Steve Foxe talks X-Men: Blood Hunt - Psylocke and Heir of Apocalypse

[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. What are those projects? It's from our friends at Lifeline Comics.

[00:00:34] Following their success with By Visibility Still By, Heralogy and Rainbow Canvas, Lifeline Comics is launching their newest queer anthology, Transphoria, a trans and non-binary anthology on May 30th. The 90-page graphic novel will contain 19 stories all about trans and non-binary experiences of gender euphoria,

[00:00:54] crossing all genres like slice of life, supernatural, romance, science fiction, anime and beyond. Featuring a vibrant display of artistic styles and storytelling techniques, Transphoria is a testament to the creativity and talent of its contributors. From sci-fi striking stories to endearing romantic ventures,

[00:01:14] this graphic novel celebrates trans stories while delivering a powerful message of empowerment and affirmation. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can check it out. As always, thanks for listening and have a glorious Pride Month helping us celebrate. Y'all, Jimmy the Chaos Goblin strikes again!

[00:01:35] I should've known better than to mention that 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

[00:01:46] and whip this campaign into shape so we can start playing. Another friend chimes in, are you gonna make baps? It's fair to say it's been a while since I put something together so I guess? It was then that I discovered Arkham Forge.

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[00:02:28] Check them out at arkhamforge.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 Arkham Forge for partnering with our show. I think I'm gonna make Jimmy play a Goblin Warlock just to get even.

[00:02:44] Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Cryptic Creator Corner. I'm Byron O'Neill your host for today's Comics Creator Chat. As we continue to celebrate Prad month here in the show, I'm delighted to introduce one of my favorite guests on with me

[00:02:56] who is kind enough to carve out a little time and chat from what is a crazy schedule for him this summer. Steve Fox. Steve has been busy, right? Recent drops include Dead X-Men, Dark X-Men, X-Men 97 and Spider Woman

[00:03:10] and you've got a slate of lots more Marvel books coming down and dropping soon. Short term that includes the four issue X-Men air of apocalypse with artist Netho. Is it Netho? Is that right? As far as I know.

[00:03:23] Okay, so Diaz and the Scylark Blood Hunt one shot with artist Lynn Yoshi which we'll get into shortly but Steve it's always great to have him in show. It's always nice to check in see what you're up to.

[00:03:35] Fair to say is the easy way to describe 2024 in your life warp speed? Yeah, I mean I like to stay busy and thankfully the publishers I work with have been indulging me on that front.

[00:03:50] Well I'd say in no small part the equation is your new role working at Tiny Onion, the production house. Kind of you mentioned it a while back and it's in the newsletter so it's fair game.

[00:04:01] So just kind of want to check in and see what you've got going on there. What are the new jobs looking like and is Tiny Onion poised to take over the entertainment media?

[00:04:11] Yeah, I mean it's new and old right because I've been working with James Tynan for years now. I've been the editor on Department of Truth, World Tree, The Deviant, we co-created Razor Blades together.

[00:04:22] So my new role is really more of a making official what I've been doing for a really long time. So I am taking on increased responsibilities and will be sort of expanding our reach across comics and other media.

[00:04:38] And you'll see in the coming months me getting announced on other projects both with James and other creators working in the industry. And we'll be doing some cool stuff outside of comics but really my focus is always going to be 98% comics.

[00:04:53] And it's really always where you're going to see me. But you know we've had stuff announced in the past like it's public knowledge at Department of Truth has been optioned. And you'll see other things like that but it's really going to stay primarily comics.

[00:05:05] It's what we do, it's where we started, it's where we plan to be forever. Okay yeah and it's as I'm trying to wrap my head around it, it's more of a in terms of production house. It's like packaging in a way.

[00:05:18] It seems like it's to help other creators as much as James' work itself. Yeah that's part of what we're doing.

[00:05:26] And it's not too much we can talk about yet but it is what's going on behind the scenes now and we're going to be able to talk about it more. But it started as a way to help manage because James does work across different publishers.

[00:05:39] You know he works at Boom, he works at Image, he works at DC Comics. And it's a way to help manage all of his books and present a unified front because when you are a creator working at different publishers we should be able to talk to each other.

[00:05:52] We should be able to you know a rising tide lifts all ships. It shouldn't be a matter of you know competitiveness with your own titles.

[00:06:01] It should be how can we help coordinate so that you know if you're doing a horror book at one publisher and a horror book at another publisher this should be something where they're feeding into each other, they're not taking apart each other's sales. Right.

[00:06:16] So that's something we're trying to help do for other creators as well. And especially you know I come most directly from the image side of the table. I've been editing his image books and at Image you know the benefit is it's a creator on publisher.

[00:06:31] Everything you do there you own the rights. I'm not excluding some of the stuff at Skybound where they work with licenses but Image proper you know you own the rights. You're doing it all yourself but that also means you're doing it all yourself.

[00:06:47] And so you look in the credits of a lot of these books there is no one listed as editor. There is no one listed as designer because not every creative team can afford to do those things. Not every creative team can afford to hire some of those services.

[00:07:01] So we are trying to figure out different solutions to provide support teams for creators to provide extra support networks to figure out how to best position titles in today's market because there are you know frankly the market has been better than it is today.

[00:07:20] Even in just the past few years at the beginning of the pandemic we saw kind of this little boom where everyone was home everyone was turning towards other hobbies and comics saw this little boom where everyone was reading and they got back into it and then everyone went back to work and other things and we had a little bit of a bust again.

[00:07:40] So it goes through these fluctuations all the time and we're looking for ways to help stabilize that and position people the best we can. And so you're going to see more announcements in the coming months of other people we're working with and other partnerships we're forming.

[00:07:54] And I know it's hard not to use like those corporate sounding buzzwords but until until we can actually announce some of the folks we're working with we have to be a little vague about it.

[00:08:05] But I'm excited to work with other creators and expand my editorial reach beyond just James himself. And you also see me writing in the ecosystem as well. I have a project coming out that will be announced for early 2025 that's going to be part of Tiny Onion.

[00:08:25] Nice very cool. That sounds really exciting. Yeah, well here's my bid to encourage you to post more real life stuff in your newsletter. So you got to take in the crow with Kenny Porter recently. Yes. Evidently you've never seen it at theater before how is that even possible?

[00:08:41] Well, I mean well because I'm 34 so it's not like I'm just going to be the original run. I'm just okay got it. All right cool. Yeah, it was like a borderline religious experience. They saw the crow for the first time when I was five years old on VHS.

