Issue 18: Horror Comics & Terror, Inc.

Happy Halloween! We're joined by comics scribe Daniel "D.G." Chichester to talk about the history of horror comics, Marvel's return to the genre in the early 1990s, and the macabre anti-hero Terror (whom Chichester co-created). 

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Issue 18 Transcript

 

Mike: [00:00:00] It's small, but feisty, Mike: Welcome to Tencent Takes, the podcast where we dig up comic book characters’ graves and misappropriate the bodies, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson, and I am joined by my cohost, the Titan of terror herself, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: It is I. Mike: Today, we are extremely fortunate to have comics writer, Daniel, DG Chichester. Dan: Nice to see you both. Mike: Thank you so much for taking the time. You're actually our first official guest on the podcast. Dan: Wow. Okay. I'm going to take that as a good thing. That's great. Mike: Yeah. Well, if you're new to the show, the purpose of our [00:01:00] podcast as always is to look at the weirdest, silliest, coolest moments of comic books, and talk about them in ways that are fun and informative. In this case, we looking at also the spookiest moments, and how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we're going to be talking about horror comics. We're looking at their overall history as well as their resurrection at Marvel in the early 1990s, and how it helped give birth to one of my favorite comic characters, an undead anti-hero who went by the name of Terror. Dan, before we started going down this road, could you tell us a little bit about your history in the comic book industry, and also where people can find you if they want to learn more about you and your work? Dan: Absolutely. At this point, people may not even know I had a history in comic books, but that's not true. Uh, I began at Marvel as an assistant in the mid-eighties while I was still going to film school and, semi quickly kind of graduated up, to a more official, [00:02:00] assistant editor position. Worked my way up through editorial, and then, segued into freelance writing primarily for, but also for DC and Dark Horse and worked on a lot of, semi-permanent titles, Daredevil’s probably the best known of them. But I think I was right in the thick of a lot of what you're going to be talking about today in terms of horror comics, especially at Marvel, where I was fiercely interested in kind of getting that going. And I think pushed for certain things, and certainly pushed to be involved in those such as the Hellraiser and Nightbreed Clive Barker projects and Night Stalkers and, uh, and Terror Incorporated, which we're going to talk about. And wherever else I could get some spooky stuff going. And I continued on in that, heavily until about 96 / 97, when the big crash kind of happened, continued on through about 99 and then have not really been that actively involved since then. But folks can find out what I'm doing now, if they go to story maze.substack.com, where I have a weekly newsletter, which features [00:03:00] new fiction and some things that I think are pretty cool that are going on in storytelling, and also a bit of a retrospective of looking back at a lot of the work that I did. Mike: Awesome. Before we actually get started talking about horror comics, normally we talk about one cool thing that we have read or watched recently, but because this episode is going to be dropping right before Halloween, what is your favorite Halloween movie or comic book? Dan: I mean, movies are just terrific. And there's so many when I saw that question, especially in terms of horror and a lot of things immediately jumped to mind. The movie It Follows, the recent It movie, The Mist, Reanimator, are all big favorites. I like horror movies that really kind of get under your skin and horrify you, not just rack up a body count. But what I finally settled on as a favorite is probably John Carpenter's the Thing, which I just think is one of the gruesomest what is going to happen next? What the fuck is going to happen next?[00:04:00] And just utter dread. I mean, there's just so many things that combined for me on that one. And I think in terms of comics, I've recently become just a huge fan of, and I'm probably going to slaughter the name, but Junji Ito’s work, the Japanese manga artist. And, Uzumaki, which is this manga, which is about just the bizarreness of this town, overwhelmed with spirals of all things. And if you have not read that, it is, it is the trippiest most unsettling thing I've read in, in a great long time. So happy Halloween with that one. Mike: So that would be mango, right? Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So you'd make sure you read it in the right order, or otherwise it's very confusing, so. Mike: Yeah, we actually, haven't talked a lot about manga on this. We probably should do a deep dive on it at some point. But, Jessika, how about you? Jessika: Well, I'm going to bring it down a little bit more silly because I've always been a fan of horror and the macabre and supernatural. So always grew up seeking creepy media as [00:05:00] a rule, but I also loves me some silliness. So the last three or so years, I've had a tradition of watching Hocus Pocus with my friend, Rob around Halloween time. And it's silly and it's not very heavy on the actual horror aspect, but it's fun. And it holds up surprisingly well. Mike: Yeah, we have all the Funkos of the Sanderson sisters in our house. Jessika: It's amazing watching it in HD, their costumes are so intricate and that really doesn't come across on, you know, old VHS or watching it on television back in the day. And it's just, it's so fun. How much, just time and effort it looks like they put into it, even though some of those details really weren't going to translate. Dan: How very cool. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. So, but I also really like actual horror, so I'm also in the next couple of days is going to be a visiting the 1963 Haunting of Hill House because that's one of my favorites. Yeah. It's so good. And used to own the book that the movie was based on also. And seen all the [00:06:00] iterations and it's the same storyline the recent Haunting of Hill house is based on, which is great. That plot line has been reworked so many times, but it's such a great story, I'm just not shocked in the least that it would run through so many iterations and still be accepted by the public in each of its forms. Mike: Yeah. I really liked that Netflix interpretation of it, it was really good. Dan: They really creeped everything out. Mike: Yeah. There's a YouTuber called Lady Night, The Brave, and she does a really great summary breakdown explaining a lot of the themes and it's like almost two hours I think, of YouTube video, but she does these really lovely retrospectives. So, highly recommend you check that out. If you want to just think about that the Haunting of Hill House more. Jessika: Oh, I do. Yes. Mike: I'm going to split the difference between you two. When I was growing up, I was this very timid kid and the idea of horror just creeped me out. And so I avoided it like the plague. And then when I was in high [00:07:00] school, I had some friends show me some movies and I was like, these are great, why was I afraid of this stuff? And so I kind of dove all the way in. But my preferred genre is horror comedy. That is the one that you can always get me in on. And, I really love this movie from the mid-nineties called the Frighteners, which is a horror comedy starring Michael J. Fox, and it's directed by Peter Jackson. And it was written by Peter Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh. And it was a few years before they, you know, went on to make a couple of movies based on this little known franchise called Lord of the Rings. But it's really wild. It's weird, and it's funny, and it has some genuine jump scare moments. And there's this really great ghost story at the core of it. And the special effects at the time were considered amazing and groundbreaking, but now they're kind of, you look at, and you're like, oh, that's, high-end CG, high-end in the mid-nineties. Okay. But [00:08:00] yeah, like I said, or comedies are my absolute favorite things to watch. That's why Cabin in the Woods always shows up in our horror rotation as well. Same with Tucker and Dale vs Evil. That's my bread and butter. With comic books, I go a little bit creepier. I think I talked about the Nice House on the Lake, that's the current series that I'm reading from DC that's genuinely creepy and really thoughtful and fun. And it's by James Tynion who also wrote Something That's Killing the Children. So those are excellent things to read if you're in the mood for a good horror comic. Dan: Great choice on the Frighteners. That's I think an unsung classic, that I'm going to think probably came out 10 years too early. Mike: Yeah. Dan: It’s such a mashup of different, weird vibes, that it would probably do really, really well today. But at that point in time, it was just, what is this? You know? Cause it's, it's just cause the horrifying thing in it are really horrifying. And, uh, Gary Busey's son, right, plays the evil ghost and he is just trippy, off the wall, you know, horrifying. [00:09:00] Mike: Yeah. And it starts so silly, and then it kind of just continues to go creepier and creepier, and by the time that they do some of the twists revealing his, you know, his agent in the real world, it's a genuine twist. Like, I was really surprised the first time I saw it and I - Dan: Yeah. Mike: was so creeped out, but yeah. Dan: Plus it's got R. Lee Ermey as the army ghost, which is just incredible. So, Mike: Yeah. And, Chi McBride is in it, and, Jeffrey Combs. Dan: Oh, oh that’s right, right. right. Mike: Yeah. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. Mike: All right. So, I suppose we should saunter into the graveyard, as it were, and start talking about the history of horror comics. So, Dan, obviously I know that you're familiar with horror comics, Dan: A little bit. Mike: Yeah. What about you, Jess? You familiar with horror comics other than what we've talked about in the show? Jessika: I started getting into it once you and I started, you know, talking more on the [00:10:00] show. And so I grabbed a few things. I haven't looked through all of them yet, but I picked up some older ones. I did just recently pick up, it'll be more of a, kind of a funny horror one, but they did a recent Elvira and Vincent Price. So, yeah, so I picked that up, but issue one of that. So it's sitting on my counter ready for me to read right now. Mike: Well, and that's funny, cause Elvira actually has a really long, storied history in comic books. Like she first appeared in kind of like the revival of House of Mystery that DC did. And then she had an eighties series that had over a hundred issues that had a bunch of now major names involved. And she's continued to have series like, you can go to our website and get autographed copies of her recent series from, I think Dynamite. Jessika: That's cool. