Last Podcast On The Left - Blue Book: A Conversation with James Tynion IV

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

Ben, Henry, and Marcus sit down with renowned comic book writer James Tynion IV (Something is Killing the Children, The Nice House on the Lake, The Department of Truth, Batman, Powers...) to discuss his new Dark Horse series "Blue Book", his research on The Betty and Barney Hill case, the inspiration behind "The Department of Truth", writing in the world of Batman, as well as a sneak peek at the upcoming Last Podcast x Dark Horse project "Operation Sunshine".

There's no place to escape to this is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started It's our Christmas special Oh, yeah, it's Christmas. Put your clothes on dad Welcome to the last podcast of the left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with Henry and Marcus We have a very special episode for you today. We are going to be joined by a fella He's authored many many books, but two of them are blue book needed that with dark horse and department of truth Which I've heard Marcus mentioned many many times is one of its ultimate favorites

It's my favorite book in the shelves right now. We're joined by James Tinian the fourth. Thanks for being your James Thanks so much for having me. Thank you. And this is not just some cross-promotional opportunity Anybody who says different I will physically attack them in their home in front of their Promotional opportunity, but no James Tinian who is who's become a good friend of you Marcus. You guys are all friends Yeah, we're friends and shit, right? Or is that too far? No, no, no, we're friends. We're friends Okay, he came to my going away party in New York City. We're friends. Good. Good. It's one of the more difficult people to become friends with the comic book I'm not gonna say nerd author

Because they're they can oftentimes reject love. Let me put that on James first James. Is that true? Do comic book authors reject love or community? Oh, we're getting we're getting right into the real shit here Oh, yeah, oh, absolutely, but I try to keep my heart open to love as often as I can single Yes For those of you that don't know James is one of the most talented artists in comic books right now writers right right yeah, but I view I view writers as Okay, yes, but we must make the distinction. We're talking about comic books here. I forget also. Yeah, why don't you draw? Really really bad

Draw out little pictures like when you write I mean this as fellow writers of comic books Yes, because like the so cross-promotional we're talking about your new book Which is a series of anthology comics for dark horse called blue book Which is all about likes tales of aliens, but is it is it just gonna be UFOs and aliens or is it gonna be a wider scope as well? so the like the the main thread in every issue is Our UFO stories, but then I'm running what I'm calling like true weird tales in the backups Which are that's where we're going and down all sorts of fun rabbit holes I fucking love it again cryptids and hauntings and you know

Spontaneous human combustion. Yes anomalous phenomena Wrap it up and so and but we are also promoting our very first comic book for dark horse Which is called operation sunshine that Marcus and I have been working on kids I actually threw some good ideas in there. Absolutely yellow whole bunch of shit But as a comic book writer like so this is a thing that Marcus and I like as we go like how do you properly? Translate your vision from like the page to an artist Like do you just lean on the artist to run with it? Like is that the thing you're like where they say in movies? Like it's good casting does all the work where it's like essentially you if you have the right person

It doesn't matter or do you draw out little things? Like we had one little sequence in our recent book that I drew out like a layer Style like this the layout of like a layer like a map and so they could use it There have definitely been moments where I just don't have the words for what I'm trying to express and I need to like Do a horrifying doodle that tries to express it But most of the time like I do try to lean on my artist quite a bit like what what I try to do is at the start of every project I like what I write like a crazy long document That's basically talking about like the vibes of the story and like the core ideas and all of the things that influenced me and all of

That and then we have a bunch of back-and-forth conversations before we're even talking about the plot and then like What so once they're up and running? I'll sort of you know, I'll set the emotional stage for the scene but like page-to-page my my My panel descriptions are usually pretty pretty short like it's you know, it's more like here's the character Here's their emotions. This is what they're doing next. Yeah, this is what real writers do. I think that that's good I suppose that makes sense because at some point you want them to create what they want to create Because otherwise they're gonna blow with you. If you drag if you give too much detail, they're like, I'll fucking come up with this It's fine. Calm down. Oh, yeah, I mean

But that's always the legend of like Alan Morris writing in comic books Which Alan Morris, you know widely considered to be the greatest comic book writer of all time his scripts every single panel is Painstakingly described down to every tiny little detail his comic book scripts for a 22-page comic will run well over a hundred pages But then if you're the artist, I feel like it's just paint by numbers. Yeah, that's not as fun What do you think? What do you think the fourth mister the fourth? I think that like the you know, when you're working with Alan Moore, you kind of like you're you know what you're getting into But it's it is one of those things where the Like like I've read some of those scripts and they're kind of stream of consciousness in this really really wonderful way

Like yes, he does break down like all of the little pieces But he's also telling like the artist like what he's thinking about and all of that It's almost like he's you know, just dictating every thought he has about the comic and he's just like letting the artist absorb that I'm sure there are artists who hated that and I'm sure there are artists who absolutely love that But yeah, no like that that is one of the cool things about comics is that as long as the You know script is just a sort of letter to the artist where they get to absorb and interpret everything Like I like to lean on letting the artist interpret like as much as they can because you know I got into this crazy business because I just want a bunch of cool comic book art

