Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #443: "Sparks"

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

One of my popular features in my "Tales from the Pit" comic is an ongoing "sit-com" with planeswalkers I make using the Funko Pop! figures. I call the recurring feature "Sparks." In this podcast, I talk about how it came about and what I did to find the humor in the planeswalkers.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, today is like a subcategory of a subcategory. So, today I'm going to talk about a running strip I have inside my comic strip called Sparks. So first let me explain what I'm talking about. So, I do a daily comic called Tales from the Pit, which I've done a podcast on a while back. You can listen to it. And in it, I have an ongoing little sub-series where I use the Funko figures of the Planeswalkers to tell a little sitcom that I call Sparks.

So I'm going to talk about how that came about and sort of talk about how I had to take my, you know, comedy writer sensibility and apply it to our magic characters. And hopefully it'll give you some insight into the magic characters. Okay, so let's go back to the beginning. So I had been doing Tales of the Pit for quite a while. So, Tales of the Pit, for those who don't know, every single weekday I post a comic to all my social media. So, if you follow me on Twitter or Tumblr or Google Plus or Instagram, I post them every day.

And they're just comical takes on magic-themed topics. But anyway, one day we started making these little Funko figures, Funko Pops. For those who don't know, it's a company that makes figures of lots and lots and lots of different IPs. I mean, really, name an IP, they make figures. But anyway, we started making some figures with them so the very first run the very first series

there's been two series the first series had it was Jace and Liliana and Chandra and

Garrick but like you know black green Garrick and Ajani and was Nissa the sixth? I think Nissa was the sixth. So those were the first six. And what happened was when we put them out,

the, as a, I don't know, as a nice gesture, they randomly gave one to each person. Like you, one day you got to work and on your desk was a little Funko figure. I think originally I got Nyssa,

but what I really wanted was Chandra. And so I traded with somebody to get Chandra. And, and then Sean Main who sat near me had Jace.

And I came up with a cute idea for a comic where I had Jace roasting a marshmallow over Chandra's hair. Because in the figure it's on fire because that's the cool looking Chandra when her hair is on fire. And he's like roasting marshmallows. And at home what I did is we had like little mini marshmallows and I got a little toothpick. So I put the toothpick on the mini marshmallow um and then she's saying like not cool Jace not cool or something like that uh and people really liked it and so I started making more not only at the time I had Chandra and Jace so I just I I was making a little sort of I just would use Chandra and Jace and and um and I think I had one extra, access to one extra Chandra.

So there was a little clone for a while that looked like Chandra. But anyway, and I wasn't really, I wasn't trying to tell a story per se. I was just trying to be funny. And Jason, Chandra, one of the things in general I found is the way the magic color wheel works, that if you get two characters of opposite colors, that it's really easy. They make good comic foils with each other. And so anyway, I did a bunch of

comics for Tales of the Pit. That was just Jason Chandra. There was Jason Chandra jokes. And I think what happened was the brand team saw my comics and thought they were funny. So they sent me a box of all the initial Funko figures. Or maybe I asked them.

I didn't ask for them. I forget. Anyway, brand gave them to me. And so all of a sudden, I had not just Chandra and Jace, but I had Nyssa and Garrick and Liliana and Ajani. Okay, I decided, well, let's make use of them. So I started doing more comics, and then I started, like, I mean, my background, obviously, in comedy writing, so I started kind of wanting to, like, explain what these figures were doing together,

because I tended to put them in more contemporary situations. I wasn't acting as if they were in, in, you know, like, settings that they really were. And I was kind of putting them in the real world. They'd make real world references. So I said, okay, what would I do if I wanted to take the planeswalkers?

And I decided that I'd sort of make a little sitcom out of them. So the little story I built is that they were roommates. And so when we started started it was just like, okay, they're roommates. They're roommates. It's the modern world.

They're roommates. And so let me walk through the characters. So what I wanted to do was, oh, well, real quickly. So I started kind of putting the situations

and I decided that someone said, couldn't I tag the ones that use the Funko figures? So I decided I would give it a name. And it was a lot like Friends to me. The show had a lot of Friends-like qualities. Friends, you know, living together.

