Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #36 - Tales From The Pit

Episode Date: May 31, 2013

Mark Rosewater talks about his comic, Tales From The Pit.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so, today, um, I just celebrated, I mean, upcoming for me, in the past for you guys, is I celebrated the two-year anniversary of Tales from the Pit, which is my daily comic strip. Um, and I decided I would talk about Tales from the Pit, which is my daily comic strip. And I decided I would talk about Tales from the Pit today. I'm hoping, actually, it's a larger discussion than just the comic itself, but sort of like what goes into making a creative endeavor. But I wanted to sort of talk about where it came from and sort of why I make it,

and I don't know, just some behind-the-scenes stories of the comic itself. So, let's begin with the story, the origin story, if you will. Issue number one. So what happened was, I have an iPhone, for those that are unaware. I'm a giant, giant Apple fan. In fact, something people may not know, my entire adult life, and I'm 45, I've never had a computer at home or at work

ever that wasn't a Mac or wasn't an Apple computer. I guess before Macs existed at home, we had an Apple IIe way back in the day. And my dad actually got an Apple, like the very first Apple you could get, the consumers could get, my dad got

that. And originally, you had to load it with a cassette tape. This is before discs happened. And you had to put a cassette tape in for like three minutes and go... And then you could play some text game, like Hunt the Wumpus or something. Anyway, showing my age here.

So anyway, we got into Apple very young. I'm a huge Apple fan. I've learned, because every time I talk about how I love Apple, that a lot of my fans are not Apple fans. Apple seems to be, it creates great passion both ways out of people, much like things that I... I believe that truly great things tend to spur people in both directions, that some will love it, some will hate it. And Apple is one of those things. But the thing I love about Apple is that their...

I love their design aesthetic. I feel like a lot of what I've learned about being a designer has come from looking at designs that I, as a designer, really appreciate. The thing that Apple taught me, this might be some future podcast of design inspirations, but the thing Apple taught me is the idea

of things have to do what they seem they do. Your intuition should just be correct. Make the thing do what people expect it to do. And the second thing is, is the importance of simplicity, and that one of the easiest ways to get, you know, how do you know it's the right button to push? Put one button on it, you know.

Anyway, so I have an iPhone. In fact, the way it works in my family, by the way, is I will always buy the newest iPhone, and then the latest iPhone goes to my wife, and the iPhone after that goes to my daughter, my oldest daughter, Rachel. And so, like, every time I get a new iPhone, it means everybody else, they shift and get the newest iPhone. So, anyway. Anyway, there was, there is, an app on the iPhone called Halftone.

And Halftone is, the premise of Halftone is, it lets you take your pictures and convert it to look like an old-style comic book. For those that are unfamiliar with comic books, back in the day, in fact, it's probably still true, they're made with a system where there's lots of little tiny colored dots. If you look close.

And so back in the 60s, I mean, now the dots are pretty small, and, you know, it's hard, you have to really look with a magnifying glass, I think, to see the dots. But back in the day, the dots were a little bit bigger, and so there's a very distinctive look to a lot of comics, especially the 60s and 70s. And Halftone was trying to give your pictures that comic book look. So, I love comic books. I love iPhone apps. I like taking pictures.

And I like goofing around and making funny things up. So, we were celebrating something. I forget what it was. Wizards does this thing where when we have a success, or Magic does this thing, when we have a success, they'll have cake. And so, we were having cake for something. Some set did well. I'm not sure.

Zendikar or Skarsgård. Anyway, some set had done well. We had cake. And so I went to up to the bridge. So all of our conference rooms at Wizards are named, mostly have geek names. We have The Matrix and the ones near R&D are named after magic cards.

