♪ (heroic 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.

We're in Charlotte, North Carolina for Heroes Con 2025.

What makes Heroes Con so special and why is it my favorite comic convention?

Because unlike other cons that mix in movie stars and pop culture celebrities, Heroes Con keeps the focus on comic books, graphic novels, and newspaper scripts.

They invited more than 300 comic creators, legends, top talents, and rising stars.

They welcomed indie creators as well as the people who produced the best of Marvel and DC Comics.

On this episode of Comic Culture, I'm speaking with comic creators from all genres.

First up, Dan Jurgens, whose work on Superman influenced the 2025 blockbuster film.

Dan, you are at Heroes Con 2025.

This is your second year in a row at the convention.

You are in what I like to call the royalty section.

So a convention like this, what's it like for you on this side of the table 'cause it's like you're always working?

- They turn into long days, but yes, we are always working and that's why it turns into a long day, but it's always a lot of fun too.

And it's one of these things where we can feed off the energy of the crowd and as people come up and generally are so warm and welcoming.

I mean, Charlotte is a great area.

So it's always a pleasure to be here.

And you kind of walk out of these things realizing that yes, people are buying the books, they're reading them and they're really enjoying them.

- And that's the one thing about what you do.

You are working in a bubble.

You are at home probably working in your own studio.

You have no real feedback except maybe an email or two and you get to come to a convention and you get to hear back from the fans.

So when you see those fans, are you hearing a lot of the stories about how that book meant this to them?

- I get a lot of that, yes.

And a lot of it is because I've done this for a fair number of years now.

But the other part is when you have books in your past that are of significance, and we'll use "Death of Superman" as an example, yes, that's where I get the people coming up and they'll say, "My mom took half the day off of work "to go pick this up at the store for me "'cause I told her I had to have it."

Or, "My parents let me cut school to go buy the book."

And I get all of that.

And I also get then the parents who are saying, "And I'm reintroducing this to my children."

Things like that, which is very meaningful.

It's nice to hear those things because you're right.

This is a solitary profession.

And there's also the time delay.

So a book that I'm working on right now may not be out until September, and by then you're on to other things.

So this is the nice way to get feedback.

- And the last question is, you're here, you're sketching, you're doing commissions for fans.

It's gotta be tough because you only have so much time to do the work for them.

So is it tough to tell them, "No, you don't have the time for this particular commission "and maybe next year?"

- Oh yeah, that's always hard.

So for example, my list was pretty much filled up by about noon Friday for the weekend.

And people keep coming up and asking, and I always hate to say no because generally they're disappointed.

So yeah, that's always a problem.

And I hate to do that, but it's just the way it is.

- All right, well, Dan, well, thank you so much.

- You're welcome.

- From an absolute legend to a rising star, I spoke with cover artist, Maria Wolf.

Maria, you are an artist and not just an artist, you are a renowned cover artist.

What's it like being on, getting out of the studio and getting to meet the people who love your work?

- I've been doing this for quite some time, even before I became a professional, and it's always new, it's always different.

People think, "Don't get me wrong, "the same thing as travel, go to con, set up, sale."

But to me, I do this to meet new fans, for people to get to know me, and of course to meet my older fans too, but it's always a surprise.

It's always nice to hear when people are like, "Oh, I just, I barely know you or I met you," or like what we were talking earlier about the energy I bring.

Somebody came to my table yesterday and they said, "Last year, I was waiting in a line for Alex Ross, "and I just heard you talk, "and you were so, so inviting and so excited, "and I just then researched you "and I fell in love with your work."

And it's nice that not only my work gets noticed, but myself as a personality in general too.

And then people just come here just to talk to me.

They just wanna know who is Maria Wolf, right?

And what makes her do all of this, right?

So it's just, it's new.

Every year it's new.

I never think it's gonna be mundane or boring because life is not mundane and boring if you see it that way, right?

It's something's always gonna happen, something new, and that's why I see it.

Something new, a new adventure, and I get to meet new people and their stories, and careers I would never think people would make money off, and then they tell me, and I'm like, "Oh wow, I'm doing the wrong career then."

(laughs) - We met yesterday, I moderated a panel with cover artists, and the one thing that really struck me was your enthusiasm, your obvious love of what you do, and the energy you brought to the room as you discussed how you always reference and make motion and faces.

The audience could feel it, I could feel it.

So as somebody who's a very physical and I guess active artist, how do you kind of temper yourself so that you can sit in the chair and do the artwork?

- Man, that's the hard part too.

I'm starting to think I have ADHD now.

(laughs) 'Cause I'm just everywhere, right?

I'm a little ball of fire.