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Nice. Mike: Speaking of horror comedy Elvira is great. Jessika: Yes. Mike: I recently showed Sarah the Elvira Mistress of the Dark movie and she was, I think really sad that I hadn't showed it to her sooner. Jessika: [00:11:00] That's another one I need to go watch this week. Wow. Don’t- nobody call me. I'm just watching movies all week. Dan: Exactly. Mike: It's on a bunch of different streaming services, I think right now. Well it turns out that horror comics, have pretty much been a part of the industry since it really became a proven medium. You know, it wasn't long after comics became a legit medium in their own, right that horror elements started showing up in superhero books, which like, I mean, it isn't too surprising. Like the 1930’s was when we got the Universal classic movie monsters, so it makes a lot of sense that those kinds of characters would start crossing over into comic books, just to take advantage of that popularity. Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, the guys who created Superman, actually created the supernatural investigator called Dr. Occult in New Fun Comics three years before they brought Superman to life. And Dr. Occult still shows up in DC books. Like, he was a major character in the Books of Magic with Neil Gaiman. I think he may show up in Sandman later on. I can't remember. Jessika: Oh, okay. Dan: I wouldn't be surprised. Neil would find ways to mine that. [00:12:00] Mike: Yeah. I mean, that was a lot of what the Sandman was about, was taking advantage of kind of long forgotten characters that DC had had and weaving them into his narratives. And, if you're interested in that, we talk about that in our book club episodes, which we're currently going through every other episode. So the next episode after this is going to be the third episode of our book club, where we cover volumes five and six. So, horror comics though really started to pick up in the 1940s. There's multiple comic historians who say that the first ongoing horror series was Prized Comics, New Adventures of Frankenstein, which featured this updated take on the original story by Mary Shelley. It took place in America. The monster was named Frankenstein. He was immediately a terror. It's not great, but it's acknowledged as being really kind of the first ongoing horror story. And it's really not even that much of a horror story other than it featured Frankenstein's monster. But after that, a number of publishers started to put out adaptations of classic horror stories for awhile. So you had [00:13:00] Avon Publications making it official in 1946 with the comic Erie, which is based on the first real dedicated horror comic. Yeah. This is the original cover to Erie Comics. Number one, if you could paint us a word picture. Dan: Wow. This is high end stuff as it's coming through. Well it looks a lot like a Zine or something, you know it's got a very, Mac paint logo from 1990, you know, it's, it's your, your typical sort of like, ooh, I'm shaky kind of logo. That's Eerie Comics. There's a Nosferatu looking character. Who's coming down some stairs with the pale moon behind him. It, he’s got a knife in his hand, so, you know, he's up to no good. And there is a femme fatale at the base of the stairs. She may have moved off of some train tracks to get here. And, uh, she's got a, uh, a low, cut dress, a lot of leg and the arms and the wrists are bound, but all this for only 10. cents. So, I think there's a, there's a bargain there.[00:14:00] Mike: That is an excellent description. Thank you. So, what's funny is that Erie at the time was the first, you know, official horror comic, really, but it only had one issue that came out and then it sort of vanished from sight. It came back with a new series that started with a new number one in the 1950s, but this was the proverbial, the shot that started the war. You know, we started seeing a ton of anthology series focusing on horror, like Adventures into the Unknown, which ran into the 1960s and then Amazing Mysteries and Marvel Tales were repurposed series for Marvel that they basically changed the name of existing series into these. And they started doing kind of macabre, weird stories. And then, we hit the 1950s. And the early part of the 1950s was when horror comics really seemed to take off and experienced this insane success. We've talked about how in the post-WWII America, superhero comics were kind of declining in [00:15:00] popularity. By the mid 1950s, only three heroes actually had their own books and that was Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Which, I didn't realize that until I was doing research. I didn't, I just assumed that there were other superhero comics at the time. But we started seeing comics about horror and crime and romance really starting to get larger shares of the market. And then EC Comics was one of those doing gangbuster business during this whole era. Like, this was when we saw those iconic series, the Haunt of Fear, the Vault of Horror, the Crypt of Terror, which was eventually rebranded to Tales from the Crypt. Those all launched and they found major success. And then the bigger publishers were also getting in on this boom. During the first half of the 1950s Atlas, which eventually became Marvel, released almost 400 issues across 18 horror titles. And then American Comics Group released almost 125 issues between five different horror titles. Ace comics did almost a hundred issues between five titles. I'm curious. I'm gonna ask both of you, what [00:16:00] do you think the market share of horror comics was at the time? Dan: In terms of comics or in terms of just like newsstand, magazine, distribution. Mike: I'm going to say in terms of distribution. Dan: I mean, I know they were phenomenally successful. I would, be surprised if it was over 60%. Mike: Okay. How about. Jessika: Oh, goodness. Let's throw a number out. I'm going to say 65 just because I want to get close enough, but maybe bump it up just a little bit. This is a contest now. Dan: The precision now, like the 65. Jessika: Yes. Mike: Okay. Well, obviously we don't have like a hard definite number, but there was a 2009 article from reason magazine saying that horror books made up a quarter of all comics by 1953. So, so you guys were overestimating it, but it was still pretty substantial. At the same time, we were also seeing a surge in horror films. Like, the 1950s are known as the atomic age and media reflected [00:17:00] societal anxiety, at the possibility of nuclear war and to a lesser extent, white anxiety about societal changes. So this was the decade that gave us Invasion of the Body Snatchers The Thing from Another World, which led to John Carpenter's The Thing eventually. Um, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Hammer horror films also started to get really huge during this time. So we saw the beginning of stuff like Christopher Lee's, Dracula series of films. So the fifties were like a really good decade for horror, I feel. But at the same time, violent crime in America started to pick up around this period. And people really started focusing on juvenile criminals and what was driving them. So, there were a lot of theories about why this was going on and no one's ever really come up with a definite answer, but there was the psychiatrist named Frederick Wortham who Dan, I yeah. Dan: Oh yeah, psychiatrist in big air quotes, yeah. Mike: In quotes. Yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. And he was convinced that the rise in crime was due to comics, and he spent years writing and speaking against them. He almost turned it into a cottage industry for himself. And this culminated in 1954, when he published a book called Seduction of the Innocent, that blamed comic books for the rise in juvenile delinquency, and his arguments are laughable. Like, I mean, there's just no way around it. Like you read this stuff and you can't help, but roll your eyes and chuckle. But, at the time comics were a relatively new medium, you know, and people really only associated them with kids. And his arguments were saying, oh, well, Wonder Woman was a lesbian because of her strength and independence, which these days, I feel like that actually has a little bit of credibility, but, like, I don't know. But I don't really feel like that's contributing to the delinquency of the youth. You know, and then he also said that Batman and Robin were in a homosexual relationship. And then my favorite was that Superman comics were [00:19:00] un-American and fascist. Dan: Well. Mike: All right. Dan: There’s people who would argue that today. Mike: I mean, but yeah, and then he actually, he got attention because there were televised hearings with the Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. I mean, honestly, every time I think about Seduction of the Innocent and how it led to the Comics Code Authority. I see the parallels with Tipper Gore’s Parent Music Resource Center, and how they got the Parental Advisory sticker on certain music albums, or Joe Lieberman’s hearings on video games in the 1990’s and how that led to the Electronic Systems Reading Board system, you know, where you provide almost like movie ratings to video games. And Wortham also reminds me a lot of this guy named Jack Thompson, who was a lawyer in the nineties and aughts. And he was hell bent on proving a link between violent video games and school shootings. And he got a lot of media attention at the time until he was finally disbarred for his antics. But there was this [00:20:00] definite period where people were trying to link video games and violence. And, even though the statistics didn't back that up. And, I mean, I think about this a lot because I used to work in video games. I spent almost a decade working in the industry, but you know, it's that parallel of anytime there is a new form of media that is aimed at kids, it feels like there is a moral panic. Dan: Well, I think it goes back to what you were saying before about, you know, even as, as things change in society, you know, when people in society get at-risk, you know, you went to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Right. Which is classically thought to be a response to communism, you know, and the feelings of communist oppression and you know, the different, you know, the other, and it's