We have, like, Ivory Tower. Anyway, all around the building, they're named after different things. I mean, each department got to name their own, and so sometimes you can kind of guess who named it by based on what section of the company it's in. Like, Double Jeopardy is near legal. But anyway, so the bridge is the main room upstairs that, like, you know,

if the president is going to have a big official meeting, they always meet in the bridge. The bridge is a Star Trek reference for those that somehow don't know that. Anyway, so we go up to the bridge. There's cake. And Ethan is eating cake. anyway, so we go up to the bridge, there's cake, uh, and Ethan is eating cake. Now, I believe at this point, Ethan is relatively new, um, being that it started in March, he must have just, he could not have been here more than a month or so, because I think he started, I think it's very short after he started, but anyway, I took a picture of Ethan eating a piece of cake, um,

and then I decided that it'd be fun to make a little comic out of it with my Halftone app. More because I was just entertained by the app. And I don't even think when I first made it, my intent was to show it, was to put it anywhere

on the internet. I just thought it was funny. And then it entertained me enough. I'm like, oh, whatever. I'll tweet it. So, in fact, it's whatever. I'll tweet it. So, in fact, it's possible before I tweeted the halftone version, I just tweeted a picture of Ethan eating the cake,

which I think is what happened. I think I just tweeted a picture of Ethan eating the cake. And later I went back and I changed it. I thought it was funny. I posted it. I got decent response. And at that point, be aware, it wasn't a thing. It wasn't like, it was just, I made a comic I thought was funny, I posted it. And then the next day, I posted another one.

And I just, for that week, I don't know, every day I posted one, because it was just, I was being entertained by it, and there were so many possibilities of things I could do. And then, I think by the end of the week, I was like, this isn't that hard to do. So, a little background. For those that don't know, I mean, obviously, welcome to me. I have a comedy writing background. In college, for example, I mean, in high school, I started doing a lot of playwriting, and they were mostly comedies.

In college, I started an improv troupe. I started a writing workshop that did sketch comedy. I did stand-up. And so I did a lot of different things with comedy. I eventually went out to Los Angeles. I wanted to be a sitcom writer. I mean, long-term, I wanted to create TV shows, but I wanted to be a sitcom writer. I mean, long term, I wanted to create TV shows, but I wanted to write comedy. I mean, Roseanne's the one show I was on staff on. So, I mean,

my background is I like writing comedy. I have a lot of background in comedy. And I've always been fascinated by comic strips. I love comic strips. I think comic strips are cool. And I remember thinking that one of the things I always thought would be awesome to do was to have a comic strip. Now, the really thing that was getting my way, for those of you who have ever seen my one piece of magic art, look at me at the DCI, which is I can't draw. And people go, oh, but, you know, XKCD, he's the stick figures. He's much better at drawing than I am. Much better. I am very limited in my drawing abilities. For example, look at me on DCI. Here's how I did it. I have an art style that very few people use. Very

few. I actually drew that 60 times and then picked my favorite one. Also, by the way, for those who don't know, a little trivia about looking at me on BCI. I got paid a dollar. Originally, they were going to pay me full price, like a full whatever price. And I said, no, that's crazy because I can't draw. And I said, look, just pay me a dollar. They had to pay me something to own it. And then they gave me a dollar and they gave me a check. This is a funny story.

So I get a call from the finance department. So they say to me, so it says here that we owe you a dollar check. And I say, yes. And they go, well, could we give that to you in cash? I'm like, no, I want a check. He goes, do you understand that it costs us more than a dollar to make a check? I'm like, yeah, sure. They were going to pay me a lot of money. I volunteered to just get $1 to save us some money. And so, you know, yeah, give me my check. And he's like, well, why do you want a check? And I'm like, because I want to frame it.

And he's like, you're not even going to cash it? I'm like, yeah, you're going to be off a dollar at the end of the year. Anyway, I still have my check framed with my art, my original art. I'm looking at the DCI in my den. I have four pieces of art, by the way, for those that trivia the care. I have the original Morrow, named after me, and I bought the art from Stuart Griffin. And by the way, here's an interesting way, today's podcast is me starting on a topic and just drifting off. One of the interesting things about Morrow

is the painting wasn't made to be a magic painting. It was just painted to be a painting. Sue Ann Harkey, who was the Mirage art director, saw it, thought it was cool, and bought the rights to the image. And then we later figured out where to put it. But anyway, what it means is it's a full-size piece of art.

