SHOW NOTES:

The interview was recorded in April 2004, in my apartment. If the movie ever got made, a shot of Flo would have looked like this (if you want a visual aid):

Some snippets in the original interview that didn’t make the cut…when I piped in and asked about the dynamic at Marvel between editorial and bullpen then vs. “now,” which I cut because it just required too much set-up and the answer wasn’t that compelling (yes, it changed, but not while Flo was at Marvel). But I’d say 90-95% of the original recording is in the podcast..cut up and rearranged, but it’s all there.

I considered playing more clips from personal voicemails from Flo…her being saltier about stuff (she didn’t mince words)…her saying nice things about PIX (which with her permission I quoted on the back cover of book one) but…that felt too much like an invasion and/or too self-indulgent. Though this snippet is kinda great:

http://stuffsaidshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/FloMessage_IndianRestaurant.mp3

As much as Flo was my neighbor and a friend – and of course you realize this when it’s too late – I didn’t see her enough, or talk to her enough, or know her better enough…and isn’t that always the way?

I’m glad I knew her as I did.

As I said to someone in an email at the time, she’ll be remembered as one of the sweetest badass ladies I’ve ever had the pleasure to know and call a friend.

 

 

MUSIC:

• “Stuff Said Theme” by Craig Chin
• “She is Staggering” by Polaris
• “Oswald Piano Ditty” by Evan Lurie

SHOW NOTES:

I like talking to Franco, and I think the why of that comes across in this recording, which was a long time coming. But on some level it was maybe good to have had it take this long, if only because now, with my new approach to the show, I think it ends up being a more “natural” conversation than an “proper” interview, if that makes sense.

Of course, with any of these, I walk away thinking we could have/should have talked about x, y or z instead of a, b and c, but listening back, I think we covered a lot of ground and overall you, the listener, will see some different aspects of Franco and what makes him a person in comics with whom I enjoy chatting.

As mentioned, we’ll both be in Baltimore for Baltimore Comic-Con, so come on out and see us and everyone else in the Kids Read Comics pavilion…it’s gonna be a fun weekend.

And buy our books!

 

LINKS:

• Franco’s Big Cartel Page
• Franco on Twitter

 

MUSIC:

• “Stuff Said Theme” by Craig Chin
• “Yeh Yeh” by They Might be Giants
• “Yeah Yeah” by Cyndi Lauper

SHOW NOTES:

As mentioned in my intro to the episode, this was a panel I volunteered to moderate and not one I proposed or conceived of, but that said, I was glad to have the opportunity and wanted to “do right” by the assignment.

In preparation, I sought out interviews with the panelists, mostly to hear what kinds of things they’d been asked in the past, particularly so I could avoid them. So, much like when I barely talked about THE WALKING DEAD with Robert Kirkman, here I was going to have Bob Camp on and basically avoid talking about Ren & Stimpy. But honestly, he’s done so much and maybe it’s just me projecting, but I know if/when I’m ever interviewed, as much as I want to talk about the thing I’m promoting…or as much as I know SpongeBob is the most notable thing I’ve worked on…or as much as I know there’s some small cult of people that loves talking about “Fast Lane”, those aren’t, really, the things that would get me going. So on some level I’m looking for those things when I talk to people…unlocking that can of worms, but like, good worms…gummy worms, if you will.

Though, in some cases I DO like the idea of a can of worms. I like getting the inside dish on stuff, exploring the challenges of things…and I for sure, 100% thought of a bunch of questions that could take that path. But as mentioned, Andy Suriano offered some advice, which was to keep things positive. He’d had experience on animation panels and knew that they could easily become big ol’ complaint-o-ramas…and as someone who’s been on plenty of kids comics panels that turn into people bemoaning channels of distribution, I thought better of it and tried to keep things positive.

I neglected to mention this in my intro, but speaking of positivity, man, that Tom Bancroft makes a terrific impression. He walked into the panel room and immediately playing to the audience, and not in an obnoxious way, but a genuine “who’s excited to talk about animation?!” way…and as we were seeing up the recording stuff, he was asking audience members at random to name their favorite Disney films…dare I say he might’ve done a fine and dandy job moderating the whole affair himself.

It was a fun one. Hope you enjoy(ed) listening to it.

SHOW NOTES:

As I mentioned in the episode, this is the second iteration of this panel concept, the first of which you can hear here.

For show notes purposes I thought I’d talk a bit, as mentioned, about Alan Davis and getting him on the panel, etc, etc. This, mostly given my admiration/appreciation for his work. Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate the work of the other panelists; I absolutely do – I wouldn’t have asked them to participate otherwise. But Alan was the one person on the panel who was making comics when I was a kid…heck, he’s the one person on the panel who was making comics before I was (as I approach the 20th anniversary of my first professional job in comics).