the same thing. I think every single one of these is just a proof point of if you want to become, suddenly well-known like Lieberman or Wortham or anything, you know, pick the other that the older generation doesn't really understand, right? Maybe now there are more adults playing video games, but it's probably still perceived as a more juvenile [00:21:00] thing or comics or juvenile thing, or certain types of movies are a juvenile thing, you know, pick the other pick on it, hold it up as the weaponized, you know, piece, and suddenly you're popular. And you've got a great flashpoint that other people can rally around and blame, as if one single thing is almost ever the cause of everything. And I always think it's interesting, you know, the EC Comics, you know, issues in terms of, um, Wortham’s witch hunt, you know, the interesting thing about those is yet they were gruesome and they are gruesome in there, but they're also by and large, I don't know the other ones as well, but I know the EC Comics by and large are basically morality plays, you know, they're straight up morality plays in the sense that the bad guys get it in the end, almost every time, like they do something, they do some horrific thing, but then the corpse comes back to life and gets them, you know, so there's, there's always a comeuppance where the scales balance. But that was of course never going to be [00:22:00] an argument when somebody can hold up a picture of, you know, a skull, you know, lurching around, you know, chewing on the end trails of something. And then that became all that was talked about. Mike: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, spring boarding off of that, you know, worth them and the subcommittee hearings and all that, they led to the comics magazine association of America creating the Comics Code Authority. And this was basically in order to avoid government regulation. They said, no, no, no, we'll police ourselves so that you don't have to worry about this stuff. Which, I mean, again, that's what we did with the SRB. It was a response to that. We could avoid government censorship. So the code had a ton of requirements that each book had to meet in order to receive the Comics Code Seal of Approval on the cover. And one of the things you couldn't do was have quote, scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead or torture, which I mean,[00:23:00] okay. So the latter half of the 1950’s saw a lot of these dedicated horror series, you know, basically being shut down or they drastically changed. This is, you know, the major publishers really freaked out. So Marvel and DC rebranded their major horror titles. They were more focused on suspense or mystery or Sci-Fi or superheroes in a couple of cases, independent publishers, didn't really have to worry about the seal for different reasons. Like, some of them were able to rely on the rep for publishing wholesome stuff like Dell or Gold Key. I think Gold Key at the time was doing a lot of the Disney books. So they just, they were like, whatever. Dan: Right, then EC, but, but EC had to shut down the whole line and then just became mad. Right? I mean, that's that was the transition at which William, you know, Gains - Mike: Yeah. Dan: basically couldn't contest what was going on. Couldn't survive the spotlight. You know, he testified famously at that hearing. But had to give up all of [00:24:00] that work that was phenomenally profitable for them. And then had to fall back to Mad Magazine, which of course worked out pretty well. Mike: Yeah, exactly. By the end of the 1960s, though, publishers started to kind of gently push back a little bit like, Warren publishing, and Erie publications, like really, they didn't give a shit. Like Warren launched a number of horror titles in the sixties, including Vampirilla, which is like, kind of, I feel it's sort of extreme in terms of both sex and horror, because I mean, we, we all know what Vampirilla his costume is. It hasn't changed in the 50, approximately 50 years that it's been out like. Dan: It's like, what can you do with dental floss, Right. When you were a vampire? I mean, that's basically like, she doesn’t wear much. Mike: No, I mean, she never has. And then by the end of the sixties, Marvel and DC started to like kind of steer some of their books back towards the horror genre. Like how some Mystery was one of them where it, I think with issue 1 75, that was when they [00:25:00] took away, took it away from John Jones and dial H for Hero. And they were like, no, no, no, no. We're going to, we're going to bring, Cain back as the host and start telling horror morality plays again, which is what they were always doing. And this meant that the Comics Code Authority needed to update their code. So in 1971, they revised it to be a little bit more horror friendly. Jessika: Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with, walking dead or torture shall not be used. Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permitted to be used when handled in the classic traditions, such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high caliber literary works written by Edgar Allen Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle, and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world. Mike: But at this point, Marvel and DC really jumped back into the horror genre. This was when we started getting books, like the tomb of Dracula, Ghost Rider, where will finite and son of Satan, and then DC had a [00:26:00] bunch of their series like they had, what was it? So it was originally The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, and then it eventually got retitled to Forbidden Tales of the Dark Mansion. Like, just chef’s kiss on that title. Dan: You can take that old Erie comic and throw, you know, the Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love as the title on that. And it would work, you know. Mike: I know. Right. So Dan, I'm curious, what is your favorite horror comic or comic character from this era? Dan: I would say, it was son of Satan, because it felt so trippy and forbidden, and I think comics have always, especially mainstream comics you know, I've always responded also to what's out there. Right. I don't think it's just a loosening the restrictions at that point, but in that error, what's going on, you're getting a lot of, I think the films of Race with the Devil and you're getting the Exorcist and you're getting, uh, the Omen, you know, Rosemary's baby. right. Satanism, [00:27:00] the devil, right. It's, it's high in pop culture. So true to form. You know, I think Son of Satan is in some ways, like a response of Marvel, you know, to that saying, let's glom onto this. And for a kid brought up in the Catholic church, there was a certain eeriness to this, ooh, we're reading about this. It's like, is it really going to be Satanism? And cause I was very nervous that we were not allowed even watch the Exorcist in our home, ever. You know, I didn't see the Exorcist until I was like out of high school. And I think also the character as he looks is just this really trippy look, right. At that point, if you're not familiar with the character, he's this buff dude, his hair flares up into horns, he just wears a Cape and he carries a giant trident, he’s got a massive pentacle, I think a flaming pentacle, you know, etched in his chest. Um, he's ready to do business, ya know, in some strange form there. So for me, he was the one I glommed on to the most. [00:28:00] Mike: Yeah. Well, I mean, it was that whole era, it was just, it was Gothic horror brought back and Satanism and witchcraft is definitely a part of that genre. Dan: Sure. Mike: So, that said, kind of like any trend horror comics, you know, they have their rise and then they started to kind of fall out of popularity by the end of the seventies or the early eighties. I feel like it was a definite end of the era when both House of Mystery and Ghost Writer ended in 1983. But you know, there were still some individual books that were having success, but it just, it doesn't feel like Marvel did a lot with horror comics during the eighties. DC definitely had some luck with Alan Moore’s run of the Swamp Thing. And then there was stuff like Hellblazer and Sandman. Which, as I mentioned, we're doing our book club episodes for, but also gave rise to Vertigo Comics, you know, in the early nineties. Not to say that horror comics still weren't a thing during this time, but it seems like the majority of them were coming from indie publishers. Off the top of my head, one example I think of still is Dead World, which basically created a zombie apocalypse [00:29:00] universe. And it started with Aero comics. It was created in the late eighties, and it's still going today. I think it's coming out from IDW now. But at the same time, it's not like American stopped enjoying horror stuff. Like this was the decade where we got Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm street, Evil Dead, Hellraiser, Poltergeist, Child's Play, just to name a few of the franchises that we were introduced to. And, I mentioned Hellraiser. I love Hellraiser, and Dan, I know that you have a pretty special connection to that brand. Dan: I do. I put pins in my face every night just to kind of keep my complexion, you know? Mike: So, let's transition over to the nineties and Marvel and let's start that off with Epic Comics. Epic started in the eighties, and it was basically a label that would print, create our own comics. And they eventually started to use label to produce, you know, in quotes, mature comics. So Wikipedia says that this was your first editorial job at Marvel was with the [00:30:00] Epic Line. Is that correct? Dan: Well, I'll go back and maybe do just a little correction on Epic's mission if you don't mind. Mike: Yeah, yeah. Dan: You know, first, which is it was always creator owned, and it did start as crude. And, but I don't think that ever then transitioned into more mature comics, sometimes that just was what creator-owned comics were. Right. That was just part of the mission. And so as a creator-owned imprint, it could be anything, it could be the silliest thing, it could be the most mature thing. So it was always, you know, part of what it was doing, and part of the mission of doing creator-owned comics, and Archie Goodwin was the editor in chief of that line, was really to give creators and in to Marvel. If we gave them a nice place to play with their properties, maybe they would want to go play in the mainstream Marvel. So you might get a creator who would never want to work for Marvel, for whatever reason, they would have a great Epic experience doing a range of things, and then they would go into this. So there was always levels of maturity and we