Most magic art, if you've ever seen it, is pretty small because it just needs to go on cards. So normally it's like 8 inches square or something, or 8 by 10 inches, whatever the correct proportion is. So I have Maro, I have Look at Me on the DCI, I have Jester's Sombrero, which was the packaging image from Unglued, and then I have Mize, the packaging image,

or one of the packaging images from Unhinged. Mize, by the way, was a birthday present for me from Matt Cavada, who drew the card and is a friend of mine, which was very cool. Anyway, sorry, deviating back. So I always had wanted to do a comic strip, but was hampered by the fact that I can't draw. And watching over the years,

there's been many people who've done magic comic strips. You know, I remember one of the famous ones was called UG Madness, of which I showed up as a character as a little devil with little wings. And, you know, MDG Pro made a comic. of which I showed up as a character as a little devil with little wings. You know, M.D.G. Pearl made a comic. There's a lot of people that made comics.

And I've always thought it was funny that, you know, it'd be neat to see a comic. But one of the things I always wondered that I had never seen, or that maybe it exists, I just haven't seen it, is a daily comic. So it's kind of like a, you know, farsighted. The kind of comics I've always enjoyed have been one of, have been like single frame, like the Farsight. I mean, I like Calvin Hobbes and all that. I mean, I think the 3B ones are fun. I just, somehow for me, I always imagined doing a one panel magic comic.

And like I said, I had the limitation of my inability to draw. So anyway, I think what clicked was I started taking pictures and turning them into these little things and they were funny. It's sort of a photo comic. And it never dawned on me before

that I could, instead of drawing, I could use pictures. And that once that hit me, I'm like, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I can make a comic strip. I found a way to get around my huge limitation. And so I started making the strip.

It was mostly, I don't know, it was just, I mean, I think the reason I did it was mini-fold. I won't pick a number because as I tell you, I'm not sure how many of these numbers are going to be. So first off, I like writing comedy. I miss writing comedy. You know, there's just not a lot. I mean, I try to put humor in my blog and in my column and, you know, in hopefully my podcast. I try to do humor, but it's not a consistent thing. And that I think part of me, part of my brain just liked the idea of, you know, just what if you could try to be funny every day, you know, and the challenge of that.

The second is that I've been trying to do more stuff in social media that broadens kind of what I do. And one of the things I've been very conscious of is I got onto Tumblr. Oh, real quickly, for those that like my blog, my blog 100% is a result of my Tales from the Pit comic. Let me explain. So what happened is, I started putting my comic out on Twitter. And I think it was Evan.

Evan says to me, he said, oh, why don't you collect your comics somewhere that, you know, so that people can see them. And he suggests Tumblr. And I'm like, oh, I never heard of Tumblr.

And he goes, oh, well, yeah, yeah, it's really easy to sign up. And a couple people talked to me about it. I think it came up a couple times. Oh, you should just post this on Tumblr. So I'm like, oh, okay, I guess. And I got there.

It was easy to sign up. And so I got it, and I started just, every day I put my comics there. I think there was an app for it. So it was very easy for me to do. It must have been an app for it because I always, one thing about my comic, by the way, it's 100% produced in my phone the pictures are from my phone the halftones in my phone I upload

it from my phone like that the comic touches nothing but my phone it's completely generated by my phone and so oh by the way Evan I'm just dropping names, it's Evan Irwin of, uh, of, uh, uh, The Magic Show, um, and, uh, anyway, a bunch of people suggested Tumblr, I said, okay, I figured out what it was, and so I started putting it up on Tumblr, and then there's a little feature on Tumblr that says, can people ask you questions? And I was like, okay, I guess people can ask me questions.

