Peter Warren and Gianna Marie Interview - The Tin Can Society

[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] I love comic books.

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[00:01:02] He's a daredevil, Ned!

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[00:01:08] 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.

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[00:01:23] Another friend chimes in, are you going to make maps?

[00:01:26] It's fair to say it's been a while since I put something together, so I guess? Question mark?

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[00:02:18] Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Cryptic Creator Corner. I'm Byron O'Neill, your host for today's Comics Creator Chat.

[00:02:24] As someone from the disability community, I'm often let down by how everybody is portrayed in comics, and it's rare to see our struggle reflected accurately.

[00:02:32] A month or two ago on social media that shall not be named, I saw screenwriter Peter Warren talking about his new comics project,

[00:02:40] the Tin Can Society dropping right now from Image Comics on Rick Remender's Giant Generator imprint,

[00:02:45] where he's using a sensitivity reader to help with the portrayal of the main protagonist, tech mogul and superhero Johnny Moore.

[00:02:52] It's become common for writers to enlist a little more help to make sure that they are sensitive to the challenges of different marginalized groups,

[00:02:59] something I'm wholeheartedly in favor of, so I reached out to Peter and sensitivity reader, Gianna Marie,

[00:03:03] to hear more about this unique type of collaboration and exactly what it entails.

[00:03:08] So, it's my pleasure to introduce both of them onto the show with me to hear all about it.

[00:03:13] Gianna Marie and Peter, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

[00:03:17] Thanks for having us, Byron. I appreciate it.

[00:03:19] Yeah, yeah. Well, Gianna Marie, I'm always, always happy to have a fellow North Carolinian in the house.

[00:03:24] We're right up the road from you in Winston-Salem, so...

[00:03:27] Oh! Yeah.

[00:03:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:03:30] I'm down in Charlotte.

[00:03:31] Yeah, have you lived in Charlotte your whole life?

[00:03:33] Not my whole life, but a long time.

[00:03:35] Okay, okay. We just moved back here.

[00:03:38] I'm from just the other side of the mountains in East Tennessee, but we moved back here about a year and a half plus ago.

[00:03:44] So, yeah, it's nice to be back in the...

[00:03:47] I say it's nice to be back in the South as a born Southerner, but, you know, it's got its obvious drawbacks.

[00:03:54] But...

[00:03:54] Yeah.

[00:03:55] It's been a warm November.

[00:03:57] It has. It's weird.

[00:03:58] But, Peter, I love New York too.

[00:03:59] You know, back in the days as a landscape photographer, I taught workshops in the Fingerlapes.

[00:04:04] I hope you guys had a gorgeous fall up there.

[00:04:07] I miss being able to travel up there in the Northeast.

[00:04:10] I spent a lot of time in Maine.

[00:04:11] My in-laws spent half the year in Maine and usually in the fall I was in Acadia National Park.

[00:04:16] So I miss.

[00:04:16] I love it.

[00:04:17] Well, yeah, you'll have to come back up here and visit soon.

[00:04:19] I'm originally from Massachusetts and now I'm in New York.

[00:04:21] So, yeah, a good solid fall is something I'm familiar with.

[00:04:26] And one of the perks of living here for sure.

[00:04:28] Well, jumping into the Tin Can Society, we've seen superhero deconstruction done up one side and down the other.

[00:04:35] Not that there's still not plenty of rooms to do something interesting.

[00:04:38] And this certainly takes the genre in a new direction.

[00:04:40] It's really exciting.

[00:04:41] I've read the first issue so far and I love it.

[00:04:45] Superheroes are really fascinating to me.

[00:04:47] And this is an interesting lens to be able to use on them, right?

[00:04:50] You're inherently evaluating how someone is either physically and or non-visibly different through the expression of powers than everybody else that's out there.

[00:04:59] And in that way, it's a fantastic platform to discuss disability issues as an analog.

[00:05:04] So what was the original germ with wanting to use superheroes and couple that with ableism in the Tin Can Society?

[00:05:12] Yeah, well, first of all, you're dead on in terms of how you're kind of seeing the way that I was looking at it in terms of superhero stories kind of always being about ability and therefore always about disability.

[00:05:27] I'm a big believer, especially when I start any project, of kind of looking at a story and asking myself, you know, what conversation is this story having, whether I'm part of it or not, whether I'm aware of it or not.

[00:05:40] Because I'd rather be aware of it and involved in it than the story be, you know, sort of blind to the things that it's already discussing.

[00:05:49] And, you know, when I wanted to find my way into a superhero book, because often that's the way I'll start projects is think about kind of what's my version of a superhero comic?

[00:06:00] What's my version of a mystery?

[00:06:03] What would be my version of a Western?

[00:06:04] That kind of thing.

[00:06:05] You know, I start by really looking at what is that genre sort of inherently already discussing.

[00:06:12] And to me, you know, any sort of superhero story is about powers, who has it, who doesn't, abilities, who has it, who has them differently, who has them expressed differently, who, you know, builds equipment to allow them to do things that their body wouldn't normally be able to do.

[00:06:30] Like, once you start to look at it through that lens, it almost feels weird to not talk about ability and disability within the lens of a superhero premise.

[00:06:40] And obviously superhero books can be about a lot of things.

[00:06:42] But that, to me, was a piece that felt so germane to the, you know, to the story that I really wanted to sort of dig into it.

[00:06:52] And in general, I think I'm drawn to things that are a bit of a genre Trojan horse that are using, you know, the big, fun popcorn that makes us want to go to movies or watch TV or pick up a comic.

[00:07:03] And then it delivers a much richer heart.

[00:07:06] As far as kind of where the germ came from, you know, I'm a longtime comics fan.

[00:07:12] I've always wanted to write a comic.

[00:07:14] It's harder to break into than you would think.

[00:07:16] Like, I've been a screenwriter and television writer for about 15 years.

[00:07:20] And yet that doesn't matter in comics.

[00:07:23] And so it was easy to sort of get a shot to write a book.

[00:07:26] And I was introduced to Rick Remender, the amazing Rick Remender, through a mutual friend, as Rick was starting to put together some books for the sort of inaugural line of Giant Generator.

[00:07:37] And I had been toying with my best friend, Noah Gardner, who has another book that recently came out through Image called The Infernals with Ryan Parrott.

[00:07:46] And John Pearson.

[00:07:47] Yeah, beautiful book.

[00:07:48] He and I had been toying with this idea that we were calling Wingman that was basically about, like, two high school friends.

[00:07:55] Like, one was, like, the super jock, handsome, popular guy.

[00:07:59] And the other was kind of, like, sort of, like, the dork that he kind of looks out for.

[00:08:03] But then in adulthood, it's like the little guy gets superpowers.

[00:08:08] And the question of the book was, like, can you handle becoming Robin if you always thought that you were sort of destined to be Batman?

[00:08:16] Like, can you handle the sort of inversion in power?

[00:08:19] And so, you know, I've been toying with this book, Noah and I had, and I talked to Rick about it.

[00:08:24] And, you know, it got a larger conversation started between Rick and I about, you know, I remember he said to me, I've always been interested in the idea of Superman's entourage.

[00:08:35] You know, like, who's dry cleaning the suit?

[00:08:37] And I was like, you know, it wasn't necessarily that piece that lit me up as we were talking.