[00:08:58] Okay. Which is very young to see the crow. But yeah it's a very impactful movie for me. I mean the soundtrack kind of set me on the path for life.

[00:09:07] Like those bands and the soundtrack for the second movie which you know the second movie is nowhere near as good but the soundtrack has Iggy Pop and Hole and White Zombie.

[00:09:19] And all those bands left such an impact on and really kind of directed me towards the culture that I'm still like enmeshed in. Okay.

[00:09:30] So I can see that on the big screen was really kind of like I said near religious and as the first time my partner had ever seen the movie.

[00:09:39] So he says I swear I showed it to him and he just doesn't really remember but you know whatever he got to experience it again. Yeah. That was great. And yeah Kenny and I are nearby neighbors so he's a big dude.

[00:09:57] Everyone dressed up you know as Goth City here in the movie theater. Nice that's really cool. Yeah not my favorite movie like it is yours. Maybe third right? Like the Revenant is first then the original Predator. Oh okay. Yeah yeah yeah.

[00:10:16] But it took me back so in this is like seeing that 1994 at DragonCon I got to hang out with James Obar.

[00:10:26] Because he was there and he was signing like limited posters and all this stuff so that was like a really cool comics memory I looked at it and it went ping. Oh yeah. That's the first ever convention sketch I have is from James Obar. Really? Okay. Very cool.

[00:10:43] Yeah James is a really nice guy. I had a lot of fun with that though. And the last very anti-eperbot was when he did the Doom Patrol cover. Okay. Wow.

[00:10:53] Yeah I think I got to Bruce and Brandon's Graves in 2002 and that was my damn near religious experience with the Grove. They're in the Hollywood one right? Or no they're in Seattle. Yeah in Seattle on the hill. I forget that because Bruce Lee is from Seattle weird right?

[00:11:13] Is he not from Hong Kong? Well the whole I think from thing is yeah I mean he originally certainly you know not from the US but made his definitely in the Northwest and California is sort of where he solidified his name. Hold up.

[00:11:34] Editor Byron here letting out a sad and remorseful sigh for my woefully lacking knowledge about Bruce Lee. Bruce was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong.

[00:11:44] He moved to Seattle in 1959 where he eventually opened his first martial arts school adding a sex school in Oakland California in the early 1960s.

[00:11:53] After that it was on to Los Angeles where he ended up teaching Chuck Norris and Karim Abdul-Jabbar among others which ultimately gave rise to the movie career and the legacy most of us associate with him today.

[00:12:04] He died in 1973 at the far too young age of 32 and his grave sits next to that of his sons Brandon who also died tragically young during the filming of the Crow movie which we are talking about in the episode today.

[00:12:16] Their graves can be found in the Lakeview Cemetery in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. I've personally visited the site several times and expressed my gratitude for their contributions to martial arts in America as a practitioner myself.

[00:12:28] Hopefully that's enough explanation to get me out of trouble should Seafood Graves my teacher ever listen to this. He's probably picking up the phone now. Got it.

[00:12:38] I have a photo with the Bruce Lee statue in Hong Kong from when I was there because they have like a memorial statue for him on the waterfront. Yeah.

[00:12:47] But I haven't been to Seattle so I guess that'll have to be my if I ever make it to Emerald City that'll have to be one of my stops. Okay. Yeah. Hit the grave and hit the troll. If you haven't ever heard of the troll. Oh my God.

[00:12:58] I've got to look this up. So it is it is a real troll and it is underneath the Fremont. I think it's a Fremont bridge troll. And it's massive like I'm probably exaggerating but you know like 17 foot tall concrete troll. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:18] So Fremont troll there you go. Do you have do you have a point of clarification to ask you about that because you said in the recent newsletter that the Crow was your favorite movie. But in the one before that you said that Alien was your favorite movie.

[00:13:30] So I think you're allowed several favorite movies. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And I mean I could boil mine down like I could boil it down to three. Okay. And it'd be the Crow alien and Texas James home asker. Okay. Those are great. I mean that.

[00:13:49] The Crow is like my like nostalgic like I can defend it past like questions of questionable taste or quality. Like it wears its heart on its sleeve. It's you know cheesy at moments. It's I mean I think it holds up because it's a very earnest movie.

[00:14:09] Whereas Alien I think it's like unimpeachable. Like there's nothing you can really throw an alien as a critique. It works on every level. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just a perfect film.

[00:14:21] The Crow you know he pauses to do guitar solos on the roof of his building in between taking vengeance for his dead fiance. Yeah. But it's still a perfect movie. Yeah. In my heart. Yeah.

[00:14:38] It's got some of the best lines I mean most memorable lines I feel like especially in of its genre the childhood is over the moment you're going to die. Like that is so good. Yeah it's just amazing and I really forgot how funny it was too.

[00:14:52] It's just like I don't want to say like laugh out loud funny but it's got such a like hilariously dark sense of humor throughout the entire thing. Like they really had fun with that movie. Yeah. And I just love it to death.

[00:15:09] I want to rewatch City of Angels too even though I know it's not good but I love Iggy Popp so much.

[00:15:14] Like yeah it's going to be really fun to revisit it and I remember at least having a good sense of style but I feel like when I rewatch and we go. Oh no.

[00:15:23] I'm a bit scared to go back and rewatch any of the anything beyond the first one. I'm sure the first one I'd still be in love with. Yes. I certainly won't be rewatching three or beyond but I'm going to give two another watch just for Iggy. All right.

[00:15:40] Well make sure to sign up for Steve's newsletter. That's our pitch there. See what his favorite movie is next month. My only guess is that it's going to have Michael Wink hot in it because he was both in Alien Resurrection and in the Crow.

[00:15:52] So that's my best guess but before we get into your current X-Men stuff it seems like a really good time to kind of evaluate just what the Krakowa era leaves behind as a legacy.

[00:16:04] You know we've talked before as you know I'm not the biggest fan about certain elements of it but I don't want to be hypocritical because I've always professed my annoyance. I've always professed my annoyance at Marvel and DC for playing it safe and not taking big swings.

[00:16:16] And it's safe to say that Krakowa was a big swing and they did some amazing stuff with it. So as someone who's worked in the ecosystem as a writer what do you think its legacy will be?

[00:16:26] Oh man that's really hard to say as I'm still kind of standing in the shadow of it. I think that it's exactly what you said right. It is a huge swing.

[00:16:38] I don't want to be hyperbolic but it's maybe the largest swing the franchise has ever taken because even when you want to compare it to something like New X-Men, like Grant Morrison Frank Whiteley.

