[captivating music] ♪ [captivating music] ♪ [captivating music] ♪ [captivating music] ♪ - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

And I'm coming to you from my home office while our studio is undergoing renovations.

This episode is all about HeroesCon in Charlotte.

First up, longtime Marvel writer and editor, Howard Mackey.

What's it like being at this convention compared to being at some of the other ones you've been to?

It's really been an amazing and eye-opening experience for me, because I've been hearing so many wonderful things about HeroesCon for many years.

I do a lot of other shows.

People come up, fans come up to me at the table and go, "Have you ever been to Heroes, and why not?"

And I said, "Well, you know, haven't been invited."

[laughs] And that's really what it came down to.

And I was supposed to appear last year, and unfortunately I got ill and had to cancel.

But I finally made it here, and it's kind of fun to know that the fans are right.

[laughs] And all of the pros that I had spoken to as well, where it's just been an incredible experience from top to bottom.

And I mean that in terms of the organization, the guys that run this show, the men and women that run the show, are just wonderful.

They make it so that it's very easy for us as the creators.

But also, I believe, for a fantastic fan experience.

It's nice to attend a show of this size that's completely focused on comic books.

So many of the other shows out there, they are still holding onto that Comic-Con label.

And yet, more often than not, they're more focused on the real celebrities, or the celebrities: The guy that played the third zombie from the right on one episode of "The Walking Dead."

And this is not that.

So for me personally, it's been wonderful to meet new fans that I have not been able to see before, but also it's like a who's who of people I've known for more than a few years, in terms of creators.

And it's a great space too.

It's been a very well attended and crowded show, and it has never felt overwhelming or claustrophobic.

I guess I liked it.

I'm planning on being back next year.

- Compared to conventions that you've gone to over the years, I've noticed in going back to conventions that the audience has changed.

And I'm seeing things, whether it's younger people in costumes of characters that might be from an animated series or from a video game, but they're all here enjoying themselves.

What do you see the difference between a convention, maybe back in the earlier 2000s or the '90s compared to a convention today?

- Well, oddly enough, I was not doing very many shows back in the late '90s, or even early '90s, and early 2000s.

I was far too busy, to be completely honest, both with work, but I had a young family.

So I did do some shows in the late '80s, very early '90s, when Marvel forced me to.

It was a different time.

I mean, there was much more of a focus on the big two.

And now it's everything from indie comics to self-published comics to anime and manga that I don't know anything about at all.

But I think it's kind of fun, for me in particular, because I much prefer seeing and meeting other creators that I don't know.

They were always asking me when I do shows, "Well, let us know if there are people you'd wanna sit next to."

I would prefer to sit next to somebody I don't know.

For the most part, it's fun for me to meet new creators that have a different approach to comic books than I do.

I'm not always familiar with their work when I first meet them, but hopefully by the end, I've become somewhat more familiar with them.

So anyway, but to answer your question, I can't give as much of a direct trend, but I do know things have changed drastically, sometimes for the better, as in this show, and then sometimes, not so much, some of the bigger shows would, again, focus on celebrity and yet they still call it Comic-Con.

I've been to too many shows where they have the Artist Alley right in front of where the celebrities are.

We have a lot of people just walking by Artist Alley to go... Because it's a budgetary thing, and I understand that.

And people have a limited amount of cash in their pocket, and if I'm charging $10 for an autograph and they need to have somebody, a celebrity, who's charging $90 for a photo op, well, I'm probably going to lose out.

- Artist Kayla E. stopped by the booth to talk about her book, "Precious Rubbish."

We're at HeroesCon, I see that you've got a booth set up.

It's "Precious Rubbish."

- Yes, that's right.

Can you tell us about that?

- Sure, yeah.

"Precious Rubbish" is what I call my autobiographical comics practice.

I have a book forthcoming from Fantagraphics in 2025.

And my comics deal with really heavy subject matter.

I had a pretty brutal childhood.

And so the work is like, kind of like drawn in a 1950s-like kid-style comic.

And the content is about sort of like what a childhood really looks like underneath that sort of facade.

So yeah, the work is intense.

But yeah, that's, that's the subject matter.

- A lot of folks will make the assumption that comics are a genre rather than a medium.

- [Kayla] Right.

