Pornsak Pichetshote and Jesse Lonergan talks Man's Best

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

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

[00:00:09] get on to the interview. Hey Yeti, what's shaking? I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I'm shakingtock man This is Brian O'Neill your host for today's episode of the cryptid creator corner We've got a really good one because I'm joined by co-creators porn sack

[00:01:41] Picha chote and Jesse Lonergan who have a new pet centric space adventure called man's best dropping soon from boom studios

[00:02:44] embarrassing things. I have a enormous lamp in front of me that I have no idea how to turn on. So it looks as dark as it does right now. So I apologize.

[00:02:47] And porn tack is illuminated by a cell phone.

[00:02:50] Yes, yes. Oh, just Jesse. Otherwise I would just be a black silhouette right now.

[00:02:56] Jesse had the genius stroke and actually turned on the phone light.

[00:03:02] Otherwise I would just be a black silhouette.

[00:03:05] As if I was like, nobody knows who that is. Frank Whiteley. At the time, Grant was referring to it as the Incredible Journey for the original 1960s version of Homeward Bound. So it was much later that I realized that, oh, the Incredible Journey is Homeward Bound.

[00:04:20] But I saw it as an adult and the thing that I got from it,

[00:04:25] it's so fascinating. you say is a Homer bound, Homer bound 2099 or bound in space. And so a lot of it was, okay, well, we can endanger animals without regard to like the safety of those animals. So let's throw them in crazy sci fi set pieces in the same way incredible journey had these amazing set pieces for animals that were just you just had to be a horrible human being

[00:05:43] to actually film them. And then with all of like one of the things that sort of like the ideas is that it's like these very

[00:07:04] cute sort of things I don't feel like within comics I've had that much of a And she has the resources to make pet mech for all intents and purposes. And so for the same reason why people are because of these videos that were very influential in the creation of this comic, the same reason why people put their pets, their dogs in like UPS outfits or like Chucky the, Chucky the dolls or, you know,

[00:08:23] like Myers and just have them run around because it's adorable.

[00:09:24] I've been saying this a lot, talking about this book is that I lived before the pandemic, I lived in a building that had no pets.

[00:09:27] And then during the pandemic, it allowed for emotional support animals during the pandemic.

[00:09:33] And now there are pets all over the building and everyone's got a pet in this building.

[00:09:39] And I saw many of my friends end up getting pets sort of through it.

[00:09:42] And so it was so much about just how these perspective that is personal to me, you know, as a person of color, as an Asian, as Thai, whatever the case may be.

[00:11:04] But rarely in my books does something happen to me and that thing happens in the book. a lot of time on the road with rock bands over a decade of my life. The Buddy Adventure and Road Life share so many parallels, which I think is why they hit home. I lost one of my best friends from that era during the COVID timeframe. It's still a fresh wound. This book reminded me like life is ephemeral.

[00:12:20] We tend to lose some of coming through and coming out of COVID. I mean, I coming out of COVID, not thank God, not, not physically, not life or death, but I did sort of lose a friendship kind of coming in through COVID. But going out through COVID in the sense of, you know, one of my best friends

[00:13:41] we no longer talk. And a lot of it, a lot of that processing of

[00:13:45] how we were always kind of different people, and then we

[00:14:49] more than ever before certainly more than i can remember so what about using them is such a favorable analog telling a story of me about us and the human condition.

[00:14:58] The thing i love about my all of my friends with and I've had the benefit, Animal Pound's out, so everyone's read it, I've had the benefit of reading Feral, the first couple issues of Feral, is there is this theme, and we're definitely tapping into Man's Bass, this idea of just feeling insignificant

[00:16:20] in sort of in the grand scheme of all the crazy shit

[00:16:24] that's happening in the world right now.

[00:16:26] And then there's a little complicated thing in terms of like, getting stuff down and like, like when you say the emotive quality, I'm like, I think I know what that means.

[00:17:40] But I think like part of it is like, you know like, and trying to then like, you know, get more positivity into Porthos and stuff, he's the golden retriever.

[00:19:02] And sort of like, I don't know, sort of holding those emotions while like sort of rendering

[00:19:05] these characters.

[00:20:03] to the French Bulldog. I forget what it was originally,

[00:20:08] but I requested that it be a French Bulldog.

[00:20:12] But that one's based on that.

[00:20:16] I haven't had a Golden Retriever and cats.

[00:20:21] My dad had a cat.

[00:20:22] So it's not one specific one.