[00:08:42] It was this feeling of how a friend group can metabolize a radical shift in status, in power and ability.

[00:08:52] And so from there, that opened up the sort of brainstorm that became what the Teen Can't Society actually would be.

[00:09:00] You know, because I realized that this wasn't just about the fact that, you know, capes cast very long shadows, sort of socially and politically.

[00:09:08] Although they do in the book as well.

[00:09:09] In Teen Can, there's a lot about how Johnny's largesse and his persona can be very corrosive and corrupting to the people around him and his relationships.

[00:09:19] But to me, it was always about ability and this infusion of ability that radically shifts the landscape of how some friendships were constructed.

[00:09:32] And then what happened?

[00:09:35] Well, Jenna Marie, do you have much history as a sensitivity reader coming in with comic books yourself?

[00:09:42] Do you have a background in it?

[00:09:44] No, this is the first comic project that I've worked on.

[00:09:48] I've been sensitivity reading for about two years now.

[00:09:53] So this was a very exciting opportunity to apply something that I do for work for one of my like guilty pleasure hobbies.

[00:10:01] Because I've been trying very hard to get into more of the like prose publishing side of the publishing industry.

[00:10:09] Um, and I've never pursued any of the comic book side because it is very scary, especially for women.

[00:10:19] Um, so I've always been like, no, no, no, I'll just I'll just have fun.

[00:10:23] Like this is just what I do for fun.

[00:10:25] But I was also very interested in it when I was in college.

[00:10:27] I was, um, I was studying disability theory in college.

[00:10:30] So I was like, annoying all of my professors in other classes by continuing to bring up disability and like writing papers about it.

[00:10:40] And I spent a lot of time doing independent work in college that was focusing on the intersections of the disability genre and, um, the superhero genre and disability.

[00:10:51] Um, Peter and I talked about this a little bit.

[00:10:54] My undergraduate thesis was a paper about Jane Foster and the, the Jason Aaron run where she becomes Thor and has breast cancer and how, um, really cool that was and how much I appreciated it and how sad I am that it's not really a thing anymore.

[00:11:13] Um, she's had like two appearances in comics this year.

[00:11:18] Um, I, I feel your pain a hundred percent.

[00:11:21] I get it.

[00:11:22] Is that out there somewhere is, is, is, could I read that?

[00:11:25] Um, I could email it to you, but it's not like published.

[00:11:28] Okay.

[00:11:29] Yeah.

[00:11:29] I'd definitely be game to check it out.

[00:11:31] That sounds really interesting.

[00:11:33] I'm, uh, I'm really proud of it.

[00:11:36] Well, I think you illustrated right there.

[00:11:38] A lot of the annoyance that, uh, disability community people share with how characters get portrayed and sort of.

[00:11:47] Just get dropped or get changed in comics.

[00:11:50] You know, Professor X comes to mind, uh, all the time.

[00:11:54] That's kind of my flag bearer, you know, for somebody with a very visible disability in our medium.

[00:11:59] And, you know, Tom Braver, if you are, are you listening?

[00:12:01] I've read all the, from the ashes storylines and there are a variety of talented writers that are working on them.

[00:12:07] So you, you could put, you know, Professor X back in the chair.

[00:12:11] They would, it would, it would make a lot of us happy.

[00:12:13] They make me happy anyway.

[00:12:14] And that's really all I care about, but you know, trust the, trust these people to be able to, to handle the opportunity, add, add more inclusion.

[00:12:22] Um, and, and this is a great example, Peter, of what you've done in the tin can society, you know?

[00:12:26] And I think there's a relevant analog there too, because your main character, Johnny Moore is a famous tech mogul focused on building, you know, mobility aids, who is he himself physically disabled at, at birth with spina bifida.

[00:12:39] Um, so at what point did you decide, yeah, I'm going to need a little help to, to nail this, right?

[00:12:47] Let's listen, list a sensitivity reader.

[00:12:49] Oh, from the moment I knew I wanted to tackle a conversation about, you know, that, that involved characters whose experience wasn't my own.

[00:13:02] You know, there was no, there was no question in my mind that in order to, to do this right.

[00:13:09] And by right, I don't even necessarily mean the finished product, but more to have a process that I was proud of.

[00:13:16] Um, and to begin a dialogue with an audience, because at the end of the day, you know, as proud as I am of the book, I knew that really the only thing that would matter would be the only, the only people that could tell me if the conversation around disability was feeling powerful, was feeling accurate, were the readers and members of the disability community.

[00:13:35] And so I knew that I need, it wasn't just about the ends justifying the means.

[00:13:41] It was also the means being a process that I felt was in informed, informative.

[00:13:48] Um, you know, I was acutely aware of not just what I wanted to know, but knowing that there was an enormous amount of things that I didn't know I didn't know.

[00:13:56] Um, and, and felt like, you know, this is maybe sort of a larger answer than you're looking for, but it's something I think about a lot as a white cisgendered writer and creator of things, whether that's TV shows and writers rooms or movies or that kind of thing is, you know, what my, you know, the answer is always that the mic needs to be passed more to people that don't look like me.

[00:14:26] And then the second part of that question is when the mic does get passed to me, how do I avoid feeling like I should only be writing stories about people that, that look like me or reflect my own experience?

[00:14:40] Like, how do I create, um, spaces for storytelling that lives, you know, beyond my lived experience in a way that doesn't feel appropriate or doesn't feel inappropriate?

[00:14:52] And so, you know, I put, I put the back signal out to, to use comics terminology.

[00:15:00] Um, and obviously even just now, you know, what you heard from Gianna Marie about her, not just sort of her expertise as a disability advocate and reader, but also her organic love of superhero shit.

[00:15:13] You know, it was, you know, it was, uh, it was so clear to me what an amazing fit she was and working with her was, has been such an incredible process because, you know, and Gianna Marie, tell me if I'm wrong here, but I, you know, I think, I think she came in with a very healthy degree of skepticism.

[00:15:31] Um, given, given, given both who I am, um, and, and how I am able-bodied, but also given the extremity of some of the opening images of the book, you know, it's, it's, I think it takes a minute to, you know, and, and I think we all have this feeling where you can kind of tell when you watch something or read something, whether the people that made it are, are genuinely, genuinely care about this conversation.

[00:16:01] Genuinely care about this rendering. Even if there are things that weren't rendered perfectly, you can, you can kind of tell when people very much are invested in and aware of the impact of this and what the impact of these images might be on a reader.

[00:16:19] Genuinely care. And so I think that as we started to work together too, I think hopefully, and again, Gianna Marie, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I think, I think she realized that, realized what we were trying to do with the book, um, and, and how invested I was really in trying to do it as well as we could.

[00:16:37] And she was just unbelievably priceless in terms of contributing to that, um, and helping to help me illuminate different corners of that conversation or have better tools to have it.

[00:16:55] Yeah. I mean, the first page really did hit me like a hammer and yeah, you know, as, as somebody who, who struggles with lupus that was, you know, in 2020, I got down to 128 pounds.

[00:17:08] I needed assistance to walk. Um, I couldn't take care of myself. I couldn't remember what year it was. Um, you know, I felt like my body had just completely become a prison that I could not escape from.