Okay.

- And when we see books like "Fun Home" or some of the other biographical comics out there, they take on different subject matters that are just wildly unexpected.

So you're taking something, you said, unpleasant parts of your childhood and you're putting this sort of '50s aesthetic.

When you're devising this, is it more of like a therapy?

Is it more of just, I have a story to tell and this is how I tell it?

How do you kind of come up with that?

- That's a really good question.

It is not therapeutic to make it.

[laughs] I wish it was, I really wish it was.

It's actually so hard to make this work.

It's like, you know, it's triggering, it's painful.

It gives me nightmares.

And like, by all means, you kind of look at it like, why am I doing it, and sometimes I ask myself that.

but it's like, when I come to events like this, the reason that I table events like this is people get drawn into the work usually by the aesthetic, which is like a part of that.

It's like, I need a way to pull people into the story.

It's people read the work, they see it, they talk to me and they feel safe telling me about what they've been through.

And they disclose to me and I see that my work is like mirroring them, and then they're telling me about their pain and it mirrors me.

And it becomes this like really beautiful interaction that I'm able to have with other survivors who would otherwise just be strangers, I would never get to talk to about something so deep.

And it kind of like breaks that wall, and that has been incredibly healing for me, 'cause it's very lonely to be a survivor.

It's very lonely.

It's very lonely to have an abusive family.

I'm in no contact with anyone I'm biologically related to.

And it's isolating, you know?

And I feel really good when I connect with other people out there who are able to look inward in that way.

And it's just been really powerful and beautiful.

And that's the motivation I have for chugging forward and doing this 'cause I've noticed that people need it.

- It's really interesting because you're saying it's painful that it keeps you up at night.

And I can imagine, I've had, we've all had bad experiences in our lives.

But what you're doing is, it's a noble mission.

You are trying to let people know that you might have terrible circumstances, but you are not the only person.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

- And therefore, there's support, there's understanding that they can turn to.

- Yes.

- So how do you get the comic to the audience so that they can kind of look at this?

I know you said it's being published in 2025, but that's still two years from now.

- It's a minute.

Yeah, yeah.

Honestly, the only way that I really am connecting with an audience at this point in my career is by tabling at these events.

Because I have a day job.

I'm creative director at Fantagraphics, the publishing company.

And so I'm like very busy with my work there.

And I live in a small town.

I live in Burlington, North Carolina.

So there isn't like a comics community where I can sort of engage with and meet new potential readers.

So I table at Cons.

Usually they're on the weekends, so it's a little bit easier for me to do it.

And yeah, so far it's just kind of in grassroots, you know, person to person, like one person at a time, making that connection.

And it's been slow going, but I think that it's kind of building up like a more meaningful readership.

And I think that when the book does come out, it'll be a lot easier to promote it, you know, 'cause there'll be this object, and there'll be press and stuff that will make it easier for me.

But for now, yeah, it's just like one person at a time, face to face, 'cause I'm not really on social media.

- Again, it speaks to the passion that you have for this, the importance that it has for you.

That you are basically a door-to-door sales person.

- Yeah, that's true.

[laughing] For trauma talk.

- You're not selling a vacuum.

But at the same time, because it's so important to you that you're doing this, it's just, to me, it's again, it's that noble mission, that quest to make the world better by sharing your pain.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

Yeah, I see it as like, I'm in recovery, I'm an alcoholic in recovery, and I'm always trying to, as my best self, think about, how can I be of service?

What can I do with my life that will help other people?

And I'm very much an introvert, so it's difficult for me to do sort of the more traditional route of organizing and that kind of service work.

And so I just really was trying to think about, this is something I want to do and I don't know how to do it.

And it just sort of made sense that I'm good at making comics, I love comics, this is how I can tell my story.

And by being brave and no longer carrying these secrets for my family, that is a way that I can connect with other people and help them.

That's the way I frame it in my mind and it's the only way that I'm able to keep going, 'cause I'm not gonna lie, it is very hard.

Most of the time I'd much rather just be at home sewing, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's tough to talk about trauma all the time, and it's been worth it so far.

- And I would like to end on a high note.

- Sure.

[laughing] - Because I think what you're doing is really important, but you talk about making comics.