And so I ended up with the name Sparks. See, the sitcom in me, the idea that it has two meanings. They're planeswalkers, so Sparks because planeswalkers spark, but also they fight with each other. So I thought that was a very sitcom-y type name. So anyway, what I really did was I said, okay, let's take a comedy writing eye, a sitcom eye, and look at the characters and figure out sort of, because I wanted to write comedy, right?

What I wanted to do was, like I was saying, I wanted to make a little sitcom where they're having fun. I mean, Tales of the Pit is a comic, so it wanted to be funny. So mostly what I was doing was just trying to figure out how to set up jokes. And due to the nature of a one-panel comic, I don't have tons of... I only have so much space for word balloons. So, like, I can fit in, if I'm trying to cram it, maybe six word balloons. More realistically, I tend to have two to three.

So in comedy writing, there's a thing about the rhythm of threes. The idea is there's a certain rhythm to comedy. And the most common rhythm, they call the rhythm of three, which is, the way I try to explain it is, if you think of like a simple joke, a simple riddle, you know,

why did the chicken cross the road? I don't know. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Like, there's sort of like set up, response, and then punchline.

Now, there's a lot of riffs on comedy, and you don't always have to do B to 3, and I mean, usually you end with a punchline. Sometimes you do punchlines working up. But one of the things that I was having fun with is that, okay, like, let's just take these characters and see what I can do. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through the first six, and then I'll get to the later six when the second series comes out. Okay, so Jace was my main character.

Jace actually is very perfect for a main character for a sitcom, because he has a very sitcom-y-like problem. So the schtick of Jace as a character is he's a person who craves knowledge. You know, he fundamentally wants to sort of live the perfect life. That Jace is, Jace believes, and this is just following Blue Philosophy, Jace believes there is an optimal way to be, he's got to find that optimal way,

and it's just a matter of him being studious and figuring out what he needs to do. So, in comedy they call this a control character. A character that wants to control things. And what makes a control character funny is, they call this a control character, a character that wants to control things. And what makes a control character funny is they don't control things. They want to try to control things, but things constantly get out of their control. And so the comedy comes from the idea that the character wants something,

but is constantly sort of not getting the thing they want. That is very common in comedy, by the way, is characters wanting something but not getting the thing they want. That is very, very common in comedy, by the way, is characters wanting something but not getting the thing they want and having to deal with constantly not getting it. There's comedy there. So Jace, the idea I really loved, is one of the things that we don't get to play up enough

that I love about Jace is his know-it-all qualities. Like, here's somebody who just studies information and knows everything. Like, one of my favorite comics I ever did is a Chandra and Jace one. They are an awesome comedy team together, by the way. I really could just do Jace and Chandra

and they alone, the two of them have a great dynamic. Anyway, Chandra is like, hey Jace. She's like, hey Jace, we're going out to comedy night. I mean, not comedy night. We're going out to trivia night, and I wonder if you wanted to come. And then Jace is like, you know, oh, yeah, you just want me along because I know all the answers.

And then Chandra's like, oh, no, no, no, no. I just love it when you correct the hoax that gets so flustered. It's awesome. And then Jason's like, you mean like every question? And then she goes, oh, this is going to be great. She has the idea that he can't stand trivia night because the person

in trivia night never fully gets the question correct and that he's always trying to correctly answer but that's not the answer they've written down. And so like, like he gives the correct answer and often gets it wrong, not because he's wrong, but because the person who set it up didn't do a good enough job. And that boils Jace to no end. I just love it. That's, that's kind of the, to me, the fun of Jace is this idea that he really wants to control stuff. And so, in my mind, the little story I set up was, he wanted to live in this house,

and so he needed other people there to make it all work, so he convinced these other people to stay with him. And kind of implied in the comic is, he didn't quite tell them the truth. He clearly used some sort of tricks to sort of make people, like, I had a comic about how, I'll get to it when other people show up, but clearly he

had him sign the lease, and the lease they signed wasn't quite the lease it actually was. You know, he missed her illusion and everything. But anyway, the fun comedy of Jace is this idea of he really wants his sense of

perfection, and he wants a sense of things being right. He wants things in some sense of control for him. And just he surrounds his people that that's the last thing he can get. You know, it's kind of like he wanted to live in a nice place. And so he sort of said, OK, the way to do this is to have the other planeswalkers here. And then just it's dug a hole. Like in the end, this is not at all what he wants.

