Think Like A Game Designer - Dafna Pleban — Editing Underwater, Building Creative Teams, and the Economics of Storytelling (#83)

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

About Dafna PlebanDafna Pleban is a veteran comic book editor and narrative developer whose career spans over 15 years across original and licensed publishing. Best known for her work at BOOM! Studios, Dafna has overseen hundreds of issues, helping launch award-winning titles like Lumberjanes, Fence, Seven Secrets, and Goldie Vance. She’s worked with major creators including Tom Taylor, Mark Waid, and Kieron Gillen, and has shepherded beloved franchises such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dune, Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, and Power Rangers.Dafna’s creative journey began at UCLA, where she majored in English after pivoting from microbiology and discovering her strengths lay in storytelling, not science labs. A lifelong comics fan, she broke into the industry through sheer hustle—running a podcast to score a press pass to Comic-Con, then turning that passion project into a marketing job at BOOM! and eventually into an editorial career.In this episode, Dafna reveals what it really means to be an editor in comics—from juggling creators and licensors to surviving the relentless pace of monthly publishing. We talk about the role of stress in the creative process, the economics behind launching a successful comic, and how great editors build trust, teams, and stories that resonate. Whether you’re looking to pitch your first comic or just want a glimpse behind the curtain of franchise storytelling, Dafna’s journey offers a masterclass in making creativity sustainable.Find Some of the Comic’s Dafna’s Worked on Here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Daphna Plebin. Daphna is a veteran comic book editor with over 15 years of experience in both original and licensed publishing. She's edited hundreds of comic book issues, including critically acclaimed series such as Lumberjanes, Fence, Seven Secrets, and Goldie Vance. She's also collaborated with notable creators like Tom Taylor, Mark Wade, and Kieran Gillen. She's worked on major franchises like Dune, Planet of the

apes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Star Trek, and the Power Rangers. And we have a lot to dig into in this episode about what makes these kinds of comics successful, how you're able to build these teams that are able to build successful comics, the business model, of comics and IP creation in general. We talk about the relationship between art and money and the importance of how the business model of what you're making matters for how the type of art that you're able to create. The difference between movies and comic books and games, we dig into all of that stuff. We talk about serialization and long-form narrative storytelling.

What makes the new modern era of comic books different than the olden era and what comes from web comics and new different types of releases and simultaneous releases and manga. We cross paths about what the creative process is like from gaming to comics to books to movies. And it's as I've reinforced many times throughout this podcast, being able to see the through lines of creative work where you're able to put hard work in and find a niche that's going to work for you and how you iterate and how you build according to your medium, how you build teams and work with successful teams of creatives. All of that stuff is here in this episode. It was really great to get to meet Daphna and I'm sure you're going to love her. So without any further ado, here is Daphna Plebin. Hello and welcome.

I am here with Daphna, Plebben. Daphna, I'm so excited to finally have this conversation. Me too. So I normally, and I will get to this, I love starting and kind of going into the wayback machine and kind of getting your origin story. But as we were prepping for this, you made a comment I just have to kind of dig into, which is saying, you know, don't stress. We're giving you the kind of lay of the land of how the podcast goes.

And you said, you know, you're telling an editor not to stress. My whole job as an editor is stress. I'd love for you to unpack that. I want people to understand what this means and what the life of an editor is like. Well, I mean, I know in different mediums and in different formats, an editor can have a lot of meetings. In comic books, and specifically I was in monthly comics for the first 14 years of my career. it had a very specific meaning, which was you're already late.

In that, like, as a comic book editor, you are not only working on the issue that's in production now. You're prepping all the materials for the issue that's to come. You're putting to bed the issue that just went to press, and you're doing this on a monthly cycle. The irony is it takes more than a month to write and draw, to produce a comic book period. And so a big part of your job is like, I call it laundering disappointment on all sides. And not in a bad way, but everyone is human. Everyone's going to get a hiccup. Someone's going to get sick.

Someone's going to have something important crop up. And sometimes people are just, you know, they're drawing a blink, especially in a creative process. Drawing a blink, I think is actually part of the creative process. but that like collision of the creative process that is, I kind of liken it to like a hose that's just kind of spewing water about. And then the rigidity of a narrative that runs on a schedule, you as the editor is the one that has to get all of that spewing water going in a direction at a regular pace. My metaphors are all over the place today.

So that might also be an example of why editors are always a mess. But that you're you're talking to your writer and you're talking to your artist, you're talking to your colors, and you're talking to your letter, you're talking to your publisher, you're talking to your licensor. And that's just one book. And for a lot of monthly editors, and again, my experience is for the longest time at one company, but I suspect the way that wings have solved a flying problem independently on different continents. I suspect a lot of editors at different places that face the same challenge of a monthly comic release schedule

have adapted to the same goal and share similar scar tissue. So it's, yeah, you're stressed, but it is, one of those things that now that I have a different role as a managing editor and I'm not in a medium that is more graphic novels and has a yearly or quarterly cadence, I have discovered that I don't know who I am when I am not underwater. When someone asks, how are you? And I could be like, oh, things aren't bad. I have a panic attack because now I have to develop a personality that is not

not harried. And I haven't had to do that in 14 years. Wow, that was way too long of an answer. No, no, no, no. No, it's exactly what I wanted. So thank you. And again, this is why I chose to start here, because the comment, as you phrased it, was really interesting to me that you made before we started recording. And this idea that of stress as a way of living, a stress as a mode of career, is something I'm really interested in because, yes, there's a certain amount of positive stress. that comes in, right? One of the phrases I like to use is deadlines are magic, right? You have a month of deadline.

The comic has to happen. It's going to happen. It's incredible, you know, when I first started as a game designer, I didn't know anything about game designing, but I knew if I didn't turn it over this assignment by the time it was due, I was going to get fired. So I found no way to get it done, right? And so there's a degree to which that you can accomplish incredible things by creating in essence, stress, right?

Deadlines and pressures and constraints. And then there's another side of this where when when stress becomes a mode of living that it can actually take over and become, you know, a straight jacket almost that you could be living a dream, right? You're, you know, and we'll get back into again how you got in the comics, but presumably this is a dream career that you got into and suddenly you find yourself just constantly feeling stressed or frazzled or not, you know, not realizing that, wait a minute, this isn't, you know, I'm not able to enjoy this in the same way. So, you know, it's great that you're

able to kind of realize that. And I think it's great to highlight for people that, you know, might see this as all sunshine and roses that it's really not. And there's, there's a lot of tradeoffs you have to make as a creative and as someone that's managing creatives. But what you just said about deadlines are magic is also something that I think is the value of having to make a decision. I think for so many creatives, you know, there's the blank page, right? And a deadline's a horizon to make a decision. So much of writing is taking a path. And so much of drawing is putting the pen to paper. And I've seen people who have all the time in the world to work on their dream project. But because there's no deadline and they don't have to answer to anyone, it takes decades.