And I like now at the point where I just get to hire and like collaborate with a bunch of my favorite artists And then I just want to see them draw cool shit Have you ever had to fire an artist because they're putting hidden penises in their work I saw this with Disney. There was a person he circled all the penises Weird I usually hire them for more work once I discovered the hidden penises great great Well, I mean speaking to artists that you know that you get to work I mean for your new book for for blue book like you get to work with Michael A. Von oming For to tell the Betty and Barney Hills story and it oming some fucking amazing

Did powers back in the 90s? Oh, I love powers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like did you request him specifically or just was there Something about his work that you thought would what was there something about his work that you thought like this is the guy to tell The Betty and Barney Hills story but before we get into that Do you want to give a quick refresh Henry on what the Betty and Barney Hills story is Betty and Barney Hill? They are an interracial couple. I believe from I think upstate New York. I may be incorrect. They went in New Hampshire New Hampshire They were one of the first cases of alien abduction that became widely known. It's kind of where we saw the first like kind of besides Wittley-Streiber like

Descriptions of grays. They were both all of the traditional steps of an abduction We're seeing the first time in the Betty and Barney Hill story. Yeah So what was it about oming that you thought would be perfect for this? Well, like honestly, it was very simple I would I had started working on Department of Truth and I would get to trust me. Yeah, but like I Started becoming friendly with oming because he was a big UFO nerd and like in particular he read I think it was issue seven of DOT Which is where I dug into men in black and I kind of dealt with UFO lore as part of the larger

ideas behind Department of Truth and so we started going back and forth and when I had the opportunities to like fund the Fund the Blue Book series It was like this is the person who I wanted to work with and you know I originally thought we were gonna try to do something like way further down the line But I wanted to just like, you know a few like wild hairs that like popped up in the back Like, you know and I wanted to like try my hand at Adapting a story rather than just like coming up with it. I wanted to work on something that was like functionally non-fiction

And then beyond that I was like in digging more and more Into like 40 in stories and like isoterica of all kinds what for DOT I kept noticing the fact that a lot of these stories aren't as accessible as they used to be like when I was coming up But when I was growing up it was like right during the like X-Files boom in the early 90s And if there were all of these like non-fiction books in non-fiction, maybe in quotes with like in my middle school library About like yeah encounters. That's how I got into it It's all the same because we grow up with it during that time period and then it was everywhere They say Tanaq Manic actually allowed us to get a hold of all of this like cool

Material because it was supposed to be a warning for children and shit like that But it was just all I just it was just books of pentagrams. Yeah And it was amazing and it was just like in it like all of that stuff seeped into me And it became so much of like the creative force of like it made me fascinated in like in all things strange And I wanted to like tap into those original stories particularly the ones that you know I felt had a real deep impact on kind of the folklore of Like UFO like it like everything because that is that is such a keystone story the Betty E. Barty Hill story Now when you go to tell that story

What is the direction of blue book? Is it sort of pulpy like or are you digging deep? But is it the opposite like are you doing something where you're trying to portray the humanity of what of what happened? Or are you just going for like I'm telling a cool ass alien story? I wanted to I wanted to strip it down pretty like it I wanted to tell the story as directly as I could um and which is hard because it's something where it's a story that Contradicts itself in like seven different places, but you saw this the constellations Well, I want to talk after he finishes. I want to ask about the star maps the star map is a point of contention But please continue, but I mean like that's that's really what I wanted to tap into was the like

With the way the whole idea started was just at first. I just wanted to tell the early part like of their story Their initial encounter which they're they're recounting of that initial encounter has always stayed pretty Pretty firm like it like there are a couple of little things like does he get a gun at one point that? Differs in the you know He gets the gun in one of the one of the tellings and then he never uses the gun but then like you know the I wanted to like weave all of these threads together and see if I could tell Like a fairly linear story that just like you know that just kind of encapsulates the whole thing And so we do it over five issues like 20 pages each and it's the full life of mostly Betty Hill

Yes, because you went on to become an important figure on the like the UFO circuit She's a lot of lectures. She was the one really put the story forward because Barney Hill was if you do believe The circumstances of his illnesses the fact that he was given these dick warts by these aliens and his body was destroyed by whatever The hell it is they snaked up there to make him Orgasm so hard and in a way that was terrible. That's the only thing that's what really scares me about it It's the super hard painful orgasm that you're supposed to do again and again again While they're all staring at you. How do you go back to Betty? Like now

Seize the gray with the little thin straw up your dick on your balls. It's God. You can think about anything in your head Just don't say it out loud That's a great piece of merch though. I got abducted by aliens all I got with these big old dick warts That's save it yeah, all right. It's actually past the holiday season. We're gonna wait for summer So now that you dug in to the story where do you stand on it? Well specifically what I want to ask you about is the star map because that's one of the things that I always found fascinating about the Betty and Barney Hill story you want to roll it out for the people that don't remember who didn't do the fucking homework Yeah, apparently like Betty Hill was shown a star map while she was on the alien spaceship