I mean, at the end of the day, I'm like, "This gots to get done," but it is exciting when I wanna think I'm Wolverine or Hulk, right?

'Cause I just wanna be massive and big and all crazy and stuff too, but no.

I mean, I feel like when I build up that energy, it has no place to go, so I'm like, "Oh, there's paper."

(laughs) Quickly just release it, and that's what I think it is.

It's all that energy I have, I build it up to the point, I was like, "Okay, let's put it all "on that piece of paper," right?

And then it's an explosion of emotions and movement and life itself.

So that's why when I kept telling people, "I don't think lines are meant to be straight," even though technically that's what a line is, is straight.

I feel that even if a character's standing still, they had to always feel like they're breathing in a sense.

- You're at a con, you are a professional, but you are also a fan, so if you had the opportunity, if you weren't working, what would you look for?

- See, I love this con particularly because I always get to meet new artists.

And that's the thing too, I always tell people, my peers are what makes me keep going, because it's an excitement when I see they publish their own books or have their own characters, their own designs.

That feeds me, I kid you not, I eat it up.

I'm the only one going, mentally, I'm going to everybody's table, I'm going, "I'm just gonna eat that," right?

And I just love art, and I love what my peers do.

Of course, if I had the time, I'd go talk to all my friends, right?

But I'm mostly always looking for somebody who's just detail-oriented as I am, because that's the thing, I don't know what it is, but detail artists like to be with the other detail artists, and I like to go, "Mm, yes, yes."

We study each other, right?

We're just scanning each other's work, like a digital scanner going so slow, grabbing, but we consume that, it's all knowledge, right?

It's just consuming, consuming.

That helps us become better artists, too, right?

So, yeah, I think that's what it is.

I think that's why a lot of people like this con, too.

It's just a way of how to improve ourselves, right?

How to get just at their level, right?

Not be better than them, be as equal as them, too, so.

- Well, thank you so much.

- Oh, no, thank you, I appreciate it.

- And I'm glad you were able to spare a few minutes for us today.

- Oh, any time for you guys.

- Since Heroes Con is all about comics, and about all comics, you have the chance to discover new and groundbreaking series.

One book I kept hearing about was "Spectrum," so I tracked down artist Dave Chisholm in Indie Alley.

As somebody who's working in your studio on this comic, in sort of a bubble, when you get to a convention and you hear feedback that people love it, what's that do for you?

- You know, I call that part of the process closing the loop, you know?

Like, you spend all this time in process, in the cave, like you said, working and working and working, and it feels incomplete until you close the loop and really kind of like interface with readers.

And it's cool, with this book in particular, people either, Rick and I have really gotten, like, Rick is the writer, have really gotten like, largely like two reactions from people.

One of the reactions is like, this is my new favorite book.

This is like my favorite book of the year, my favorite book of the decade, which is like really a cool thing to hear, right?

Or people are like, I don't know what's happening in this book, and it's like so confusing.

And I think that like, with this book, particular book, Rick and I have taken some big swings, taken some big risks, and have really trusted the reader in a lot of ways, and so it's been really cool to get both of those levels of feedback.

I think it's sort of like, you want, I want my work to get a big reaction from people, and those are definitely two big reactions, so it's cool.

- And I think it's one thing when someone gets what you're doing and they read it, but it's another thing when somebody doesn't quite get it, but they can't stop reading it, so.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I can attest to that, 'cause when Rick, Rick and I are part of a Slack group, or like an internet group where we, this is a really small, it's just three of us, where we kind of share a process and work.

And he uploaded that script to that group of the first issue way back in 2021, and it was a real like, he was just like, this is just kind of a dream script.

I'm just gonna put this out there, and I read it and like texted him and was like, I'm gonna draw this book.

This is mine, nobody else gets to draw this.

I'm gonna start it, and I think I started drawing it like that, that day.

I just was like, I'm clear, I'm gonna do this.

And when I got to the end of that script, I just had a, like a feeling that was so ineffable, and I usually hate that word, right, 'cause people use it too much when they're talking about music.

Like music is very effable.

I know it sounds weird to say, but it's really, there are real things happening, tangible things, objective things happening in music, and the late, like normal people who aren't weirdos hear music and think it's just magic, right?

But with Rick's script, it really tapped into this, like this deep feeling in me, and it was like so mysterious and so open-ended.

You get to the end of the first issue, and it's like this great cliffhanger, and you're like, what is gonna happen next?

It's like, it just kinda left me with this really amazing feeling that I didn't get in anything I was reading, and I was like, that's it, this is it.

We have to make this work, so yeah, super cool.