always looked at it as very eclectic and challenging, you know, sometimes in a good [00:31:00] way. So I'll have to go back to Wikipedia and maybe correct them. My first job was actually, I was on the Marvel side and it was as the assistant to the assistant, to the editor in chief. So I would do all of the grunt work and the running around that the assistant to the editor in chief didn't want to do. And she would turn to me and say, Dan, you're going to go run around the city and find this thing for Jim Shooter. Now, then I did that for about five or six months, I was still in film school, and then left, which everyone was aghast, you don't leave Marvel comics, by choice. And, but I had, I was still in school. I had a summer job already sort of set up, and I left to go take that exciting summer job. And then I was called over the summer because there was an opening in the Epic line. And they want to know if I'd be interested in taking on this assistant editor’s job. And I said, it would have to be part-time cause I still had a semester to finish in school, but they were intrigued and I was figuring, oh, well this is just kind of guaranteed job. [00:32:00] Never knowing it was going to become career-like, and so that was then sort of my second job. Mike: Awesome. So this is going to bring us to the character of Terror. So he was introduced as a character in the Shadow Line Saga, which was one of those mature comics, it was like a mature superhero universe. That took place in a few different series under the Epic imprint. There was Dr. Zero, there was St. George, and then there was Power Line. Right. Dan: That's correct, yep. Mike: And so the Shadow Line Saga took his name from the idea that there were these beings called Shadows, they were basically super powered immortal beings. And then Terror himself first appeared as Shrek. He's this weird looking enforcer for a crime family in St. George. And he becomes kind of a recurring nemesis for the main character. He's kind of like the street-level boss while it's hinting that there's going to be a eventual confrontation between the main character of St. George and Dr. Zero, who is kind of [00:33:00] a Superman character, but it turns out he has been manipulating humanity for, you know, millennia at this point. Dan: I think you've encapsulated it quite well. Mike: Well, thank you. So the Shadow Line Saga, that only lasted for about what a year or two? Dan: Probably a couple of years, maybe a little over. There was about, I believe, eight to nine issues of each of the, the main comics, the ones you just cited. And then we segued those over to, sort of, uh, an omni series we call Critical Mass, which brought together all three characters or storylines. And then try to tell this, excuse the pun, epic, you know story, which will advance them all. And so wrapped up a lot of loose ends and, um, you know, became quite involved now. Mike: Okay. Dan: It ran about seven or eight issues. Mike: Okay. Now a couple of years after Terror was introduced under the Epic label, Marvel introduced a new Ghost Rider series in 1990 that hit that sweet spot of like nineties extreme with a capital X and, and, you know, [00:34:00] it also gave us a spooky anti heroes like that Venn diagram, where it was like spooky and extreme and rides a motorcycle and right in the middle, you had Ghost Rider, but from what I understand the series did really well, commercially for Marvel. Comichron, which is the, the comic sales tracking site, notes that early issues were often in the top 10 books sold each month for 91. Like there are eight issues of Ghost Rider, books that are in the top 100 books for that year. So it's not really surprising that Marvel decided to go in really hard with supernatural characters. And in 1992, we had this whole batch of horror hero books launch. We had Spirits of Vengeance, which was a spinoff from Ghost Rider, which saw a Ghost Rider teaming up with Johnny Blaze, and it was the original Ghost Writer. And he didn't have a hellfire motorcycle this time, but he had a shotgun that would fire hell fire, you know, and he had a ponytail, it was magnificent. And then there was also the Night Stalkers, [00:35:00] which was a trio of supernatural investigators. There was Hannibal King and Blade and oh, I'm blanking on the third one. Dan: Frank Drake. Mike: Yeah. And Frank Drake was a vampire, right? Dan: And he was a descendant of Dracula, but also was a vampire who had sort of been cured. Um, he didn't have a hunger for human blood, but he still had a necessity for some type of blood and possessed all the attributes, you know, of a vampire, you know, you could do all the powers, couldn't go out in the daylight, that sort of thing. So, the best and worst of both worlds. Mike: Right. And then on top of that, we had the Dark Hold, which it's kind of like the Marvel equivalent of the Necronomicon is the best way I can describe it. Dan: Absolutely. Yup. Mike: And that's showed up in Agents of Shield since then. And they just recently brought it into the MCU. That was a thing that showed up in Wanda Vision towards the end. So that's gonna clearly reappear. And then we also got Morbius who is the living vampire from [00:36:00] Spider-Man and it's great. He shows up in this series and he's got this very goth rock outfit, is just it's great. Dan: Which looked a lot like how Len Kaminsky dressed in those days in all honesty. Mike: Yeah, okay. Dan: So Len will now kill me for that, but. Mike: Oh, well, but yeah, so these guys were all introduced via a crossover event called Rise of the Midnight Sons, which saw all of these heroes, you know, getting their own books. And then they also teamed up with Dr. Strange to fight against Lilith the mother of demons. And she was basically trying to unleash her monstrous spawn across the world. And this was at the same time the Terror wound up invading the Marvel Universe. So if you were going to give an elevator pitch for Terror in the Marvel Universe, how would you describe him? Dan: I actually wrote one down, I'll read it to you, cause you, you know, you put that there and was like, oh gosh, I got to like now pitch this. A mythic manifestation of fear exists in our times, a top dollar mercenary for hire using a supernatural [00:37:00] ability to attach stolen body parts to himself in order to activate the inherit ability of the original owner. A locksmith's hand or a marksman, his eye or a kickboxer his legs, his gruesome talent gives him the edge to take on the jobs no one else can, he accomplishes with Savage, restyle, scorn, snark, and impeccable business acumen. So. Mike: That's so good. It's so good. I just, I have to tell you the twelve-year-old Mike is like giddy to be able to talk to you about this. Dan: I was pretty giddy when I was writing this stuff. So that's good. Mike: So how did Terror wind up crossing into the Marvel Universe? Like, because he just showed shows up in a couple of cameos in some Daredevil issues that you also wrote. I believe. Dan: Yeah, I don't know if he'd showed up before the book itself launched that might've, I mean, the timing was all around the same time. But everybody who was involved with Terror, love that Terror and Terror Incorporated, which was really actual title. Love the hell out of [00:38:00] the book, right. And myself, the editors, Carl Potts, who was the editor in chief, we all knew it was weird and unique. And, at one point when I, you know, said to Carl afterwards, well I’m just gonna take this whole concept and go somewhere else with it, he said, you can't, you made up something that, you know, can't really be replicated without people knowing exactly what you're doing. It’s not just another guy with claws or a big muscle guy. How many people grab other people's body parts? So I said, you know, fie on me, but we all loved it. So when, the Shadowline stuff kind of went away, uh, and he was sort of kicking out there is still, uh, Carl came to me one day and, and said, listen, we love this character. We're thinking of doing something with horror in Marvel. This was before the Rise of the Midnight Sons. So it kind of came a little bit ahead of that. I think this eventually would become exactly the Rise of the Midnight Sons, but we want to bring together a lot of these unused horror characters, like Werewolf by Night, Man Thing, or whatever, but we want a central kind of [00:39:00] character who, navigates them or maybe introduces them. Wasn't quite clear what, and they thought Terror, or Shrek as he still was at that point, could be that character. He could almost be a Crypt Keeper, maybe, it wasn't quite fully baked. And, so we started to bounce this around a little bit, and then I got a call from Carl and said, yeah, that’s off. We're going to do something else with these horror characters, which again would eventually become probably the Midnight Sons stuff. But he said, but we still want to do something with it. You know? So my disappointment went to, oh, what do you mean? How could we do anything? He said, what if you just bring him into the Marvel Universe? We won't say anything about what he did before, and just use him as a character and start over with him operating as this high-end mercenary, you know, what's he going to do? What is Terror Incorporated, and how does he do business within the Marvel world? And so I said, yes, of course, I'm not going to say that, you know, any quicker and just jumped into [00:40:00] it. And I didn't really worry about the transition, you know, I wasn't thinking too much about, okay. How does he get from Shadow Line world, to earth 616 or whatever, Marcus McLaurin, who was the editor. God bless him, for years would resist any discussion or no, no, it's not the same character. Marcus, it’s the same character I'm using the same lines. I'm having him referenced the same fact that he's had different versions of the word terrors, his name at one point, he makes a joke about the Saint George complex. I mean, it's the same character. Mike: Yeah. Dan: But , you know, Marcus was a very good soldier to the Marvel hierarchy. So we just really brought him over and we just went all in on him in terms of, okay, what could a character like this play in the Marvel world? And he played really well in certain instances, but he certainly was very different than probably anything else that was going on at the time. Mike: Yeah. I mean, there certainly wasn't a character like him before. So all the Wikias, like [00:41:00] Wikipedia, all the Marvel fan sites, they all list Daredevil 305 as Terror’s first official appearance in. Dan: Could be. Mike: Yeah, but I want to talk about that for a second, because that is, I think the greatest villain that I've ever seen in a Marvel comic, which was the Surgeon