He's surrounded by chaos. And that's why Chandra is a great foil for him. Which is, Jace just wants, like, things to be clean and easy and simple and want, you know,

and Chandra is the antithesis of that. Like, there's no way things are going to go as planned when Chandra's around. So, Jace is fun. And the thing I like's around. So Jace is fun. And the thing I like to play up with Jace is the idea that I love playing into his know-it-all nature, the idea that he thinks he always has the answers,

but yet he's constantly surprised. So there's just a lot of comedy there. Okay, so Chandra, the schick of Chandra as a character... Oh, the one thing about Jace I didn't get into is, the serious side of Jace in the story is that Jace is a man who wants answers but doesn't know his own past. And the idea that it's somebody who's sort of seeking something, but fundamentally is missing the core.

And that's an interesting, I mean, from a larger character sense, that's interesting. Okay, so Chandra as a character is somebody who fundamentally wants to do good. She, in her heart, is a good person. The problem is, her special ability is she lights things on fire. That it's like she has a constructive personality and a destructive power set. And the other problem is that she has impulse control. She's a red character. And impulse control is another great comedy tool, right?

She's a wonderful character. Because one of the things they say about writing is bad decisions make good stories. And Chandra is the queen of bad decisions. But the thing that makes her lovable, the thing that I really think makes her, is that her decisions always come from a really warm place. She wants to do the right thing. She's not mean. She's not vicious.

You know, she fundamentally, she's sweet. She really wants to help people. And so the thing I love playing up is this idea that, like, she really wants to do right by things, but, oh, her impulse control. Oh, and she knows she has bad impulse control. She's not unaware of it. But she's constantly fighting it.

So once again, the key to comedy is somebody wants something and they never have it. So Chandra, likeandra wants to sort of overcome this impulse control, but fundamentally at her core, she just can't do it. She wants to do right by the world. She wants to do good things. She wants to be there for people. And another big thing about her that I like to play up in the comic is she really cares about other people. So she cares about relationships.

You know? And while, for example, in the sitcom, she teases Jace all the time, there's a real fondness between them. At least the way... I mean... Chandra as a character is somebody who, like,

will fight with people, but she has your back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, she'll go toe-to-toe with you. She's not afraid to fight with people. But when push comes to shove, she'll be in your corner. You know, and so I, as a comedy writer, Chandra is just a lot of fun.

She's a lot of fun to write. And there's just a lot of tweaks on the, you know, like a lot of the Chandra comments are like, okay, I'm not going to make the mistake I always make. Oh, yes, I am. I do that joke again and again and again, where, you know, Shondra sort of starts out with the idea of, it's going to be different this time.

And the reason that Jace makes a good foil for there is Jace knows it's not going to be. Jace is aware of what's going to happen. So every time she sort of pretends like, no, it's gonna be different, Jace is like, yeah, that's not that's not gonna be so. Meanwhile, Jace is trying to sort of get his perfect life and Chandra understands he's not gonna get that. So each one of them kind of understands the other. So I mean, there's a fun bond between them. Okay, next, Liliana. So, Liliana as a character, she has a lot of pathos. The actual, like, the normal character is she's a necromancer afraid of death.

Which is, you know, she's somebody who, like, is so afraid of, I mean, she lost her brother. That was very traumatic. And she lost her brother in her own hand. She felt responsible for for his death. And so she's kind of been running scared her whole life and trying to sort of do what she needs to do. And the problem Liliana has is, you know, it's sort of a life of one step forward, two steps back. That every time like she's trying to sort of get free of things, that she keeps sort of getting entangled in other things. But, and this is the part I play up a lot, is her attitude is an awesome attitude.