Putting together one of these panels I try to mix it up…different art styles, different approaches to stories and storytelling, different types of creators. So long as their work speaks to the overall thesis. I tend to like having cartoonists on, i.e. folks who both draw and write…or write with pictures. I also like to try to get at least one big/bigger “name”, someone recognizable to draw an audience.

I had someone in mind for that anchor position (Not Alan, as when I pitched the panel, he wasn’t yet announced as a guest.), and when the panel was approved, they declined my invite. I started pulling together the rest of the panel…mixing it up as best I could with folks whose work I knew, a great group…and every week I’d check the guest list, contemplating potential “anchors.” And then, there it was, on the new announcement list: Alan Davis.

Without repeating myself and what I said on the show, this was huge for me just as a fan. That he would be awesome for the panel didn’t hurt. I fired off an email, figuring the chances might be slim…I mean, for all I knew my email would end up in his junk folder…or the email address I found wasn’t valid anymore.

He totally wrote back within 48 hours saying “I’d be happy to participate as long as it doesn’t conflict with anything Rico Renzi has scheduled. If you haven’t already, could you please check in with Rico.”

I did, and there were no conflicts…it was on!

Though I refused to believe it until it was actually happening…there was nearly a month yet to go and a lot can happen in a month.

—

On day one of the convention, I went to all my panelists’ tables to introduce myself and thank them…except Alan always had a line, and he was doing sketches…so I couldn’t get to him.

But the next day, in the panel room, I introduced myself and asked him stuff about ClanDestine that wasn’t relevant to the panel…and he was gracious and soft spoken and I gotta say, it was so cool. I refrained from overdoing the gushing, but I couldn’t not tell him I was a fan, blah blah blah.

—

I think the panel went really well. Could I have just talked to Alan for the whole hour? Of COURSE I could have. And you might be saying, “then why not have him on as a STUFF SAID guest?” And that’d be a fair question. A part of me worries I’d do too much praising and not enough conversing…even after the panel, I think I hold almost too much reverence. I saw him and his wife and lunch and didn’t feel like I could just go over and join their conversation. I’m gonna say that’s on me more than anything else.

I did, however, the next day, give them a copy of PIX, Vol. 2, as I listed Alan in the “Thanks” (in each book so far I’ve listed three folks who influenced my work in with the rest of the acknowledgements – want to know the other five names? Pick up the books! #Salesmanship).

Did Alan look at the book at all (he was sketching so I gave it to his wife, who is also lovely)? Did he think, “this kid’s pretty good.”? I don’t know. Maybe he left it in his hotel room or gave it to someone as a gift…I hope he looked at it and thought good things. I’m not going to ask.

He did, after the panel, tell me I was fun, so I’ll take that…that, and the recording*, especially since I forgot to pack my Captain Britain trade, the one from which I reverse-engineered the female figures to better learn to draw women, to get signed…

 

 

*evidence of a much less dopey interaction than the one I had with him as a Marvel intern (a story relayed in one of the episodes with Brian “Smitty” Smith, if memory serves).)

 

SHOW NOTES:

Not sure what to really say about this episode, since, as I mentioned in the episode, I kind of like the idea of the story standing on its own without too much additional commentary.

I suppose I can write a bit about the process, how this all came to be and I ended up taking this approach, because this is definitely a story I’ve wanted to address.

Years ago I imagined having “CJ” on STUFF SAID as a guest, and bringing up “Roberto Mendoza”…my theory was that “CJ” would deny it and then I’d have cause to reach out to folks who knew, maybe get them on record, get a really dramatic, juicy set of episodes out of it…kinda like when Marc Maron had Carlos Mencia on WTF.

But as time passed that became less likely, and the idea of doing that on STUFF SAID seemed less in line with the spirit of the show…I had other solo shows that seemed a better fit…and then I got busy.

At some point, and I can’t remember when, I hit upon the idea of telling the story as a story and changing all the names…and then I got it in my head to link the names, somehow, thematically. I originally was going to use superhero secret identities, to play to the “secret identity” thing, but thought that might put certain companies in mind, etc, and then somehow I hit upon THE WEST WING, and everything sort of fell into place. Which makes no sense, because outside of using Jed Bartlett, the President on the show, to represent the Editor in Chief at “Capitol Comics”, nothing else really followed that governmental hierarchy, so…I think I just liked the gimmick more than anything else (though it’s possible if you’re a huge WEST WING fan the names might get in the way the way superhero identities would*). And that’s why the story begins with the opening notes of the WEST WING theme song.

The bedding music during the story comes from the score to the movie FARGO, which famously begins with text reading:

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Since this was also a true story, with changed names, it seemed appropriate…plus I really love the FARGO TV series, which recently ended it’s third season. A part of me wonders if that music will make people think, like the movie and tv series, this story isn’t actually true. I assure you, it is.