[00:17:21] And I think that's fairly common in our community that, that body horror kind of affects all of us, um, you know, very strongly. And I'll admit, honestly, having a bit of shock, you know, a little bit of, of triggering. Right. And it wasn't exactly what I expected.

[00:17:37] Based on the advanced solicits, you know, and knowing that Gianna Marie was a part of this automatically made me also feel a little bit more at ease, um, with it, you know, that it was going to be approached thoughtfully. Um, and the, the character Johnny is, is not only a person with a, a significant ability, but they're a person of color as well.

[00:18:04] Um, and that can be tricky. I'd imagine Gianna Marie, you, you, it's, it's difficult to be asked to, to, to do this as a sensitivity reader.

[00:18:14] Uh, okay. You don't have spina bifida. You're, you're, you know, you're white. You're, you're not a person of color. Um, you're not a man.

[00:18:21] Right. So it's tricky. So, okay. So going in, it's a very no holds barred, uh, approach right from the jump. So how did you feel, you know, when reading the script for the first time? Like, did you, did you have that? Uh, what am I in for here?

[00:18:40] Um, I don't think I had as strong a reaction as you. It's not, it wasn't as overwhelming just in the script as opposed to the art, but I was very suspicious. I was very cautious. Um, I, there's a lot of different approaches that clients take with me.

[00:19:02] And, um, a large number of clients are not actually very interested in making changes. Uh, they finished their manuscript and this is the last step. And once I, once I sign off on it, then they know that they are not problematic and no one can ever criticize them. And a lot of times they're not particularly pleased when I'm like, Hey, I have some feedback. There are some ways that you could do some cool things with these ideas. Um, so the, like,

[00:19:32] shock factor of that first page, I was like, Oh no, like, uh, like what if this is really bad? Like we were talking earlier about, um, how Peter is so aware that the superhero genre is so about disability, but I'm going to say that almost all of readers and comic creators don't know that. Like, yeah, the superhero genre is so complicated, especially due to its age, but it's so profoundly eugenicist.

[00:20:01] Like the very core of the genre is someone who has a better body in certain ways than other people will go enforce their moral values through violence, which is why I'm like, this is a guilty pleasure. Um, so I, I deeply love the superhero genre, but I also am very excited whenever there's opportunities to question this narrative, which is one reason why I thought this was really cool.

[00:20:26] Um, I totally got distracted from what I was supposed to be talking about, which was the first page. I wrote down bullet points to talk about because I knew I was distracted. Cool. The thing that I was really worried about, about the front, the first page, I knew that there was certainly, um, a race angle that I wasn't qualified to think about or talk about. Um, not qualified to think about that.

[00:20:51] That's I'm always, I get what you're saying.

[00:20:54] I'm not qualified to speak on it in a professional. I, I don't know who else might've worked on this project, but I'm, I'm always in favor of hiring more sensitivity readers.

[00:21:03] Uh, and I tried very hard to find someone with spina bifida to like come along on this project, but, um, there's not a ton of sensitivity readers out there in the world with every single possible disability. So just tried to do my best as like an umbrella. Um, but I was very scared that able-bodied readers would really get the wrong impression from the braces being the murder weapon because mobility devices have such a, uh,

[00:21:32] a bad vibe in mainstream media. Um, able-bodied people are frightened of them and they think that they're very limiting, which the truth is that they're very freeing because your alternatives are not going places.

[00:21:47] Like less independence, having to stay in bed. Um, so I was like, Oh, like, I really don't like this. This is, this is certainly, it seems bad. Like, I don't know where, where Peter's going.

[00:22:00] Going with this. I also don't know what happens in the rest of tin can society. I've only worked on a few issues. So I've always been like, I really wish that I knew more about what was happening.

[00:22:12] But, um, when I brought this up to Peter, we had a really generative conversation about it because, um, I was, I didn't get a great impression reading the script the first time. And then we had a very long conversation and I was like, Oh, thank God. His heart is like actually in the right place.

[00:22:30] So I was very reassured by our conversation. And we talked about like, how we could make sure to position this as uniquely violent because of the involvement of the mobility aids. Um, the first, the script that I read, um, didn't really call attention to that.

[00:22:50] But after we spoke the, the version that came, that went to print, um, Peter added a line from Cassia where she's talking to Adam that, um, it's perverse. It's a hate crime. And I was like, Oh, I used the word perversion when I was explaining this.

[00:23:07] So that was exciting.

[00:23:11] For sure. It's, you know, the book, but also so many things that I've worked on. It's this balance between, you know, when I describe the book or when I think about the things that made me want to make the book, one of the words that comes up most frequently is vulnerability. Right. That I wanted this to feel particularly, you know, the first two issues are out on the stands right now.

[00:23:35] Um, but I obviously know the whole run and three, the third issue, which is coming out in particular, um, is, is one of my favorites of the run.

[00:23:45] If not my favorite of the run, because it, it is so unbelievably tender and vulnerable as it looks at, um, Johnny and Cassia's romantic relationship and, and their intimacy and, and sex with disabled bodies and all that.

[00:24:03] And so it was always a balance between how to render vulnerability unflinchingly without it being either confused as, or utilized as exploitation. Right. Um, the first shot of Johnny in that first page is horrific. Um, it's not designed to be exploitative.

[00:24:32] It's not designed to be fetishistic, but it isn't designed to full punch it. And, and this, these are things that I've wrestled with constantly. And by no means do I feel like any part of this is, is perfect or unassailable actually in a weird way.

[00:24:49] You know, I, I was looking forward to the conversation that the book would generate. And I've been so pleased to see how positively it's been received, but I would also be just as pleased to, to learn more and to hear more perspectives.

[00:25:03] But it's one of those things where on the one hand, there's such a terrible history of violence against black characters in all types of media. Um, and at the same time, we also know that people of color are statistically more likely to receive it.

[00:25:21] And so on the one hand, it felt like when sometimes you're trying to write stories to reflect the world as you want it to be, uh, or as you wish it was, you want to treat these characters the way that you wish that these characters would be treated if they're real people.

[00:25:36] And at the same time, you want to be honest about the fact that it is so terrible. The fact that it is so horrifying is often many times the point. And in some ways to camouflage that would have feel, would have felt dishonest, but it doesn't make those images easier.

[00:25:53] And it's a reason that, you know, I think my, my general feeling throughout the book was, it's not that there aren't moments that are going to be deeply disturbing or sad or horrifying, but they'll never be there without me aware that that's the case.

[00:26:11] Right. The only thing I think that would really could really go wrong is not realizing that an image is as harmful as it is, or that it is as loaded or that it is as reflective of politics that I'm unaware of. Um, as long as I'm informed as to the reality of how this could feel for an audience or a reader disabled or not, then now we're in the realms of, of choice as an artist, of,

[00:26:40] of what you want the piece to do and feel like, but I think the only bad choice is the one that you don't realize you're making. And that's why enlisting Gianna Marie was so, was so hugely, um, helpful because, you know, like she sort of touched on, and then I'll shut up is, you know, you can't, first of all, it would be very hard to find any disability reader who, or sensitivity reader who has a life experience that, that reflects every side of the character.