So in comedy, she's what they refer to as the bad girl, in that somebody who, like, speaks her mind, is blunt in what she says, And the reason that you like this character is that she's very honest. That she's very, you know, one of the things about her character is she doesn't feel a need to hide behind facade. So she's really relatable because she's really direct and says what she means. Now, the funny thing is people fundamentally have a very selfish nature to them. And most people hide that. Liliana doesn't hide that. And so there's a lot of...

I think I mentioned this before. I did a play when I was in college called Leggo My Ego, All the Emotions. And the big lesson of that play was how much the audience connected to the negative emotions. It wasn't that people didn't like love

or didn't like more positive emotions, but wow depression was fun and paranoia was fun and bitterness was fun and a lot of the negative characters people really relate to

and I really put that up in Liliana I Liliana is never really nice I mean every once in a while you get the sense

that she does like the the interesting thing to me and you see this in the Gatewatch, is that Liliana is a lonely person. And that fundamentally, she really wants friends.

She wants companionship. But she, heaven forbid they know that, that's weakness. So, like, she wants something, but she can't let them know she wants it. And so she has this very sarcastic sort of attire, but, you know, it's fun to sort of watch. And as a comedy character,

there's a lot to play with there. And her just blunt nature, her sort of, I'm selfish and I'm aware, I'm conscious of my selfishness, it makes for a lot of fun. She actually, by the way, her great foil is Liliana,

which I will, not Liliana, she's Liliana. Her great foil is Elizabeth, which I'll get when I do the second batch. She actually, by the way, her great foil is Liliana, which I will, not Liliana, she's Liliana. Her great foil is Elspeth, which I'll get when I do the second batch. But anyway, so Liliana is definitely

played up. And like I said, she is a funny character. One of the things that's nice is certain characters, I think Jace and Chandra and Liliana are all naturally,

you don't have to try hard to make them funny. They all play, and archetyiana, are all naturally, you don't have to try hard to make them funny. They all play, and archetypes that play well into comedy. And that you see that in the story. Okay, next up was Ajani. So Ajani, I decided that there's another character in comedy, which is sort of the uptight and orderly character of somebody who plays by the rules

and you know, really is sort of like a stickler for things. And it's playing into white. And so the idea I like about Ajani is that she, he,

he, like for example, you put a situation with roommates, you know, where the idea of he's just like, okay, come on, guys, we have a short chart and we need to do this. And hey, look, we all should be looking out for each other. And if we all do a little bit, then it'll be better for all of us. And, you know, and he has the real goody two shoes sort of wants to assume the best of everybody. he has the real goody two-shoes, sort of, wants to assume the best of everybody. And, so, like, I love to play sort of the, that he's

just this organizational person, and he's a real, sort of, rah-rah team-builder sort of guy, who, you know, that he just wants to see the best in everybody. That, in some ways, I don't actually, I don't play Lillian against him too much, but,

there is the, Lillian against him too much, but there is the, Lillian is kind of the pessimist and he's the optimist. She wants to see the worst in people, he wants to see the best in people. Probably I should do more with that. I haven't done a lot. I mean, comedy-wise,

it's a staple pairing. So anyway, and Ajani was sort of, I like the idea that he was somebody who, you know, the idea essentially was, Jace got all these roommates and every roommate was kind of a bother in their own way. And they get to be a bother in a way that matches their color. And so Ajani gets to be the uptight one. It's sort of like, you know, that Jace's like, okay, I want some sense of order.

But yeah, okay, come on. Not that much. Okay, next was Garrick. So Garrick I decided to go silent with. There's a big thing in comedy where you have a character that's kind of, usually they're a little bigger. Not always. But there's like Silent Bob in, you know, like Jane Silent Bob,

Phineas and Ferb, if you guys know that, Ferb, like characters that don't talk. Now, usually in comedy, they talk infrequently. I have Garak not talking. But the thing that I found funny about Garak is the version of him I have, that I have a Funko figure of, is he's a planeswalker killer. And so in the story, the premise is

that Jace has used his mind tricks to make Garrick think that they're exchange students and they're not planeswalkers. But the idea that, like, you know, he so badly needs to pay the rent that he keeps it on somebody who, well, if the little mind thing slips, will just kill everybody.