But it shows like this is where we are, you know, you don't have basically them saying like you don't have a reference for where We are but this is where we are it's like so they were they were blowing the dome off of Barney's cock and they showed her a map Yeah, but she was able to later Reproduce this map and it turned out that the map pointed towards Zeta reticuli I believe was where it was it where it pointed towards and that's where people look at this story and say well There's some truth to this because this woman is not an astronomer She does not know have any sort of a background experience in astronomy, but then of course fucking Carl Sagan Whatever he didn't know at least he was imaginative. He's not like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yeah, he's a reductivist

Yeah, and he's not like Joe nickel who's just a straight-up dickhead. Yeah, who I still like because of how big of a dickhead He is great But that what Carl Sagan said is that that map that Betty Hill drew could be pretty much placed Anywhere on a star map and it could match up to something. What do you think? Do you think it's more Carl Sagan or do you think that maybe there's something to Betty's judgment now? I think I think in all things like, you know, I'm I'm a natural skeptic But I have a deep fascination with all all of this. So it's one of those things where I Like, you know, like it's it's compelling

It's a very compelling like piece of this and there are there are definitely there are a handful of people I forget the the names like a handful of astronomers who have said that it's just like actually it is very unlikely that she would get at this This exact but I mean, I do think that the the Carl Sagan point is very compelling But it is, you know, like For me so much of it is just in this, you know It's about what happens when somebody encounters something that they just cannot explain and the stories they tell from it Because that that element of it feels so powerful and so universal and it's like so many that in the fact that this story and it like

More than so many others has burned itself into like our consciousness and the way we tell stories about aliens Like all of that deeply fascinates me. So it's like it's almost like I am open to everything happening as literally As possible, but it's also it doesn't lose any of its fascination to me if it did I feel like that's what the unpacking the esoteric Well reminds me a lot of so I do young Ian therapy, which is some people say it doesn't mean it's not helping But I do young Ian therapy and partially it's like, you know, we talk about my day-to-day, but like, you know, when I have dreams She's like a nice session is done like we can rip through the dream for an hour But there's something that feels like that when you unpack the esoteric is that it's like when you were searching for details

From a dream that you had where you actually this thing Happens to you and then as you are slowly ruminating over it you walk down alleyways Which I this is where the the one sign the cynical skeptic says like oh, you're just making it up, right? Which I do understand that I understand that feeling but the actual I feel like opens skeptic Understands that your brain can examine something. It's like also like when you're tripping like if you notice if you ever seen So I've never seen something photo realistically in front of me when I'm tripping But I have seen things that then my then have chased down in my brain to sort of give shape to and that seems like a lot of What happens in these types of people who experience a phenomena. No, and I think the dream comparison is so

So direct because it's just like when you have a dream and then the next day when you are telling the story of the dream You were creating connections that a hundred percent did not exist while you were having the dream Yeah, it's like like it's a bunch of powerful emotions and like little moments that are set as scenes that then some is plot a lot of its vibe It's like writing a comic book where it's mostly vibe And then you're trying to explain vibe after the fact of me It's that thing of like I was at my mom's house, but it wasn't my mom's house But I knew that it was my mom's house exactly and it's just like and in that you sort of understand that the Like the the aspect of storytelling that is just your brain making sense and making a connection

Like the fact that there is a part of your brain that can just tell you the information that this is your mom's house without Like it looking like your mom's house without it Like having any of the aspects of your mom's house But your brain makes that connection so powerfully that it is one of those things where it's just like you encounter to being and it's just like Every description you give of the being is different and it's like are they wearing little hats? Are they in little uniform? Are they walking around naked? Are they like do they how many limbs do they have and it's just like it's different every single time you approach it because it's like when you're like giving voice to something that does not have like

Any for you for my holidays. Yeah, yes, and of course when you're at your mom's house, you tend to have massive orgasms I'm physically unable to orgasm at home really You can write that down in a book James. I sometimes and I'm not even joking about this. I've went masturbated in the car That's so much worse. That's illegal. Well, it's far worse I'm gonna break it over. It's in the garage. Well, anyway You know you're tired like I feel like like let's move on to department of truth here Well, I just have one question though Jim when you're talking about something that's real like with Barney and Betty Hill at the very least Again real to the to the degree to alter their entire life

Did you get any pushback when you're talking about real life people was anyone with the Betty or Barney Hill Institute? I don't know where they're like this is completely wrong like when you're dealing with someone because I mean you're telling their story Did did anyone get upset? Oh So far no Like what I mean, I think at this point the you know the the benefit with a story like Betty and Barney Hill And this is also part of why I gravitated towards that story It's a story that's been told in many different different many different places that including like Newspapers and magazines that I got, you know, my hands on the original. I think it was look magazine