[00:27:08] But even if you did, it's no one's job and it's no one's ability to rubber stamp something as saying, you know, all they can do is to provide perspective, experience, tools, language. Uh, and Gianna Marie did that so ably. And so I felt like I had so many more tools in my toolbox to, to tackle this.

[00:27:31] All right, let's take a quick break.

[00:27:41] After a string of unexplained disappearances in the Southern parts of the United States, retired detective Clint searches for his white trash brother.

[00:27:49] While searching for him, he ends up being abducted by aliens.

[00:27:52] 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.

[00:28:04] And his brother is the reigning champion with 27 kills.

[00:28:08] That's the premise for a new book from Banda Barnes, big guns, stupid rednecks.

[00:28:13] 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.

[00:28:24] In Jimmy's words, big guns, stupid rednecks is many things, but it isn't subtle.

[00:28:29] It tells you exactly what it is up front.

[00:28:31] Then it delivers with a great premise, fantastic art and a whole mess of fun.

[00:28:35] 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, a family mystery, brother pitted against brother, aliens, fighting for profit in a big arena.

[00:28:49] This truly has it all.

[00:28:50] 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.

[00:29:00] Don't miss.

[00:29:00] Let's get back to the show.

[00:29:02] Comics are a very unique medium, and I'm curious about your experience kind of moving into them from screenwriting.

[00:29:09] We're kind of focused on this one panel, but I think it's a really interesting point to illustrate how a panel can keep you there and a reader or a watcher, whoever's absorbing it, can stay in that space as long as they want.

[00:29:30] Or as short as they want.

[00:29:32] You know, the journey is paced by the reader in a way that you're never going to get with a TV show.

[00:29:39] You're never going to get with a movie.

[00:29:40] And I think that that's why that was so strong for me because I stayed there.

[00:29:46] You know, normally I spend more time.

[00:29:49] I think that most comics readers do just kind of absorbing a page.

[00:29:51] But I was probably there for 20 or 25 seconds just like, wow, I didn't expect this.

[00:29:57] And I do not mean to color this.

[00:29:59] I feel like we're putting a little bit of a stamp on the book that it might be negative.

[00:30:03] I absolutely love this book because it uses that imagery and then takes you on the journey.

[00:30:10] And I'm immediately sucked into wanting to know about Johnny, you know, like what his journey was, what his challenges were.

[00:30:18] So in moving from screenwriting into comics, was that something that you were initially aware of?

[00:30:25] I'm just curious about the feedback that you've gotten from other people about that, you know, and staying with that one page.

[00:30:32] Sure.

[00:30:33] No, I'm happy to answer that.

[00:30:34] Gianna Marie, did you have something you wanted to say too?

[00:30:36] I feel like I cut you off and I wanted to make sure you had a chance.

[00:30:39] Um, I just wanted to return to something that we were talking about real quick, which is I did not, I did not intend to be like, Peter, you should have sent me all of the, all of the files.

[00:30:53] I needed to know what happened.

[00:30:54] And I just, I always like to have as much information because a lot of the time when I'm working with people, I don't have enough information to decide, like, are you actually coming close to what you're trying to do?

[00:31:09] Um, like, uh, like I was saying earlier, and I don't, I don't mean this like negatively or in, in any kind of criticism, but like the impression that I got from that first version of the script is nothing close to what you were actually trying to do.

[00:31:22] So, like, so like the conversations that we had about it were really important and helpful for me so I could help you, help give you better feedback.

[00:31:33] Like, that's, that's all that I was trying to say.

[00:31:36] Like, I wish that I had all of the information so I could be like, oh, this first page, like, I totally get what it's doing now because like, I don't actually know what it was supposed to do yet.

[00:31:47] Totally, totally.

[00:31:48] And that's also, you know, there's a bit of like building the airplane and, you know, while you're making error of writing a book where like, you know, I didn't have as much of information about future issues to, to share at that point because I didn't know what they were.

[00:32:01] But by the way, closing that delta between my intentions as an artist, this is what I want the book to feel like, and how it's reading.

[00:32:09] That's all to Jean-Marie's credit, right?

[00:32:11] That's what closes, that's what helps to close that gap between here's what you're trying to do, here's what you executed.

[00:32:17] Getting back to sort of what you were asking about, you know, that feeling of an audience really having an enormous amount of agency around pace.

[00:32:27] When you take in a comic as compared to, you know, film or television, which are kind of the other, the medium that I'm actually more familiar with.

[00:32:36] Yeah, it's one of the things that's, that's special about comics is, it's actually, you know, what's sort of special about reading period is you kind of tell the story to yourself.

[00:32:47] Yeah, I wrote it.

[00:32:49] But, you know, if you read a novel, the characters sound how they sound in your head, they look how they look in your head, like there's an enormous amount of intimacy, but, you know, but also an enormous amount of agency.

[00:33:01] And I think that comics to me is the closest, in a lot of ways, sister medium to screenwriting, because it is a produced media.

[00:33:09] It's a media that goes from script to then production, realization, you know, all the things that we do in, in, you know, dramatic writing in terms of costumes and lighting and hair and makeup.

[00:33:26] All that happens in comics, it's just all done by Francesco Mobili, you know, like he's, he's in charge of all the things, which is part of what makes him so impressive.

[00:33:34] But yeah, the one of the biggest differences is, is that as a reader, you maintain control over pace and you can linger.

[00:33:43] I'm a very slow reader in general.

[00:33:45] And I like to think it's because I'm a saverer.

[00:33:48] You know what I mean?

[00:33:48] I like to say, I, I take my time.

[00:33:50] It's probably just I'm a fucking slow reader, but you know, I, my way sounds nicer.

[00:33:54] Um, but yeah, it's, I just want to pop in here for a second.

[00:33:59] I don't think that we should be assigning any moral value to reading speed.

[00:34:04] Fair enough.

[00:34:04] That's a very, very good point.

[00:34:06] There's nothing wrong with this.

[00:34:07] You don't need to be selling it to us to make up for the fact that you're slow.

[00:34:11] Some people are just slow.

[00:34:12] It's fine.

[00:34:13] That is very, that is very true.

[00:34:15] As someone who like has to read for a living, I often wish I was faster because it would make my life easier.

[00:34:21] Um, but yes, I like to linger in it and, you know, uh, and comics have so much to savor and to, and to delight in.

[00:34:32] Delight is not a huge part of that first page of the book by any, by any means.

[00:34:37] Um, and it, it is arresting and it is disturbing.

[00:34:42] And I think, you know, uh, I, I did have to kind of trust the reader to have the experience that they were going to have.

[00:34:55] And also to, to tell me if that experience was, you know, valuable or not, you know, like we are sort of in, in a dialogue.

[00:35:07] I think one of the things, honestly, that my, one of my biggest fears, um, in terms of how that book was structured, how the first issue was structured is that as you read further into the series, um, you know, Johnny looms very large in the first issue.

[00:35:24] Um, but he really continues to be an incredibly important character dramatically.

[00:35:32] Meaning it's not just like the idea of Johnny in the past, but he's dead because so much of the book spends its time looking at the history of this group and all those things.

[00:35:43] Like he's alive and participating and problematic and here and present.

[00:35:50] And so it was one of my only fears was that that opening image, the, even just the opening issue could be misconstrued as Johnny being really not a part of the book in a way that makes his death so early, even a little bit more gutting or a little more loaded.