It takes years. It never finishes. Deadlines, I think, take the kind of amorphous thing and like you said, it forces it through sit. You have to make a decision here or it's not going to happen. And oftentimes, nine out of ten, the decision that is made is the best decision. You could, you could say, well, I should have done it this and I should have done that way, but you didn't. And that's okay. And it's actually not one is better than the other. It's just a new challenge.

And then you iterate off of that. And so I think the problem is when you get to the point of your job where stress is debiless is debilitating and you can't make a decision, that's the time to kind of reassess and see if you've gotten all you could out of that lifestyle for a bit. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I mean, I think like I don't, I don't believe in writers block, right? I don't believe that you can't find ideas. I believe in fear. I believe that you're afraid of judgment. You're afraid of not good enough. And then that stops people from moving forward. And then deadlines are one of the most powerful tools might be the most powerful tool.

to get you past that because it's, you know, in the same way that when you're, you know, if you're a kid writing your, you guys a term paper do at the end of the term. Yeah. And you spend all, you know, all semester not doing anything. And all of a sudden it's due tomorrow. And you're like, all right, I'm going to crack open some red bowls and I'm going to make this happen tonight because it's got to get done. I did that way too many times. It's been going in college.

But I've learned. Yeah, that's basically it. But so what I learned was like from being, you know, the kind of the fear of, of this deadline. and this pressure made me get things done. Now I have a healthier relationship to these things because I set more granular deadlines for each part of the process, so it's less complete madness all at the end. But all right, I want to dig into your process quite a bit here,

but I did promise and I do want to get into your origin story because I believe that you started, you broke into the industry from entertainment weekly before you got into comics, and I don't know what your kind of real, how you kind of got into this world and what got you interested. So let's let's let's let's let's let's let's learn a little bit more about your backstory before we dig into the the process more.

I mean, I was an intern, but how I got there you said about term papers. Um, I came to L.A. to study microbiology. I was, you know,

grew up in Fresno. Not a lot of Jews in Fresno. So had a lot of time on my hands to read comics. A lot of time with my hands be good at my schoolwork. Um, and, And so I came to UCLA to study biology. The problem is, is that I had undiagnosed ADHD. But at the time, I had that kind of self-loathing of, oh, I'm just garbage.

I'm just stupid and I can't do this. So instead of asking for help or seeing if there's some other issue than personal, I just failed all my classes, distracted myself. with taking on as many jobs as I could. I worked at a comic store. I'd been reading comics since I was a kid. But I worked at a comic book store. I worked at the school newspaper.

I worked at the computer lab. And I did all three of those. And I think I worked at the food commons for a bit to just kind of like cover the costs of things. So I wouldn't be a disappointment to my parents. And it didn't help. But ultimately, I had minored in English. And the thing about the. the deadline and the term paper is if you are if you are an English major and I'm not saying

writing is very hard people are like it's cheating or it's making things up it's not it's very hard to to make a case and then compel people and commit to what you are writing but it is something that you could be thinking you're not doing for hours and then when that deadline looms and there is do or die, all the thoughts have a chance to kind of funnel through and finally coalesce. You can't do that in biology. You can't start your titration two hours before it's due. It's already too late by the time the natural instinct of fear for someone like me kicks in. And so ultimately in school, I did excel more in English, graduated that very late in English. but the thing I discovered in the school was this distraction, I guess you could call it,

but in my case I think I learned a lot of skills doing that. So I loved comic books, worked at a comic book store, did that so I could put my paycheck back into buying more comics with the employee discount. And I went to ComCon for the first year. I believe it was between my sophomore and junior year. Drove from Fresno, took my little brother, picked up my best. friend. And it was when you could still go to Comic-Con and buy tickets at the door. I did that, that, like, Odyssey across California, you know, broke college students. So I'm staying at my friend's

place at UCSD, which is nowhere near the convention, as I'm sure you know, slept in the car because my friend was popular and had a party. And Comic-Cat's so important. And I get there. That first day is just a crowded mess. And that second day, as I'm waiting. to buy my pass, I see there's a press line. And I see that they just go in. And at the time, I think they also let the people with press pages into junkets. So you didn't even have to go to Hallage or Ballroom 20. You could just go to this tiny little in my head panel just for you and 20 other people. So I thought the reason I didn't enjoy Comic Con was because I paid for it. and I had to like hang out in a crowd.

And so the next year I and I worked at the newspaper doing production design. I was like, hey, I'll write. I'll review comics for the paper because I just wanted that byline. I just wanted that byline. I was already reading comics. I was already blogging to it with my friends. I just have to like take out some curse words and some hyperlinks. I get that byline and my scam would be complete.

I'd go to Comic Con for free. And so I did that for a couple of years. and then I had the nerve to graduate, which was very touch and go. And then I couldn't work at the school newspaper. And I'd have to pay for Comic-Con again? No, no, thank you. Hard pass. I still worked at the computer lab and had access to all of the library equipment.

And I had convinced my boss that podcasting was the future. And I knew I couldn't hit a deadline. And I knew I didn't actually enjoy writing. It just did it to go to Comic-Con for free. So I thought I'd fake a podcast. because that's considered journalism. So I learned how to edit an audacity. I learned how to make a Nuculus CMS blog page with an RSSV

that would feed into Apple. I learned how to design a logo. I roped in my comic store a friend and we, you know, I was like, yeah, two comic store employees reviewing comics. Like, that seems real. Here's the thing. Faking a podcast is just making a podcast. You can't fake it, right?

I was like, I'll do a couple of episodes to make it seem real. I'll interview a creator or two and really populate it. And so if they check it, it's the cover is pristine. Yeah. So I just had a podcast. And that podcast got me into Entertainment Weekly at the time they were considering podcasts. And so they wanted an intern in that division. It ultimately didn't work out.