And I’ll leave it at that. I hope you enjoyed it.

 

 

*In the novel WONDER BOYS, Michael Chabon wrote a scene where a character waits outside The Baxter Building and mentions several members of The Fantastic Four by their non-superhero names. It totally distracted me from the otherwise really great book. I apologize to any listeners for whom the WEST WING names have had the same effect.

(contains very mild adult language)

SHOW NOTES:

I’m doing this in a different way…I’m recording the show differently, preparing differently, and writing show notes differently. Instead of the bullet list of links and images, etc, I’m talking about the episode, commenting on things said, just getting real stream-of-conscious, or offering corrections.

For example, late in the show when talking about Chris’ wedding anniversary, I used as an example of a memorable date December 6th…yeah, I should have said December 7th, you know, the date that’s to have lived in infamy? Well, clearly not, though the second I heard it I thought, “Well, that was a screw-up.” And then I thought, “In the old days I’d have re-recorded and and corrected it.” And then I thought, “Hey, I can talk about that in the show notes!”

But this is the as-is conversation, unedited and unchanged. I did, after recording, add the theme song and bit of bedding music before the Chris part. This conversation was recorded from about 10:30am-12:30pm on January 12, 2017, using the website zencastr.com. I heard about it from Tom Fowler when he told me the guys at the War Rocket Ajax podcast were using it. This was my first experience with it. It’s pretty cool, though I realize I need to use something better than my headset phone microphone, as the sound quality isn’t great and there’s some weird echoing going on. I don’t know if a USB mic is the solution or using my handheld mics and USB interface, though the latter would mean it’d be harder to draw while talking, which also was happening during this conversation; I was penciling a page from a story that will appear in SPONGEBOB COMICS #68 (the cover I got an email about was for the same issue).

The interesting thing about this new way of doing the show is it’s really a much looser conversation than targeted, methodical interview. As a result, I feel like a lot of stuff got left untouched, both in terms of things I thought we might/could talk about, and things that come up that I didn’t pursue further, either because something came up to distract me or because I didn’t think it worth going down that rabbit hole. In this conversation the conversation of kids and comics…it’s a conversation I’ve had a lot, and one for which I have a lot of opinions and truthfully, the whole show could have turned into that conversation. But…I opted to NOT go down than path. Maybe one day I’ll do a show with a panel to talk about that…maybe not. It’s almost too big a conversation. I’m happy to address questions or whatever in the comments below.

Lastly, we talk a bit about online presence…and negative opinions online. I didn’t think of it at the time, but listening back…one could argue that what one person sees as a negative thought, someone else will agree with 100%. Evan Dorkin, whose twitter rants I enjoy a great deal and I agree with a lot, might be considered by someone else as negative. I don’t know…I think it’s a tricky needle to thread attempting to never push a wrong button, and I say that as someone who tries to post positive comments more than “I didn’t like X” or whatever. I do wonder if someone’s all cheerleading and rah-rah-rah, does the value of those affirmations diminish? If someone loves everything, then what’s actually great? I guess same thing if someone hates everything, then what’s good?

There’s some of that stream of consciousness, huh?

I think that’s about for show notes…until I think of something else. Wanna comment? Do it below. Don’t want to make it public? Send an email using the form on this site!

Oh, and because I didn’t do this one face-to-face, I couldn’t take a silhouette photo of my guest, so, for the moment, the image above isn’t the standard face-to-face thing…

…and also, oh, it’s rudeanagrams.com…I should write down my outro stuff…I forgot a bunch of stuff, including plugging the most recent issues of SPONGEBOB COMICS, issues 62 and 63, which feature the two part “Who is Mermaid Girl?” story I wrote, penciled and inked. So…check that out…and pre-order PIX!

LINKS:

Chris Eliopoulos on Twitter

A roundtable discussion of a variety of stuff, some of it even comics related – like perception of the work of recent younger artists, reactions to CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, discussion of what drinks comic characters might drink, and more. Having eaten too much food and a general punchiness, it’s a real hodgepodge, complete with fart noises (apologies in advance).

SHOW NOTES:

• Brian “Smitty” Smith’s website and Twitter
• Chris Giarrusso’s website and Twitter
• Jacob Chabot’s website and Tumblr
• “Stuff Said Theme” by Craig Chin (also on Soundcloud)
• Other music/audio: “She is Staggering (instrumental)” by Polaris

Stuff Said returns! After a ten month hiatus, I’m back on the mic, recording…but I’m doing it differently this time, figuring it all out along the way. Brace yourself for barely edited audio and the occasional sound of a siren in the background.