[00:36:09] And that wasn't the case. Like we're playing with time here. Yes. He's dead when the book starts, but the book is very much about him and about his experience and about the impact of, of his life story on his friends.

[00:36:22] Like I sometimes, like I sometimes, again, I don't want to spoil too much of the book, but you know, I, I sometimes have described the story as him losing himself multiple times over and in different phases in different chapters and trying to reclaim it.

[00:36:38] And the issue two is, is, is out on Stan. So I feel comfortable talking about it, but even there, that issue starts with him talking about how he felt like he was drowning in plain sight as the figurehead mascot, um, kind of token of the company that he had started.

[00:36:57] And that caliber, this side project that belonged to him was something, it was a reassertion of his sovereignty and his identity. Then obviously we, as we know from the first issue, that identity eventually goes on to become property of the public as it becomes, you know, and so he, that first image of the first page.

[00:37:22] It's so hard to look at, so hard to look at for so many reasons, but the only, the one that I was also the most afraid of was that it would, uh, it would misrepresent the degree to which a very alive Johnny is the centerpiece of the book.

[00:37:36] Um, and luckily again, I've been thrilled with the reception of the book thrilled and that never seemed to be, uh, readers have really seemed to understand that implicitly.

[00:37:50] I feel really blessed that you're able to have the range to be able to go in to as much as you want to go into with these characters. Um, I don't know you're relatively new to comics. Um, but being at image, working with Rick, not having to deal with a page count, um, not having an editor that's telling you, you have to cut from 28 to 22, not being limited to four issues.

[00:38:15] Like this is standard stuff. So I'm really excited about it. Um, in the, in that regard, I am spoiled as hell as a new, as a new comic writer. And I'm very, I'm both aware of it. And yet I know that I'm like, can't fully appreciate it. First of all, um, to be given the latitude, beginning of the opportunity to do the book in the first place is crazy and amazing to be introduced to you and paired with Francesco

[00:38:45] Mobili who is as good. He's better at what he does than like anyone is at anything. Like he is so unbelievably good. I actually, New York comic-con was the first time. Cause he's in Italy. I'm here in New York. We don't see each other often. And when we do, it's like, it's like before sunset. We have like a one day romance with each other. But when I saw him in New York comic-con was the first time I saw the original art in person.

[00:39:12] And I know every square inch, every panel of this book, but still seeing it in person blew me away. I could not believe how lovely his work is. Like I just, I'm so spoiled to have like, honestly, one of the best artists in comics.

[00:39:27] And then, like you said, the lack of interference, the lack of notes, you know, Rick as an unbelievable resource and mentor and shepherd and, and co-conspirator has been incredible. And yeah, the length of the run, like I, as a comic reader, it's just me, no shame in the game. But like, I don't like like four issue minis personally.

[00:39:54] Like they just, there just isn't quite enough there for me to like, all of my favorite comics are like a hundred issues long. You know, like I love the epic story. Honestly, just being totally transparent that I wanted this to be a fully ongoing book.

[00:40:09] Yeah.

[00:40:10] And that's incredibly hard to do these days, especially because my name doesn't mean shit in comics.

[00:40:16] And so it's not like, you know what I mean? The fact that I'm getting to do a nine issue run is expansive and crazy.

[00:40:22] And part of my hope is that, you know, the love for the book and maybe, you know, if we were to see this come to life in TV, knock on wood, you know, that that could unlock us doing, you know, another art.

[00:40:33] Cause it's a, it's a very big story. And I feel like this run is kind of the tip of the iceberg.

[00:40:38] Well, Gianna Marie, I want to pull you back in to kind of how you, you feel like your role works as a sensitivity reader.

[00:40:47] Cause everybody's approach as a sensitivity reader could be different, you know, but I'm curious about lines.

[00:40:53] So in terms of approach, how do you go about helping an author, Peter, in this case, tell a story that is authentic in intent from their perspective while evaluating kind of the potential emotional response of an entire demographic who is already preloaded.

[00:41:09] Come after you to some extent, right?

[00:41:12] Yeah.

[00:41:13] Online can be unkind.

[00:41:15] I guess the first question is kind of, does this, should this piece of art exist at all?

[00:41:24] Because I have unfortunately come across that a couple of times where I've had to write a really detailed response to an author.

[00:41:33] And I'm like, please sit down and explain to me like why you are writing this, because I don't think that it's for the right reasons.

[00:41:40] And I think you're going to do all the harm and none of the good.

[00:41:43] And no one loves to write that feedback or receive that feedback.

[00:41:48] Sure.

[00:41:49] So that's like the first question.

[00:41:52] I'm always trying to think about, like, what is the author trying to accomplish?

[00:41:57] And a lot of times they are trying to just tell stories that normalize disability.

[00:42:03] But sometimes they have nefarious purposes, I'll say.

[00:42:09] So fortunately, after Peter and I had a long conversation, I was like, OK, Peter has good ideas.

[00:42:15] This is certainly something that I would like to see in the world.

[00:42:18] This would be so cool.

[00:42:21] Then the other things that I do, I have kind of three things that I'm always thinking about.

[00:42:27] One is factual inaccuracies.

[00:42:31] There are so many things that I'm likely to miss.

[00:42:37] But the depth of disability community and culture is so vast and it's so invisible to able-bodied people that, like, even though I know more than a lot of people in disability culture, I come off as, like, even more of an expert than I actually am to most able-bodied people.

[00:42:54] Because they don't have any idea of, like, who disabled heroes are, like, important laws that have been passed, like, important moments in our history, like, things that happen to you when you walk on the street and you're visibly disabled.

[00:43:11] So an example of something that was kind of tiny in the first issue of Tin Can Society, the script that I read had a line about Johnny's parents being Christian scientists and it said that they didn't take him to the doctor.

[00:43:25] And I was like, I know that this is two words, but it's really important because he would be so fucked.

[00:43:31] Like, I don't know that he would have even survived his childhood if he'd never been to the doctor.

[00:43:37] So we had, like, a long conversation about that and I was like, here's what the impacts would be.

[00:43:41] Like, I don't think that you would be able to tell the story you're trying to tell with this detail.

[00:43:46] And it is changed in the more recent version, which is very exciting.

[00:43:51] There's, yeah, sorry, keep going.

[00:43:53] Yeah, so facts is one.

[00:43:56] And another detail is trying to provide more details and context.

[00:44:02] When there are good ideas, I can be like, hey, did you know about this thing?

[00:44:06] If you included details about this thing, this would really show that you're trying and it would make it seem so much more realistic and vibrant.

[00:44:15] Which I'm trying to think.

[00:44:18] I'm trying to think if I had any examples.

[00:44:20] I think in the first issue, I was also worried that Johnny wasn't going to be very much a part of Tin Can Society.

[00:44:27] And I was like, if I was just a customer, I would be really disappointed that he was dead in issue one.

[00:44:35] Because I would be coming for a disabled superhero.

[00:44:38] And I was like, is it possible that there could be another disabled superhero who was inspired by Johnny later?

[00:44:47] Or someone takes up his mantle because of that?

[00:44:50] And we ended up having a whole conversation about disability activism.

[00:44:55] And what impact the Capitol crawl would have had on Johnny because of his age.