General, who is this woman who is commanding an army of like, I mean, basically it's like a full-scale operation of that urban myth of - Dan: Yeah. Mike: -the dude goes home with an attractive woman that he meets at the club. And then he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice and he's missing organs. Dan: Yeah. You know, sometimes, you know, that was certainly urban myth territory, and I was a big student of urban myths and that was the sort of thing that I think would show up in the headlines every three to six months, but always one of those probably friend of a friend stories that. Mike: Oh yeah. Dan: Like a razor an apple or something like that, that never actually sort of tracks back. Mike: Well, I mean, the thing now is it's all edibles in candy and they're like, all the news outlets are showing officially [00:42:00] branded edibles. Which, what daddy Warbucks mother fucker. Jessika: Mike knows my stand on this. Like, no, no, nobody is buying expensive edibles. And then putting them in your child's candy. Like, No, no, that's stupid. Dan: No, it's the, it's the, easier version of putting the LSD tab or wasting your pins on children in Snickers bars. Jessika: Right. Dan: Um, but but I think, that, that storyline is interesting, Mike, cause it's the, it's one of the few times I had a plotline utterly just completely rejected by an editor because I think I was doing so much horror stuff at the time. Cause I was also concurrently doing the Hellraiser work, the Night Breed work. It would have been the beginning of the Night Stalkers work, cause I was heavily involved with the whole Midnight Sons work. And I went so far on the first plot and it was so grizzly and so gruesome that, Ralph Macchio who was the editor, called me up and said, yeah, this title is Daredevil. It's not Hellraiser. So I had to kind of back off [00:43:00] and realize, uh, yeah, I put a little too much emphasis on the grisliness there. So. Mike: That's amazing. Dan: She was an interesting, exploration of a character type. Mike: I'm really sad that she hasn't showed back up, especially cause it feels like it'd be kind of relevant these days with, you know, how broken the medical system is here in America. Dan: Yeah. It's, it's funny. And I never played with her again, which is, I think one of my many Achilles heels, you know, as I would sometimes introduce characters and then I would just not go back to them for some reason, I was always trying to kind of go forward onto something new. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Is there anything about Terror's character that you related to at the time, or now even. Dan: Um, probably being very imperious, very complicated, having a thing for long coats. Uh, I think all of those probably, you know, work then and now, I've kind of become convinced weirdly enough over time, that Terror was a character who [00:44:00] and I, you know, I co-created him with Margaret Clark and, and Klaus Janson, but I probably did the most work with him over the years, you know? So I feel maybe a little bit more ownership, but I've sort of become convinced that he was just his own thing, and he just existed out there in the ether, and all I was ultimately was a conduit that I was, I was just channeling this thing into our existence because he came so fully formed and whenever I would write him, he would just kind of take over the page and take over the instance. That's always how I've viewed him, which is different than many of the other things that I've written. Mike: He's certainly a larger than life personality, and in every sense of that expression. Jessika: Yes. Mike: I'm sorry for the terrible pun. Okay. So we've actually talked a bit about Terror, but I [00:45:00] feel like we need to have Jessika provide us with an overall summary of his brief series. Jessika: So the series is based on the titular character, of course, Terror, who is unable to die and has the ability to replace body parts and gains the skill and memory of that limb. So he might use the eye of a sharpshooter to improve his aim or the arm of an artist for a correct rendering. And because of the inability for his body to die, the dude looks gnarly. His face is a sick green color. He has spike whiskers coming out of the sides of his face, and he mostly lacks lips, sometimes he has lips, but he mostly lacks lips. So we always has this grim smile to his face. And he also has a metal arm, which is awesome. I love that. And he interchanges all of the rest of his body parts constantly. So in one scene he'll have a female arm and in another one it'll sport, an other worldly tentacle. [00:46:00] He states that his business is fear, but he is basically a paid mercenary, very much a dirty deeds, although not dirt cheap; Terror charges, quite a hefty sum for his services, but he is willing to do almost anything to get the job done. His first job is ending someone who has likewise immortal, air quotes, which involves finding an activating a half demon in order to open a portal and then trick a demon daddy to hand over the contract of immortality, you know, casual. He also has run-ins with Wolverine, Dr. Strange Punisher, Silver Sable, and Luke Cage. It's action packed, and you legitimately have no idea what new body part he is going to lose or gain in the moment, or what memory is going to pop up for him from the donor. And it keeps the reader guessing because Terror has no limitations. Mike: Yeah. Dan: was, I was so looking forward to hearing what your recap was going to be. I love that, so I just [00:47:00] want to say that. Jessika: Thank you. I had a lot of fun reading this. Not only was the plot and just the narrative itself, just rolling, but the art was fantastic. I mean, the things you can do with a character like that, there truly aren't any limits. And so it was really interesting to see how everything fell together and what he was doing each moment to kind of get out of whatever wacky situation he was in at the time.So. And his, and his quips, I just, the quips were just, they give me life. Mike: They're so good. Like there was one moment where he was sitting there and playing with the Lament Configuration, and the first issue, which I, I never noticed that before, as long as we ready this time and I was like, oh, that's great. And then he also made a St. George reference towards the end of the series where he was talking about, oh, I knew another guy who had a St. George complex. Dan: Right, right. Right, Mike: Like I love those little Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, there are a lot of Clive Barker Easter eggs throughout that whole series. Dan: [00:48:00] Well, That's it. That was so parallel at the time, you know. Mike: So around that time was when you were editing and then writing for the HellRaiser series and the Night Breed series, right? Dan: Yes. Certainly writing for them. Yeah. I mean, I did some consulting editing on the HellRaiser and other Barker books, after our lift staff, but, primarily writing at that point. Mike: Okay. Cause I have Hellraiser number one, and I think you're listed as an editor on it. Dan: I was, I started the whole Hellraiser anthology with other folks, you know, but I was the main driver, and I think that was one of the early instigators of kind of the rebirth of horror at that time. And, you know, going back to something you said earlier, you know, for many years, I was always, pressing Archie Goodwin, who worked at Warren, and worked on Erie, and worked on all those titles. You know, why can't we do a new horror anthology and he was quite sage like and saying, yeah. It'd be great to do it, but it's not going to sell there's no hook, right? There's no connection, you know, just horror for her sake. And it was when Clive Barker [00:49:00] came into our offices, and so I want to do something with Archie Goodwin. And then the two of them said, Hellraiser can be the hook. Right. Hellraiser can be the way in to sort of create an anthology series, have an identifiable icon, and then we developed out from there with Clive, with a couple of other folks Erik Saltzgaber, Phil Nutman, myself, Archie Goodwin, like what would be the world? And then the Bible that would actually give you enough, breadth and width to play with these characters that wouldn't just always be puzzle box, pinhead, puzzle box, pinhead, you know? And so we developed a fairly large set of rules and mythologies allowed for that. Mike: That's so cool. I mean, there really wasn't anything at all, like Hellraiser when it came out. Like, and there's still not a lot like it, but I - Jessika: Yeah, I was going to say, wait, what else? Mike: I mean, I feel like I've read other books since then, where there's that blending of sexuality and [00:50:00] horror and morality, because at the, at the core of it, Hellraiser often feels like a larger morality play. Dan: Now, you know, I'm going to disagree with you on that one. I mean, I think sometimes we let it slip in a morality and we played that out. But I think Hellraiser is sort of find what you want out of it. Right. You go back to the first film and it's, you know, what's your pleasure, sir? You know, it was when the guy hands up the book and the Centobites, you know, or angels to some demons, to others. So I think the book was at its best and the movies are at their best when it's not so much about the comeuppance as it is about find your place in here. Right? And that can be that sort of weird exploration of many different things. Mike: That’s cool. So going back to Terror. Because we've talked about like how much we enjoyed the character and everything, I want to take a moment to talk about each of our favorite Terror moments. Dan: Okay. Mike: So Dan, why don't you start? What was your favorite moment for Terror [00:51:00] to write or going back to read? Dan: It's a great question, one of the toughest, because again, I had such delight in the character and felt such a connection, you know, in sort of channeling him in a way I could probably find you five, ten moments per issue, but, I actually think it was the it's in the first issue. And was probably the first line that sort of came to me. And then I wrote backwards from it, which was this, got your nose bit. And you know, it's the old gag of like when a parent's playing with a child and, you know, grabs at the nose and uses the thumb to represent the nose and says, got your nose. And there's a moment in that issue where I think he's just plummeted out of a skyscraper. He's, you know, fallen down into a police car. He's basically shattered. And this cop or security guard is kind of coming over to him and, and he just reaches out and grabs the guy's nose, you know, rips his arm off or something or legs to start to replace himself and, and just says, got your nose, but it's, but it's all a [00:52:00] build from this inner monologue that he's been doing. And so he's not responding to anything. He's not doing a quip to anything. He's just basically telling us a story and ending it with this, you know, delivery that basically says the guy has a complete condescending attitude and just signals that we're in his space. Like he doesn't need to kind of like do an Arnold response to something it's just, he's in his own little world moments I always just kind of go back to that got your nose moment, which is just creepy and crazy and strange. Mike: As soon as you mentioned that I was thinking of the panel that that was from, because it was such a great moment. I think it was the mob enforcers that had shot him up and he had jumped out of the skyscraper four and then they came down to finish him off and he wound up just ripping them apart so that he could rebuild himself. All right, Jessika, how about you? Jessika: I really enjoyed the part where Terror fights with sharks in order to free Silver Sable and Luke Cage. [00:53:00] It was so cool. There was just absolutely no fear as he went at the first shark head-on and, and then there were like five huge bloodthirsty sharks in the small tank. And Terror's just like, what an inconvenience. Oh, well. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Like followed by a quippy remark, like in his head, of course. And I feel like he's such a solitary character that it makes sense that he would have such an active internal monologue. I find myself doing that. Like, you know, I mean, I have a dog, so he usually gets the brunt of it, but he, you know, it's, it is that you start to form like, sort of an internal conversation if you don't have that outside interaction. Dan: Right. Jessika: And I think a lot of us probably relate to that though this pandemic. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: But the one-liner thoughts, like, again, they make those scenes in my opinion, and it gave pause for levity. We don't have to be serious about this because really isn't life or death for Terror. We know that, and he just reminds us that constantly by just he's always so damn nonchalant. [00:54:00] Dan: Yeah. He does have a very, I'm not going to say suave, but it's, uh, you know, that sort of very, I've got this, you know, sort of attitude to it. Mike: I would, say that he's suave when he wants to be, I mean, like the last issue he's got his whiskers tied back and kind of a ponytail. Dan: Oh yeah. Jessika: Oh yeah. Dan: Richard Pace did a great job with that. Mike: Where he's dancing with his assistant in the restaurant and it's that final scene where he's got that really elegant tuxedo. Like. Dan: Yeah. It's very beautiful. Mike: I say that he can be suave and he wants to be. So I got to say like my favorite one, it was a visual gag that you guys did, and it's in issue six when he's fighting with the Punisher and he's got this, long guns sniper. And he shoots the Punisher point blank, and Terror’s, like at this point he's lost his legs for like the sixth time. Like he seems to lose his legs, like once an issue where he's just a torso waddling around on his hands. And so he shoots him the force skids him back. [00:55:00] And I legit could not stop laughing for a good minute. Like I was just cackling when I read that. So I think all of us agree that it's those moments of weird levity that really made the series feel like something special. Dan: I'm not quite sure we're going to see that moment reenacted at the Disney Pavilion, you know, anytime soon. But, that would be pretty awesome if they ever went that route. Mike: Well, yeah, so, I mean, like, let's talk about that for a minute, because one of the main ways that I consume Marvel comics these days is through Marvel unlimited, and Terror is a pretty limited presence there. There's a few issues of various Deadpool series. There's the Marvel team up that I think Robert Kirkman did, where Terror shows up and he has some pretty cool moments in there. And then there's a couple of random issues of the 1990s Luke Cage series Cage, but like the core series, the Marvel max stuff, his appearance in books like Daredevil and Wolverine, they just don't seem to be available for consumption via the. App Like I had to go through my personal [00:56:00] collection to find all this stuff. And like, are the rights just more complicated because it was published under the Epic imprint and that was create her own stuff, like do you know? Dan: No, I mean, it wouldn't be it's choice, right. He's probably perceived as a, if people within the editorial group even know about him, right. I was reading something recently where some of the current editorial staff had to be schooled on who Jack Kirby was. So, I'm not sure how much exposure or, you know, interest there would be, you know, to that. I mean, I don't know why everything would be on Marvin unlimited. It doesn't seem like it requires anything except scanning the stuff and putting it up there. But there wouldn't be any rights issues. Marvel owned the Shadow Line, Marvel owns the Terror Incorporated title, it would have been there. So I'm not really sure why it wouldn't be. And maybe at some point it will, but, that's just an odd emission. I mean, for years, which I always felt like, well, what did I do wrong? I [00:57:00] mean, you can find very little of the Daredevil work I did, which was probably very well known and very well received in, in reprints. It would be like, there'd be reprints of almost every other storyline and then there'd be a gap around some of those things. And now they started to reappear as they've done these omnibus editions. Mike: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, and going back the awareness of the character, anytime I talk about Terror to people, it's probably a three out of four chance that they won't have heard of them before. I don't know if you're a part of the comic book historians group on Facebook? Dan: I'm not. No. Mike: So there's a lot of people who are really passionate about comic book history, and they talk about various things. And so when I was doing research for this episode originally, I was asking about kind of the revamp of supernatural heroes. And I said, you know, this was around the same time as Terror. And several people sat there and said, we haven't heard of Terror before. And I was like, he's great. He's amazing. You have to look them up. But yeah, it seems like, you know, to echo what you stated, it seems like there's just a lack of awareness about the character, which I feel is a genuine shame. And that's part of the [00:58:00] reason that I wanted to talk about him in this episode. Dan: Well, thank you. I mean, I love the spotlight and I think anytime I've talked to somebody about it who knew it, I've never heard somebody who read the book said, yeah, that sucks. Right. I've heard that about other things, but not about this one, invariably, if they read it, they loved it. And they were twisted and kind of got into it. But did have a limited run, right? It was only 13 issues. It didn't get the spotlight, it was sort of promised it kind of, it came out with a grouping of other mercenary titles at the time. There was a new Punisher title. There was a Silver Sable. There was a few other titles in this grouping. Everyone was promised a certain amount of additional PR, which they got; when it got to Terror. It didn't get that it like, they pulled the boost at the last minute that might not have made a difference. And I also think maybe it was a little bit ahead of its time in certain attitudes crossing the line between horror and [00:59:00] humor and overtness of certain things, at least for Marvel, like where do you fit this? I think the readers are fine. Readers are great about picking up on stuff and embracing things. For Marvel, it was kind of probably, and I'm not dissing them. I never got like any negative, you know, we're gonna launch this title, what we're going to dismiss it. But I just also think, unless it's somebody like me driving it or the editor driving it, or Carl Potts, who was the editor in chief of that division at that point, you know, unless they're pushing it, there's plenty of other characters Right. For, things to get behind. But I think again, anytime it kind of comes up, it is definitely the one that I hear about probably the most and the most passionately so that's cool in its own way. Mike: Yeah, I think I remember reading an interview that you did, where you were talking about how there was originally going to be like a gimmick cover or a trading card or something like that. Dan: Yeah. Mike: So what was the, what was the gimmick going to be for Terror number one? Dan: What was the gimmick going to be? I don't know, actually, I if I knew I [01:00:00] can't remember anymore. But it was going to be totally gimmicky, as all those titles and covers were at the time. So I hope not scratch and sniff like a, uh, rotting bodies odor, although that would have been kind of in-character and cool. Mike: I mean, this was the era of the gimmick cover. Dan: Oh, absolutely. Mike: Like,that was when that was when we had Bloodstrike come out and it was like the thermographic printing, so you could rub the blood and it would disappear. Force Works is my favorite one, you literally unfold the cover and it's like a pop-up book. Dan: Somebody actually keyed me in. There actually was like a Terror trading card at one point. Mike: Yeah. Dan: Like after the fact, which I was like, shocked. Mike: I have that, that's from Marvel Universe series four. Dan: Yeah. we did a pretty good job with it actually. And then even as we got to the end of the run, you know, we, and you can sort of see us where we're trying to shift certain aspects of the book, you know, more into the mainstream Marvel, because they said, well, we'll give you another seven issues or something, you know, to kind of get the numbers up. Mike: Right. Dan: And they pulled the plug, you know, even before that. So, uh, that's why [01:01:00] the end kind of comes a bit abruptly and we get that final coda scene, you know, that Richard Pace did such a nice job with. Mike: Yeah. I mean, it felt like it wrapped it up, you know, and they gave you that opportunity, which I was really kind of grateful for, to be honest. Dan: Yeah. and subsequently, I don't know what's going on. I know there was that David Lapham, you know, series, you did a couple of those, which I glanced at, I know I kind of got in the way of it a little bit too, not in the way, but I just said, remember to give us a little created by credits in that, but I didn't read those. And then, I know he was in the League of Losers at one point, which just didn't sound right to me. And, uh. Mike: It's actually. Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to say this cause, it's basically a bunch of, kind of like the B to C listers for the most part. And. So they're called the Legal Losers. I think it's a really good story, and I actually really like what they do with Terror. He gets, she's now Spider Woman, I think it's, Anya Corazon, but it was her original incarnation of, Arana. And she's got that spider armor that like comes out of her arm. And so she [01:02:00] dies really on and he gets her arm. And then, Dan: That's cool. Mike: What happens is he makes a point of using the armor that she has. And so he becomes this weird amalgamation of Terror and Arana’s armored form, which is great. Dan: Was that the Kirkman series? Is that the one that he did or. Mike: yeah. That was part of Marvel Team-Up. Dan: Okay. Mike: it was written by Robert Kirkman. Dan: Well, then I will, I will look it up. Mike: Yeah. And that one's on Marvel unlimited and genuinely a really fun story as I remembered. It's been a couple of years since I read it, but yeah. Dan: Very cool. Mike: So we've talked about this a little bit, but, something that we like to focus on a bit is, you know, LGBTQ+ themes in comics, because we both identify as members of the queer community. And something has been happening over the past, I don't know, five years or so, is that the queer community has really been actively making a push to reclaim the horror genre as, it's ours. And this goes back to, you know, the original Gothic horror [01:03:00] novels were a lot of times written by people who were queer before terms like homosexual were even really part of the common parlance, and you know, Oscar Wilde, things like that. And it was a way that they could weave these homoerotic themes into fiction without being identified as the other. And then, also like in horror movies, a lot of times it's queer people who wind up being the killers. There's this great meme that came out a couple of years ago, which I've included in our show notes of, you know, society saying, well, LGBT+ people are monsters. And then us saying, well, we're just going to gather up all the cryptids and monsters in our arms and say, these are ours now. And they're like, they're like, wait, no, that's not. And it's no, no, it's too late. The Babadook is gay and I'm dating Moth Man. And Dan: Is there a t-shirt that says that, because that would be pretty freaking awesome. Mike: Yeah. Dan: It's like. Mike: So you have a fairly unique perspective because, you know, we've [01:04:00] talked about how you worked on a couple of queer horror franchises. Like I feel like Hellraiser is a very queer horror franchise in its own way because there's a lot of sexuality of various types in there. And Nightbreed the argument has been made that it's a subversively queer movie because it's all about a persecuted minority that gathers together to support itself from the larger, you know, humanity society. and you were working on these comics right around the time when the Comics Code Authority was updated to allow the acknowledgement of homosexuality. And I mean, What was that like, did that even come into play with what you guys were writing at the time, because you didn't have to worry about the Comics Code. Dan: Yeah. for us to do wasn't a blip, you know, it wasn't a blip on the radar by being over an Epic land. We skirted that because our books were more mature, you know, in that way. And I, in all honesty at that point, the Marvel books were still submitted to the Comics Code, but it had become largely toothless, you know, from the late seventies, early eighties [01:05:00] onward, you know, especially when, I think it was DC, really broke precedent. I think Marvel brought precedents with some Spider-Man issues that were related to drugs. And then DC did something of the same with the Green Lantern Green Arrow books. And they said, we want to talk about these mature themes and we're not gonna, you know, be buckled under by this. So, even though when I worked on the Marvel side and we'd submit things to the Comics Code, and if they came back with something, certainly that would be responded to, but, in relationship to the Nightbreed and Hellraiser work, we never had to worry about that. But I think it's a really interesting point you make. And wasn't something I consciously thought of in that exact way. I mean, Clive is gay and, that's not a secret and I hope not in an outcome. Right. Um, and Mike: I think he was out even back then. Dan: No, he was, he was, no, he, of course he was. And he was very much who he is and just an amazing character and amazing charismatic and amazingly seductive [01:06:00] in, you know, in the work that he does. And I think we touched on this a little bit before, you know, certainly in terms of Hellraiser, at least my view was always, yeah, there's horrific things in there and of you want to interpret that as your pleasure, well, that's so whole different like mindset or worldview, but it's very open, right. Find yourself in this. And if folks have embraced, you know, the Nightbreed, you know, in that way, I think that's terrific. I don't think it was never in all my many, many, many discussions and creations, you know, around that overtly stated, well, well, this is a metaphor, you know, for the queer community or something. I think anytime anything's actually discussed that way, it’s horrible. You know, when it's, when it's literally positioned as this is a metaphor for X and therefore there's an agenda behind it to do it that way, it becomes very, like you're preaching about something in a [01:07:00] way, but it was always inherently there. Who were the heroes at Night Breed the monsters of the heroes, right? Their persecution, their outsider status. They are the normals to themselves, right? Which was the wonderful thing about it. And it was Archie Goodwin who actually sorta gave us the keys to the comics kingdom on that, because he said there are the X-Men of monsters, right. Which is the X-Men were famously the outsiders as mutants, you know, within the mainstream comics. So it was like his interpretation of like saying, this is how we make this transition into an ongoing, you know, series of stories. So, you know, I would just say that it's all there in how you want to, look at the sense that there are societal outsiders who are, of course, completely normal and worthwhile and vibrant and worth exploring and becoming part of. How many people within the Nightbreed stories. At least the, you know, I was doing, you know, want to [01:08:00] become a Nightbreed, right? Because they recognize something about themselves or they recognize they're lacking, or maybe they're doing it for the wrong reasons, it's actually in so many ways, a more appealing society because it has this range and individuality. Mike: Awesome. Well, so this kind of leads into the fact that, you know, we've been rereading Terror. Ahead of this interview, but we're obviously approaching it with 2021 perspective. Dan: Right. Mike: And something that stuck out to me is that Terror comes across a bit as somewhat gender fluid, but it's like in a utilitarian way, like given how he isn't picky about, the gender of the parts that he attaches to his body. I mean like, so you know, the metal arm that Jessika mentioned earlier, so it wasn't really explained in the core series until I think that final issue, and we get that, that two-page splash. That was the woman that he fell in love with. And he, always wanted to keep a part of her with him. Right. Dan: Right. She's hermetically sealed inside that metal hand. Mike: Right. Dan: Yeah. Mike: But I mean, [01:09:00] you know, there was the bit where at one point in the first issue where he's using the hand of an artist and his assistants like, oh, I love what you've done with your nails. And he gets this quizzical look and he's like, well, I was more concerned with, you know, its artistic abilities rather than it's cuticle care. But I mean, do you think the argument can be made these days that he is somewhat gender queer? Dan: I love this point that you made and it's something, you know, I wish I had explored more. And thinking about the character then, I think it's a fantastic consideration. I think he's more gender practical. Mike: Mm. Dan: Right? In the, in the sense of Lucy, you said sort of utilitarian, it's just, what do I need at any given moment to get my business done? But I think, and you brought this point up, Jess, when you sort of did the recap, every part didn't just come with the physical abilities, right. It wasn't just the locksmith’s, you know, hand or the artist's hand or the kickboxers leg or whatever, whatever he picked up also came with the emotional components. [01:10:00] Right? So if that hand that was doing, a sketch of somebody, because he needed to know what the map of a building looked like. He was also picking up on the fact that that hand had touched that person's child that morning and run its fingers through the hair. So he was getting this emotional charge and memory components that were kind of mixed in there, which he had to both hold at bay because he couldn't get swept away in it. Otherwise he's not gonna be able to do his business, but I think based upon what you're asking now would also just make a much more completely, robust, informed character. Right? He's experienced so much from so many genders., and so many gender interpretations and personal persona interpretations over thousands of years, you know, potentially, you know, in this way, he's gotta be incredibly balanced and also sort [01:11:00] of, why are you guys talking about this? You know, if he ever got into a conversation about it, you know, in that way, which I just love, I just love that you brought that up. And it also made me think a little bit for the first time, really about, you know, the whole sort of Theseus’ ship, you know, what is left of him. Mike: Yeah. Dan: You know?And you know what very little right. So who is Terror, you know, in that own way, what he's replaced probably pretty much everything over time. Mike: I never even thought about that. That's a great point. Jessika: Yeah. So Terrorists popped up in Marvel books since his solo series, but you didn't write them. Dan: Shame, shame! Jessika: So the appearances were, I know, oh, I'm going to have to no, heartily agree. So Terror, Marvel Max, Apocalypse Soon, Deadpool volume six, Deadpool and the Mercs for Money, and Marvel Team Up. If you were going to write a new Terror story and you could team him [01:12:00] up with anyone, what would you do? Dan: Another great question. And first I want to ask you guys a question. Why would it have to be a team up? Why