So what is it, and this is a a silly question, but what is it about comics that that draws you?

That makes you want to either seek them out or create them?

- The first graphic novel that I read was "Jimmy Corrigan" by Chris Ware.

And I was in, I was a freshman in college and it was a seminar that I took at Harvard and it was one of the assigned books.

And I was just like, I did not know that art could be this immersive.

Like it just, I never experienced any art like that where it just like fully consumed me creatively.

And I just immediately was like, this is the best medium on the planet.

There is nothing like comics.

And ever since then I've just been really seeking out work that is experimental and pushing the form and bold and brave in storytelling.

And there's just so much out there.

And I think what's really exciting about today is being able to find young cartoonists who aren't a part of the mainstream, 'cause there's a ton of gatekeeping around it, and the internet is kind of democratizing that.

And it's been really fun finding cartoonists that I wouldn't otherwise see in a bookstore, you know?

So that's been really exciting.

I just, I love comics.

[laughs] It's what I do for a living too.

So I really do love them.

- Walking through Indie Alley, I met artist Nick Cagnetti.

So I'm wondering what your book is about, I know it's called "Pink Lemonade," and what you hope to do at a convention to attract more readers.

- I loved comic books my whole life, and that's how I learned to read, write, draw, the whole everything.

So, the stuff brought me so much joy as a kid and the Pink Lemonade character about capturing that joy and holding onto it in a way.

And sort of the whole conflict of the book is just seeing if you can maintain that, and just wrestling with like the real things that I've thought just about how the industry has always been and how the entertainment industry in a wider sense is just kind of, can kind of eat away at people sometimes.

And "Pink Lemonade" sort of gets involved in that and sort of tries to see if she's able to maintain that sense of joy by the end.

That was the journey for me, sort of figuring that out too through the whole process.

- That's interesting, because I was introduced to you by Don Simpson, of course the creator of Megaton Man.

You have, what he called, a great IP.

So you're at the convention, you're trying to introduce more to it, do you have a strategy or is it just like, you're gonna hope that the work speaks for itself and people will come and and ask questions?

- Yeah, I mean honestly, the latter.

I think for me a big part of making this stuff is always trying to make stuff that looks eye catching from afar.

and that's sort of the thing as a kid, you reading comics.

For me, Spider-Man, like the costume design from Steve Ditko just instantly like the thing that draws in so many kids for generations.

I wanna make stuff with just fun eye-popping characters like that, but below the surface they got human things going on, they're kind of quirky, they're kind of just like normal people.

So that's sort of the thing for me, just throw the guiding light in a way.

- Comics have changed a lot from when I was reading them and I'm sure from when you were reading them.

There's a different focus.

It's not so much super heroics, it could be comics about just about anything.

And that's, I think, great because comics are not a genre, they are medium.

So when you are coming up with the concepts behind "Pink Lemonade," which seems like there's a lot under the surface, like you were saying, is this something where it's easier for you to make it a comic than it is to maybe try and turn this into a screenplay and and try and sell it that way?

Or is it because you just like the control of being able to do it yourself?

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean I just love doing all this stuff like that.

'Cause it started out as like a series of comic strips and I hadn't written anything before that.

So it was really just a experiment for me to see if I could do it and get over a little bit of that fear.

So going into the full series with the full books, it was really just sort of, okay, I can do this, and just keep learning as I kept going along.

There was a lot of wacky things I wanted to do with the series and just, below the wackiness, I think there was a lot of cases, for me, just like finding things that were important that I wanted to sort of imbue in those wacky things.

Like there's a character called OJ Bot who's just an orange juice robot, and sort of was born out of like a spelling mistake I made years and years ago and sort of took on a life of its own where it just sort of became like the embodiment of that mascot type character like your Mickey Mouses or stuff like that where it's just sort of, how has this been reinterpreted over the decades and seeing that character or how it started in the pure form and how it became and how it sort of got strung along through the business of just how it would affect the creators of that character and stuff.

And there's just sort of a lot of stuff like that and characters being sort of in the midst of that struggle of just like, how do we stay ourselves through just, all these forces are trying to like eat away at you.

There's a character called Ron Radical who's sort of like a '90s pastiche.