So I ended up working in the blog side of things. and I kept doing the podcast. And I had one of the people that I had interviewed as part of, you know, the scam to make it look real. He didn't know that was Chip Mosier at Boom Studios, at the time was in marketing. And he said, hey, I'm starting, you know, a podcast. We want Mark Wade, who was the editor-in-chief at the time, wants a, you know, we'll do a 15 minutes of Wade. You know how to do a podcast. You love comics.

come be my marketing assistant and help set it up. And it was like, I get a work in comics. I don't have to move to New York. I live in L.A. This is great. I love Mark Wade. I mean, that big fan of his work. And so I said, yes, but I also want to be an editorial assistant. And a year in, I'm not good at marketing. I just, it, it, not that it feels like lying, but it is a way of being on and you have to sell something that you didn't make. And so at the end of the year, I beg to just be an assistant editor. And then from then on, you know, I was an editorial, uh, assistant editor, editor, editor, um, and I haven't looked back. Um, so, and I haven't like done a podcast. Yeah, yeah. So that's, it's, it's really interesting and I mean like you know quite a very varied path of uh trying to scam your way into

Comic-Con yeah i just working in comics turning into a turning into a 20-year career or whatever um and uh and so the idea of um you know trying a bunch of different things that kind of get you in the door or get you adjacent to the thing that you love right you love comics so okay i'm going to try writing about comics okay that wasn't so great all right i'm going to try podcasting about comics and then that got you another thing you know opportunity at the entertainment weekly and then you got a job from that podcast to try a marketing role and you didn't really like marketing and then you got to editing. So you're kind of jumping around and staying, staying close to the thing you love, finding where that natural match is of your skill set and the value you can provide,

what I kind of called your superpowers, which is like, I love to do this. I'm good at it and it has economic value, right? Like the world needs and serves a purpose. Finding the center of that bull's eye there. And so what is it about editing? that you felt particularly suited for, that this suddenly now was your home and where you were able to thrive as opposed to, whereas marketing and writing were not.

I realize I don't particularly like my own writing. I also don't know if I necessarily have a specific creative voice that I think people need to see, I need to hear. I tend to be a fan of people, a fan of other things, and I tend to be very evangelical on giving. people to like the same thing I like. And so that kind of suits yourself in marketing to a degree. But in editing, what was so cool and specifically Combook editing is you also get to put together your favorite people in a room and see what they do and see what they come up with. And so,

you know, as I spent more time actually at the company, even just as a marketing assistant and seeing what editors do, they are finding artists that they love. and they're introducing them to writers that they love. And then they're giving them the conditions to make something that they can be proud of. And, you know, also giving them starts to their career. I think especially as an indie publisher, we had a touch more agility to be able to bring people who maybe haven't drawn comics before or haven't considered as a career and give them their start in a way that's something like the big two

who would need a certain level of clear skill to, put them on something or at least a resume, right, or backlog would need. And so seeing that what an editor did in comics wasn't just copy editing, which I wasn't good at, which is what I love about editing comics is your editing dialogue. So it can sound naturalistic, so it doesn't have to be correct. And you are talking to writers about story. And you're basically getting to me like a first row seat to your favorite stories being made. Like, I've always loved hearing, you know, director commentary or writer commentary and what were their thinking and what was their intent and comparing it to what I got from the work.

And now I got to have a direct conversation and a direct dialogue with someone who's making something I'm really excited by. And so, yeah, I think that's what I really responded to even as an editorial assistant. and then that's what I really respond to as part of my work. Yeah, so it seems like you're an editor in a comic book sense is more like a producer in a movie sense, right? Like that you're really trying to put together all the puzzle pieces, manage the process, solve problems as they come along and help sort of empower the creatives and kind of shepherd the vision across the finish line. Is that, does that sound right?

Yeah, and a little bit of studio exec too, because a co-part, especially at indie publishers, you're also developing original pitches. You're reaching out to creators and asking if they have an idea. You are trying to convince your bosses, hey, say yes to this, put money into this. Let's see what happens to it. Oftentimes, it's just a writer and you're pairing them with an artist. It's an artist and you're pairing them with a writer. And so your matchmaker and producer and studio exec and intern kind of all wrapped into one.

All right. All right. Now, this sounds like a perfect segue to start really diving into this process in more detail. Because I, like you, a huge comic book fan, grew up reading comic books. It's the thing I spent almost as much time as I spent playing games, reading comics. I felt like I had kind of, you know, all the things that my parents told me to stop doing. I felt like had kind of come to an apex when I started working on the versus system Marvel and DC trading card games. All of my comics experience, all my games experience came together and take that parents. Ha ha ha. And they were, of course, eventually very happy for me once they realized you could actually make a living doing this stuff. But what I want to know is I've always wanted to make my own comics. In fact, I think we even had a conversation a while ago talking about potentially doing an ascension comic. I don't think it was, I think you talked to George about it, but we talked to boom media while you were an editor there about possibly doing this. But I, you know, for someone that's excited about bringing a comic book idea to life, how do we think about that?

How did you specifically, at Boom? What makes you decide, yes, this is a green light. This is a good idea. What is a, like, let's just, let's start digging into all of this fun stuff. And I'm also, I'm interested in both in kind of original new IP, new ideas. And I know that you've also worked on a lot of major IPs. You've launched comics for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Planet the Apes, Dune, Power Rangers, a bunch of others that Star Trek, I think, also a lot of cool major brands

that, of course, have their own following. But I'm, so I'm interested in some of those stories, but primarily around. around like, okay, new idea, new thing, we want to bring it to life. What does that look like? So I, you know, was working at a publisher and a publisher has a particular identity. And Boom Studios in particular at the time has, you know, the Boom Studios imprint, which was, I called it the FX Network, summer blockbuster, kind of four quadrant genre plus space, think like 824, but also think, you know, Blumhouse, right?

or justified. And then Booms Box was the Y-A space that tended to be all ages. But for like an older readership, you know, we think there are more women reading Boombox than they're necessarily reading Boom Studios, though I would argue. I'm an example of someone who's going to devour everything. And then there's Kaboom, which is the kind of kids imprint. And then we had Archaia later, which was more literary. That's where Slaughterhouse Five lived.

That's where the book we did for Roxanne Gay, The Sacrifice of Darkness, Live. And so... Okay, so wait, just I want to make sure I understood this correctly, and some of these phrases might go past some of our audience here. So when you talked about four quadrants, and then these are basically, you have different imprints within the publisher that all have different target audiences, and that's how you decide what your, which types of comics will go with each one.