[00:20:25] I'm very much more of a dog person. it's sort of this challenge of like putting expression into an animal phase, which isn't necessarily like capable of it. Like they can't really like raise an eyebrow. We don't smile. They don't smile. But we always do. You're smiling. Yeah, dogs smile, but they really don't. And sort of that, but then also it's sort of that

[00:21:41] like cartooning quality of like, well, the more you simplify it, the more sort of, you know, is that is that kind of a signature look of yours? Like I was going back to your website and you know seeing how you you use that on some other projects But on others you didn't so I didn't know if it's it's a case-by-case basis. Um Coloring I think skill wise was sort of like my most recently developed

[00:23:02] once and so it's it's like I feel like it's sort of like constantly evolving and

[00:24:08] I like that quality and it's something that I bring into it because I feel that's humans. We're wiggly and wobbly.

[00:24:11] We're idiosyncratic and weird and so you should have that in your art.

[00:24:15] Coloring-wise, I like that same thing.

[00:24:21] It's getting that personal quality into it.

[00:24:23] I think I think that made it also in my head much more approachable for, you know, for everybody, right? The part of it was like the idea to actually have something that it wouldn't have to shield from a child is It was great and the other thing too I think which is gonna be great when this book is eventually collected going to something that Jesse was saying is that When you flip through these pages Jesse goes through so many goes through the complete range in this but it's really like even in an issue It's really cool. But like when when the whole series is laid out like there's just so many different

[00:28:03] Uh, Grand Matillie's Helltack Mech with Lane Lloyd. I saw the preview for that.

[00:28:04] That is crazy.

[00:28:05] Jimmy even contributed to their anthology from the static

[00:28:08] and had Matt Sumo on the podcast to talk about his project,

[00:28:11] The Bardic Versus, which makes a lot of sense

[00:28:14] that the project landed there.

[00:28:15] Hey, where you are, bah-bah-bah.

[00:28:18] Where can you find them?

[00:28:19] You need to get out more.

[00:28:20] They were in previews, or you can visit their website,

[00:28:23] bandabards.com, for all the latest.

[00:28:25] Can we turn the music off now?

[00:28:27] Oh, damn you. that as much as I could so I didn't get in the my my tendencies didn't get in the way of that because that's what I love about Jesse's work. So, you know, so even something for something like this is I write this book in a completely different way You know, I mean Jesse talked early on about how like I was gonna do five panels for every page in my scripts and for action sequences before panels and then he would have the complete freedom to add as many beats or subtract as many beats or whatever how you want and

[00:30:44] a lot about how that'll name that tune thing. I can pick that song in two notes. I can pick that song in one note. A lot of it is like, here's everything I want to have done on this

[00:30:48] page. All right. What's the least amount of action? Do I really need this to get that

[00:30:51] sequence? No, I probably don't. What is the least amount of actions to actually communicate

[00:30:56] the sequence that I have? And me realizing like, oh, I don't need to have this or that.

[00:31:02] I can just say it. This is the sentence that, oh, your scene doesn't actually work dramaturgically. And when you're stripped things down in such a way,

[00:32:22] like you don't have anything,

[00:32:24] you can't hide behind any of that stuff.

[00:33:23] Like I think some people like he counts the panels. I don't know how many panels.

[00:33:25] Like I'm like, yeah, I don't know, 50 maybe?

[00:33:30] I think we'll see what happens whether an issue five,

[00:33:34] like two deaths, but like, yeah, I just sort of,

[00:33:37] I think of using like the panel as like,

[00:33:42] you know, like it's its own tool, like, you know, Lots of panels. It's true. What he said is he did write five and I don't know. There's very few pages I think where there's only five. Yeah. Very, very few. I remember I think in issue, because we just got the art in for issue four, and there is one page I wrote as four panels that actually came back as four,

[00:35:00] and I was literally shocked.

[00:35:01] I was literally like, wait,

[00:35:02] there's only four panels on this page.

[00:35:05] I think it's the only four're going back and forth with him. Oh, yeah

[00:36:24] Yes, yes, and again, it is a way to, um, to paper over good news is, is that like, I get to have awesome pages come back. That had all these cool stuff that never would have been possible if I had like, you know, 200 words on a page or, you know, whatever the case, the case would have been. Yeah. I mean, it feels like ultimately there's a double meaning, um, this book, you

[00:39:01] know, man's best, obvious correlation is man much about these three very separate voices in these three very separate perspectives.