News and like, you know, those magazines are fucking huge by the way Unit I have a pile of them someone sent us one to last podcast a long time ago And I have that fucking stack of these UFO. I haven't gotten through because again, they take up so much room Yeah, I don't know where to put up But but I tried to make sure that I was drawing from many different sources Like I didn't have a single primary source. I did, you know reference the like I went and looked at You know, the interrupted journey was probably my favorite that I read In the in the end out of everything that I read

But I also made sure that like I didn't pull directly from The transcripts like none of that direct dialogue is in that just because I didn't want to step on the like step on the rights But I wanted to capture the gist of it all That has been retold many different times So it's just like it's something that, you know, I wanted to approach this the same way I would if I was telling a story about, you know, a real event like not a like a more traditionally like journalistically

You know verifiable event that had happened in the 60s. Like I would pull from many sources I wouldn't pull from a single source. So like like you're like the sandy hook issue You're gonna do is gonna be so fucking like very carefully done. But yeah, also interesting Oh, well, I don't know. I mean that speaking of that point like department of truth Look at that really the book that or basically I you know discovered your work just by seeing it on on the shelves And I read department of truth and I got to the end of it and my first thought was like this guy knows his shit But this guy absolutely knows a shit and then I like went to find you on Instagram. It's like, oh fuck. He already follows me All right, great. Let's start talking about

Yeah, I'm gonna catch you he knows But for me like, you know talking about dreams and all that like for me like I feel like department of truth is a book That's really about the nature of reality And what people make of it and what governments make of it and to give a bit of a synopsis of it I hope I I can give a synopsis of this without getting too many spoilers because it's it's a book that unfolds so beautifully It's a book about conspiracy in which the conspiracy within the conspiracy unfolds so slowly and so fucking masterfully that you Wonder whether this is actually reality. It's like basically a The department of truth is a department within the government that basically handles conspiracy

But handles conspiracy as if every conspiracy is actually real But I also don't want to spoil why they're real That's some issue one stuff so I don't mind Yeah, yeah, it's like basically flat earth is real But flat earth is real because people believe that flat earth is real not because flat earth not because the earth is Actually flat is the idea that if enough people believe that the earth is flat Then the earth will become flat and the earth will have always been flat and so there's someone has to fight against the belief Yes, and it's anti the tinkerbell syndrome

Yes, where you have to do the concept that all of it It's like that just the your creation of it in your mind allows it to be objectively and that in the main character of the book Is a guy who was a satanic panic child like who had been satanic panic and and had and had it basically created a Creature of his own like one of those home on yeah, we're created like little penny his own sort of creature little penny That's how I that's how I understand Going through the and working on that style of project because you know like you look at great Morrison That's about when he worked on the when he was working on his like

Magnum opus he was Experiencing things because he was putting magic ritual like in his works and both do you find when you were playing with your own ideas of Objective reality like like I know that it's obviously it's a creative endeavor But I feel like in your brain You're still kind of putting yourself in the headspace of Imagining this literally that what you imagine is real because I do believe that I believe that anything that has been imagined at some point In some way shape or in some fashion is real somewhere someplace, right? Yeah, did it fuck with your life did it like me did it have real-world implications I think it like the biggest real-world

Implications is that it made me really fucking cynical like You know, it's it's one of those things where I I like because I cover it from all angles I cover it from the like You know, the weirdest aterica And you know deep dives into you know UFOs I we have a two-parter about bigfoot that I'm very proud of I don't know if I ever told you I fucking love your bigfoot do two partner It's like one of the it's one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read about bigfoot in my life

He's the only character well, it's about a bigfoot hunter and that's why it's great Yeah, no, and I wanted to like and in digging into those stories and especially the human stories of people's lives who are Like can be destroyed when they like fully succumb To an idea that's just outside the fabric of everyone's reality but it's like it was those stories and then also the stories of You know just the ways in which our government is like, you know shaped and can like police its own history and Right that history is told to us and it's happened around the same time as like, you know I I travel a lot internationally

For work now just going to different conventions and I work with a lot of international artists and it really just Sharpens the fact that it's like. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like most of like history as talked to Americans was like a like propaganda effort Yeah, you know generations for generations and then like when the Soviet Union ended then they stopped like, you know It's like they took the wheel off the car and then it's still driving the car is still driving But nobody's like directing it in certain ways, but it's You know, which is more like honestly more chaotic and more fucked up So it's just the we need to bring back the NWO was what you're saying

This all time we're in desperate need of the Illuminati. Yeah, no I mean that is like kind of the horrifying realization, which is like Total like oh in a world where it's just like that no two people believe the same version of the world Is a terrifying world and it's just like but it's very like that is the most Individualistic world that that you can build where everyone is like fully manifested into themselves. It's just it can't cohere But then what you have to do to cohere a giant group of people is like tell them a fictional story that inevitably like fucks a whole bunch of people over And it's like it's terrifying. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I'm celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ

What who is the hottest nerds out of all the cons you've been to This is why this is episode is out for everyone because it's for like we're gonna have our Real questions that the real listener wants to know I'm a guy's brain. Well, I will say the the most attractive comic book creator is Jorge Menez who draws drew Batman when I wrote Batman Yes, and it's just like if you ever go to his Instagram, it's just like he'll dress up like Superman sometimes and it's just like yeah No, that that's that tracks I got that for you. James wrote Batman for how many years ten years. Yeah Yeah, you wrote Batman for ten years. Do you got any Batman questions for him? Yeah, I have a lot of Batman questions

Of course. No. Oh my god If Batman could go back in time and save his parents, what do you do it? Oh boy. Oh, I mean, yes Then it would create like some you know like weird time fragment that Like would then come and start destroying the future and then when he defeated that in the present He would have to like it would go back and like you'd have to accept like his parents lost Thomas and Martha and the fucking face. Yeah. All right. Also, you won't you won't pitch that. That's a good That's a good multi-verse Tony Stark Bruce Wayne who has more money. Oh Batman because

Batman can put I mean like Batman funded like the Justice League watch tower and I mean, I guess right Tony Stark like like built a skyscraper and Manhattan, but people do that in real life. Uh, I don't know like It's a question. I want to ask you to roll around your head because there's actually what I do I actually have brought this up several times on the show and you you are a person that it's like you've had your head's been in This space for a long time. Why have we not seen an actual person attempt to be Batman? Like why have we not we didn't Seattle? No, but that was like low rent. It was like that's what I think about like a rich guy Yeah, like rich guys are not strong

I just feel like they could have spent so much money to put little bezos is getting cut. Yeah, but he's tiny He's he deal. I know but I don't really understand why we've not had one guy Want to make these things real. Oh, yeah. No, I think about that a lot I mean, I think it's mostly that they would die immediately. Yeah, you just get killed cuz you get shot in the head My final Batman question Nipples are no nipples on the suit because I watched the George Clooney one, which is just it's whatever but he got big old Nipples, but then the Keaton one very small nipples and then the most recent Batman's no nipples at all He's serious. So what do we want? What do we want here? I?

I accept bat nipples or no, like I like a Batman that changes his costume every now and then so You can get the nipples out and but he doesn't have to like okay So maybe if it's winter time, he's got nipples like culturally when we need Batman to have nipples They'll be there for us. All right So, I mean speaking of Batman like you you wrote Batman for for 10 years, you know You wrote a ton of great runs, but you know this like you left Batman this summer like it was actually treated as a pretty big deal Like in the the comics industry like but it's see and it seems like the books that you Right now, you know the stuff like Department of Truth nice house on the left, which is also fun

I like congratulations for the Eisner on that by the way. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're collected them now. Yeah, yeah, I've got a whole line of them. Two time two time two time Eisner award winner So it seems like that the books that you write that are your own property are horror books Like it was horror something that you just kind of wanted to do all along. Oh, absolutely Like I mean I did my like, you know when I was in college. I did like my My minor was in film studies and I did a whole thing on like international horror movies like Like horror as a genre has like always really been really important to me and part of it's because when I was a kid It scared the shit out of me like I was like I would walk down the horror aisle at blockbuster

But I wouldn't make eye contact with any of the videos because then I would have horrifying nightmares And it wasn't until I was in like late high school early college that I realized that the nightmares I was having about those covers was much scarier than what was it And then it was a year later that I realized that if I wrote down those like if I structured and wrote that down and then Turned it in a writing workshop. People enjoyed them. Well, that's interesting Oh, I didn't realize that you went to Glaine Maxwell University as well. We're everyone gets a minor. Hello Um, just lastly, lastly when it comes to Batman because obviously now you're doing I opened the flood games

You could ask any Batman question you want I'm open. I'm open. I have a great Glaine Maxwell joke. This is me a question When you're working for IP like that, how much do is it nice and refreshing that you get to create your own stuff? Like cuz I can imagine like you write something about Batman and then someone's like that's not the way Batman would do it And then you have to be like fucking all right. Yeah, you're right like with I mean, is it nice? Is it more liberating now? Oh with a hundred percent like there there's no comparison Like there's an obvious thrill getting to play with characters that you know, the whole world loves and You know, like there's there is you get to be the Batman guy is sweet. Yeah

Yeah, like that that I'll always be grateful that I've had I had that opportunity But nothing is better than people connecting to something that you and like a couple of like you and your like the artist friends That I have like created from whole cloths Yeah, and you know and then you get to rely on Your own instincts and that like honestly the the most gratifying thing in the last few years And this was part of why I left Batman is it's just I my independent books started out Selling Batman on a few moments during the year and it's like that I said I was like I could sign on to like keep continue my DC exclusive

Continue like another few years writing Batman or I can go all in and I know I don't call and I was just like that Was the moment I was ready to go all in. That's really fucking awesome when your work starts to outsell Batman That's pretty awesome fucking cool. It wasn't like outselling it every single month. It was like I don't know it means to be in the month through the year. It was like, you know, the sales went up, but that's fucking awesome So that's so cool. Was there any specific moments? So you remember that you were told no Like I did you pitch something for Batman? Is there anything that you were like you pitched it for Batman and they're like No, like what was the one with that? Oh, yeah, there wasn't the big one was that Batman couldn't go to eat pussy So that wasn't that wasn't it, right? No, that was the Harley Quinn animated series