- Well, thank you so much.

In Indie Alley, I met Kurtzman and Inkpot Award-winning cartoonist Keith Knight, and invited him to the Comic Culture booth.

As a cartoonist, what's it like coming to a convention like this where you're exposed to just so many people of so many different interests?

- First of all, I'm just psyched that something this big is happening this close to where I live, because I get the same vibe at San Diego Comic-Con, so it's just a pleasure that this exists.

It's really funny, though.

Somebody I met in Burlingame, California, who lives out there, comes to this con, like comes here from California for this con, because he says there's nothing like it.

It's not about celebrities, it's not about big companies, it's about the artists, and so I'm just excited to be here.

- It's three days of pretty much nonstop, and the thing about it is, my experience is, you show up in the morning, and then someone tells you it's time to go home, so I'm wondering, on the other side of the table, is somebody who is talking to fans who's maybe doing a commission here or there, how is your day?

Are you as busy as I think you should be?

(laughs) - I hope I am.

Friday's always a little bit slow, because people work, people need to make the money, so they can come spend the money on Saturday and Sunday.

So Friday's a good time to reconnect with a lot of the artists, and I see a lot of the artists in Indiana that I know.

There's a few folks that I've never met that are in my section.

Ed Piscor's family is here, and it was just nice to connect with them and talk about, I use Ed's work in some of the classes that I teach.

So it's nice, Friday's a good day to go around and get a layover, and know where the good bathrooms are for Saturday, when it gets really busy.

- As somebody who's a professional, how, I guess, the logistics of it all, how important is that for you?

I mean, whether it's knowing that you have someone who can cover your booth when you need to step away to come someplace here, or maybe to a panel, or maybe to go get a snack, or visit the restroom.

- Well, it's always good to make nice with the people around you, your neighbors.

And I think that's always the best thing, is to, I love being turned on to the, if I'm not familiar with the work of the people around me, I love to check out their work and get to know them, and where they've drove in from and everything.

And I'm not so much worried about people covering, you know, I'm doing a panel tomorrow from 12 to one.

And what's nice is, you know, the people who wanna see me are gonna come to the panel, and then they'll come down after the panel, and then that's when I'll be busy.

So, yeah, I just tell people next to me, just like, here, just let people know I'll be back in an hour and everything.

And this is a really friendly environment.

It's just really a great environment to let your geek flag fly.

And that's what I really love about Comic-Con.

- You mentioned your geek flag.

At one point, before you were a professional, you were a fan.

So what would you be looking for if you were just out walking the aisles?

- No, actually, I was never a fan.

(laughing) - Well, make a liar out of me.

- I was never a fan.

I like, but the first time I came to a Comic-Con was San Diego in 1993.

I snuck in, I looked for an open space in artist alley, and I just, I crashed.

I was one of, what do you call it?

I was a squatter.

And I sold my zines in an empty spot.

And I became known as the Squattin' Dude.

And then, like, it got, I started getting so popular that they came by one day, one year, and said, "Keith, you gotta go legit."

Gave me a form to fill out.

But really, like, I, as much as I love being here, like, I tend not to walk around because I know I'll spend the money I make.

So I buy the stuff of the people around me, but I, you know, every once in a while, I'll go say hello to people.

But I, you know, I'm not, I need to feed my kids when I come.

Because there's so much good stuff here, you know?

- Well, thank you so much.

- Yes.

- There were a lot of Spider-Men at Heroes Con.

So I tracked down longtime Spider-Man and Spider-Girl artist, Ron Frenz.

Ron, you were at Heroes Con, which is my favorite convention.

I'm wondering what you think about coming here and getting out of the studio and getting to meet the people who love your work.

- Oh, generally, I love doing conventions.

This is one of the best ones because it is specifically about comics.

And there's a wide variety of people working in comics, the major publishers and independents.

And I love the crowd, the customers here.

This Southern charm is a real thing, and I love it.

Everybody here is so polite, so wonderful and patient.

It's terrific, yeah, I love it.

- And you know, you are here, you're working, you know, you signed some books for folks, but you're also doing commissions.

So what's the number one thing people always ask you for?

- Well, the main ones would be Black Costume Spider-Man from 252, the symbiote.

And Hobgoblin was happening in the book, his newest arch foe when we were on the book.

So a lot of people ask me about, associate me with Hobgoblin, although I did not design him or create him.

And so they ask for that a lot too.

So those would be the two main ones, I guess.

- And you were also part of the Superman triangle era, as they call it now.

- Yes, very tail end of it, yeah.

- But you were, I guess, the artist behind the Superman blue and red costumes.

At least that's my understanding.