[00:40:22] And when the stakes were so high, is there a common ground for them? about getting this story out into the world. Here's your chance to be the positivity and spin it that way, right? Honestly, I cannot wait for people to see Jesse's art on this. When I got Jesse's first few pages in, I was actually at a party with other comic book people and I was showing it off. And I was like, this is the most comic book I've ever comic book. Like, this is great.

[00:41:40] This is, you know, it's all this crazy stuff.

[00:42:44] tying into these classic sci-fi. I feel like at once it's a new story and it's something different,

[00:42:49] but there's also these familiar aspects that come back of

[00:42:53] these kinds of relationships that we have with people and getting through hardships. it keeps moving and it's like really sort of like this fast paced fun adventure that I feel. I feel other things promise, but it really is. Well, you can hold me responsible if I got too deep there. I apologize. No, no, no, no, no, not at all.

[00:44:20] Yeah, yeah. We'll keep that rolling in the upbeat, right that thought. And so he was, but yeah, but all these, I mean, the three pets at the center of the book, they're all based on the pets of friends, which I feel like means I've all based them

[00:45:40] on my friends because the pets prettyriever as a disabled person myself. I really appreciate that representation. We don't really get to see a lot. So thank you. Either or both of you that decided to include that in there, that was really appreciated. I'm trying to remember.

[00:47:00] Was that you or was that me?

[00:47:01] I actually, I can't remember if there is a best small dog, right? I'm a big dog person, right? So all the, all these tattoos on my armor, they're memorial tattoos for our dogs. So like, I just don't like little dogs. Like I don't like a dog. I'm a clumsy human like by birth. It just happens that way.

[00:48:23] And I'm afraid I would break little dogs, like just not paying attention.

[00:48:27] I'm in the kitchen. I'm cooking. I turn around.

[00:49:25] part of it is like the people who own them don't put all the work.

[00:49:29] Like, like if you have owners who have like German shepherds, it's like, this dog is potentially dangerous. You need to train it. You need to be careful.

[00:49:33] And everybody getting a German shepherd hopefully knows that going in like,

[00:49:38] and so they're prepared while you,

[00:49:41] you get your tiny little dog and you're like, this isn't going to hurt anybody.

[00:49:44] It can't hurt anybody.

[00:50:44] It's like, I think they, if you're walking them, they pose a serious challenge.

[00:50:47] If they want to go somewhere, that's too big for me.

[00:50:51] Like if it's, I think you can actually pull me

[00:50:54] wherever you want to go.

[00:50:58] That's why they have to be trained.

[00:50:59] Like training training.

[00:51:00] I know it's all about the training.

[00:51:05] Well, what else you both got cooking in 2024?

[00:52:01] I'm really excited about it. Okay.

[00:52:02] Where can people find you?

[00:52:03] Where would you like to be found online?

[00:52:06] The like question is the hardest part.

[00:52:09] Isn't it?

[00:52:10] Yeah.

[00:52:11] Yeah.

[00:52:12] I am real underscore porn sec on Twitter.

[00:52:15] I still call it Twitter.

[00:52:16] I'm never gonna change.

[00:52:17] I'm not gonna call it anything else.

[00:52:19] I'm real underscore P-sec on Instagram

[00:52:22] and I'm porn sec on blue sky.

[00:52:25] Just make it absolutely difficult

[00:52:27] and absolutely a headache for people to keep. Twitter I think I'm Jesse Lonergan plural how did that happen how did the s go on some other Jesse Lonergan beat me okay but I mean like with all of those fall There was a I think of DJ in Singapore But with the first name porn sack and I am nowhere near as many followers as this is he smokes me in every conceivable

[00:55:02] way on social media

[00:56:04] It's easy to shift, but I could just rely on Jesse to put in like 10 black panels and people are like, that's genius.

[00:56:06] It was.

[00:56:07] No, it is.

[00:56:08] It absolutely is.

[00:56:09] It absolutely is.

[00:56:10] Great to be able to do the least drawing I did, but the most notable thing.

[00:56:15] You put those squares down.

[00:56:18] It's like you spent a long time designing robots and stuff, but those black squares are amazing.

[00:56:24] But it takes balls to do that.

[00:56:26] It really does.

[00:56:28] That is a confidence. It's a long stop. Like, and it's like, not many bands will just stop dead 30 seconds into a thong and just be like, yep, we're not playing for eight seconds or however long it is. So yeah, I guess I see it, but yeah. So band stress number one,

[00:57:41] band stress number one drops when exactly.

[00:57:43] I know release schedules are crazy, so.