[00:16:49] That's probably the only other time you can say the franchise is taken as large of a swing. But at the same time you know Extreme X-Men was going on which was you know very nostalgic.

[00:17:01] They might have been in Black Leather but that was as standard of a Chris Claremont book as you could have gotten. Even you know Uncanny at the time was progressive while Joe Casey was writing it but pretty quickly became a very traditional X-Men book.

[00:17:20] Whereas Krakowa you know for a long time if not the entire run was trying to really switch things up. We had villains completely reforming things and in charge of massive swaths of the line. We had teams not really meaning what teams used to mean.

[00:17:41] For the first year, year and a half there was no X-Men. The book X-Men was kind of just the Summers family or whatever Hickman needed it to be. I think people forget that for an entire year there was no X-Men team.

[00:17:58] I think it was a huge swing. I think it was very progressive and I don't mean that politically. I just mean in the sense that it attempted to move the concept of mutants forward. And I think that that's what it's going to be remembered most for.

[00:18:18] I think what's going to have to happen once the dust settles is everyone's going to have to reckon with kind of the Hickman of it all. Which is that there's the question of like Hickman left. Did he have unfinished business? Didn't he?

[00:18:33] And I'm in a funny position because I came on once Hickman was gone. I didn't overlap with him. I was never in the room with him at the same time. We didn't work on anything together. I've never met him. I'm sure he's awesome.

[00:18:45] I'm very grateful for everything he did that I got to come in and play with. But all I can say is that from everything everyone told me is that he left willingly and just wanted people to play with the toys.

[00:19:01] I know that a lot of fans speculate that we like ran him out of dodge, but everything I was ever told is that he just wanted people to play with these toys. And he set things up and went to do other projects.

[00:19:18] So that's the perspective I have on things and that's the perspective that we had in the room. And I think that's going to be the thing that people talk about for a long time is like, oh, what could have been what was supposed to be?

[00:19:31] But I think that's always how fans speculate that there's such a fine line between what could have been and what was supposed to be. Like those sound like the same question, but they're not really the same question.

[00:19:45] Was there a roadmap that didn't happen or were there discussions about different possibilities? And in my mind, there were discussions about different possibilities because that's how all these things are decided. When we get to talking about the era of apocalypse, we talked about 15 different eras of apocalypse.

[00:20:07] That doesn't mean that there is like an untold story where Scott Summers was there sitting out there somewhere. It just means we talked about different eras of apocalypse. And I think that is something that kind of gets lost in the Twitter of it all,

[00:20:28] because Twitter's kind of like a big game of telephone, right? One person gets excited and that person sees a tweet. And that person sees a tweet and that person sees a tweet.

[00:20:38] And all of a sudden it's like, oh, they ran Jonathan Hickman out because he had a plan to do this and this and this and he wasn't allowed to do it. Okay, well, he's still writing 15 Marvel titles.

[00:20:51] So if he's so unhappy with everything, why is he happily employed there doing a bunch of books? So I think he's fine. Yeah, yeah. Not exactly the same as Claremont way back when. Right, you know, Claremont left for what a decade.

[00:21:09] So, you know, clearly it's a different situation. I mean, Jonathan Hickman is doing a Wolverine book for God's sakes. Like it's not like he's out of the mutant world. I just think like that is going to be kind of the question that hangs over things for a while.

[00:21:28] And I think particularly in the social media era, it just takes a while for things to sit and really look back on that. You can see, heck, even like talking about Spider-Man era is like every time someone's writing a Spider-Man book, it's the worst thing in the world.

[00:21:44] And then the next Spider-Man writer comes on and that last Spider-Man run was the best thing in the world. So, you know, that's going to happen with anything.

[00:21:54] Like we're going to move into the next X-Men era and then we'll have Rosie-eyed, you know, rose tinted glasses for what we left behind. And it'll just keep cycling. That's what always happens.

[00:22:05] So I'll be interested to see what people are saying about Karkoa in the year, what people are saying about Karkoa in five years. But I do think like what we're already seeing is people really liked the setting and there's nostalgia for the setting already. Yeah.

[00:22:22] People liked the idea of the island. Of course, I'm saying people broadly. There are some people who hated the island from the start. They didn't like the island. They wanted the island gone and those people are very happy. And to those people, cool.

[00:22:35] Like you got what you wanted and good for you. There's room for everybody. Yeah. There's always a hurry up and wait on those kind of things to me.

[00:22:44] You know, I keep at it where people want to focus on the negative and I'm like, you know, if you don't like it, it'll change. Like in a couple years, it'll cycle. Like the characters aren't going anywhere, whatever. Yeah.

[00:22:56] And it's hard for me to talk about as a creator because I don't like, it's hard not to sound like I'm playing on a team because obviously I was part of the Karkoan era.

[00:23:07] So and I loved participating in it and I loved reading it, you know, before I was part of it and I enjoy Karkoa as a concept. But I also liked the non-Karkoan eras when I got to write X-Men 97.

[00:23:21] And I got to write for the first time like, you know, establishing shot Westchester, the X-Mansion. I got a huge pop out of that because I had never written the mansion before. Yeah. You know, it's all fun and exciting. I like doing all of it.

[00:23:35] And I think there's benefits to all of it. But I'll miss the island. I think it was cool to have such a distinct setting that put them apart from any other part of the Marvel Universe.

[00:23:45] You know, that was something that was purely theirs in a way that no other franchise or no other corner of the Marvel Universe had. But these things are all cyclical.

[00:23:55] I'm sure that just as this is the first Karkoan age, someday there'll be a second Karkoan age, you know, these things will come around. You know how many times has Genosha been there? Yeah. So it'll be exciting to see what happens some other time.

[00:24:12] But I think, yes, if I had to distill it all, I think progressive. Okay. Not politically. I just mean progressing the idea of what it means to be a mutant and what it can mean to be a... What the mutant species can mean.

[00:24:31] Well, I know that the X-Men are huge for you as a person, foundationally. And I talk a lot during Pride Month coverage about moving the representational needle, right? So did Karkoan do that in terms of queer representation in comics? That's such a complicated question because I am...

[00:24:55] I have to answer this in stages. Okay. Very well. I'll answer it at a very basic level. It's undeniable that this era probably had the most visible queerness among mutants. Like we saw more mutants established as queer than ever before.

[00:25:12] I mean, everything with destiny and mystique, that finally came out in the open and got clarified in 700. Claremont finally got to write the family as he like always wanted to. Betsy and Rachel, lots of the teen mutants, you know, that probably more than ever before.