I think that's fine. I also, because I got all the versions of him, I have a version where his eyes are purple. So every once in a while, and I also have a version where Chandra, her eyes are red. So every once in a while, I'll use those. I do a little joke all the time. He never talks, but he's in the background. People will talk about him. And there's some fun comics where they're talking about it, and the, but he's in the background. People will talk about him. And there's some fun comics where, like, they're talking about it,

and the fact that he's framed in the background, it gets to be funny. I also do this thing where I do these little couplets where I do little rhymes about the characters. I do a rhyme, and they talk, and then he never talks. And either someone talks for him, or the fact that he's not talking is a joke. But anyway, I'm playing him as a strong side type. There's some interesting things I could do with Garak if I had normal mono-green Garak. But that's not the character I had. That's the direction I've gone.

Okay, the hardest one of the original was Nissa. And Nissa, I mean, obviously we did a lot with her character. Like, when the character started in the story, she was originally going to be a villain. And we then sort of needed her in the Gatewatch, and so we sort of massaged her character some. And by some, I mean a lot. So I was trying to figure out, and what I decided was, I liked playing her. I decided I wanted to play her a little differently. So what I was getting into was I liked the idea of somebody who's made mistakes in their past

and who's trying to live a better life. And so the idea that she is more quiet and that she is trying to sort of make amends. Oh, so one of the great foils is, I mentioned Liliana and Elvin. Liliana and Nyssa proved to me wonderful. The idea there is that I decided that Nyssa wants to sort of get along with everybody and Liliana wants nothing to do with Nyssa. There's nothing about Nyssa that Liliana cares about. And so there's this little relationship they have

where Nyssa's trying to bond with Liliana and Liliana just sees an opportunity to torture Nyssa and finds it funny. And there's a series of comics I've done always with Nyssa starting the conversation and clearly trying to make an effort to find some way to connect with Liliana and Liliana making her feel uncomfortable.

And that's just a funny... It really helped define Nyssa for me in that I love the idea of a character that's trying to find a little bit of redemption and that is trying to sort of see the best in things. And the difference between Johnny and Nyssa is Nyssa is trying to figure out, she wants to realistically see people, but she wants to figure out, you know, how they fit into the worldview. She has sort of like, it's like somebody who's like, okay, had kind of a crisis, came to peace. You know, she sort of found a place to find peace within herself. And now she's trying to sort the rest of the world into her worldview to make sense of it.

Where Johnny is more of just like, he's sort of like, if people function the way I, you know, there's a right way to function, if function that way would make it easier for everybody. And so they play off a little bit different from a comedy standpoint. I get a play off, Ajani's more the uptight one, the rule maker, where Nissa is more, Nissa is playing in a slightly different space.

She's the one that's not a straight up archetype, if you will. So I massage her. But I do like, I slowly started to find her voice for comedy. I have a good sense of her voice as far as interacting, and she's a good straight person.

But I'm trying to find her place, and one of the things I've been doing recently is the idea that there's certain concepts that are invisible to her. Like there's a bit I did recently where Jace is sarcastic. And then he says to her, oh, you want me to tell you when I'm being sarcastic? And her last line was, yeah, still don't see it.

Like the idea that like Jace, she doesn't get the intonation. There's certain concepts that she doesn't have that she's sort of like. The idea is she has a lot of the outsider feel. Like, you know, I'm a foreigner living in a foreign land. And I love the idea. Like I grew up in the forest. And now I'm in civilization. I don't understand any of this. Why do you guys do this? What's going on? Um, and then I also made her have this bonding with animals that it's kind of fun that she keeps befriending animals and bringing animals in the house. Um, I want each person to

have a pet peeve that drives Jason sane. And so her, her pet peeve, she keep bringing animals in the house. And clearly the contract that he signed says they can't have insane. And so her pet peeve is she keeps bringing animals in the house. And clearly the contract that he signed says they can't have animals. And somehow, what is he doing? Why are there animals? And so anyway, I'm slowly getting a good rapport between Jace and Nissa. Once again, they're opposite. And I kind of like that Nissa doesn't get things and Jace is like, how can you not get these things?