Is that right or is there more to that flesh out for people? No, that's pretty straightforward. And when I say Four Quadrant, you know, I mean, it's probably four quadrant. It's probably not the right, correct term for the Boom Studios imprint. It was probably more Boombox, which, you know, like, that's where the creators who did the Adventure Time comics, like, did their originals, which I felt like was something that a lot of people could like men, women, kids, adults, everything in between. But yeah, you know, basically, and I'm just speaking from my specific experience,

but basically every publisher has a specific audience in mind for their imprints. And as an editor, depending on where you are kind of allowed to bring in pitches or if you can bring in pitches for any of the imprint, you want to give that pitch the best possible chance of getting greenlit if you are helping this creator that you're excited by develop it. And so oftentimes, you know, I would be excited by someone, want to work with them, think probably they might have a story that's in the realm of a genre of some sort that I think Boom Studios could do well. And I would reach out to them and see if they're even interested in comics if they didn't already work in comics or if they are working in comics, see if they're interested in a creator-own or working with our company. I think Fence is a really good example of, you know, from the ideating to existing of that process.

Fence is a Y-A sports comic for a boombox imprint. It's BL. It's so it's queer. It's like the boys are a little flirty. The swords are crossing a lot. And Cisbecat was a writer of a book series that I had read as a fan and wanted to see. if she had anything else. And I read it and it shared a lot of like,

the series is called Captorprints. It had a lot of genre components and it felt like someone who probably liked the same things that I like growing up and might have a story to tell in comics. And she was primarily a novelist. So in this case, you're coming from a, you know, you like this writer. You reach out to them saying, hey, do you have anything that would fit in our portfolio? Is there a scenarios or what is it? what is it like? Is it can writers pitch you? Are there scenarios where that has worked out well?

What makes those more likely to succeed or not if somebody's coming inbound and saying, you know, somebody listening to this who's got a great comic idea? Maybe that an artist, maybe they're a writer. They want to see that come to life. What does that process look like? Or is that uncommon? It's not necessarily uncommon, but most publishers like have a no solicitation. Like you can't just email unsolicited pitches. We legally, oftentimes can't open them or can't look at them, in part because there aren't really new ideas. You know, every single person, every single editor I know has gotten a men in black, but for

imaginary friends story, like for their entire career. And that story has been done a thousand times, right? We've had one called Imagine Agents. I think if was a movie that had the same idea. Like, it is a cool idea. It's not necessarily something that only is. specific person can ideate it out of the blue and no one else can do that. But if you were a person who maybe didn't know that side of the industry or didn't get exposed to all these pitches all the time,

you might think that's my idea and they ripped it off. And so to kind of prevent people for thinking that because it's just simply not true, we can't necessarily look at unsolicited pitches. But there are, you know, I know Viz has the OneChat program that has like an honest, online submission form that has like a release. Archaia had an online submission form that has a release. So if it's coming to the pipeline of an unsolicited pitch, it's usually solicited in a very structured manner that has like rights release tied to it. So we could be protected as much as the creator.

And the truth of the matter is, unfortunately, the comic book industry is like any other entertainment industry. it's really hard to get a yes and for someone to commit to spending money on a complete unknown. And so oftentimes the better chance for someone who wants to do a comic to be seen or heard is to be big in another field to have a preexisting fan base or an audience, be it, you know, a streamer or a prose writer or, you know, an actor. or a TV writer or someone who can come with a degree of bona fides that can answer, you know, the people who are cutting the checks, like how much of a risk is this? And so that is a little bit moreizing. Can you make me a little bit of a bigger picture?

No, I appreciate that. And look, the same is true across any of these creative fields, right? It's very hard if you're on your own and you have nothing to show for it to be able to get somebody to pay attention and take a financial risk on you. you can establish that you are either a good writer or have an audience or have something else to say or some other hook that brings people in. Of course, that makes sense. When you talk about the financials and the risks associated with, if you don't mind, I'd love to get a better sense of what that looks like. What does it cost, generally speaking? I know there's obviously got to be ranges here in terms of like time and money to launch a comic. What does success look like in terms of, you know, is it selling a thousand units or 10,000 units or like what's a range? Because I honestly have no idea what like success looks like in your industry, you know, relative to mine. I can send after this an article if you want to share it with your audience. Jim Zub has done a great breakdown of independent comics and sort of like what publishing looks like from an independent, like from someone who's self-publishing or is publishing through image.

And I don't know if it's necessarily worthwhile to go into specific like page rate numbers in part because they have changed. over the years, even as my time, like what I started with and how it ended, and it's probably changed since the year I've been out of monthly comics. But generally, you know, a comic book is a collaborative effort for the most part, unlike manga, where manga tends to be one writer, one artist, and they're writing and drawing for themselves, and it's black and white. Western comics, you know, tend to be color. And in the monthly comic space, you know, you have a have a writer and artist in part because you need to split the jobs up so that you can actually hit that schedule in a reasonable amount of time. You also oftentimes have an inker and you have

a colorist and you have a letter and all of those people have to get paid and have to get paid a page rate. And if it's a bigger company, oftentimes there are royalties involved with it. So you should probably have an accounting department as a publisher. And publishers also paying the printer and distribution and the editor to edit the book, cover artists. And so these costs rack up relatively quickly. And so the number of issues that you have to sell to not only break even and to make money is very volatile, especially since the market we're selling into, the direct market is a coalition of independent stores. It's not like you're just selling to a Barnes & Nobles or an Amazon that can order on these big numbers. You have to almost like

you have to convince almost every single individual store to take a chance on you. On top of that, the direct market, for the most part, is non-returnable. Mass market is. And so you sell much bigger numbers of graphic novels in the mass market, but at the NB, they could return back to you and you have to give all that money back. In the direct market, part of the reason why retailers are so conservatives and they're ordering is for the most part, but this can be different publishers that have a relationship with if Diamond exists after this podcast in a certain way, it's not returnable, which is good

from a publisher's perspective, right? They don't have to give the money back at the end of the day, but from a retailer perspective, if they buy something they can't sell it, they're out of it. And so that all those kind of tensions go into, you know, what does success look like in the direct market versus the mass market? Do you have the ability to wait for the mass market to give you a bigger return on investment if you just break even in the direct because you're releasing it monthly and then you're collecting it.

