your artist in advance, you're paying them out of pocket.

[00:32:04] So you're just losing money hand over fist. And if the book isn't selling fast enough, you can't even wait for the trade to come in and see how that does before you have to cancel the book because you're just too far in the red at that point. So it's really, really tough. And the market is really weird right now. There seems to be books that are absolute out of the park home runs in terms of commercial viability.

[00:32:30] And then there's books that, you know, a few years ago would have been performing well and would have been able to support themselves for 10, 15, 20 issues. And they're just not selling right now. It seems like people are either all in on a book and everybody's buying it or nobody's buying it. So, you know, we're just we're just trying to hit the market and head on and make sure that this book gets in as many hands as possible because we're all really doing the best work that we can on it.

[00:32:57] And we all believe in it and think that it can be something really incredible. Circling back to the characters. For me, as a trained anthropologist, horror is always in the material culture. What's Freddy without fingers or Jason without a machete? So I connect easiest with creators work that infuse it into their worlds. And my friend, you have a fascination with it because the silver coin immediately creates a legacy that's tied to this continuum that you're able to perpetuate through the books.

[00:33:25] And now exquisite corpses, you're kind of going back to the well with the Massachusetts golden mask. So as a fellow lover of stuff, I guess, what appeals to you so much about using them narratively? That's a really interesting question. I think I think people sometimes latch on to an item or a relic more almost than a character.

[00:33:51] And that also enables a story to have this thing that can be passed down generationally or from character to character to bind a story together in a way that an actual person can't because people can die. But you can always, you know, like a machete can just live forever, you know, and that machete can be a way to tie something together with the silver coin.

[00:34:18] You know, I wanted to make sure that it felt like each issue could tell a new story with new characters and have stakes you and have the idea that anybody could die at any time. But it didn't matter because it was like the coin would always exist and the coin would be able to go issue to issue and it would still feel like a silver coin story. So in, you know, and the idea, I think, in exquisite corpses is that each of these killers has their weapon.

[00:34:47] And so when we have other exquisite corpses games, you know, we're we're dubbing this as exquisite corpses season one. And, you know, obviously it's going to depend on sales and reaction and everything. But we're we're very much believing in this book that this will have a season two and we will see the next exquisite corpses games with a whole new group of killers or maybe not. You know, that's going to be something that you find out throughout the course of the book.

[00:35:13] But each family picks their killer based on the weapon card that they are presented, which means like like Freddie's claws and like Jason's machete and Michael Myers or Myers's knife, Mike Myers's knife. Like, you know, these weapons will carry on from games to games to games.

[00:35:37] And these these iconic serial killer items will really bind together each and every games. And I think that also create this sense of excitement from an audience when they're like, ooh, like who's going to wield the axe in the next games? Who's going to who's going to have the gun in the next games, you know? So each of these these different weapons is going to is kind of ingrained in the identity of what the

[00:36:06] exquisite corpses games is and will be and was because the exquisite corpses games, as will be revealed very quickly in the first issue is something that's been going on for a very, very long time. So all of these weapons have a history. And that's something that we're going to play with a little bit as we go. But yeah, people can die. But, you know, their weapons can't, which is, I think, an interesting thing to think about when we're telling this story. Yeah, to me, it was iterative scalability.

[00:36:35] Yes, because, you know, you get the opportunity to perpetuate backwards, forwards in time, however you want to do it. I mean, you the next generation could be 200 years in the future. You know, I don't know, which gets me to one question. Why do you all hate Pennsylvania so much? Because there were 13 original colonies and everybody gets one. You know, I'm going to say maybe they were wiped out in an arc covering a historical period.

[00:37:02] Are you leaving that speculation to abound? Why do you hate Pennsylvania? Yeah, people are going to have to read the first issue of Exquisite Corpses, but all will be revealed about why Pennsylvania's killer has not been shown publicly yet. And who or what or why the Pennsylvania information has been held back from the readers. And that's going to be something that's talked about in the first issue.

[00:37:31] Awesome. Well, I'm more excited about this book than anything I've seen in a long time. And wholly believe it has that mass market appeal that could transcend just the normal comics market. I'm waiting on the announcement to drop about an audio drama or like a podcast. I'm expecting somebody to do the Stanley Tucci, Caesar Flickman role, the announcer bit from Hunger Games for this somewhere. Maybe I'll do it. If nobody else does it, maybe I'll do it.

[00:37:57] But it's hitting shelves mid-May with enough variant covers to give people scroliosis when they're trying to find all the different variants. Do yourself a favor, folks, and pick up Michael's polybag with the trading card. I think that's going to be the one. I think that's going to be the collector one to grab. Yeah, I think so, too. So if you buy each issue of Exquisite Corpses, it's going to come with a trading card.

[00:38:20] And if you collect all of the cards, you'll be able to play a strategy card game where you role play as a chosen killer and you have your own battle to the death. So the idea behind this was that I get a lot of people at conventions who have their own ideas for characters and stories. And I wanted to gamify the Exquisite Corpses even further by giving readers the opportunity to choose their favorite killer and have them win the games if they don't in the comics, you know?

[00:38:51] To get there. Like, there might be a killer that dies in the first or second issue that's one of your favorites. And if you feel like you didn't get enough of them, now you're going to be able to play as them in this role playing strategy card game. And that was kind of the point of it, too, because there's killers in this that I love that don't last very long. That I had every killer is like a child to me. I designed them. I came up with their background and I really do love them.