[00:25:35] Answering personally, like I'm a jaded old queer, right? Like I think there are limits to what pop culture representation can ever mean. Okay. I think it's great to have pop culture representation if it makes you feel more seen and if it makes you feel more entertained. Right.

[00:25:55] I think it's also healthy to realize that like seeing yourself on the page or on screen is not the same thing as like actually having more rights. Yeah. So, you know, for me it's always kind of a two pronged assault, right?

[00:26:11] Like you want more stories and you want more representation, but I think you also don't want to hyper obsess over that as like the end goal of these fights. Yeah, for sure.

[00:26:25] Like I'm grateful to get to tell stories about webweaver or faint or any of these other characters I've worked on. I think that's cool.

[00:26:34] I really enjoy doing those and when people write to me about that stuff or tell me that it means something to them, I'm very grateful. I'm happy to play a part in that.

[00:26:43] But I also think like real world concerns, you know, those matter to me a lot too, you know? There's a distinction here to be made. Sure. And so of seeing the representation of self in these characters that we all love is the first step.

[00:27:01] What does the next one look like to you? And I'm not asking you to be the avatar model. Thanks, queer. Yeah, I mean, I think just like, I don't know if it even is like a linear next step, right?

[00:27:15] It's almost like you just need to compartmentalize a little bit. You want to, you can enjoy the media and you want to see representation.

[00:27:24] But you also need to decide if you want to be politically engaged or if you want to be socially engaged and that aspect of yourself too. And maybe the answer is no, maybe you don't want to be engaged. That's okay. Not everyone needs to be.

[00:27:37] But I think that, and maybe I'm just sounding too much like, get off my lawn. But I think like if your idea of activism begins and ends with demanding that certain characters be queer, that is probably not the most effective form of activism.

[00:28:08] You know, at the end of the day, you're not, you're not really moving the needle in real life. Like you're, you know, it's great for you if you're seeing yourself on the page more awesome. But that's not helping someone out on the street, you know?

[00:28:23] So I think like more representation on the page and screen is always great. I'm really happy for that. And I'm happy to be a part of it. But I don't think we should mistake that for like political advancement.

[00:28:37] So that's my little like a Pride month distinction to make, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this and just trying to absorb it myself, you know, like how, how do we create a reverberation of representation in comics that hits the larger American consciousness?

[00:28:59] Right. So I think about something as big as men and I do think they've really been at the forefront with Krakow in pushing that needle for me. But take the X-Men weddings, you know, specialize an example for representational impact, you know?

[00:29:16] And here's my line of thinking for context, right? So I'm a disabled person and our big favorite character is Xavier. So in the comic books, he's been in and out of the wheelchair at various points, which bugs the shit out of me, but that's not really super relevant.

[00:29:29] In the movies and TV shows, he's always pretty much in the chair, right? So that ability, that representational impact ability shifts pretty dramatically based upon the writers and the editors who are crafting the lens. So like, can comics make that big an impact, you know, representationally, I guess.

[00:29:53] Yeah, I mean, it is challenging because at the end of the day, what like the best selling monthly comic, it's like 100,000 copies. Yeah, these days. And even that you have to figure like, are 100,000 of those being read by a human being? Or are we factoring in variant covers?

[00:30:13] Right, right. Just going in a box. Yeah, so you know, compared to film and television and stuff, you know, we are making a smaller impact that I think it adds up and I think it matters. And it also it trickles out, right?

[00:30:28] Because these are the things that are then becoming video games and becoming television in movies. So it does all compound, you know, webweaver could show up in Into the Spider-Verse. I don't know for a fact, if you will, but Prasanca designed them and Prasanca works on the movies.

[00:30:44] So it's certainly possible. So, you know, those are things that do have an impact. And oh, and Sun Spider, who is a disabled spider character, you know, she showed up into the Spider-Verse after appearing in the comics. So these things do have a ripple effect.

[00:31:02] So, no, I mean, I do think comics have had the ability to have that impact. But like you say, there is that inconsistency sometimes. And that's why I do sometimes. I think I'm a particularly jaded person, which makes it tough sometimes to have the most inspiring answer.

[00:31:23] But I think, yes, there is an ability to give these, I want to say, templates. Like there's a template that you can offer at times. Okay. But it's tricky because a lot of it comes down to metaphor.

[00:31:50] And we see all the time that interpreting metaphor leaves a lot of room for, I don't want to say error, but a lot of room for different interpretations. Like, I don't know if you've seen the conversation recently about the boys.

[00:32:07] But in this mode, well, I don't watch the boys, but on this most recent season,

[00:32:12] I guess a lot of the fans, a lot of the more conservative fans of the show have been turning on it because they now feel that the show has taken a more liberal bias. Okay.

[00:32:24] And as other fans of the show have said, no, this has kind of been there all along. You just now are realizing that the show has been making fun of you this whole time.

[00:32:34] But we see this again and again where it's like, if you want to apply your lens to something you can, because you don't really get that it might be making fun of you or that it might be criticizing you because you're coming at it from your angle.

[00:32:51] And we can see that in the X-Men a lot, you know, the X-Men has always been a bit of a metaphor for marginalized communities. But most of the most prominent X-Men are attractive fit white people with no visible mutations.

[00:33:07] So sometimes when it does elapsed into a more obvious metaphor for, you know, queerness or being a person of color, you have a lot of straight white fans who are like, wait a minute, why is this becoming too woke? It's kind of always been there, my guy.

[00:33:25] I don't know. Like you're just now seeing it because we've made it more obvious for a moment. But like this has always been there. But there are people who see the X-Men as a metaphor for being a nerd who's getting picked on by a jock.

[00:33:38] They're all different ways to view it. And I think that's, that is kind of where the limitation comes in of metaphor as representation.

[00:33:48] Because if you leave it, if you leave too much room for interpretation, then you do have the person who's just interpreting it and they're part of the status quo. But because they feel slightly put upon, they think that this is them. You know what I mean?

[00:34:09] Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And unfortunately, I think woke has become a word now synonymous with stopping the thought process. It's very easy to just use that label and just tack it on anything.

[00:34:24] And then the introspective element that could be important in whatever you're absorbing in terms of entertainment medium just stops. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, would you like to like internalize something and think about it for a second? No, it's not really it's woke. Yeah.

[00:34:44] And also the X-Men, at the end of the day, like, you know, I think it's cool to think about things in terms of metaphor. But I as a gay person can't open my eyes and blow up the house next door to me and Cyclops can.

[00:35:00] So it does become a little complicated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break. Hey, comics fam. Itty comic book publisher Banda Bars just got a level up and announced it is now a cooperative.