Is that the case?

- Yes, at the time that they were gonna give Superman new powers, which was decided by the writers, and they put it out to all the artists on the various Superman titles, which were there like four or five of them at the time.

And they gave us all the opportunity to design Superman's new containment suit to contain his new electrical powers.

And after I was done with pages for the day, I decided I threw an idea together 'cause I had kind of an idea using an electrical motif and everything.

And yes, surprisingly mine was chosen.

I think for two reasons.

One being that I actually played with the S, which would have made it easier for marketing to announce and promote the change.

And two, because it was monocolor, it was blue.

And I found out later that the colorist had been lobbying for years to do a revamp of an old story from the '50s and '60s called Superman Red, Superman Blue, where Superman is divided into two beings.

And this gave them the perfect opportunity to play that through.

So since mine was monochromatic and blue, then they could easily do the Superman Red, Superman Blue.

So those are the two reasons mine were changed.

Everybody else had terrific ideas for a containment suit as well, but I got the nod.

- Besides working on episodes of Comic Culture, I also moderated panels at Heroes Con, including one with top cover artists like J Gonzo, who joined me afterwards.

Gonzo, you are in Indie Alley this year at Heroes Con.

- Yes.

- What's it like for you?

You are somebody who has dabbled in the mainstream.

You've done work for Marvel.

You've dabbled, obviously, in Indie Comics, working with Henry Barajas on what I call Tata Rambo.

- Yeah, La Voz de Mayo, Tata Rambo, yeah.

- You know, you're at this convention.

How is it sort of going between those two audiences as you meet and greet?

- It's weird, I gotta tell ya.

So most people used to know me because of the Indie work that I had done, because La Voz de Mayo with Henry Barajas and with also Lomano D'Avistino, the book that I write and draw.

And I had kind of a relationship with everyone who had ever bought anything from me.

And then I started doing work for the Ninja Turtles and for Marvel, and now more than half of the people who come to my booth already have stuff I've bought.

So I'm all geared up to do my sales pitch.

Like, oh, it's about this, and I'm telling them about my comic book, but they already have product in their hand, and they just want me to sign it, and they'll usually buy something very nice.

But it's weird to not have to explain or define myself to people every single time.

But there's like, they wanna support me 'cause I don't charge for signatures.

And I think most people are kind of conditioned to think they do, and so when I don't charge them for a signature, they then wanna buy something from me 'cause they wanna support Indie artists, which I appreciate.

I love that community for that.

It's just interesting that I have worked very long and hard on my kind of sales pitch, on my shtick, you know?

And now it's totally useless, like I don't need it.

And it's also weird that, to be some kind of known quantity, right?

And people showing up with stacks of comics, and it's a really great retrospective on my year 'cause I just do the work and it leaves, and then suddenly someone's got, like, here's my past year's worth of covers in their hand, and it's like, oh yeah, I did do that cover.

That's like, it's good to see.

So it's a little shift from the amount, it's not a shift in the amount of work, but it's a shift in the kind of work I have to do to interact with fans now.

It's just a little different.

It's also very new.

Like, I've only been doing Turtle covers for two years now, and the Marvel work is only a year old at this point.

I don't know that I have a full handle on it.

It's very fun, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

- You're here, you're doing, I guess, sketches in between, but your work seems to be really labor-intensive.

So when you're under the pressure of a con where you've got maybe five, 10 people who are looking for something to be done before they go, how do you sort of make sure that you're giving them what they want, but at the same time, I gotta get this done?

- I'm just, honestly, I'm just honest.

I'll just be like, "Hey, feel free to peruse," blah, blah, blah.

I'm on a commission right now, but interrupt me whenever you have any kind of question.

And I just try to stay focused, because if left to my own devices, I'll just be social and wanna talk to people and stuff.

But I'll also let them, I just have to say out loud, "I have a thing that's due, and so I have to work on it."

And most people are cool with that.

I also have help, my wife is here this time, and partially because of that.

Again, because of the newfound kind of exposure, more people just want me to do quick little remarks or sketches and stuff, more than ever before, as opposed to me just peddling books, which I could totally do on my own.

I can sell my own book all day long.

But now that I have to be head down drawing stuff, I kind of need help so that I don't have to constantly be looking up away from my art board to make sure nobody standing there has a question.

So at shows, I try to take on really nice, digestible stuff that I can do for commissions.

I don't take on anything full-size, like 11 by 17, or even an eight by 10.

I just do stuff I know I can get out in an hour or so, because that thing that I can draw in 45 minutes is gonna take me three hours, because I'm gonna have to stop and sign stuff, I'm gonna have to stop and sell stuff.