Little did I know, I had no idea what happened when I, yes, people asked me questions. Anyway, the, can people ask you a question, me clicking yes, that, my whole blog came out of that, which, which, it's funny. The comic's now a little tiny part of it, and all the question answering was the major part. But, but, but Tales from the Pit is directly responsible for the blog happening. And one of these podcasts, I will do the blog-a-tog podcast, but that's not today.

Today is Tales from the Pit. So, anyway, I liked the idea that I could challenge myself every day. I really, I mean, there have been magic comics, but I felt like I just wanted a magic comic to exist that was just daily, you know, that every day and could, you know, could capture on whatever was going on. Like, I wanted something that was kind of, could be topical at times. Now, be aware, there's a huge limitation I have, which is I work for the company. I'm one of the spokespeople. So the funny thing for me is I often come up with comics that would be hilarious, but they're not, you know, I do not have the freedom just to publish any comic I want. In fact, every once in a while I'll put a comic and I'll run it by, you know,

people at work and go, what do you think? And they're like, you know, you can't publish that. So deep in the recesses of my brain, I've made some comics that are funny, but maybe not appropriate. If I was outside the system, if I wasn't working for the company, maybe I'd publish some of those. But, anyway, so I liked the challenge.

I really liked the idea that Magic would have a daily comic. And there are some comics out there. I don't want to diss any of the existing comics. I always enjoy when I see magic comics, and a lot of people do very fun work, and they're awesome to see. Oh, the other thing, by the way, is

as I'm trying to... One of the things I'm big on is trying to understand social media, and that one of the things I realized was that words only get you so far. I look a lot about how much I get retweeted and reblogged and sort of where my messages go and what kind of impact they have. And one of the things as I experimented,

I realized that I was trying to sort of create a product that had a different feel to it. Yeah, I have Twitter and I answer questions on Tumblr and Google+. I mean, I do different things. I do this podcast. But the comic is nice in that it's something that's very bite-sizeable. It's visual. It has some different qualities to it. And when I really get a comment that just sort of hits one out of the park,

it gets reblogged all over the place. So that is kind of cool, this image you can associate. So that's why, kind of why I started. I mean, like I said, I didn't mean to start. I kind of accidentally did it and then just sort of said, oh, I could do this. Now, here's an important thing to understand about the comic, by the way, is I do not spend a lot of time on the comic. I'm a busy man. And I mean, basically what I do, here's my thing, is sometimes I'll take pictures. And I go, oh, this is a funny picture. I'll come up with something. Sometimes I get a joke and then I hunt down what I need.

Usually if I make up a joke, I hunt down images. That's why I've been doing a lot more magic images. It's easier to do at home. Because a lot of times I'll wake up and go, okay, I've got to make a comic. And I'll make a comic while I'm getting ready. And that, by the way, is a little side note.

I do not spend a lot of time in this. I know that the quality veers wildly all over the place. This is the kind of thing where it's my job and I would fine-tune them and everyone would be... I think the overall quality level

would be much higher. But the fact that I spend, you know, sometimes five minutes to come up with it, I know that there, there is a variance. But the thing I do love also is trying to find a way to be topical and make jokes about kind of, be able to have some fun at whatever magic is going on. And I try whenever I can to be in the moment and do jokes that are topical. I don't always. Sometimes some of them are more, you know, I could do the joke anytime.

But usually there's something I can make a joke about that's a current thing I try to do. So let's talk a little bit about some of... So once again, I didn't set out to do recurring things. I just have comedy in my blood. And when I hit something that I know is funny, then I just go like, oh, okay. And one of the parts about trying to come up with comics every day is I realize that some days something will come to me, and some days it's not as easy. And so when I think about having some running stuff, it just makes it easier when I'm struggling one day that sometimes I have stuff I can go to.