[00:35:15] This heralds a new era for them, including a partnership with Dallas Stories. And they added several new members to the ownership group. Marcus Jimenez is now chief operating officer Brent Fisher takes on the role of chief diversity officer.

[00:35:29] And Joey Galvez is introduced as head of Kickstarter ops and social media manager, which is sure to increase their capabilities overall as a publisher. And it further promotes their mission statement of advancing representation, inclusion and diversity in the media.

[00:35:45] They also established a new board of directors to help chart the new path of their journey with new projects in the works like Alaska by dropping in June unbroken soon launching on Kickstarter and pollen coming up with Dallas.

[00:35:57] Stay tuned to this space for more exciting news from the growing Bards family. Let's get back to the show. Last time we spoke, you teased your your next Marvel project with the color purple, which is apparently SyLac Blood Hunt. I thought you meant like the color purple.

[00:36:17] I was like, I don't know how that's relevant to know. You're definitely introducing some new characters if you're pulling from the color purple. So that would be fascinating. So this is the SyLac first of all that I absolutely love, you know, we're one on the Ninja assassin here.

[00:36:38] All of all the history of the mutants is complicated but like SyLac's is up there, not Wolverine level, but fairly complicated. And I've always enjoyed this version better than Betsy Braddock. No disrespect to Betsy.

[00:36:51] And maybe that's because my mutant love started when I saw Frank Miller, you know, with that Wolverine cover where he's covered in a ball of ninjas. So tangentially her connection to the larger Wolverine in Japan narrative is just very, very fun, you know, foundational to me.

[00:37:07] So what's your your SyLac origin story? You know, so I have a funny SyLac origin story because my entry way for the X-Men was the animated series in which she appears very little.

[00:37:18] You know, she comes in near the end and you know, the intention was kind of like to bring her and Bishop and Archangel in at the end. I think they wanted to potentially transition them on to the team.

[00:37:30] And also the video games because in the Super Nintendo, there are a couple of video games where she's a main character or played a character.

[00:37:39] And also the toy line. She has a couple main toys, but because she wasn't on the animated series much, I really didn't know that much about her. I was just like, OK, cool ninja girl.

[00:37:50] And it wasn't until much later that I really got to know her via Xtreme X-Men. And you know, with all retrospective respect to Chris Claremont now as a kid, I was super obsessed with new X-Men.

[00:38:08] And you know, I also enjoyed uncanny X-Men and extreme X-Men was much lower on the totem pole for me and also very hard to understand. It was way more steeped in his continuity at the time that I just didn't know.

[00:38:22] So it took me way longer to come around on Psylocke continuity. And I really didn't click on either Betsy or Quannon until I went back and did my chronological reread of the X-Men.

[00:38:36] So a couple years ago, I went back and read all X-Men comics from the beginning, starting with Giant Size. I didn't do the 60s, but I started with Giant Size. I read everything forward. And then I was like, OK, now I get Betsy.

[00:38:51] Now I get Quannon. I'm sure I'm not saying your name right. But you know, now I understand both of them. So they're really much more recent characters that I came to like and enjoy. But in the 90s, it was really just like mysterious ninja.

[00:39:07] And I probably didn't even know about the Mind Swap thing until 2000 something. Because if you're a kid in the 90s, you just see a Japanese ninja with a psychic sword. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's all you need to see. Yeah. And you don't really question why she's British sometimes.

[00:39:29] Yeah. Yeah. But I got a chance to read in advance of her in the Blood Hunt 1.1 shot. Really enjoyed it. I felt like it was a really nice tension release of sorts from the complexities of many of the things.

[00:39:43] So this is the third release of four mutant Lady One Shots featuring Jubilee, Magic, Zylok and Laura Kinney. And for Zylok, this is definitely a return home to Japan after serving on the front lines in the War against Orcas with her new bow, Gray Crow.

[00:39:58] And he's along for the ride. So how did you get kind of recruited into this whole Blood Hunt mayhem that is happening this summer? Yeah. I mean, Lindsay Koic, my editor just reached out out of the blue.

[00:40:12] Actually, funny story. So Zylok was originally supposed to be in Air of Apocalypse. Okay. And through... That would make sense. Yes. Make a lot of sense. Through just no one's fault whatsoever.

[00:40:27] There was a little miscommunication and she was not drawn onto one of the covers and a different character was. And at that point, the interior page hadn't been drawn yet. And another character who I had been considering still could fit.

[00:40:48] And I was like, I really don't want to make the artist do this over. Okay, let's just swap the characters. So I went back and I revised it and I felt I was like, oh, I'm really bummed. I really wanted to write Zylok.

[00:41:01] I never got to write her during Kakoa. And then a week later, Lindsay reached out and offered me the one shot. So I was like, hello, this is great. So it was just this happy accident.

[00:41:12] So I ended up getting to write two characters I really wanted to write and I got a whole issue of Zylok. So that happy accident turned out great. And I'm really glad.

[00:41:23] And I never want to be entitled to anything but I do so much horror that I was going to be bummed if I didn't get to do anything for Blood Hunt. So I was really glad this came up.

[00:41:34] Yeah, I mean, how much in the way of big picture scripting restrictions were in the remit? Because this one feels like you had a lot of freedom just like. Yeah, I did.

[00:41:44] I mean, I got to read the whole synopsis and so I knew everything that like I know the whole plot of Blood Hunt. But as you can tell, this is in its own realm. We're off in Japan.

[00:41:54] Like I got to know everything so that nothing contradicted, but I didn't have to feed into anything. All the extra one shots are self-contained. Yeah. So we each got our own playgrounds to just do our own thing.

[00:42:07] They all kick off with the, you know, kind of the zero hour event of Blood Hunt. Blood Hunt. Away from the Valley Universe. They all kick off with the sort of the zero hour event of Blood Hunt and then we get to do our own thing.

[00:42:25] So we all got the outline but we didn't have to tie it in. Okay. Yeah, Blood Hunt is like everything I want from a big summer crossover event. And I usually stay away from these things entirely at least in terms of single issues.

[00:42:41] I usually pick up the trades if they feel like interesting enough but hey vampires. And I'm a big fan of Brian Hill's run on blades. So I was definitely sucked in and I've been picking up a fair number of the single issues which for me is quite unusual.

[00:42:55] And you recently called this monster versus mutant melee manga. Okay. As the host of the cryptic creator corner, nice alliteration. That's a good job. Thank you.

[00:43:06] And part of that feeling of attention release for me was being able to have, you know, a clearly defined antagonist where eliminating them is free from moral dilemma, which both Silak and Greco are kind of always forced to do.