And the idea of that Nyssa has this natural understanding, and Jace has this learned understanding, and the conflict there is a good green-blue conflict. Okay, so at some point we put out a second batch of planeswalkers. So it was, let's see if I can get these all correct. So it was, let's see if I get these all correct. It was Sarkin, Elspeth, Kiora, Tezzeret, how am I forgetting?

Nicol Bolas, and who am I forgetting? Who am I forgetting? It's Sarkin? Oh, Gideon, Gideon, Gideon. I'm forgetting Gideon. Okay. So the idea I did is I then decided that I wanted... That Nicole Bowles would make the perfect sort of antagonist to Jace. And so the idea is I made him the landlord.

Right? Because the whole setting is the roommates. I made him the landlord the whole setting is the roommates I made him a landlord and the premise I built in is that Jace is a smart ass his whole life he's been coaching the fact that he's smarter than everybody and finally meets somebody who's just as smart as he is, maybe even smarter than he is

and Bolas just sees an opportunity to put it to Jace the implication here is somewhere in the past that for some reason Bolas has a grudge against Jace. I haven't really explained why, but he's just seen this opportunity to give it to Jace. So what he does is he comes with him,

makes him hold to the actual lease he signed, which means he needs to have more money for the rent, which means that he needs to get more roommates. So I take four of the characters, which is Gideon and Elspeth and Sarkhan and Kiora, and make them roommates, and then he makes Tezzeret the grumpy next-door neighbor. So he's just trying to like, he recognizes Jace is miserable, and he's just trying to make Jace even more miserable by making him have all these

roommates. And so I introduced these new characters of, first Bolas showed up and he was the landlord, which was funny, and then basically said, hey, you know, if you don't owe me this much money, I'm kicking you out. And kind of, Bolas

knew and Jace figured out, like, okay, he's got to get more roommates so he gets the other planeswalkers and once again the idea is I like every planeswalker to like one of the things is they must bug Jace like the idea is Chandra

just keeps setting things on fire and causing chaos Liliana's just mean to everybody, Nissa keeps keeping the pets. Johnny keeps these schedules and all this stuff that Jace doesn't want to have to deal with. Garak, you know, could kill everybody if somehow the mental mind slips. Okay, so I got new characters.

So, Elspeth. So the thing about Elspeth I love is I like the idea of a comically tragic character. And the shtick to her character is she's a good person that wants to do good, but really what she just wants to do is just be left alone, but tragedy follows her.

You know, like the joke is wherever she goes, chaos ensues. You know, tragedy ensues, and then she's obligated to stop it. She's obligated to do it. She's obligated to fix the problem. Her sort of character flaw is that she can't not do good. She can't not help.

And really what she wants is to just be left alone. But when trouble rolls up, she can't not deal with it. And so right away, the idea is the second she moves in the house, a Phyrexian portal opens in the basement. And she's got to go down. So she lives in the basement, a Phyrexian portal opens in the basement, and she's got to go down. So she lives in the basement fighting the Phyrexians nonstop. And also, she has a tie to the Phyrexians in the real Magic Star, so I thought that was funny.

Gideon, I decided to go the Captain America route, which is he's Mr. Goody Two-Shoes, and that he just, they're always supposed to do the right thing and do the good thing, and I have him, him and Liliana hit all the time. In fact, when they first move supposed to do the right thing and do the good thing. And I have him, him and Liliana hit all the time. In fact, when they first move in and they do the interview, he talks about how, you know, he's anti-demon. If he sees a demon, he'll

kill them. And Liliana's like, is that a promise? If you see a demon, you'll kill it. So, like, Liliana's like luring demons, because Liliana's a demon she needs to kill. So she's trying to get Gideon to kill her demon. I thought that was funny. But anyway, Gideon, I definitely, I'm trying to play Ajani and Gideon a little bit differently. So Ajani is more make-the-rules person,

and Gideon's more of the goody-two-shoes, let's-do-the-right-thing. I just differentiate them a little bit. Then we had Kiora. Kiora is just awesome. She is just made for comedy. She is just, you know, kind of like, I do my own thing and I care.