[00:45:01] And Peter had a really great idea.

[00:45:04] This was not my idea.

[00:45:05] This was Peter's idea.

[00:45:05] Which was, what if we put a lot of disabled characters at the funeral to show how important he was to this community?

[00:45:13] Which is visible in the issue in print.

[00:45:18] Which was really exciting.

[00:45:19] We had a lot of...

[00:45:21] I think issue three, we also...

[00:45:24] Peter asked me about book recommendations about sex and disability.

[00:45:29] So he was doing a lot of research about that.

[00:45:32] And he showed me some art.

[00:45:33] And I was like, ooh, do you know what would really make these cool positioning pillows?

[00:45:38] And Peter was like, well, they're not even at Johnny's house.

[00:45:42] And I was like, whoops, totally missed that.

[00:45:44] That was on me.

[00:45:45] But that's the kind of like, oh, you probably don't even know that this thing exists.

[00:45:49] But it would be so cool and really show who you're trying to represent to that community if it was there.

[00:45:57] And then the third thing I'm always keeping an eye out for is unintentional authorial ableism.

[00:46:03] Which I'm not going to use Peter as an example here.

[00:46:07] But a lot of the time...

[00:46:09] You can. Go for it.

[00:46:10] You can.

[00:46:10] No, I have way worse examples from actual comic books.

[00:46:14] No, like Marvel DC has way more of those that I can clearly explain to the audience.

[00:46:21] But a lot of times authors do not realize that they are making plot decisions that are really ableist.

[00:46:30] One of my favorite examples of this is House of M.

[00:46:35] Which I think probably most people are very well aware of.

[00:46:39] But Brian Michael Bendis has some problems with sanism at times.

[00:46:45] And House of M sort of is just plugging along and then suddenly, suddenly out of nowhere, because of reality warp powers, Wanda cannot tell the difference between reality and illusion.

[00:46:58] And then she kills people because she can't tell the difference.

[00:47:03] And it's a whole big problem.

[00:47:04] And we get like two pages of a male doctor explaining all of this to us, Doctor Strange, without ever having spoken to her or what she's experiencing.

[00:47:14] Like it's...

[00:47:15] We were talking about Professor X earlier.

[00:47:20] Barbara Gordon is another huge example of this in comics.

[00:47:23] Like, no one whose opinion should be counted wanted Barbara Gordon to walk again.

[00:47:31] Like, she was the primary disabled superhero for a very long time.

[00:47:37] And people are still furious that for no real reason, she was forcibly cured by the narrative.

[00:47:49] So...

[00:47:49] Well, this...

[00:47:50] That brings up something I think that was one of the things that Gianna Marie and I discussed the most and that she was so helpful with.

[00:48:01] Was...

[00:48:02] In...

[00:48:03] How I wanted to render Johnny's relationship to his own disability.

[00:48:08] Meaning on the one hand, he is so many things beyond just being a disabled man.

[00:48:18] Many good, many bad.

[00:48:20] Like, it is not the only facet of his life experience that defines him.

[00:48:27] On the other hand, to minimize the impact that it did have on his childhood, the man he became, what he does for work, also would feel kind of dishonest.

[00:48:41] Right?

[00:48:42] The...

[00:48:43] What Gianna Marie was just touching on, the idea of the desire for cure as a concept, you know, was such a big part of it.

[00:48:52] Which is, on the one hand, it's incorrect and ableist to render cure as the universal goal for the disabled person.

[00:49:06] On the other hand, it also was fair to say that as a child, he didn't necessarily want to be disabled at school with his lunch.

[00:49:17] And I mentioned that those feelings of resentment toward his disability, struggle with his disability, you know, needed to be honestly and accurately reflected without them being conflated as, from a sort of authorial or political standpoint...

[00:49:39] Yes.

[00:49:40] A desire to fix the disabled body.

[00:49:43] I think there's a really big difference between a character possibly wanting cure and the overwhelming genre normative status that cure is forced on all bodies in comics, unless you die.

[00:50:02] Like, it's just a matter of time.

[00:50:04] Like, that's why I can't be like, oh, well, Barbara wanted to walk again.

[00:50:09] Like, I can't count what she thinks.

[00:50:12] Like, that's not relevant here.

[00:50:14] The point is that, like, if you're like, oh, yes, but we can cure everything in a superhero comic.

[00:50:19] They have all of this technology.

[00:50:20] Okay, you're going to cure your way out of representing any disabled people.

[00:50:25] Yeah.

[00:50:26] It's sort of the difference between rendering how a character is looking at the world versus how this world is looking at this character.

[00:50:32] You know?

[00:50:33] And we, in conversation with Giann Marie, too, we identified, you know, the ways in which Johnny's relationship to his own disability evolves over his lifetime.

[00:50:45] It's different to be an adult man who also has achieved an enormous amount of notoriety, money, a seam, and then his relationship to a company that is, you know, built on its involvement in mobility aids.

[00:51:05] Like, that changes his relationship to how he wears his braces, how he moves, how he interacts with other characters, all of these things.

[00:51:14] When he's 12, it's a different thing.

[00:51:19] Also, the fact that he's so much more independent as an adult.

[00:51:22] His parents would have been abusive if he wasn't Black, if he wasn't disabled.

[00:51:27] But the fact that he is Black and disabled, that abuse is magnified because of the extra layers of vulnerability.

[00:51:35] Like, the care that they give him is abusive.

[00:51:37] It is life-limiting.

[00:51:39] So, to be an adult and have autonomy over what happens to his body is a journey that a lot of people go through as they leave their parents' houses.

[00:51:51] And they're like, oh, I can take care of myself in ways that aren't so harmful.

[00:51:56] Like, care is not always a threat.

[00:51:59] So, yeah, there's a lot of layers.

[00:52:03] There's so many layers, right?

[00:52:04] Like, that was the thing.

[00:52:05] It was never about trying to render one thing right or one thing correctly.

[00:52:13] It was about feeling supportive of the complexity of an honest experience.

[00:52:20] You know, I'm thinking ahead, again, to issue three, which I really hope people will read because I'm really, really proud of it.

[00:52:27] And it's like, again, I'm not spoiling anything here, but just because you've got a carol burn suit,

[00:52:36] just because you were about as abled in that thing as anyone can get,

[00:52:41] just because you've figured out how to fight and fly and all this stuff doesn't mean you've totally figured out sex yet.

[00:52:51] Sure.

[00:52:51] Quite.

[00:52:52] Or how to feel, not that you haven't figured it out, but maybe you haven't figured out how to feel as comfortable as you do punching a hole in the wall, right?

[00:53:02] Like, it was the, that Johnny's relationship with his body is not, you know, binary.

[00:53:11] His relationship to his disability is not simplistic.

[00:53:14] It expresses itself in a variety of contexts, in a variety of ways, from the degree to which you wear your braces very visibly,

[00:53:23] the degree to which you've, you know, allowed yourself to explore certain types of intimacy,

[00:53:31] the degree to which it's affected you as an athlete.

[00:53:33] Like, all of these things are kind of, you know, they stem from maybe this large umbrella of a relationship to disability.

[00:53:41] But you can be in a very different place with different facets of your life and wanted to make sure that we held that nuance.