[00:43:19] They're always pulled back and they're dealing with their violent past. But oh yeah, we've got this thing that is a dirty deed that nobody else can do. So this is what we're putting you on right? And this feels unencumbered so I loved it.

[00:43:33] So it had to have been a lot of fun to write. So why did you want to play with both of them kind of in that way? Yeah. Well so the only tee up I had was they wanted Silak to be in Japan for this. Okay.

[00:43:47] So I had been to Japan a couple times. And I, you know, like any nerd in his 30s, I grew up with plenty of anime and manga and had different references I wanted to pull on.

[00:44:02] And the first thing I requested was to work with Lynn because I'd worked with her on Sunfire and a couple pages of Dead X-Men. I just thought she'd be perfect for this.

[00:44:13] And I really want the second thing I asked was if I could include Greco because I loved the relationship that Zeb introduced in Hellions. And I really wanted to play off of the dichotomy between old Japan and New Japan. Okay.

[00:44:28] And then a lot of manga and anime you have that play between, you know, sort of like Cyberpunk Japan and like Samurai Japan. On the Silak side you have, you know, she has her katana. She dresses like a ninja from 100 years ago.

[00:44:43] But then on Greco you have these covered in technology that's I don't think ever really been explained in his entire history. He has these high tech weapons. So I wanted to play with those two different like sides of the manga trope. Okay.

[00:44:59] And that's what you see in the villains too. Some of them are very high tech looking and some of them look straight out of, you know, yokai scrolls from a thousand years ago.

[00:45:09] But I did just want this to be really fun and direct, you know, their references to Silak's past, but they're pretty fast. It's there for your fans of her history.

[00:45:18] But you can also just pick this up if all you know about her is that she's a cool psycho. Like this is just meant to be a fun summer one shot.

[00:45:27] And I have to say, like, I'm rarely one to toot my own horn, but I am like unreasonably happy with how this turned out. And one of my favorite things I've done because I just think like Lynn's work looks amazing here. Ruth's colors over this looks amazing.

[00:45:45] And Lynn and I worked together in a fun way on this where like, I left a ton of the page play out to her. I didn't break this down the way I normally do. So Lynn had a lot of control over the storytelling.

[00:45:57] So it really was like more manga like in a storytelling way. And like you said, like the villain, it's brand new. It's not like something like a deep out of Silak's past.

[00:46:10] Like it's just kind of like a big fun monster match one shot with with, you know, Japanese monsters and vampires is fun and bloody and sexy. Yeah, which which is all you want from a big summer event, right? Yeah, I'm surprised that I got sucked into it.

[00:46:31] I made close some doors here, but I didn't I was not into the DC versus vampires as much. I tried. I just wasn't maybe that's because foundationally the the gene colon run to move Dracula, all that was that is that is the foundational comics DNA for me.

[00:46:51] So yeah, so I'm really into it. But speaking of Silak's complicated past right and happy accidents. X-Men era apocalypse number one is out now is on shelves, right? Yes. So in this apocalypse has returned to a Reco and is looking for replacement because he can't not start shit.

[00:47:16] That's that's his role. Right. As a writer, this is kind of a unique opportunity to shape the destiny of a truly pivotal character in the X universe. Right? He's a true bastard.

[00:47:28] And I'm kind of curious about totally, you know, where you wanted to go with it after writing Dark X-Men, which allowed to kind of explore the darker natures of some of these X icons. So just kind of a picture of Tom. Yeah, I mean, it was so hard.

[00:47:48] Apocalypse is Dark X-Men felt more like my comfort zone. And I also think on Dark X-Men, I had like rookie confidence because my first book. So I almost didn't know enough to be afraid. Okay. Yeah, but I was coming in from the horror lens.

[00:48:07] So I was like, okay, this is all kind of oaky spooky these characters. I picked characters that were specifically in kind of the horror realm. They were in the darker corners of the X-Men world.

[00:48:22] And probably the character that was most intimidated there was Maddie because Maddie is, you know, she's a charged character. She has a lot of intense history and she'd also almost only ever been written by Chris Claremont or Louise Simonson. So that comes with a lot of history.

[00:48:39] But Maddie was someone who I felt like I could get a grasp on by coming in via Zeb's depiction and Jerry's depiction. Whereas Apocalypse, like that's Apocalypse. You know, like I feel like Apocalypse, you either get it or you don't.

[00:49:01] And people can tell right away if you don't. I would say out of almost any character I've written in the X-World, he was the most intimidating to write. Okay, I see that. And it really took me a long, long time.

[00:49:17] Like I felt like I circled him a lot, like just to do the dialogue for him to really feel like I could attempt to get his voice because he's not just a villain. So there are characters you write where you jump in, it's just a villain monologue.

[00:49:32] Like either they're a goon or they're like a monologuing bastard or whatever. But like Apocalypse, it's different. It's like the weight of centuries. It's not the same thing.

[00:49:45] And, you know, I don't mean to sound too pretentious saying that, but I really did kind of have to wind myself up to feel like I could write him for four issues. Okay. Because I didn't want to get it wrong.

[00:50:00] Yeah, I wanted him to sound right and sound intimidating. And I went back to Hickman's early issues with him in particular because I thought the main thing with Apocalypse is less is more.

[00:50:17] But because he's the one setting up this tournament, he kind of had to talk a lot. I wish I could have gotten away with him being really not talkative in the book.

[00:50:31] But he unfortunately has to say a lot because he's the one explaining the rules and setting up the terms of the event. But I did feel like I got more comfortable with him over the course of the book and especially issue four is my favorite by far.

[00:50:47] I don't know if you got a chance to read through all four, but by the time we get to the final the final candidates, the final four, it becomes a more of a mental test. And they go through sort of a psychic psychic gauntlet.

[00:51:04] And we put the final four through flashback to sort of pivotal moments in their pasts, which also allowed me to write some of my favorite settings in X-Men history, which I was never going to get a chance to do otherwise. Right. Thousands of years to play with there.

[00:51:28] Yeah. Really? Some of my favorite favorite settings in X-Men history and, you know, some of my last chances to get in cameos and other things, which I love to do.

[00:51:39] And Nethos such an amazing collaborator, he can really draw anything I had to keep kind of upping the ante because he just, wow, and he just really pulled it out. I got to find out what his next gig is and it's perfect for him.

[00:51:53] I think he's really, really about to blow up. But yeah, I really just had a blast on this once I locked into it. But writing Apocalypse Man just really intimidated the heck out of me. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:08] A note, I mean, on Nethos artwork, I was really kind of blown away as a relatively new voice. I hadn't seen much of his stuff before, just for me. And it definitely had a 90s X-Men, Jim Lee DNA to it, to me. Yeah.