Now it's a book that exists in both direct and mass market. And so, you know, roughly, that's the other thing that a lot of these independent publishers look as a profit stream is the IP. They represent it in the market. They, you know, our company, or when I was at Boom, you know,

we had before the Disney Fox merger, Fox, I think, had a minority stake, so they had a first look deal. I think after that, I think we had a first look deal with Netflix for a bit. And so basically, the other thing that oftentimes gets negotiated when you're working on an original project is the ability to represent the media rights in the marketplace. There is, of course, contracts that break down, you know, profit sharing and all of that stuff and who owns the copyright. And the kind of standard in the industry right now is the copyright stays 100% with. the creators and you're negotiating a term of representation in these kind of secondary IP markets. And so, you know, there's this accusation a lot of times like, oh, this is just an IP play.

They just want to make a movie. Sure, sometimes that could be seen as the case. The truth of the matter is, is no one working in comics just wants to make a movie. We don't get paid enough. We don't get paid movie money and we don't get paid necessarily the most livable wage in publishing. We want to make comics. We're here because we're stupid. And so also, the best way to get someone excited on the lot is to make a good comic. So

at the end of the day, the way that I as an editor always looked at it is like if it does sell, you know, as a movie or a TV show, and actually we had some that also sold as pros, like Little Brown did prose tie-in novels for Goldie Vance. That's great. That's more money to my

creator's pocket so they keep making comics for me. Right. Yeah. Well, and I think it's crazy to me to view this as a negative, right? Like, the idea, and I'll be transparent about this on my side too, right? So I make, I make tabletop games. I also make digital games. Digital games are very expensive, very hard to make, whereas a tabletop game is a lot more economical to make. And we can try new IP and new stories and new mechanics with a tabletop game. And if it resonates and people love it, then I'll invest more and turn it into a digital game. And my hope is that we, we could turn some of these IPs into animated series and movies and things like that. And like, I love, you know, I love the stories I'm telling. I'm going to tell it whatever mediums are available. But it seems just like totally rational to be able to test out your stories in a medium that is more economical to try and put out there. And then if people love it, then you start investing more. And so comics.

I'm nodding so hard and people can't see it. Yeah, it just seems like a rational way to be a creative, you're there. Because like, as you mentioned, and I think you, I'm really glad you went into so much detail on this. because like how much risk is at each stage of the puzzle, how much work it takes, right? You know, it's one thing to say, like somebody's going to buy the latest Wolverine comic because it's Wolverine,

but it's another thing to say, hey, here's a brand new comic with a brand new title that I've got to get you interested and got to get you hooked on. And as a local comic book store, if you buy it, you're taking the risk, right? And to try to put it into a mass market store, as a publisher, you're taking a massive risk.

Like, those are huge challenges to face. And so to not have some asymmetric upside, if you will, the opportunity for something to really blow up and to capitalize it across multiple medium would make it nearly impossible to take bets like that. Well, and I also think of it as in a con, like you just, you said it about how tabletop is cheaper, digital is more expensive, so you can be more agile and more experimental in this tabletop space. That's very similar, I feel, to comics, to monthly comics. Yes.

Monthly comics in particular, you're breaking, you're itemizing that cost over each month. There is money out to the creators and money in from the retailers. And that lets you, I think, also, you can tell stories that are so big in scope that if it was a movie or a TV show, even now in the era of, you know, the volume, like, it's expensive to do certain genres in those other mediums. And in comics, there's still a cost, but drawing something is a different, costs than hiring, getting a set, building a design, doing it in SFX. And so it actually lets people be really ambitious in storytelling, or not even ambitious.

It is able to use genre to tell personal. You don't have to be restricted on what the story has to be. And for whom in comics in quite the same way as if you're spending this amount of money to do the special effects, you need to get this amount of people to come in. So it has to appeal to this amount of people. And in comics, you don't have those same challenges. There are still challenges and there are still preconceptions, right? There is still this preconception that women don't read comics.

I do think that preconception also prevents people from going into the store and discovering there's something for them there. And oftentimes they're reading them in the mass market. But it does let you be more experimental because it doesn't cost $200 million to take a shot. And so there's such a range possible in storytelling. I do still think you have to convince people who's going to buy this, who are we going to sell it to? You still have to do all of those dances. It's just a different metric that's a bit easier to game.

Not easy, but easier. No, no, none of this is easy. And that's sort of the whole point, right? Like you want to sort of set yourself up for success and leverage the strengths of the mediums that you have. And I just, a point I like to reemphasize is like people, there's this kind of myth that there's the,

you know, there's the creative and then there's the money people, right? There's the business and there's the art. And I think that is, you cannot help but intertwine those things, right? Unless you just want to do something as a hobby on your own

and take as much time as you want and probably it'll never actually get done, when you actually need to build things for people and a way that is sustainable, it matters, right? When I make a game that's a collectible game where we're releasing new content, every quarter, every month, it's a different type of design, it's a different type of approach,

it's different type of marketing that if I'm releasing something that's a one-off thing that's meant to stand alone or a subscription-based model or everything else, it's a different kind of game, it's a different kind of experience. It's the same would be true with comics. If I'm going to release a monthly comic versus a graphic novel, quarterly or annually, versus a regular novel versus, you know, a movie, every single one of those things is going to have different challenges, different constraints, different upsides, different downsides. And I think, you know, I'm really fascinated by this stuff. because again, I'm like you, I'm just a super fan of comics and of the medium in general.

And I'm curious how you feel about how this is trending now. So we've kind of come into, you know, a little bit of your past and a little bit of the present. And then kind of, I'd love to start kind of shifting to how you think about how the future is going, right? There's a lot more of these kinds of web tunes, web comics becoming a modern medium. Obviously, the fact that comics have become such a gateway to, you know, other forms of like Hollywood media is a big deal. AI and creator conflagrations and combinations and things is a big deal. I'd love to get your thoughts and kind of you can take it in any direction you want in terms

of like where do you see the industry going? What do you see the kind of future of comic book creation looking like? You said something a bit earlier that I think kind of plays into my answer here of like artist commerce, right? Like to make art at a certain scale or even at all is money. even if you're doing it as a hobby. Unless you're a writer or a cartoonist and all you're doing is prose or you're writing and drawing for yourself and not even getting into the fact that if you have time to do that

atop of either having a job to pay where you live or you have family help so you can just focus on your art. There is money involved whether we want to admit it or not. But on top of that, I feel like art has always been tied to commerce, right? Like if you want to self-publish as a comic book creator and you can't draw, you're going to have to pay an artist. Or if you're going to find someone to do it for free, they're going to have to have some sort of benefit from doing that. Do they own part of the IP? Do they have time to do that?