[00:53:51] Yeah.

[00:53:52] Well, I'm, I'm hype about that personally.

[00:53:55] Um, having gone through my own experiences with it, you know, I've been married for 20 years.

[00:54:02] The, the guy that my wife married was 205 pounds.

[00:54:06] When we got married of, I mean, I was just muscled.

[00:54:10] Like I was, I, I was doing club security when we first met.

[00:54:14] Um, and then to get down to 128 pounds, uh, looks very different.

[00:54:20] And then putting weight back on, but you know, she's adjusting to somebody that looks radically different than the person she married that she was attracted to, to begin with.

[00:54:32] And, and all those things are so loaded.

[00:54:33] It's hard not to take it personally, you know, even when that person doesn't mean it that way, you know?

[00:54:41] Um, so I'm, I'm really looking forward to issue three.

[00:54:44] That should be really interesting to dive into.

[00:54:46] I appreciate you sharing that.

[00:54:47] And I, and I, I, I hope you find something in the third issue.

[00:54:52] I mean, I think that part of the core of Johnny and Keisha's relationship in particular is that, and I think, I think this experience is one that's not entirely foreign, even outside of the realms of disability of, I think Johnny feels incredibly beloved by the world when he's in.

[00:55:12] In the, the, the parts of his life where in many ways, he is the least disabled objectively.

[00:55:20] Right?

[00:55:20] Like that's part of the, it's part of the politics, right?

[00:55:24] Is that the, the more he develops the powerful suit, the less that his mobility is infringed upon, the less, the less that he is sort of on paper disabled, the more esteem and money and, and admiration and action figures there are.

[00:55:44] Keisha, as we see is the person who loves him with the, without even the mobility aids on, you know?

[00:55:53] Like she, in many ways loves him, even when his body isn't being like, you know, isn't having his disabilities compensated for in some manner, you know?

[00:56:07] And that's a really beautiful thing.

[00:56:09] And also creates, I think, a lot of tension for Johnny as the character, right?

[00:56:14] Because you want to feel the love of the world, but it can also feel like it comes, it's conditional.

[00:56:24] Yeah.

[00:56:24] Gianna Marie, you look like you had something you wanted to add there.

[00:56:28] Yeah.

[00:56:29] Um, I was just thinking that this is very interesting to compare to Iron Man, which I'm sure is like the intent.

[00:56:38] Um, but I think that many people, if not most people who are comic book fans completely forget that Tony Stark is significantly disabled.

[00:56:49] Hmm.

[00:56:50] Um, but this series will not let you forget ever.

[00:56:55] Um.

[00:56:55] Yeah.

[00:56:56] I haven't read very much Iron Man, but it's, it's a very interesting contrast.

[00:57:01] No, it's, it's a great reference point.

[00:57:03] I mean, that, um, like John Henry Steele, like there's, there's some things in comics of, uh, you know, incredibly successful inventors with billion dollar companies and fancy suits.

[00:57:16] And, and Tony Stark obviously comes from the fact that he has a life threatening disability that the suit.

[00:57:23] Oh, and the arc reactor allows him to sort of compensate for.

[00:57:26] I think one of the, the, the key differences that I was interested in exploring was that Tony Stark was a billionaire first.

[00:57:35] Right.

[00:57:36] Like, yeah, that like, you know, and I think there's something, there's always been anger in Johnny, you know, from the first issue as a kid, like there is, you see hurt and you see resentment.

[00:57:48] And, and I think there's also, to me, there's always been an anger in the character that resents the success that he found because of what it implies that about his value.

[00:58:05] Right.

[00:58:06] Right.

[00:58:06] Like the more he has monetized a way, you know, mobility, it's the more that he has become less objectively disabled, the more esteem and value the world has bestowed upon him.

[00:58:19] And that in and of itself is enraging.

[00:58:24] Yeah.

[00:58:25] Well, fame is a very interesting element to bring into it as well, because as a straight cis white male, it's a very different level of expectation than it is with somebody who has a disability that somebody who is a person of color would have.

[00:58:43] You have this almost loaded weight to represent your community in a way that straight white cis men simply don't.

[00:58:52] And I found that was a really fascinating thing to be able to play with in this narrative that you don't see very much in comic books.

[00:58:59] Fame is just not as much of an element that I've seen in books right now.

[00:59:05] Yeah, no, I mean, it's definitely I thought at times about.

[00:59:11] You know, it's a long existing idea in comics about whether like Bruce Wayne is the mask and Batman is the real guy, you know, that feeling of.

[00:59:23] The rise of the persona and what that does to the person.

[00:59:30] And so I think Johnny, again, it's sort of what I was saying about the book very much being about him kind of losing himself over and over and trying to reclaim that and then not being sure what that is anymore.

[00:59:43] Is this feeling of whenever he finds his personhood, it becomes a persona even.

[00:59:52] I mean, honestly, it's in the first issue when we see his picture on the on his parents Christmas card.

[00:59:58] Right. Is that even from a young age, there was a sense of his identity being commodified and also being appropriated in some way.

[01:00:09] And then it happens again when you're the figurehead of a company that's got your name on the side.

[01:00:12] And it happens again when you're a superhero.

[01:00:15] But now everyone wants you to do certain stuff like it happens again when you're dating someone really famous.

[01:00:20] And, you know, it's constantly this feeling of identity being co-opted.

[01:00:26] And I think that he responds to that in ways that are a real mixed bag of healthy to deeply unhealthy.

[01:00:38] Yeah, I think that the secret identity element makes superhero comics inextricable from the conversation about masking.

[01:00:48] Like, I get very frustrated whenever there's like a viral Twitter conversation about whether Superman or Clark Kent is the real one.

[01:00:55] And I'm like, no, don't you understand?

[01:00:57] They're both real and neither of them are real.

[01:01:00] Like, how do you not get this?

[01:01:04] Like, daredevil is a really interesting example because he's hiding so much of himself in every single circumstance.

[01:01:16] Like, when he is going out to beat people up as daredevil, he's pretending to be sighted.

[01:01:22] But when he's, like, in court as that, he is pretending that he does not have superhuman senses.

[01:01:28] Like, everything is a performance all of the time.

[01:01:32] Like, and he's miserable.

[01:01:34] Yeah.

[01:01:36] That's really interesting to me.

[01:01:39] That's, like, one of the things that I find most interestingly interacts with disability in the comic book, in the superhero genre.

[01:01:50] Yeah.

[01:01:51] And I've been very excited to see where that goes in Tin Can Society because we haven't seen, like, too much of it yet because he is so performative about his pride in himself.

[01:02:04] Yeah.

[01:02:05] Well, buckle up.

[01:02:07] There is some shit coming down the pike, let me tell you.

[01:02:12] I mean, to me, all the issues have pretty intense twists, but, like, it escalates rapidly.

[01:02:17] Like, things get real, real.

[01:02:21] I mean, they're always really real, but, like, shit starts to really go off in three and then four and then five is an absolute, like, it's wild.

[01:02:33] So, yeah.

[01:02:34] Keep your hands inside the car.

[01:02:36] We're going to have a good time.

[01:02:38] Nice.

[01:02:39] Well, as I said before, I really love this book.

[01:02:42] I've read three 10 out of 10 comics this year that I'd give them, and this is certainly one of them.