He has a big mullet and he's just sort of like living that whole struggle and Pink Lemonade helps 'em get through it in a way, sort of break outta that pastiche and find some joy in not making big explosions.

Just makes paintings now.

- So if the people watching wanted to find out more about "Pink Lemonade," can they find you on the web?

- Absolutely, yeah.

I have a website, it's radicalrealmcomics.com.

It has pretty much my whole catalog of books.

Instagram, my handle is fudgy1nic, and Twitter is NCAGS.

I'm pretty active on both of those places, just updating constantly and what I'm doing, what's coming out.

It's fun doing this stuff and just getting it out there finally, 'cause you know, sometimes you don't know if it's ever going to reach anybody so it's just really, really nice that people are finding it and they're enjoying it.

It's just really, really wonderful, honestly.

- I met Rose Cheetham in Artist Alley.

You are here with the artist Kevin McGuire, but you are an artist yourself.

You are a color artist.

- That's right.

- So what does a color artist do on the comic page?

- Okay, so there's a little bit of a production line, I guess, when it comes to comic book work.

So I don't do the drawing.

What I do is I add the color, and sometimes that's to do with playing with the lighting, things like that.

So I'll get the line work from Kevin or whoever I'm working with, and then my job is to, I read the script so I know what colors things are supposed to be, and then I go in and I color that out.

And some of it is to do with bringing characters to the foreground and making sure that the background stays at background, that kind of thing, yeah.

- So I mean, there's a lot that goes into it because like you say, you gotta draw attention to certain things and mute certain things.

- Sure.

Yes.

- So is this something that you're doing, I'm imagining this is all digital at this point?

- Yes.

So I work digitally.

One of the reasons I do that is just because I move around a lot.

So working digitally means I can use my little laptop and I've got like, it's not a Wacom tablet, it's one of the knockoff ones.

It works brilliantly.

But I take that and my laptop, I can go anywhere, work digitally, and that makes things a lot easier for me.

But yeah, full digital.

- And you're at the convention now, you're with Kevin, you're helping him at his booth.

So when you go to a convention, do you explore, look for comics that you might like and meet other creators?

- Yeah, so I mean, I love to have a look around and see what people are doing.

I think it's really exciting to come to a convention like this and see what trends are going through.

And I love looking at some of the people who are just up and coming, people that are here just selling their little sketches and things like that.

But also it's cool to check in on some of the bigger names and see what they're doing too, yeah.

- So is it like a networking opportunity where you kind of make those connections for the next project?

- I mean, personally I tend to just work with Kevin 'cause we work really well together, and I love the way that his lines work and it compliments the kind of style that I like to do.

But yes, a lot of people do do these conventions for networking opportunities, for sure.

- And speaking of Kevin's work, I know that he started in the '80s when it was a lot more reliant on line and shadow.

- Yes.

And now it seems like he's adapted his style so that there's a lot of room for color, is that- - Right, yeah.

So a lot of the time he does very kind of clean lines and he doesn't do some very heavy black work, you know, where it's just 100% black or white.

So he's doing a lot of open space.

So lets me do a lot of the, yeah, I guess, the lighting angles and things like that.

Sometimes when he's doing the faces, 'cause that's what he's very famous for, is like the expressions, so he'll do like a little kind of value sketch where he really wants the light to be and I use that to inform how I'm gonna color it in.

So if he's saying the light should be coming from this angle, he might do a little sketch just to show me that's what he is intending.

But yeah, the way that he does it in his line work is very open, gives me a lot of space to just play around with it, yeah.

- I asked creator Levi Erickson what his new book is all about.

- My comic book is about Bigfoot.

I've been a fan of the subject of Bigfoot since I was a kid, and I've been a fan of comics since I was a kid.

And I've been working, learning how to draw since I first got into comics.

I literally got some of the artwork, and I know that that issue was my first issue of whatever book because I immediately started drawing from it.

And now I figured it's time to meld the two.

- Is it a Bigfoot where we get to see Bigfoot or is it a Bigfoot where we're searching for him?

- Without getting too spoily, we're gonna get to see their perspective, so to speak.

If it exists as a tribe, then then we're gonna see that point of view.

- So what is your biggest observation as you have come back after a few year gap?

- HeroesCon is very, very special in the fact that it focuses on the comics, the collecting aspect, the creating aspect.