Yeah, then like someone at DC was stupid enough to let a like a real quote out into the world Yeah, no, I mean like for me the big shit that like a lot of times it was like the most minor and Like it was like you would build a whole story around a character that you would find out like two issues into writing That you couldn't use that character So that character was suddenly going to be pulled out of your story halfway through and going to show up in another Another writer's book and that happened a lot when I especially when I was starting out because it was like I ended my 10 years on Batman on the title Batman

But it's like I started out on a bunch of the side books focused on like, you know when you're doing like the Fourth most important Batman title then the other three titles get to They're getting joker riddler. You can't use those guys. You're doing a lot of Mr. Zazz stories Oh, yeah Like and honestly the you know my my my last Batman run I like You know they like I got a lot of attention because I was creating a lot of new characters for it But part of the reason I was doing that was so nobody could tell me I couldn't do things

Yeah, I'm just sick of dealing with IP. That's great You know the credence like punchline is such a great addition to the the Batman universe like it's That's very cool. Yeah. Um, James can I ask you? All right. So you write all these horror things trying to scare us so much What scares you? Why are you so scared? What's so scared? What's so scary about your brain? It's going on side of your fucking mind that you said to put it on us Oh god I mean like like department of truth is really the like the one that lays out all of the shit

I'm most scared about in the world right now That is the one where viruses viruses run a monk is is one of those things that you can't because again You can't really talk about spoilers of the book, but it it's true like we're watching You know not to get too into the weeds here, but I think that what we saw on on january 6 2021 It was the ultimate example of a lark Going real like that was a thought it was like a thought Not on the internet and that it then made itself real and then the people that were a part of it Barely understood that they had a thought virus

And that's the reason why when they went they didn't tear the the building apart They were just as confused that they got there as anybody else and then once they arrived They're taking pictures and acting like they're visiting because they didn't understand that they just try to take over the government Oh, I don't know. Yes. I mean, but there was bad actors in there was bad actors Yeah, right. That's the problem. The bad actors were writing everybody. Oh morons Like and right now a lot of the bad actors. They're not even particularly smart They just like they're good at fanning the flames where it's just like letting people lean into what they're naturally afraid of And all of this stuff and just dialing everything up to 11

And I mean like this is the thing that scares me so much about the modern world is we're living in a time where Like bad ideas can spread faster than we understand the their impact on on the world And it's just like you can see, you know, there it is this like kind of memetic Like, you know a dangerous idea spread very very quickly in the current environment on the internet and all of this stuff And it's just like, you know, when I remember being a being a kid and the internet seemed like this Big wonderful place that was going to like open all of these doors. Oh, yeah, I went to Epcot I remember when Epcot sold us a line of horseship. Oh, yeah, and it's just like we've seen like, oh, no, no If you open all of those doors, it's just chaos and it's like, you know, but the

Like to shut all of those doors would be horrible now So it's just like, where does that leave us? And it's like that tension is like at the heart of a lot of the different And uh books that I do it's like all of my books are like all about the horror of just like Living in the modern world and like feeling kind of powerless in the face of it But still needing to like, you know, conduct yourself like, uh You know to to some degree it like, you know moral or like Upstanding way and it's just yeah, you know, it's yeah

Well, I mean that's that's also, you know, it's that the idea of like the fear of the unknown because uh, you're the other book Uh nice house on the lake, which again, I can't recommend enough like it's you know Basically a group of friends get brought to a house on a lake Um by one of their other friends and then the world ends around them Uh, and then they have to figure it out from there. Why are we here? Why did this person bring us here? What are we doing here? What's the point of all this? It's fucking terrifying But yeah, it's like dreams. I those are like that's like again. That's a dream. It's a dream. I've had I've had those types of scenarios

It's very very scary. Yeah. So is that also working that the idea of like just the unknown part of what can the world What can happen to the world around you? Yeah, and it's just the the the fact that things that you don't understand can still have Such huge impact on your life Uh, and and then the scarier thing is that understanding them does not change your ability to like, you know Like make it better. That's the most terrifying part of nice house is when they start to understand it and it doesn't matter Yeah, that's it people that I think is kind of a that's a very big Like center of the esoteric movement is just that concept of people are people are really afraid of that

I think it's why they're afraid to get into the lines of thoughts that take you into these weird alleyways Because they're really afraid that they'll get to the end of the understanding and still be fucked Yeah, right that you still go to on try to understand you try to To throw yourself into these scenarios and then all right I did all this legwork and I still am nowhere I still don't know like it doesn't matter to me now. I understand but it doesn't change anything about me and it's like Well, I feel like partially it's like that's the That's kind of more how do you get out of an existential crisis like that?