So yeah, I mean, the amount of work I got done today, commission-wise, I probably could've banged out in an hour and a half, but here we are in hour four of the con, and I'm still, yeah, I've got a little bit left to do for the day.

- You know, you're also appearing on panels.

- Yes.

- So that's both prestige, because you're introduced to even more new people.

- Yes.

- But it's keeping you from the mission at hand, which is to earn some extra money.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So do you feel pressured to do a commission?

- Oh, not at all.

So right now, I don't have a lot of new work.

I'll always do panels.

I just feel like most of me being here is me being here for people to come and interact with, talk with, and the panels allow for a little more structured, a little quieter interaction that allows me to be a little more expansive in how I communicate, like what we're talking about, or what questions they might have, and my head's not on a swivel when I'm on a panel.

No one's gonna come up behind that person with a book in their hand while I'm being asked a question on a panel.

I know it may sound corny, but I think I kind of owe it to the fans to be there in whatever way I can.

And these shows aren't really about making money for me.

Like, I can honestly, I can probably make more money at home just doing commissions there and mailing them out.

But if it's gonna be an in-person thing, then I want the value add of like, what can you only get in person?

And Q&As and talking, you know, having hour-long panels where we talk about a single subject, like those are things that just aren't gonna happen, you know, via internet and interactions about just getting signatures or signings or sketches or what have you.

I'm just in a different mode here.

Like, I'm not trying to squeeze every penny I can out of this place.

I like being a part of the community, like being a comic artist.

I like being available to my fans in whatever way they want me to be available.

Well, thank you so much.

- No problem, man.

- Monica Gallagher is one of my favorite cartoonists, so much so I had her draw a commission for me based on a character she named after me.

While I was picking it up, I met her table mate, cartoonist Danielle Corsetto.

You're a professional.

You work in an environment by yourself most days.

You're at a convention for three days.

What's it like meeting the people who love your work?

- Oh, that is the best part.

It's so nice because sometimes when you're working in a cave by yourself in a studio, you forget that people actually do read it.

So it's reassuring.

You get to really like what you do because I feel like if you don't, you're gonna forget that maybe somebody out there does like it, and if you don't enjoy it yourself, you know, it's really gonna be a bad job.

- You know, they always say that people have that wave where they kind of go from, this is a great idea, to I don't know about this, to this is the worst thing ever, to this is really not bad, and then this is great.

- Oh, see, mine most of the time is the first moment, I'm like, this is hilarious, this is gonna be such a great comic, and then you start, and it's literally like five minutes in, and you're like, okay, it's an okay idea.

This usually takes like a four hour span of time to finish a full comic strip, and by like the fourth hour, you're just like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever come up with, why would I even bother putting all this work into this, it's not a funny joke.

And the jokes are, like for a comic strip, they're read within like two seconds.

You know, people don't even look at the artwork, they just read the word balloons, and usually people do laugh, so it's fine.

- You know, it's funny too, because this is, the newspaper strip style is so, I mean, I remember reading newspaper comics growing up, and that was my gateway into reading, but newspapers are sort of going away, and it's just neat to see that there are still people who, and that's a great word on television, neat.

It's neat to see that people still love this format, the three or four panels on this kind of strip.

So what was it about this particular way of presenting your ideas that made you wanna do it?

- I mean, I was a huge fan of comic strips in the newspaper when I was a kid.

I unironically love Garfield, screw the haters.

But I feel like this is just, because of the format that I saw, you know, of course I'd start working in it.

But it is interesting, even kids, like I teach a lot of, I teach almost every age range for comics.

When I teach younger kids, they're like, in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, you know, prime comics making kids age.

They'll have never read a newspaper strip before, they won't even know what Garfield is, really.

Like, I mean, they're not allowed to go online and see the memes, I guess, if they don't know even the meme version of 'em.

But they'll have never seen a comic strip, and somehow all of them, all of them are so good, it's like a natural instinct to be able to make a comic strip that ends in a punchline.

They all take to it immediately and just make these hilarious, amazing little comic strips, like it's just out of their head.

- If the folks watching at home wanted to find out more about your work, where can they find you on the web?

- You can go to girlswithslingshots.com, you can just go to daniellecorsetto.com, but then you have to spell my name, you don't wanna do that, so girlswithslingshots.com.

Or my new project is Elephant Town, so elephant.town, that's instead of .com, it's .town.

You can go see the first half of the book that I've written so far.

It's all free to read, same with Girls With Slingshots, so it's all available to read for funsies online.

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

Thank you so much for watching.

Until next time, we'll see you soon.

(heroic music) ♪ ♪