[00:52:27] He's just perfect for evoking that feeling. And he doesn't feel like a copycat or anything. He's just capturing that big action swing to it. And it really encouraged me to lean into the action of this, the big blockbuster feeling. And also, you know, people underestimate me.

[00:52:45] It's hard to do group books. Oh my God, 12. There's 12. Well, there's more than 12. There's more than 12. I mean, there's really, there's 15 primary cast members kind of at all times, plus cameos, plus detailed settings, plus like obstacles and goons and all these other things.

[00:53:03] And oftentimes he was drawing more characters into the shots than I would write. So he's just blowing it away. It really was just gobsmacked. Yeah. I mean, for people who aren't yet familiar, we have Armageddon girl, Cable, Cypher,

[00:53:19] Emma Frost, Exodus Forge, Gorgon, Mr. Sinister, Mirage, Penance Richter and Laura Kenny. Plus you have former horseman, Sunfire and my personal favorite, Angel, who are along for the ride. So some of those make a lot of logical sense. Others are a bit left field.

[00:53:37] So aside from kind of the obvious, you can't fuck with current continuity, which is actually admittedly pretty open at the moment really. And Cylock, which was unfortunate there, are some of these choices going to be a

[00:53:52] cannon fodder that you just kind of wanted to play with in here? I mean, no one was intentionally cannon fodder. The point was really, it was a couple things. We wanted to, and when I say we, I mean, Annalise Bissa, my editor and I, we talked about it.

[00:54:07] We wanted to first off represent a range of X-Men eras. So we wanted there to be characters from across different moments in the franchise like Armageddon girl, the Gorgon. They're very new back to, you know, Iman, Mirage and Richter.

[00:54:27] Someone from like almost every major time period of the X-Men. We wanted there to be a mix of heroes and villains. We wanted there to of course be, you know, diverse characters, both gender and different racial backgrounds. But we're trying to balance all those things.

[00:54:47] It's hard to do with just 12. You can't get a perfect cross-section in just 12 characters. But I think we did a decent job. And then I also was keeping an eye on characters. This is probably going to be my last X-Men series for a good long while.

[00:55:02] If not ever, I got to write a ton and eras change. We're on from the ashes now. It's a whole new set of creators. And I, there were some characters where I was just like, this might be my last chance. I'm going to shove them in here. Nice.

[00:55:17] But I only did it if I could justify them being involved somehow. So you see across the book, you get quick flashes to apocalypse approaching all of the characters. And you also get some flashes to apocalypse approaching other characters who turn them down.

[00:55:35] So you see the reasoning why characters would approach or why characters would accept and you also see some of the reasonings why characters would decline. So there's no one who there's, there's no justification.

[00:55:48] But throughout the series, you'll, you'll at least get some idea of why every character is included. The main thing, and I think what through people is that apocalypse is not looking for someone like apocalypse. Apocalypse is looking for someone who can follow in his footsteps mission wise, but

[00:56:11] operate different approach wise. He doesn't need the next apocalypse. He needs the next person who can accomplish his goals. Yeah. Well, I would be doing the journalistic part of it, not enough due diligence if I

[00:56:30] didn't ask and this is what everybody's going to be wondering how big of an impact will this have on the new X continuity? And I know you're not at liberty to say a lot on that front, but like, can we get it?

[00:56:41] Oh, I mean the character who wins does become the heir of apocalypse gets a brand new design and a brand new name. And I know for a fact we'll be coming back to be involved in a substantial storyline in the near future. Nice. Okay.

[00:56:59] So this is not a throwaway event. This is not a pure filler thing. This isn't an actual forward moving storyline. You'll get a hint about where it's going before too long and you will see actual follow up on this in the relatively near future. Okay.

[00:57:17] Well, in other X news for you is X-Men 97, which is kind of a prelude to the wildly successful Disney plus show. I can't really say I'm surprised by that, but have you gotten to see any of the show yet with your crazy busy schedule?

[00:57:30] So shamefully I have not watched the show yet. But I have an excuse because you write the book, which is an official prelude. I got to read the scripts and talk about the whole first season. So I like basically got to watch it via the script.

[00:57:50] I mean, yeah. Yeah. So I know, you know, I know everything that happens. I read the scripts and I told myself I'd like watch it as a reward, you know, slow down. Also, frankly, you know, there's a period of time where I was writing like

[00:58:05] five X-Men things simultaneously. Yeah. I just didn't really want to sit down at the end of that and like watch an X-Men show for fun. Not because I don't love the X-Men just because you need like a work life balance.

[00:58:20] And the last thing you need is like an injection of something that's already sort of in the future to Chris Claremont, you I guess, and then you get all confused as to what you're doing.

[00:58:32] There was a period of time where I was like, I was having to keep X-Men Unlimited, Dead X-Men, the final Dark X-Men lettering passes X-Men 97, Arab Apocalypse all straight in my head at the same time. So adding something else that it was just not feasible.

[00:58:51] So I think now that all the X-Men is in the rear view for me, for the most part, wink, wink, I'm going to beat myself to X-Men 97 now that it's all done. Nice. So I'd love to hear what your thoughts are after you get through it. Yeah.

[00:59:11] This is kind of brutal like doing free comic book day and stuff. Everyone asking me what I thought of the show and I was like, I'm sure, you know, I love the scripts. Well, with everything else you've got going on,

[00:59:22] I think I need to start calling you Spider Steve. Because Spider Woman is dropping right now. I think we're on issue seven, right? Seven or eight just came out yesterday and very bad keeping up with release dates. I think eight might have been the way. Okay.

[00:59:37] And then we have announced Chasm, The Curse of Cain, Venomverse Reborn and Spider-Man hometown heroes that are all on deck. And Spider Boy annual. Okay. So what can you tell me about those briefly? How did you get so embedded in the Spiderverse?

[00:59:56] Was Webweaver your in and then did you? Well, the first thing I did was I've, the home, what's it called? Home room heroes? Home town heroes? Home room, home room heroes. Oh, home room heroes. Okay. So I've actually been doing that for a couple of years.

[01:00:12] That is a repackaging of these short stories I do for Disney in the European market. Okay. I've been doing those for years now. I've written over 300 pages of those. Wow, okay. Yeah. They're very fun. They're the short 10 page stories that I do for Disney in Italy.