Is that you kind of have to let it change you? You do have to because to me in real life the issue is is that the understanding should change you But we're all really holding on to our fucking paradigms, right because I like my fucking pumas man I got these new And so I can't give up the fucking paradigm because the paradigm led to me fucking getting these cool ass pumas Well, the more you learn the more questions you have I see you're from Milwaukee One thing that's interesting. I went to school in Milwaukee We did uh speaking of paradigm shifts. Do you ever go to landmark lands?

Oh, yes. Yeah. Yes. I now this is one of the best places ever It's a bowling alley. It has three fucking bars and an arcade It is the greatest we went we went there after we did our show at the pap's theater. Oh, I love that place That was actually one of my favorite drinking experiences in america on tour. I love that when you're super stressed You can always just go to landmark lands. Yeah, give a spotted cow. Hmm. Oh, yeah Yeah, no, I love love me some new glares brewery. Oh, I love new. I love spotted cow Uh, but uh, well now we deal with because people ask us all the time. How do you cleanse your brain? Like when you are doing these processes and you're working these like these like heavy like what do you do?

That's like throw away like i'm going to talk about inside stories this week because i'm obsessed with the story This show called knife and death knife and death. We're talking about an outside story today But it's like it's a knife in competitions with the guys from forged and fire Okay, that sounds fucking cool. I love forged and fire man It's people who should not be physically moving on camera And now they're the center of the story like they're it's fantastic But what do you do like what do you how do you blow off steam? Do you just like do you have a big dick sucking machine? Or are you like?

Yeah, so there's the big dick sucking machine, but I mean so like Honestly the like this feels like such a cheap answer But the real thing is is the way I cleanse my system is I write these comic books Yeah, like it is just like it's taking all of the abstract like anxiety in my head And it's just channeling it out into Into projects that I think look beautiful and and all that that like You know it's short circuits the part of my brain that like makes me think Oh, I should do something about some of these horrifying things and it's just like i'm gonna make a the horror comic book. Yeah

You be surprised. I feel like we're you're bringing more More to the table making art necessarily unless you're like I feel like there's there's the difference between like There are people that are artist activists that do like straight up activism mix with their art But there's something this activism term is getting a little bit overused by the way I see a lot of people's profiles where they just add the word activist now. I'm like, I know you and you're not Yes, we know that you you do five tweets a day. That's not Hey, man, that's hard. That's hard on the thumbs I am like in the iranian revolution

I am on the front line, but you could I feel like Having an art the piece of art Tell these stories and these like talk about these issues on a more allegorical front really helps people I think that it allows you to it Kind of allows it to be wrapped around you can wrap your head around it more easily and then you don't understand that you're learning lessons Yeah, no, I like I think that that's exactly right and And I mean like I also just you know, I'll like I'll watch a nice like animated movie or something like that like You know, there, you know, there are lots of ways to just sort of like connect to the nice things

Like every now and then I'll build up like, you know, a lot of times what I read is a lot of like what I write It's a lot of non Nonfiction is a tariff shit and then like real messed up or and then every now and then I'll just let a stack of You know five YA comics build up that I've heard are really really fucking good And then I'll finally sit down and read them and I'll like have a very emotional day in a really cathartic like beautiful wonderful way and You know, I don't know. It's like I like how does someone get to the heart of James Tinian? You said you were single. How did someone get there? How does someone become them? How to become the you know, your side piece Oh boy. Oh boy. How do they get in there? How do they get into that big old head of yours?

You know, I mean look at your head so much room in there You look like a young Francis Ford Coppola. Yeah, it's not a compliment. It is. Yeah, is it? Yeah Well, just my final question I think it is Whatever, okay, um Allegorical Allegorical, uh, we can now learn through all these niche markets like with forged and fire You take a piece of raw steel and you make something out of it and with what it comes and you can learn a lot of

That's alchemy. Yeah, that is that in football You'll learn a lot of lessons stick to it if this and maybe you can win at the end and comic books You can teach a lot through your art form and things like that So there is something really awesome about the niche markets now that people have found The best way for them to learn and it's just I think comic books are a fucking badass way Yeah to really understand the world and um, I have you have you enjoyed the rise of comic books Because even when we were growing up, it was still a little friend right and now it's about You got more mainstream than anything else for being a nerd, right? Like yeah. Oh, no

No, I definitely was in the the daisy. I get in beat up for having my x-men Do you feel like comic books are uh In the proper position and the zeitgeist has taken seriously enough I think they definitely have like, you know, they've risen up so much and you know I like I say this is someone who works in like western comics, but it's just like manga is really doing the heavy lifting there in terms of just making uh, like making everyone read it Uh, but it is something that like it's amazing. It's amazing to see Uh, the breadth of what comics is like because especially when when I started reading regularly

Like, you know in the early 2000s like when I was in, you know, high school like that was the That was when I like you couldn't sell a comic book that didn't have a superhero in it Yeah, and now we're back in a world where you know, comics are not one type of thing It's not just one genre that just has to dominate everything and I say this with like great love to superhero comics But it's just like I am so fucking thrilled that I could read Comics like every week of the year and like read something legitimately great without having to pick up a single superhero comic Like that the fact that we're getting that in this modern moment is really really fucking cool. Yeah I mean on my poll list right now. I've got probably 10 15 books and one of them is a superhero comic and that's it