How are they able to draw your book for free if you're not paying them? Then on top of that, like, it'll just be like catty. Like, you know, people are like Shakespeare's literature. He was doing it for the queen. He was getting paid. He was Michael Bay. You know, the fucking Catholic church was. the biggest like art monger and you know so many other mongers they you know michael angelo and da vinci

they're all getting paid they're they're patrons of art that are funding these things these this isn't art that's being made in a vacuum this isn't even art that's being made for the artist's intent they're often working on their skills and trying to tell their stories in the context of what the person who's cutting the check thinks they are buying and thinks that they want. And, you know, I think it ties also to how much I love licenses. I think there's a perception in comics that, you know, licenses are are less valid or a less valid creative expression than an original comic. And to me, I feel like they're both valid and they're both interesting in creative ways, but everyone's lying to themselves if they think that there's any form of art that isn't in some

way an expression of commerce. Because if you can do art and not get paid for it and you can do art and do that as your life, you're coming from money and you're saying something without intending to. Sorry, that was a sidebar. But to your point of like where the future of comics is, I think, you know, I think part of what excited me about joining Viz is I think the direct market, as much as I love it and I love it with every fiber of my being. I love the monthly format. I love serialization. It is, I think, what got me at the core of what I really love about comics is long-form narrative storytelling. I love stories that took five years to

unfold. I love not recognizing a character at the end of a journey even at the beginning. And, you know, you get that in television, but I think long-form serialized storytelling and television outside of soaps is a relatively new phenomenon, but comics have been doing it since the 70s. But, But web comics, you know, I think, one, you see it from Korea, you see it from Japan, you see it from China. Webcomics are the primary form of how comics are read and created and digested. And the cool thing about web comics is the barrier of entry for someone to participate or to be published is very low. It's time, right? It's effort.

It's skill. You might have to pay an artist if you can't draw. But in theory, you don't need to necessarily be on a. platform to make a comic. But the cool thing about those platforms, like Netflix, right, for TV here is if someone's coming for a thing they already love on this platform, they might see your thing there as well. And that's also where the audience is. Like, if you look at the Western market, manga is, I think, the biggest, it sells more than DC and Marvel combined. And manga has a huge web comic space.

The Shonen Jump releases serialized comics online. They then print out collections. Viz in particular does simul. So like it releases in Japan, a chapter. We release it in English at the same time. And so that has a lower barrier of entry for readers. They don't have to get into a car. They don't have to like break out their wallet.

quite the same way, though they're, you know, you do sometimes have to pay for chapters or access. But you also don't have, I think, the observer effect of going into a store and someone's seeing what you're buying and seeing what you're reading. It lets the reader be a touch more experimental and open to new things. And so I think web comics in particular is the future of the medium, both because I think, you know, print is is a very hard sell now beyond a collectible kind of item. But it's like low barrier of entry for the reader and low barrier barrier entry for the creator. And I think we're already doing it.

I think we all live on our phone. We all live on our computer. I read more of my phone. You know, I have all of these books. But be honest of you, I read on my phone comics. I read on my phone books. I listen to an audio book. And that's where the rest of the world is at too.

So in terms of where comics is going. America. I think we're going where Asia has gone for the last 15 years and we're just catching up. But I also, you know, fear to a degree. You mentioned AI. I have a knee-jerk reaction to it. I think one, at a certain point, if everyone's creating art with AI, what is the AI going to steal from, right? Like, if it's just huffing its own farts for lack of a better term, like at one point, what does art

look like if it's just recycling what it's digested and then no one's making anything new? And then on top of that, right? Well, and then on top of that, like, I think we don't value if we are saying this is something that can just be

generated by a machine and we don't want human interaction, it's going to we're going to then not value the people creating it. Like it's just going to come for, like if we are devaluing the people who make it for us, at a certain point, we don't have to enter the equation at all. So I'm not going to,

I don't want to participate in my own kind of future destruction, so to speak. But I also just think there's something really amazing watching a piece of art come to life from a sketch. to pencils, to inks, and seeing how, like, the intent solidifies and changes through the act of executing it that you don't get from AI. And I know I sound very blanket about that, but I have yet to see a case be made that paying a human being to find their voice by the act of doing isn't

always better. Yeah, no, I mean, it's obviously a very controversial topic and it's something that you can't avoid as a creative nowadays because the train has left the station in many ways and there's a lot of things that are going to change. And I look to try to say what are the best ways that we can preserve what we value from the past and potentially leverage technology to do better in the future. Right. So for example, like, you know, I really like having a physical comic collection. I still have my favorite graphic novels set up on my on my wall and I still like to have those things. But I also agree that like, it's a lot easier to read it on my phone and producing and reading and consuming new stuff. It's rare. I pretty much only buy new comics or graphic novels when I go to Comic Con just as kind of more of a thing I like to do rather than otherwise I'm just consuming it,

you know, on my phone or my Kindle or whatever. And so there's a chain. They're very useful. They're very useful to share. Like I've got two copies of my favorite DC comic of all time so that I can lend them out. I have DC New Frontier, freaking rules. I actually also have like the single issues so that I can like make people like what I like. And it's easier with a physical thing.

Then let me say you file and you're never going to open it with a thousand files. You never open. Yeah, that's right. I gift I gift books a lot more than I'm ever going to give you. Oh, I sent you a Kindle file or an audible file or whatever. That's not quite the same. It's like, no, no, here's the book. Here's the thing. So there is something there for sure. And again, I don't think, I think Neil Gaiman's Sandman is my favorite comic series of all time. And he had an expression that, you know, books are sharks, right? That there's a, you know, sharks have been around for millions and millions of years, somehow evolutionarily, even though many other things have come and gone, sharks stay.