Not one iota what anybody else cares. I love the idea that she moves in and then she gets a pet leviathan in the pool. There's a pool. And she just, she talks back to Jay. She talks back to everybody. She's awesome. Here's an awesome character.

She just does whatever she wants. Just a free spirit. And, you know, she is somebody that's been fun to write because she truly does understand things. The blue in her is she gets it. She understands. Like, she really has this kind of laid-back atmosphere

that she wants to live life. Very green. But at the same time, she gets things. She understands things. And, you know, she's a fun character. Then we have Sarkin. So Sarkin, the thing I love to play up Sarkin is he's someone who just believes he's better than everybody else. And that he can become a dragon, and that causes all sorts of problems, because he likes to become a dragon.

And clearly, you know, like, he... I had one comic where, like, dogs are disappearing in the neighborhood and, like, he's like, bad Sarkin, bad Sarkin. And, but I love the idea that Sarkin, like, for example, in the story, the name Sarkin isn't even his given name. Vol is his real name.

But, like, Sarkin means, like, super president or something. Like, he gave his name, like, he gave himself a name, like, I'm super president. So I love the idea that he's just full of himself. And the fact he turns into a dragon is a lot of fun. And he's just really haughty and looks

down at everybody. I mean, kind of has a little bit of a Mr. Howell feel to him, in that he's just better than everybody else. Mr. Howell's from Gilgamesh, for those who don't know. And then the last character we had was Tezzeret. And so I decided to use Tezzeret for the grumpy old neighbor.

It fits kind of this character anyway. He's unhappy. He's relatively mean. He's just, he's mean-spirited. And so the idea I love is just Tezzeret is like the get-off-my-porch sort of guy. Plus sitcoms need a wacky next-door neighbor. And so, anyway, Tezzeret's proven to be fun. and so, anyway, Tezzeret's proven to be fun.

One of the best running bits is the idea that Jace is constantly trying to sort of, like, bring peace with Tezzeret. Like, he's just like, it's one less thing I need. And every time he tries to bring peace, Chandra just messes it up. Like, one of my favorite comics, one of my favorite comics of Tales of the Pit is where Jace is laying out his 38-step plan to finally bring peace with Tezzeret.

And Chandra, like, in between step eight and nine, she went and set his gazebo on fire, Tezzeret's gazebo. And you're like,

why? Why would you do that? And she's just like, ah, you know, I'm going to go with I don't like gazebos. You know, this is like, anyway you're like, why? Why would you do that? And she's just like, ah, you know, I'm gonna go with I don't like the Zeebos. Anyway, I like the wild nature of Liliana,

of Chandra, and anyway, the essential idea of one of the sitcoms that's fun is you have a bunch of people that have really, really strong opinions and strong point of views. Like, one of the nice things about the color pie is it gives our characters strong points of view. And so it is just comedy.

All you need to do is take characters and put them together, and you just get comedy. Like, for example, one of my favorite pairings, which has become a reoccurring joke now, is I have this bit where Liliana and Elspeth watch TV together. And usually Elspeth talks, the way comedy works is it's set up punchlines. So Elspeth's better to set up and Liliana's punchline. So they're always watching a show.

And then each one of them gives their impression of what's going on. You know, like they're watching Game of Thrones. And Liliana's like, I like Brienne of Tarth. You know, she's a noble knight and fighting for the good. You know, she's like, who do you root for, Liliana? And Liliana's like, I root for death. You know, it's fun perspectives. And really what I have found is you can take almost any two characters.