Okay, so my biggest reoccurring comic was Another Day of Productivity Lost. So what happened early on when I was doing the comic was I did a lot of R&D. If you look at the evolution of my comic, early on, most of the jokes were about R&D itself. And what I learned eventually was that some of that's good, but that I ended up centering more of the jokes in the game itself and less about us making the game. I still do R&D jokes, and it's still part of the comic. And that's one of the things, by the way, I realized about the comic was the breadth of things I could do, because I could make fun about the game, I could make fun of R&D making the

game, I could make fun of the audience reacting to the game, you know, I could make fun of elements of the game, art from the game, cards from the game, I could get cards talking to each other, or where are they now, and all sorts of different stuff I could do. The magic is a pretty deep depth for doing comedy, by the way. I mean, probably because there's a lot there. So, I was doing early on a lot of, like, by the way. I mean, probably because there's a lot there. So I was doing early on a lot of R&D. I would take a lot of pictures of R&D. If you look at the first maybe six months of Tales from the Pit,

it's mostly shots of R&D. And I would pose shots. The other thing I've learned is posing shots are tough. One of the things that's interesting about doing a comic is it made me have a lot of respect for visual storytelling. Because, for example, mostly what I'm doing when I'm doing jokes is to set a punchline. And ideally, you want the setup on the left and the punchline on the right. So if I take the picture wrong, sometimes I'll have to cross the word balloons, which is a pain. But anyway, today's meat is all over the board.

It's just, Mark, almost my topic today should be Mark just goes and talks and then he gets to work. So the productivity loss was just, I took a picture of people playing, just playing games, and I'm like,

what should this be? And then, somehow I thought it was funny that, like, oftentimes, just in R&D, we'll go off on topics, and, you know, it's a bunch of bright guys who are all pretty geeky, and, like, we'll just talk about whatever, you know, and I thought it was funny, and I thought it might be funny to capture that, and the productivity loss line was just me joking, like, yeah, you know, sometimes we just go off. And the funny thing is, the first one went over okay, but I thought it was funny, so I did a second one, and the second one was the one that, that was the weaponized the ponies one. We were talking about the Transformers versus the My Little Pony. Which is funny, by the way, for those behind the scenes,

is I do a lot of pop culture references, and somebody at work had said to me, hey, come on, you know, you should, someone like, you know, why do you make more references about stuff we do? And I'm like, well, hey, I make a lot of magic references. So I thought it was funny I did a cartoon where I was referencing Hasbro properties

because both Transformers and My Little Pony are Hasbro properties. Anyway, that's me making kind of an in-joke. And so, that's where that one came from. Most of the other running jokes,

I think I just came up with something that I liked. So you think you can biomanse, which has become my, uh, there's a style of joke, which is called the, uh, what do you get when you cross this with that joke? Um, and I think those are funny. So like this just became a way to tell that kind of joke because the whole shtick of the Simic is they, they cross breed things. Um, like Liliana, Ask Liliana came about cause I just thought, I had a picture of

Liliana sitting in a chair, the one from Innistrad, and I just needed to use it for something. A lot of times what I do is I'll just pick a picture and go, make this funny. And so I picked that picture, and I said, okay, make it funny. And I was trying to just come up with something that, I don't know, a lot of comedy for me is when you take different ideas and take two things that don't seem to belong together. That, you know, a lot of comedy comes from juxtaposition. In fact, it's funny. You know, they used to do stand-up.

One of the things that is very funny when you get around people that write comedy is this desire to understand comedy. And so I spent hours and hours sort of debating, like, why something is funny and what's funny about it. And one of the things that comes up a lot is juxtaposition. Is that kind of one of the things that makes things funny is taking two things that don't belong together and forcing them together. And so Ask Liliana was me just going, what is the worst job you could have Liliana do? And I'm like, advice columnist. And then just, it was funny enough that I you know, I've done a bunch of them

just because it was funny. And like I said, a lot of them, I don't even know where they come from. Like, I have a running gag where Nicole Bolas does prank phone calls.

Like, I have no idea where that comes from. It just spoke to me. I think maybe because he's like, he's a mastermind, you know, he's a devilish

puppet master and I'm like, you know, for fun, what we do, blow off steam. He's going to make prank calls. Like I said, I don't know why. And then I have a series with Mizit being a stand-up comic. Maybe playing. Anyway, they're just things I think are funny.