And I think the books are always going to be here in some form or another, even if, you know, as this sort of, you know, collectible physical thing. I think that human creators are going to be there, are going to be here always because we do value that creative force as a human and that what that looks like as we integrate with digital tools right from the difference of I have to actually physically draw on a piece of paper to I can draw on a tablet and I can have tools to help me with shading and coloring and all the different things that colors of the rainbow and things I couldn't access before and I can have an AI that can help me I can draw a quick sketch and it can help me turn it into something that's far beyond

what I could do personally I think there's degrees here that we're going to have to play with over the coming years. Yeah, I can't deny that there are things that we call AI that before we called machine learning. Like, I think actually a lot in animation and Spiderverse and what I love about Spider-Verse is the way that they mimic inking on these 3D shapes. But, you know, in that respect, what they were using that tool to do was to, they came up with an idea themselves on paper. and then they gave it input of themselves as a tool to apply it more consistently. I think as much as the kind of there's no unringing the bell, there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube when it comes to generative AI. I think there has been what feels like in the same vein as the incitification of the rest of our social networks,

a intentional misanthropy in its application. You know, an intentional people are inconvenient. If I didn't have to pay them, if I didn't have to talk to them, if I didn't have to engage with them, if I didn't have to take their thoughts and feelings into account, I'd be so much happier. And so in the current way that the toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube, it feels very violent. And it feels very dehumanizing. And so I don't quite yet have my calm demeanor to necessarily be like, okay, let's see how it looks and how we use it and how it can help people in a couple of years time. Because the people who are primarily operating it don't seem to consider me as part of the future or anyone other than themselves.

and I can't unknow the philosophy that I see in action. You know, I wish I could, but I'm on the internet. I'm reading things like everyone else. So I think for now, like, like, you know, books being sharks, the other thing is, is it's still the cheapest thing in the world to learn to draw. It takes longer, but you don't need a computer for it. You don't need someone's software that you did. make and you didn't program feeding off of things that you didn't draw or even know it's referencing.

So yeah, I do think there's a little kind of bitter joy that for now, you know, a pencil and a paper is still, you know, the tool of the people for a little bit longer. No, and again, I think I think there's always going to be value in those arts. And I think I want to, I like you, I don't want to end up in a world or just kind of you know, sleepwalk our way into a world where all of the joys of living a creative life are suddenly bled away from us because machines can do it better, right? And or they could do it cheaper or whatever, you know. So I do think that I have these conversations not as a, okay, well, the machines are going to take over. So we might as well, you know, capitulate or a, I, you know,

destroy all the machines and, you know, rebel against everything technological. I think there's got to be a middle path and it just, you know, requires, I think, a lot of thought and conversation from people that care and that are in the trenches to be able to give us the best chance of finding that path. So I appreciate the insight on your side here. And we can, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, it's like, I'm not a Luddite, right? I only have my career because of the internet. I only think I'm able to do my career because of the internet allowing me access to people

and doing creative writing and practicing my craft of giving feedback and saying, oh, I'm really excited and articulating why I like something. Like the act of another big part of being an editor is you have to articulate why something is or isn't working and then encourage a solution or moving continuously down that path. And that act of articulation came from the amount of internet fighting I did on my favorite Star Trek episode. The amount of internet fighting I did on why Young Justice is great and Tim Drake is the best Robin. That came because the internet gave me access to people to talk to. And I think, I think that's ultimately it.

When a tool is used to isolate or eliminate a person, I don't see the value of it. I don't think I'm in comics because I want to be able to do things by myself. I'm expressly in comics because I can't write or draw. I'm expressly in comics because I can't write or draw. But I want to be around when my favorite writer comes up with an idea or my favorite artist comes up with a design. I want to be the first person kind of peering through the window. and anything that says,

well, you don't need those people. I'm a lonely kid from Fresno. All I want to do is to be around other people who like the things I like. Why would I want to make the world emptier? Sorry. It's just like,

I think this conversation had let me articulate like why I find it so, my body like repels it so quickly. He's like, I don't want to be alone in a room. I had enough of that. It was boring. Yeah.

Well, that's, and then, you know, maybe this would be a good kind of, topic to circle back and end on because I think that you're hitting on a deep truth here, right? Not just that about the joy of creating, but the importance of community, the importance of collaborative community when we work together. Like I, I just had this thought the other day,

man, I was in the meeting with our team and we were dealing with, we're dealing with struggles. I mean, there was a lot of like, resource constraint challenges and trying to get a product, you know, get our new, we have a new set release coming out for SoulForge Fusion and trying to get it out on time and get the marketing ready and everything. It was a mess. But it was so joyful to be solving those problems together, like working with awesome people, making awesome things and helping each other grow. That's our kind of company motto. And that's like, well, all I want to do with my life. And so this degree of like that stating the value of collaborative creative struggle, I think is so important. And it is true, we don't want to lose that ever. Whatever that looks like,

it'll take all kinds of different forms, but there's something intrinsic to the human condition about that creative struggle that I think you've hit on that I think it's really important for people to really know and identify because a lot of times we think when we're in that struggle, a lot of times all we think about is the problems, right? That's like your job as an editor is to solve the problem. My job is the CEO to solve problems. And I've trained myself over time to really take that step back and be like, you know what? I'm really grateful for these problems. I'm really great for these challenges because it's going to be able to turn into something that we can be proud of and make the decisions, as you said, very much at the beginning of the

conversations, make those decisions that, you know, nine times out of ten, they're the right decisions, but either way, you're going to learn for them and you're going to move to the next thing because you put your creative work out there. You made your art. You put it out there. You built the community around it. And I think that's what keeps me going. And it sounds like that's a lot of what drives you. Yeah. I mean, I think you kind of actually, like, made me realize, like, I think when when people start, when someone starts to view people as the problem and not the point, it's then why are we making art or why are we making entertainment, right? There's an audience that's there to consume it.

But also, I think for me, like, I want to be making, like, if my collaborator is unhappy, then it's a failure on my part, right? Or there's something I can do to kind of get on the same page and see what's happening. And, yeah, I just, we're making these things to be consumed by human beings. And so we have to make it with other human beings. I don't know any other way to put it, you know, and just on a personal note, like, I always like the bridge crew in Star Trek, I've always just, I never wanted to be captain. I've always wanted to be data or Jordy or, well, I couldn't be Wharf. He had to stand the whole time.

But like, I wanted to be part of a team, you know, Justice League, young justice. Remember where I can sit down for a significant chunk of. Perfect, yeah. Okay. Troy had it nice, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. And so, okay, so then let's wrap this up then. For those that are out there that want, you know, because I don't, you're, you know, you're the first comic industry version I've had on the podcast, which is great because there's a lot of fascinating parallels

and as there always are between the different graded fields. And there's some things that are unique. For those that are interested in potentially getting into the field and want to have a dream of comics or working on comics in some way, what advice would you have for them? And then, you know, maybe you could also, for those that are interested to following more of the work

and the cool things you're doing could also tailor into where they can find the cool projects you're working on nowadays. I think my biggest advice is unlike film or TV, you don't, you can,

self-publishing is a very legitimate way into the industry and showing an editor what you can do. Be it self-printing a comic and bringing it to an editor convention and handing it to them and they can see your work in action It'll still cost because you'll pay an artist.