[00:39:17] And so whenever I had to write or draw one of their death scenes, I was like, oh, no, you're gone. You're gone, my baby. But I've got the card game and I've been playing it like crazy over the last year and a half because I've been playtesting it and balancing it. So you get to kind of fall more in love with those characters that you don't see as much as you might want in the comics. And it's a fun way to re-experience or experience the story in a new way and kind of add your own flavor to it.

[00:39:44] But yeah, the version is it comes with a cardboard version of the card, a beautiful killer card. One in 10 of them. We've said this on another podcast. I think I can say now one in 10 will be have a foil treatment. So there's a randomized element there on what you're buying. And then every version of the comic on the interior back cover, you'll get the killer card will be printed. So if you're feeling like cutting up your books, you could cut it out and just play with that version of the card as well.

[00:40:13] So order two is what I'm hearing. Hey, I mean, I'm not going to fault you if you order two. Yeah. One to play with. That's what I always did back in the day. And thinking those X-Men number one were going to be worth something, right? So you open one and then you keep, I don't know, 20? I don't even know. But all right. Yeah. Don't we all? That's why they're worth, what? Five dollars or whatever it is. Yeah. We'll briefly touch on your other stuff.

[00:40:42] I think it's Nullhunter number eight that's going to be hitting stands pretty soon. Is that right? Yes. I'm trying to think now. Yes. Nullhunter seven just came out. Nullhunter eight should be out soon. Nullhunter is one of my favorite things that I've done. It is a cyberpunk reimagining of the labors of Hercules. So it takes everything in the original story that was magic based and turns it into hard sci-fi.

[00:41:09] The vibe is like John Wick in space with like a Blade Runner aesthetic. So it's this big revenge story, high octane, high action, super fun, wild character designs from the amazing Gustavo Vargas, who's the artist on the book. Some of the most fun I've had writing comics, honestly. Every month that I send in the script, I'm so excited to get the art back from Gustavo

[00:41:37] and see the incredible things that his mind has created. So yeah, that eighth issue should be coming out soon. And then we're going to be releasing, after all 10 issues of this series come out, we're going to be releasing it as a hardcover with the entire series. So we're pretty excited to get that out into people's hands as well. Yeah. Anybody who has no familiarity with it yet, one, you should, because it's a fantastic book. But I'm pretty sure our interviews editor, Andrew, did a written interview actually with you about it.

[00:42:05] So I'll make sure to throw that in the show notes for anybody who's unfamiliar so they can check that out. Definitely check out Null Hunters. And as now is tradition on the show, I wrap things up on a positive note with a shout out. So this can be someone who recently did you a solid or something that inspired you or just put a smile on your face. I'll go first to give you a minute. Not sure if you're a fan of the darkness. I am. And I found out that Justin Hawkins, the lead vocalist, has a YouTube channel.

[00:42:31] And the last few evenings, that's been the perfect amount of brevity to just kind of end my day in a world that seems like a complete dumpster fire. So it's nice to be able to go to bed and have a chuckle before I do. And I've actually been introduced to a few bands I hadn't heard of before. So yeah, that's mine. What you got? Oh, it's so hard not to shout out my own collaborators. You can do that. Yeah. Okay. Here's one.

[00:42:57] I'm going to shout out Courtney Menard, who is a designer at Tiny Onion. And I feel like her fingerprints are all over the design of Exquisite Corpses and especially the Exquisite Corpses game. So if you like the design of the game in terms of the graphic design and of the book, go follow Courtney. She's an incredible artist and designer.

[00:43:22] And she's just a great asset to what we're creating here. I'm going to do one more. Can I do two? You can do what you want. Okay. And I'm going to shout out Becca Carey, who letters all of my work now. I was doing my own lettering for a few years there and hand lettering everything. And she is able to letter it with kind of that hand-lettered aesthetic that I love so much.

[00:43:49] But on top of being an incredible letterer, she's also a great designer. She did the logo for Null Hunter. And she's doing a bunch of logos all across the industry right now. And she is so freaking talented. And I'm just telling you to get on the Becca Carey boat now because she's going to start winning Eisner's and be so foked up soon that you won't be able to hire her. So keep an eye out for the work of Becca Carey. She's incredible. I see her stuff everywhere right now. It's like Becca and Micah Myers. Those are the two.

[00:44:18] I don't know how those two are sleeping because they just seem to be on every third project. I see one of their names. Oh, Becca's not sleeping. I can tell you that she's got so much on her plate right now. And she's still, with all that's on her plate, she's doing an incredible job on all of it. Yeah, her work's fantastic. I'll put a link in the show notes to both of them so make it easy for people to find them. Michael, it's been a pleasure to have you on. I know you're not feeling good, so I want to let you go. But it's been great to finally catch up, get to chat for a bit. Yeah, you got it, Byron. Thank you again for having me.

[00:44:48] Of course. This is Byron O'Neill. 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. This is Byron O'Neill, one of your hosts of the Cryptid Creator Corner, brought to you by Comic Book Yeti. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of our podcast. Please rate, review, subscribe, all that good stuff. It lets us know how we're doing, and more importantly, how we can improve. Thanks for listening. Bye.