There of course are the other aspects of the fandom that always permeate this type of thing.

But HeroesCon keeps focused on the essentials of comics.

So as the years have gone on, the fans have just kind of been pouring in.

There's more out there, like creating comics, I think, has democratized a bit because you can do it on web, you can do it... You know, you can print a book and it's a lot easier to print than it was a few years ago if you're self-publishing.

So I think that's just made it open for more creators, which makes it open for more fans.

- In that same vein, Fend Hamilton created an infotainment comic about self-publishing.

Fend, we are at HeroesCon 2023.

You are an artist, you've got a a booth in Artist Alley.

Pardon me, Indie Alley.

- [Fend] Yeah.

- Yeah, so what is your comic about?

I think it's a really interesting concept.

- So the one that I'm premiering this year, season, thing, is about printing.

It's like a infotainment manga about a intern going to a print shop and learning everything, all like, everything.

Like crop marks, bleed, CMYK, all the fun stuff with the reader.

So it felt like the perfect way to teach people, you're not alone.

Digital printing is hard.

And we wanted to make this kind of a textbook infotainment thing with a storyline about the character learning and meeting all the other characters and learning how the press works.

And I think that that'll help visualize why you need to add the things you need to do, why you need to make it single pages, why you need to make it a quarter inch bleed.

All of the industry standards explain visually.

- A lot of times people think of comics as a genre rather than a medium.

When you are coming up with something that is educational and putting it in comic form, it's a lot more accessible to a reader who might...

I mean, we all get those terms and conditions for our iPhones that are 5,000 pages long and takes a month to read.

No one reads and they just say, "Okay," and the next thing you know, Apple's coming by and taking your dog.

So it's really cool to be able to take something that seems complex, which is printing, especially for an artist whose mind might not be in the technical, might be more in the ether, and putting it together in a way that's accessible and and fun to read.

It reminds me of those great comics that Radio Shack used to do in the 1980s.

- I need to find those.

- Oh yeah.

The "Whiz Kids."

- Okay, I'm gonna find those.

I'm gonna buy 'em.

I bet they're here.

I bet I can find those.

- Oh, you can find just about anything in HeroesCon.

- Yes.

[laughing] - As a comic reader, what is it about Manga that draws you in that you might not get from, what we would consider, the American style of comics?

- Manga had a lot more variety in storytelling, at least what was being published in the US at the time.

And so a lot of people that grew up, like me, searching for those titles are now making comics.

So the indie scene is exploding.

It's very similar to the the kind of genres you can find in Manga, which has a lot of infotainment stuff.

There's a lot more these days.

Like, you can even get manga of classic literature like Romeo and Juliet to four people that are on the spectrum that can't really read, like a full novel, and truly digest it as well.

But if you put everything in visual terms, you can get through so much.

They even make a manga statistics book these days, and you can find that in the Charlotte Library.

- Are you finding that there are a lot more folks who are interested in manga and different genres of comics among your peer group?

- I think so.

It's, you know, everybody's got their niches these days, but I think that that's what's making it happen.

Everyone's becoming more and more tied to specific genres that have hundreds of options in just that genre alone.

So it's like music.

The top 40 is getting harder and harder to deal with because there's Spotify, you can find anything, you can find indie so quickly, and comics are the same way.

You can find any interest.

Once your personality can be this distilled these days, you're no longer tied to the radio.

You're no longer tied to what your local comic shop, bless them, has.

And you can order them through your local comic shop, you can order anything, then you can create these niches and people will make stuff for those niches.

'Cause Indie Publishing is anything.

You can print your own book at the quality of any mass produced book these days using Print on Demand, using your local comic shop even, because digital presses.

Even smaller digital presses in a small town like Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I live now, you can create Publisher style books on your own.

And so many, like Wild Star Press is a great example, they're here.

They're just getting started and their books already look like they could rival any publisher here.

And it's amazing.

I know I'm getting off on a tangent, but like I think that that's the beauty of comics.

No matter who you are, no matter what you are interested in, you can find something.

And I think that's beautiful.

- That's all the time we have for this episode of Comic Culture.

Thank you so much for watching.

Until next time, I'll see you soon.

Comic Culture is a production of the Department of Mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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