[01:00:33] They run in the UK and then in other parts of the European market. And now they're coming over to the US excited. I've never held one in my hands. I've only ever seen PDFs. Wow. So it's cute that they're bringing those over. Those are for younger readers.

[01:00:48] So, but my very first Marvel thing ever was Spider-Ham for Scholastic. So technically I started in the Spider world. Okay. And then X-Men just kind of sideswiped me for a long time. And now I'm going back to my Spider roots,

[01:01:02] even though X-Men was my first love as a kid. So, you know, it's all, it all comes out in the wash. Spider X, I love it all. Venomverse Reborn is a webweaver story. It is not about webweaver. It is actually mostly about silk,

[01:01:18] the male version of silk from his world. And it tells the darkest webweaver story yet. It is about the venom of this world. It is very cosmic horror. I'm very excited for people to read it. I worked with K-Zama again on that.

[01:01:37] They turned out some really cool, very freaky art for that. They were heavily inspired by Junji Ito and also the work of Gareth Pugh, who's a fashion designer. Every webweaver story, even if it's very subtle, does pull on some sort of fashion designer,

[01:01:54] which is like a fun through line. Chasm Curse of Cain, that came about because I just kept forcing Chasm into things until they asked me to write him. He was in My Deadpool Story. He was in Dark X-Men. I was just really heavily hinting at it

[01:02:10] until Nicola finally asked me to write the series. I'm really grateful for that. It's been a ton of fun. I'm working with Andrea Bercardo for that. Andrea was born to do Spider Stories, especially with kind of a creepier edge.

[01:02:23] So that is four issues of Chasm, Cain and Howell Zee, who's one of my favorite recent editions to the Marvel Universe, at least in this identity. We're having a lot of fun. It's very gothic. It's very Halloween-ish. There's actually a couple nods to the crow in it.

[01:02:41] There we go. Subtle, but they're there. And it does involve Ben's mind being messed with yet again. I'm very sorry, Ben Riley fans. I know that's a through line he can't seem to shake, but it's been fun to put them together.

[01:02:58] The two clone bros have a lot of fun with the both of them. And I hope I get to write them again. But this is just a contained mini series for now. And the Spider-Woman's going strong. The most recent arc, we're introducing some of the new

[01:03:12] champions characters who were debuted on the variant covers. So those characters, they made their splash last year and they proved to be pretty popular. So Marvel has been introducing some of them for them, showed up here in our book. This new arc is me and Ig Guerra.

[01:03:31] He took over art duties for issues six through 10. And some of those characters you're going to see popping up in other books as well. And then Spider-Boy annual is me and Carlos Nieto. I don't know if I'm saying his last name right. I'm sorry, Carlos.

[01:03:46] I'm very bad with names, but that's part of the Infinity watch crossover. So it is part eight of a crossover, but I promise if you just like Spider-Boy, it's also a pretty self contained Bailey Briggs story as well. It's set on Coney Island.

[01:04:00] It involves the circus of crime. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but it does surprise. It's a lot of fun. I love the circus of crime. I love Coney Island. It's like a fun zany summer adventure and that comes out

[01:04:12] in September, I think the beginning of September. Carlos drew the heck out of it. We actually gone back and forth on whether or not it was going to be Coney Island. I'm really glad we landed on that because Carlos has just made it look so cool. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:04:27] I'm looking forward to that. The big thing for me is, oh I moved this so you can actually see it. Yeah. Over my shoulder, there's the Erica Schultz, Hallows Eve. She signed it for me and everything. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a Hallows Eve fan too.

[01:04:39] So I really like that. It's been great. I mean, the fact that she has kind of like the, there's no one put a limit on how many masks she has in that bag. So it's been fun to make up new ones

[01:04:49] and to watch Andrea design new costumes for them. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a super inventive new way to spin on a character in the Marvel, you know, whole universe. It's one of my favorite in recent memory actually in terms of new characters. So. Yeah.

[01:05:06] She's just so tough. I mean, she, it's hard for her not to really kind of take over the scene because she's like, she's a really kind of take charge character. So even though her name is not in the title, she really is the third lead of the book

[01:05:18] and she's got just as much page time as Ben and Cain do. Okay. Well, Scylite Blood Hunt drops right before July 4th. So it's on July 3rd, right? So people grab some fireworks stopped by your LCS for some, some bloody mutant mayhem.

[01:05:34] We'll throw in some alliteration a little bit there while you're at it, pick up Arab apocalypse, which I have hopefully done a good job of pretending. I don't know what's going on because I know what's going on and it is fair to say y'all aren't ready.

[01:05:48] Pick it up. You won't regret it. That I thought was really, really good. I was really, really happy. Steve, it's always been a pleasure. I really appreciate you stopping into chat during Pride Month and just carving out a few minutes from that really busy schedule.

[01:06:04] I hope you get a chance to see X-Men 97 soon and as it's Pride Month actually get out to celebrate in some way. So thanks for coming on the show. I always love having you on. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

[01:06:17] And there was that other pride note. I had something going on in your newsletter about a donation or something. Yes. That's still a viable thing. It's totally viable. So if anyone wants to, so you can also go to my newsletter.

[01:06:31] It's hosted on button down even if you're not a subscriber. You can find it via my website, my website, SteveFox.com, F-O-X-E. And if you are above the age of 18 and. Caviar. Yes. And our interest in getting a copy of a book I did called

[01:06:50] Cheater Code, which is very 18 plus book. You can send me proof that you've donated at least $20 to any LGBTQ plus charity of your choice, preferably a local organization. Anything besides the human rights campaign, one of the big national organizations because they just don't need it right now.

[01:07:10] And I will send you an autographed copy of because I have a million comps and I just don't need them anymore. I have no way of getting rid of this. Okay. So, but all the details of that are in my newsletter, which you can find via my website.

[01:07:22] Awesome. I'll put the link in the show notes for everybody. Hold up. Editor Byron making yet another appearance today. If you are perhaps now thinking about which charity you might want to donate so you can get your signed copy from Steve, might I suggest the Columbus based

[01:07:36] Kaleidoscope Youth Center. Yeti Friend, Brent Fisher is on their board. And last year when we ran our Pride Month t-shirt campaign, all of the proceeds went to support their efforts to support queer and questioning youth people aged 16 to 24 in and around Columbus.

[01:07:51] I'd be very grateful if you considered them. Thanks. Yes, please. This is Byron Neal. Good. I just really want to get rid of these comps. I'm in my new place. I don't have time. Yes. All right. Well, this is Byron Neal on behalf of all of us at

[01:08:10] Comic Book Yeti. Thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time. Happy Pride y'all and take care everybody. Thanks for watching.