You still have to print it, but the cost of entry is so much lower than making a short film and getting a crew and getting everyone on board to produce something and then sending it to someone hoping they're going to sit and watch it. So self-publishing is how I found a lot of my favorite writers that I later brought on board. Another way in is you know, you may be someone who, you know, works in creative field as a video game writer or a TV writer, but you're not a name. You're not, you know, you're not the showrunner or something that already comes with their own audience. However, that's why I really love working on IP comics is if you make a connection with the editor who has read your stuff, be it a script or a self-published comic, they could bring you on board to an IP to write a story because the IP is the thing that's selling the book. and building a fan base through working on a franchise is a big way of not only getting your reps in writing or drawing. It's also a way of getting people to recognize your name separate from the thing. So a lot of writers that I work with on Power Rangers now are working on their own originals with a fan base that they have built through their work on Power Rangers.

And so I think looking at any opportunity to either get your finished work in front of someone, either if you self-publishing online, or just getting paid to do the craft and learn how to write a comic, suck for a bit by getting paid. Don't look for the perfect opportunity. Don't look. I'm only going to do an original. I'll only do a creator own. Just look.

to build a relationship with a person who is then like, this person has ideas. I love working with them and I want to see what their original is. And I think I'm not being as crisp as I want or as articulate as I want, but there aren't necessarily any bad paid opportunities when it comes to comics. Because you're either learning on someone else's time or you're building an audience or you're building a relationship with an editor who can vouch for you or share your work with other people who might be looking for someone else.

Yeah, this very much aligns with my experience in the game industry and from advice I've heard from others across different industry. When you're first getting started, do not worry about getting paid a bunch of money or getting the perfect right job. In fact, I think I advise working for free if you can't. Like whatever it is, like get, whether it's creating something yourself, doing some kind of work on, you know, adding value through the online forums. and events, like whatever you can do to get your foot in the door.

And then once you have some establishment, then you can kind of grow and start, try to get some more money and more setups. And similarly, I mean, this is the path I took. I started working on IP-based games, Marvel, DC, World of Warcraft, before I then jumped and started my own company and launched my own brand with Ascension, right? Trying to do that first would have been way, way more likely to fail because nobody knew who I was. So that ability to build yourself up is also great advice.

So I think that those things, you know, create something. on your own that you can just do and put out there so people could see the quality of your work, be willing to take the job that's not, you know, that's sort of adjacent to the job you want or not, you know, not worrying about trying to the perfect thing just so you can start getting, building relationships, showing that you're good to work with, getting experience, learning how things work, and, you know, leveraging whatever, you know, whatever opportunities and IP and whatever things can get you jump started to a audience that you might not otherwise have, whether that be through your other efforts, through IP, through working with a partner for

apprenticing under somebody who does have an audience, like all of those things, I think, are all great strategies. So thanks for sharing those. And if you can't write or drop, be an editor. There you go. Yeah, I think your life trajectory tells what I think is the most important part of success in an industry is just, you know, persistence and then and being willing to try a bunch of different things till you find the place where you fit, right, where you have that unique

set of skills where this fits for you. and fits for the industry. I think too many people have a narrow perspective of, I just want to be a writer, I just want to be a designer, I just want to be this only, and they lose sight of the fact that, well, your value, everybody wants to do that.

Your value increases exponentially if you could find this adjacent thing where, hey, I could also podcast or, hey, I can also edit, or hey, I can also do some marketing or whatever it is that your other skill set is, you get to create kind of more of a category of one, if you can find those multiple different, you know, skills that come together in a way that makes you uniquely you. That's, I love the category of one. That's such a great way of putting it. So for people that want to find more about your category of one and your work and the things that

you're doing, how will they find you? How can they find and read your favorite comics and all the incredible things that you're empowering to come into this world? You know, social media was kind of how I first networked starting out, you know, on Twitter, but I've left Twitter and I'm on blue sky. under Daphnapp, but I've kind of had to limit my social media intake for a bit, just to like, you know, I have enough anxiety with work. Having the kind of ambient anxiety has been more debilitating than I anticipated. But if you want to kind of see what I've worked on in the past, you can, sounds horrible. You can Google my name and Comic Vine and you can kind of see all the titles that I've worked on.

but I do think that like, you know, I got into this, this, I love comics because I love long-form serialized storytelling and I'm really proud of the things I've gotten to tell over hundreds of issues. And I think, you know, Planet of the Apes, the stuff that I got to work on, Planet the Apes is some of my favorite storytelling in comics, period. I was not a Planet The Apes fan when I started editing it and I, like, became Stockholm to the point of evangelicalism of like, this series friggin rules. So any of the Planet Dave's comics I'm super proud of. Power Rangers, you can see like Meggy the Megasaur behind me is like, again, I didn't grow up on Power Rangers, but in the act of working with these creators and living in this franchise and living with this fan base, I realized it's just superheroes.

And I grew up on DC Comics and Young Justice and Teen Titans and getting to do a superhero universe of over six years across multiple titles and getting to tell one continuous story It was, I think, the highlight of my career. And I'm something really proud of. So I would definitely check out the Power Ranger Comics from Boom. And then Lumberjane's Goldie Vance and Fence were these all ages, Y.A. books I got to work on for Shannon Waters imprint, Boombox. You know, I grew up on, like, violent storytelling.

I love. I love Westerns. I love Batman. I love punching. And working on those books taught me how to think of story in ways. that like you can't solve the problem by punching it. You have to actually solve it by Star Trek rules. People have to get along and come to a resolution and understanding and empathy.

And so working on those books really unlocked a different skill set and understanding of storytelling. And I'm really proud of those as well. And those you can find in bookstores and comp bookstores as well. And I know I'm talking very fast. So hopefully you can find them if you Google them. I'm not worried. We'll include some links in the show notes to, to all of the things so people don't have to bother Googling.

But it's great. I'm really glad to get to talk to you and talk to this stuff. It's an incredible career that you have built. It's a lot of great insights. And you make a lot of really fun stuff. So I'm really glad we got to do this. And I'm looking forward to hopefully get to do this in person next time. We're all in the same area.

Oh, that'd be great. I mean, at Comic-Con maybe, right? Yeah, that's right. I'll be a Comic-Con. So, yeah. All right. Well, then I'll see you there. I'll have to steal a ticket and scan my way in.

Yeah, you know, you've proven that you're good at that. It's a 15-year running scam. You're doing great. Yeah. Got the baked to pin you right into my account. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and I'll look forward to seeing you at Comic-Con.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platforms such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this

podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find books or sold.