And it's awesome. What superhero do you like? I like the new jsa run or at least I'm starting on the new jsa run just because I love the justice society of america Is that difference in the justice league? Yeah, justice society's older. That's gotta. Yeah, it's a fucking league in a society. You dummy I read the first issue and it was yeah, it was pretty good and then enough for me to read more But that's the thing is that I keep putting superhero comics on my list And then dropping them after five issues because it's just sort of the same story Getting told all over and over again But the cool thing about comics is that it's really like american comics

You mentioned like manga like american comics It feels like is starting to finally catch up with the rest of the world Because here in america because of the comics code authority the whole frederick wortham thing that we talked about Weird, right? Yeah, that's how american comics came to be superhero centric. The rest of the world didn't do that Yeah, because the superhero comics were really used to if you you could make really great propaganda out of them Yeah, well you can make great propaganda and you could also do a fun cheesy story that kids would buy But the rest of the world they never got so they didn't get as narrow as we did Yeah, and it was never that it was only for kids

It was like there was never the idea that come like the medium only existed for children's stories There was one time when they made captain america a nazi and that seemed to be really on the nose No one liked it. Remember that it was like mad 2015. You were like, do we need captain america to be a nazi? What do you just hydra not necessarily a nazi? He was hype. But isn't hydra nazis? Isn't that there? Hydra is nazis Yeah, hydra is nazis, but they also have nazis. That's the thing that just never makes any sense Like hydra is the nazis in the nazis, but they're not having twitter flashbacks from 2016 I also want to say so we are also doing this to promote our new book. We're coming out next year called operation sunshine

It's a vampire heist comic book story Um, and my question is well, do you have any advice for us? We are now on issue three. How do we get better? He's been giving us advice in soul plumber. I know Audibly I want it audibly while I have him just any quick hits any quick kids you could say like so right now It's like, you know, we're building because it's like I'm following up. We're following a heist structure Right a heist movie structure, but then we're going to try to rip it apart at the end. So I mean, honestly that would be my Like best advice is that you always want like there's like there are a few key things that I try to go by Is while you're writing it if at a certain point the characters don't feel like they're naturally moving in the direction of the

Like weight how you outline the plot listen to the characters. Don't listen to the old document Yes Sometimes you have to throw out the roadmap and it's just like it's a scary moment creatively But it will always lead to something better creatively. Okay, um, like something is killing the children It was like I I had a very different series in mind and then just Erica slaughter just kept not going in the direction That I was like writing in and I was like, all right I'm following her and then now it's like this big fucking series. So Yes, like listen listen to your characters is the big thing and then the other thing is just like

You know, I like don't Pull like, you know, and I have a feeling this isn't advice that you guys need But it's just like don't pull away from most visceral thing. Like it is one of those things where it's just you like Lean into the most visceral emotion you can when it presents itself sometimes people kind of flinch away From moments and it's just like you want to land in the messy like uncomfortable feelings because those are the ones that You know, I think it's especially comic readers, especially when they've only read superhero comics and stuff like that when they finally like You know go outside of it and then they're like presented with an uncomfortable feeling that they've never gotten from fiction before

It opens their brain and it like in this really really powerful way that like, you know It's the reason why so many people are so fond of like the classic vertigo comics It's because they would read all the superhero stuff and then sometime when they were a teenager They picked up the first book that just challenged them and it's just like the those readers will remember the challenge for the rest of their life Like that's so cool. Like yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, awesome. James Denian the fourth before Thank you so much for being on the show man. It's an honor to speak with you and hope to see you 2023 yeah, and James also has a he wrote a story for the last comic book on the left. Yeah, bro That's gonna be coming out in February

Yeah, yeah, we got that. It's coming out soon. We got last time. Thank you very much for doing that I worked with Tyler boss on that who did a fucking amazing job. You did awesome. It's real good And it's real fucking good. I did get uh some advanced issues of a blue book and it's fucking great when it comes out Everybody pick it up. You're gonna love it. You're gonna absolutely adore this book. It's so wonderful. Thank you so much All right, everyone there it was our conversation with James Denian. He's smart. Yes mark Well, thank you all so much for supporting the show and thank you so much for listening And if you are in the LA area come and check out me Ed Larson, we're hosting a classy night out pre New Year's Eve party so that you can be sick

For the day that New Year's Eve happens That's gonna be fine because then you get to build back up you add that layer of reality to that Honestly amateur night to December 30th. Uh, check it out. Get tickets at the pack website, we're gonna have a whole lot of shenanigans We got all of them, you know, like my sisters can be there some other you know people We're gonna yell at you and it's gonna be fun. Wear a suit or not. Just cover, just cover Uh, do we have anything else guys? No, no man. Do they even know it's christmas time at all? All right. Hail yourselves everyone Hail Satan again. Magus Dalasians

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