They have such a strong, and they don't even need to be enemy characters, although the enemies are a little bit easier. You can take any two characters. In fact, I do this sometimes. Some of the ways I'll make Tales from the Pit is I'll just take a picture of two characters and go, here's who's talking. And I usually put the funny one on the right, so I set myself up for the punchline. Although every

once in a while, I'll put like Nissa in the punchline or something, just trying to force myself to get Nissa to do the punchline, because I just sort of comedy reps, if you will, to sort of work on my game. One of the things that's fun about doing Tales of the Pit in general, but doing Sparks is I loved writing comedy. And it's a muscle I want to make sure I keep working.

That, you know, your muscles kind of act if you don't use them. So, like, we're never going to actually have a real sitcom with the characters. But the Planeswalkers actually make wonderful characters. It is very easy to write Tales from the Pit. The characters have such a strong voice and strong identity and clearly believe in things. And I've actually managed... Oh, the other thing that I started to do is I now do this thing that whenever we have a real story, I will take our characters and I'll map the real story and do the Sparks version of the real story. You know, when the real crowd goes to Kaladesh,

my crowd goes to the Kaladisco, you know, where Chandra used to spend a lot of her childhood but hasn't been back for a while. Or, you know, when they were fighting the Eldrazi, our characters had a gopher problem in the backyard. I just find some parallel, whatever it is. As we speak right now, you guys probably read this one, but right now I'm writing the one where they find out that Nicole Bolas has an apartment building that he runs. And so they go to go warn the people of Nicole Bolas, and they end up finding this beautiful, beautiful apartment building.

of Nicole Bolas and they end up finding this beautiful beautiful apartment building and just dealing with I'm just paralleling the Amonkhet story but anyway

it's fun so if you ever want to read this I tag all of them Sparks so if you want to go to Twitter or Tumblr or I think Instagram

I think I tag on all three of them I don't tag I don't tag them on Google Plus but if you want to go to any of those three I tag my Sparks comics. You can look at them.

There are some running jokes at this point. So I kind of read it like a sitcom in that I assume there's anything that's happened in the sitcom I assume has happened, and I'll reference it to it. Usually I'll set it up so if you haven't read the previous comic, you get it. I make the comic self-explanatory. Though I do do weeks where the assumption is you've read earlier in the week. So I'll do week-long strips of Sparks where the assumption is you read it every day. And I'll definitely tell little stories.

You know, like for Shadows of Innistrad, I did a story where someone stole the cookies and Jace is going to solve the mystery who stole the cookies and sometimes I just make up my own little stories just because it's entertaining to me

and I also like to do a lot of one-offs I do a lot of like it's not part of a larger story it's just the characters interacting just because it's fun to do

and then sometimes I'll do a lot of experiments like one week what I did is I took the five gate watch and I put two together and then each week I would move down the line. I might have even gone to Uber Gorder.

It's like Gideon talks to Jace where Gideon's the setup and Jace is the punchline. Then Jace talks to Liliana where Jace is the setup and Liliana's the punchline. Then Liliana talks to Chandra where Liliana's the setup. So I try experiments like that. A lot of my comics, for those who

don't know, is me just entertaining myself and trying different things. I always write stuff usually when I'm getting ready in the morning, so I don't have a lot of time. But this is something, the ones where I'm doing the Spark storylines, I sometimes will think ahead a little bit, especially for the, where I'm paralleling the actual magic story. I'm trying to figure out what, what our version is.

But anyway, so that, that is probably more than you ever need wanting to know what sparks. Hopefully if you, I also give a little insight in the characters. Like I, like I said, I, I think our characters, I think we have some really fun characters that have the potential to tell lots of fun stories. And normally the stories the creative team tells are more serious stories. But I think they're ripe for comedy. So since nobody else will provide you with the Planeswalker sitcom, I will. And it's really, really popular.

It's one of the most popular parts of my blog. Not my blog, my comic. And so I've made an effort. I do a lot of Sparks. If you like Sparks, I try to do them usually at least once a month. For sure every other month, but not every month. But anyway, guys, that is probably more than you

ever wanted to know about my Sparks sitcom. So anyway, I'm now here at Rachel's school. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.