[01:02:47] Thank you.

[01:02:48] Thank you.

[01:02:48] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:02:49] Thank you.

[01:02:50] You know, for perspective, I think I had one last year, so I'm batting pretty good this year.

[01:02:55] I'm a tough.

[01:02:56] It's a good year for both.

[01:02:57] Yeah.

[01:02:58] Well, and objectively, this is an incredible superhero story, but the depth with which Peter, with Gianna Marie's help, was able to empower a disabled protagonist and weave their story into this larger framework about friendship and loss and envy and fame and aging.

[01:03:15] It is absolutely something you don't want to miss.

[01:03:17] Issues one and two of the nine-issue series are out on shelves now, so make sure to pick it up.

[01:03:23] And before we wrap up, I wanted to check in and see what else you both have cooking.

[01:03:27] Gianna Marie, you talked about publishing hopeful in the prose world.

[01:03:31] Are you working on something?

[01:03:33] Can you talk about it?

[01:03:34] Um, I, I'm working, I'm doing sensitivity reading for a LARP manual right now.

[01:03:41] Okay.

[01:03:42] But that's not a big, big deal.

[01:03:45] Um, I do freelance reading for KF Literary Scouting, uh, which is very cool.

[01:03:50] I've been, I've done a bunch of internships.

[01:03:52] I would like very much to be a literary agent, but, um, certain disability things and living in Charlotte and living in Charlotte because of disability things has made breaking into publishing very challenging.

[01:04:04] So I have been, uh, applying for every entry-level remote job forever.

[01:04:10] Um, but outside of that, I have been working with, um, a group called Charlotte Mask Block, which has been, uh, so life-affirming and wonderful, which is, um, do either of you know what mask blocks are?

[01:04:24] I don't.

[01:04:25] I don't.

[01:04:26] Peter, exciting.

[01:04:27] Yeah, so they are, um, mutual aid groups, which are nine out of 10 times run by all disabled people.

[01:04:34] Okay.

[01:04:35] I should know that.

[01:04:36] Free, like, N95s, KN95s to their communities.

[01:04:40] So, um, we've been active for about a year and a half and we are in a really exciting moment because the Charlotte Observer profiled us in the summer.

[01:04:51] And we got, like, 500 requests in, like, two weeks, uh, which was five times as many as we'd gotten in the previous year.

[01:05:00] So there's been some really exciting stuff going on with that.

[01:05:04] Um, I, I, I have way more of a community here in Charlotte than I ever had before now that I've met a lot of really awesome people who want to be involved in, um, getting resources out to people.

[01:05:15] So that is when, what I've been doing when I am not being able to be hired.

[01:05:20] Love it.

[01:05:21] Amazing.

[01:05:22] Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm a, I'm a film and TV writer.

[01:05:25] Uh, so I, I, that's the other stuff that I'm doing.

[01:05:28] I'm directing a movie, uh, uh, coming up called, uh, Kill Me.

[01:05:32] That's, uh, that's a movie I wrote, uh, about mental health.

[01:05:36] That's also a murder mystery.

[01:05:37] So I'm psyched about that.

[01:05:38] Um, I've been adapting, uh, a very famous comic called The Ink Cow, uh, that I've been doing with, uh, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement.

[01:05:45] So I've been working on that.

[01:05:46] Uh, and, and yeah, just, you know, right in the Tin Can Society and talking to you guys.

[01:05:52] Nice.

[01:05:53] Well, where can people find you both online?

[01:05:55] Or do you even want them to these days?

[01:05:58] Yeah, I mean, sure.

[01:06:00] Why not?

[01:06:01] Let's see what happens.

[01:06:02] No, I'm, I'm, uh, at your B Warren, W A R R E N, uh, in the main places.

[01:06:10] Um, you can also email us about the book.

[01:06:12] It's, uh, writeremender at gmail.com.

[01:06:15] If you want to send us a letter, we publish them, uh, and they, they warm my heart to read.

[01:06:19] Even if they're, even if they're mean.

[01:06:21] Which none of them have been, but, you know, take a shot.

[01:06:24] Um, I am at the underscore Gianna Marie, which is G-I-A-N-N-A-M-A-R-I-E on Twitter.

[01:06:34] And at Gianna Marie on Blue Sky.

[01:06:37] Although I have not been very active in actually moving over there yet.

[01:06:42] It's jumping off.

[01:06:43] I mean, it is going bananas over there in the last.

[01:06:47] All right.

[01:06:48] Well, maybe we need to, maybe we need to.

[01:06:49] I just don't know if I need more social media in my life.

[01:06:52] I, I had to make a conscious decision on which one I spend my time on and I am switching to Blue Sky.

[01:06:59] It's just so much more affirming.

[01:07:01] Yeah.

[01:07:02] Yeah.

[01:07:02] I just, that, that, that's my new home.

[01:07:05] But I shouldn't bash.

[01:07:06] Thank you.

[01:07:07] Thank you so much.

[01:07:08] Just for, for the support of the book and having us.

[01:07:12] I just, I really appreciate it.

[01:07:13] Yeah.

[01:07:14] You're very welcome.

[01:07:15] Thank you both for coming on.

[01:07:16] I appreciate so much.

[01:07:17] It's a rare treat to get a glimpse into how this whole sensitivity reading thing works.

[01:07:21] So, and Peter, thank you for, for being willing to pull that in.

[01:07:25] And, and, and.

[01:07:26] Oh my gosh.

[01:07:27] I am.

[01:07:28] I am so grateful to be the recipient of Gianna Marie's wisdom and health.

[01:07:32] And I hope everyone hires her, but not so many people that then she's too busy to work with me.

[01:07:37] So I will, I will, I will do my best to keep a ceiling on her career right at that pocket.

[01:07:44] Um, I was going to say, this has actually been a really abnormal relationship for me.

[01:07:49] Um, a working relationship because most of the time people are done with their project and then

[01:07:53] they send it to me and I send them a report back and they're like, wow, cool.

[01:07:57] And then we never talk again.

[01:07:59] But, um, I was actually able to be involved early enough in the process that we actually

[01:08:03] had real conversations about it and I get to keep coming back for more issues.

[01:08:07] So it's like very exciting.

[01:08:09] Peter is like my top favorite client for sure.

[01:08:12] Um, you're very sweet, but you're, you're not alone that most people describe their relationships

[01:08:17] with me as abnormal.

[01:08:18] So you know, you're right.

[01:08:20] You're in good company.

[01:08:21] Yeah.

[01:08:22] Peter is extremely conscientious and enthusiastic about taking feedback.

[01:08:27] Thank you.

[01:08:28] Trying.

[01:08:29] People just describe me as abnormal.

[01:08:32] So not, not their relationships, but yeah, just period.

[01:08:35] So, but anyway, uh, this is Byron O'Neill on behalf of all of us at Comic Book Eddie.

[01:08:39] Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.

[01:08:41] Take care, everybody.

[01:08:42] Thank you.

[01:08:43] Bye.

[01:08:44] Bye.

[01:08:45] This is Byron O'Neill.

[01:08:47] One of your hosts of the cryptic creator corner brought to you by Comic Book Eddie.

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[01:09:15] Bye.

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[01:09:16] Bye.