But don’t worry, comic fans, you’ll notice the episode numbering continues from where we left off…no new #1…it’s a new direction, even a bit of a new look, but this ain’t no reboot/relaunch.

SHOW NOTES:

• Here’s the video I mentioned of my drawing “Pix Plus El Deafo”:
• Sign up for my mailing list here.
• You can get signed and digital copies of my book, PIX: ONE WEIRDEST WEEKEND, here, and read the first chapter for free here.
• “Stuff Said Theme” by Craig Chin (also on Soundcloud)
• Other music & audio: “Welcome Back Kotter Theme”

SHOW NOTES:

•  Sign up for my mailing list here.
• You can get signed and digital copies of my book, PIX: ONE WEIRDEST WEEKEND, here, and read the first chapter for free here.
• Listen to my other podcast with Chris Giarrusso, CRUISIN’ TOGETHER
• My second job drawing comics happened while I was an assistant editor, WHAT IF? #113:
• The assistant editor who challenged me to draw a comic or quit, has his own comic now, FILE 13.
• Here’s that U.S. Census page on median income in 1998.
• The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
• Here’s an outdated webpage talking about X-Men Monopoly, with some of my art (Rogue, Marrow, and the “Good Mutant” card)
• Here’s a piece all about “Fast Lane”.
• STARFOX’S SWINGIN’ SPRING BREAK SUPER SPECIAL never got past page 6, and you can read the story of why, and see the art that exists, here.
• Here are my CatDog and SpongeBob sample drawings from December ’99/January ’00 (I’m surprised I got the job!):
• The CAPTAIN AMERICA Hate Monger issue (who’d a’thunk this issue might have “stuff” in it?):
• The CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS cover recreation with one lone swastika removed (the one in the circle on the wall)…why that one? I do not know [click to enlarge]:
• The THOR cover I hired Mike Mignola to do in my last week at Marvel:
• X-BABIES: STARS REBORN, the mini-series I wrote with amazing art by Jacob Chabot (also available as part of Marvel Unlimited)
• Bullseye, hosted by Jesse Thorn
• WTF with Marc Maron
• Stuff Said Theme” by Craig Chin (also on Soundcloud)
• Other music & audio: “She is Staggering (instrumental)” by Polaris, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” by Groucho Marx, “Seinfeld Theme” by Jonathan Wolff & audio from the the Seinfeld episode “The Burning”

 

SHOW NOTES:

• Brian “Smitty” Smith’s website and Twitter
• Chris Giarrusso’s website and Twitter
• Jacob Chabot’s website and Tumblr
• Peanut Butter discussed in this episode
• Here’s a blog post by Chris Schweizer about mixed-cast and all-caps comics lettering.
• DC Comics Twix Ads
• Felicia Day‘s a famous person!
• Here’s an ad for Spalding basketballs I remember seeing a lot:
• Chris’s sound effects app is called “Instant Button” for Android
• What if this went differently:
• Here’s a quick sketch I did to commemorate Jacob’s idea of Darth Vader with the Venom Symbiote:
• I mentioned this droid from RETURN OF THE JEDI, who asked, “How many languages do you speak?”:
• The jumbo-sized Zuchkas figure is real!
• Ginsberg’s nipple scene, spoiler alert, from MAD MEN (may not be suitable for…chidren or folks not interested in seeing a detached nipple):
• An article about product placement in Marvel comics
• The saying about never work a day if you do what you love comes from Confucius.
• Smitty talked about doing one job but being expected to do another, which reminded me of this Mitch Hedberg joke (at 4:12):
• Eradicator, Steel, Superboy, Cyborg Superman, from an ad for the Reign of the Supermen story:
• Read a preview of my book at PixComic.com
• Hear more of Chris on our CRUISIN’ TOGETHER podcast!
• Pick up Chris’s books and read his web comic.
• Here’s a promo piece for Smitty’s project with his co-writer, Mike Raicht, Tree Mail:
• Check out The Basics
• Order the refreshed, new editions of The Mighty Skullboy Army Vol. 1
• Jacob’s Spider-Gwen sketch cover:
• Adam Warren
• Jason Howard & Ryan Ottley
• As per the discussion of “Caveman Style”, I took this photo of the “Caveman Toilet”:
• “Stuff Said Theme” by Craig Chin (also on Soundcloud)
• Other music/audio: “She is Staggering (instrumental)” by Polaris, “Cantina Band” by Paul F. Tompkins and Scott Aukerman (from the podcast Comedy Bang Bang), “In the Days of the Caveman” by Crash Test Dummies

SHOW NOTES: Erica’s website, Tumblr and Twitter Erica’s contributions to the Marvel Universe Handbook Redux site Erica’s presence at Project: Rooftop Erica’s drawing of Venger from the…