I don't know quite where the stuff comes from. I mean, the other thing I do try is to shake up the kinds of humor, because I think just like my column, or like this podcast, or like my anything really, is I try to do a diversity of material,

and, I mean, I try to make it funny every day, but sometimes it's more slapstick-y, I do puns, sometimes I love doing kind of like the you gotta really know magic to get this reference ones I don't do those tons but you know ones where like you really gotta know magic to get this joke a little of that is fun

and I I definitely am having a good time it's funny because like I said I just passed my 500th comic or by the time you will have seen this I will have passed my 500th comic and I do 250 a year because it's 50 weeks, I just passed my 500th comic. By the time you will have seen this, I will have passed my 500th comic. I do 250 a year because it's 50 weeks. I take two weeks off and do the best of. So I do 50 weeks, five comics, one every weekday.

So that's 250 comics a year. And I just passed two years, so I hit my 500th comic. Which, by the way, kind of boggles my mind that I've done 500 comics. I remember when I posted my 475th or something Aaron Forsythe his response on Twitter that day was

I don't know if I've done 475 of anything so but I guess if you follow along between I mean my comic I'm not a comic my column later this summer is going to do its 600th column, which is also kind of mind-boggling.

But I guess I'm just stubborn in that I pick things I like and I do them. Like I said, the comic's been interesting in that it is, some days I wake up and I curse the comic because I'm like, you know, I have to come up with a comic. But the thing I love is, I love the fact that I force myself to do it. I think one of the things they say about the way to sort of keep your brain active is just make it, you know, in some ways I think of it as a workout for my brain, that like I'm in a job where like my brain matters, like I have to be creative and I have to sort of, you know, mentally

be there. And so in some ways I feel like when I wake up, doing my comic is like my little mental calisthenics. And also, the thing I find hilarious is I'll wake up with no idea what I'm doing. I mean, sometimes I have some idea. Sometimes I've done it the day before. Sometimes I've taken a picture. So sometimes I have an idea of what I'm doing. But other times, I have no idea.

And it's always amazing for me when I wake up and I have no idea. I have no idea what I'm doing. And then, like, I send out a comic I'm really proud of. That feels really good. It's a nice little simple thing. I love my columns, but they take a while to write. Even this podcast takes 30 minutes.

My comic doesn't have that kind of time. Anyway, I parked in the parking lot. Or in the space. I guess what today was really talking about was I'm hoping a little insight other than the fact that I get off topic a lot is that I I have a love of creativity

I love coming up with stuff I love humor I love magic I like making fun of magic and that I think the comic and the, I think the comic, and the reason I make the comic is, I want my social media to sort of portray me many-faceted in that, you know,

my column is one facet, me and my podcast is another, my blog is another, and I think my comic is just a different way. It's kind of my funny side, the side that kind of looks at things and says, isn't this kind of funny? And so,

anyway, I enjoy doing it. People seem to like it, so I will continue to do it. And, uh, anyway, that's today's. I don't know. I'm more reminiscing. I think from time to time, I like to sort of

introspective and look at my own stuff. I don't do that tons. Most of the time, I'll look at magic as a whole, but I feel every once in a while, it's nice to sort of self-examine. One of the things

I always talk about writing in general is writing helps you understand who you are as a person. It's not just writing. Communication helps you understand who you are as a person.

I think my blog and my writing and my podcast and my comics, all of them help me understand kind of who I am and that a lot of how I understand things comes from me trying to express. So anyway, a little deeper than you thought for me talking about my comics. Okay, so I'm out of work.

I gotta go. So thanks for listening all about Tales of the Pit. Tales from the Pit. I always mess that up. It's Tales from the Tales of the Pit. Tales from the Pit. I always mess that up. It's Tales from the Pit making fun of Tales from the Crypt which is an old style comic

from the 50s with horror. Anyway, it was fun talking about my comic and I guess it's time to go make the magic.