wouldn't it be like a solo series? I have an idea of the team up, but I just wanted to know what led that question to, why would it have to be thinking about a team up story? Jessika: Oh, I feel like it certainly wouldn't have to be. MikeYeah. Jessika: But it would be interesting to see who think would be a good pair up these days as well. Because absolutely. I would love to see that character in his own right, you know, resurface. Cause he is interesting. He's fun. And I think there are just so many things that you could do with that character, especially nowadays. Dan: Very cool. Mike: Yeah. I'm on the same page where I would love to see just Terror in any incarnation, but like, honestly, I love the idea of just teaming up with someone established, because he's such a great comic foil in his own way. Like, he's, he, he’s. Dan: Yeah, he brings out something in the others. Mike: He's very disruptive in his own way to, you know, crib of [01:13:00] buzzword from everywhere. He says. Dan: From business. Mike: Yeah. Dan: No, actually, it was a great question. And I'm going to go pitch this to Tom Breward after this, but, it got me flashing back actually to what I'd mentioned before, when Carl called me and said, hey, we want him to be the Crypt Keeper or something like that. But, I said, you know, to myself, you know, if you were to bring it back, what if you teamed him up? And this is not commercial in any way, shape or form, but it's sort of, you know, what if you teamed him up with some other prominent Marvel horror characters, again, not the ones that already have their range, right? Like Blade and Ghost Rider, you know, who are tripping it up and stuff. But what if you pulled back that Man Thing, or the Living Mummy, or the Werewolf By Night, Morbius, you know, maybe even though Morbius is going to get some more prominent, certainly in Spider-Man or something like that, Barren Blood, you know, or whatever. And what if he basically had to establish a new Terror Incorporated? You know, he's basically got a, kind of an Ocean's 11 [01:14:00] sort of mission he has to do in some form or another, and had to bring them together. But what would be interesting, I think too, would be him in parting on all of these disenfranchised characters: you need to be operating as a business, stopped your shambling through the swamp. You know, and stop like going to dog grooming places or, you know, or bandage places, cause you're the Living Mummy or whatever, like find an angle, a disruptive angle with each of these, as he brings them together for his own, obviously self-serving purposes, you know, a way to sort of impart on them. You're not treating yourself, right. You're not treating your assets right way. Right. Here's how to invest your assets and, you know, get a return on investment, you know, as it were, and play that out. I think that could be actually a hell of a lot of fun, to have a sort of a range like that. Mike: Yeah, it’s your turn, your turn, your not a side hustle. Turn your shamble hustle and do a or side [01:15:00] shamble. Dan: Your side shamble. Yeah, I think it’s like. Mike: Yeah. Dan: like, you know Mike: Oh man. Jessika: Hashtag boss monster. Mike: Yes! Jessika: Oh, to really pull it back into nowadays. Mike: Oh God. We're. Oh man. We're totally using that in the, in the hashtags we’re using to promote this. Jessika: Yeah. Let's yeah. Hashtag boss monster. Absolutely. Dan: that would be the, that could be the title. That's the subtitle Terror Inc.: Boss Monster. Jessika: Oh my gosh. If I, if I see that come up, I'm going to know I don't, I don't need any credit, butI'm going to know. Dan: You will get credit. Mike: I was gonna say, just, just give us a thanks. That's all we care about. That's amazing. Jessika: Well, was there any one person in the industry that you aspired to work with and were you able to make that a reality? Dan: That was interesting consideration too, as you guys put it out there, I had no expectations or aspirations. I mean, getting into the business was [01:16:00] somewhat of a surprise and a gift in a lot of ways. So I sort of charged forward and I was really lucky. I mean, I've worked with a lot of A-list people, right? I worked with Bilson Kevitch and Klaus Janson and, uh, Ron Garney and Lee Weeks, and Dwayne McDuffie. And it was a co-writer on some things and, you know, Brett Blevins, Jorge Zafino, Clive Barker on these things. So, but what I thought about specifically people who I might've liked to work with and it was just too insecure to actually ask them. I always liked Bob Layton's work a lot. Um, and, JR Jr. Who we crossed over in a lot of conversations and interviews, especially in the Daredevil world, it would have been interesting to sort of reach out to him. Bernie Wrightson, who work I admired beyond, beyond, and when I finally met him, it was like, you're Bernie Wrightson. It's impossible that I'm actually talking to you. That would have been amazing to work with. And an artist I've always really admired as June [01:17:00] Brigman who was very famous for Power Pack and the, uh, Especially, and, , you know, I think that would have been a fun pairing. I don't know exactly what type of project I wouldn't put June on Terror Incorporated necessarily, but you know, these are folks who would have been a lot of fun to work with. There was a well-known artist, Paul Ryan, who, was a very workman, like presence on a lot of titles of phenomenal storyteller. And we were supposed to do some Daredevil mini-series and those got shortcut when, I got taken off Daredevil, but, would have been fun to work with. Unfortunately he passed away a few years ago. Mike: Now I'm thinking about Terror and Power Pack crossing over. Dan: Well, you know, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have beat up on the kids, you know. Mike: Well, no, just. Dan: Just think of some excuse probably, you know. Mike: World's worst babysitter. Like. Dan: Exactly. Mike: Takes them on assassination missions. Like I think that'd be great. Dan: Exactly. Jessika: Gosh. Mike: Well, slightly related. did you hear the recent news? That 2K is doing a rise of [01:18:00] the Midnight Sons video game? Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I saw that and, um, and I'm a big admirer of the EXCOM, you know, games. So, I think that's encouraging that it will be And exciting well done game. It seems like they're using that approach and that kind of engine. Uh, I'm a little, not sure about what they're doing with the whole name change. You know, it goes from sons with O N S to U N S to the casts that they've sort of put in there. You know, I was corresponding with some of the other folks who, with me created Lilith and created the Rise of the Midnight Sons and saying, is this a legitimate change or is this one of these things where they skew things just enough where they don't have to pay us for certain things? Or, even if they twist it, do we still get one of those nice little thank you’s in the game credits at least. So I'm intrigued, you know, by it, but I'm also not sure where they're going to go. [01:19:00] I read an interview with the games director and he was saying something about Lilith and then the Lilin who are her children, you know, that she was trying to spread across the earth. And he's saying, Yeah. like Lilith and her, you know, her spawn, you know, it would be really, integral to a game like this. And it was like, yeah, that was the whole point of the story, the story. So maybe it was a misquote. I, understand he's actually a fan of the stories. So I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for it. Mike: It’s interesting. Dan: Yeah, it definitely is. It's a different view on the Marvel characters, probably for a lot of people who aren't exposed to it. And certainly there's all those, I don't know if the rumors are just fan bait discussion, probably more the latter, you know, where people are always talking about. Well, that's the next shift for, you know, the MCU is they're going to start introducing more. The horror stuff, you know, and you're seeing a little bit of that with Agatha, you know, Harkness and and creepy things here. And Sam [01:20:00] Raimi is directing, Mike: Doctor Strange 2. Yeah. Dan: You know, multi-verse, you know, of madness and, and, uh, does that mean we're going to start getting Ghost Riders and certainly we're getting Blade and all that kind of stuff, so. Mike: Well, yeah. Cause we had Robbie Reyes show up in Agents of Shield. Like it's, it's, actually a really good season. Dan: And it’s actually Robbie Reyes as Ghost Rider? Mike: Yeah. Yup. Yeah. So that's the whole thing is they started splitting up the Agents of Shield seasons into kind of like half season arcs that would then merge together at the end. And so I think it's season four and have Robbie Reyes has Ghost Rider and there's the Dark Hold. And, then later on there's an AI Android who shows up and is doing her world ending nonsense. And then they, and they bring Robbie Reyes back. And, I think they give the Ghost Rider essence to Agent Colson at one point, which was kind of cool. But the thing with Robbie Reyes is he [01:21:00] reveals that he was in a car wreck and then Ghost Rider on a motorcycle shows up and gives him his own Ghost Rider. Um, and so it's hinting at that larger Ghost Rider. Dan: Connection go Ghost Rider patrol. Mike: Well, yeah, because there wouldn't have been like a whole slew of Ghost Riders in Marvel after awhile, there was Johnny Blaze and Dan Catch and then there was Robbie Reyes and then they've had a couple of others. And then I think Jason Aaron did a whole thing where it showed Ghost Riders through history. Dan: Yeah. Mike: Comic books are always weird and they get convoluted and I love them. Dan: Yeah. I think like the convolution is always the thing. I mean, sometimes I'll go to Wikipedia to catch up on something and I'll stop reading after the third paragraph. Cause I can't, follow it anymore. And it's just like, what, what, what, and I'm pretty good at following stuff, but that’s so. Mike: It gets complicated real quick. Dan: Right.Right. Like I was reading about Venom, you know, the latest movie and then there was this whole detour around and [01:22:00] then Venom became an eternal universe spanning spirit, as well as like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa he was just fine when it was like a twisty little, you know, spirally symbiote, like why does he need to become a Galactus-like figure or something like that? So. Mike: I just finished reading the King in Black series, which like, I don't know if you've read it, but Donnie Case has done some really interesting stuff with both Thor and Venom. And you know, the cool thing is that they let Kates build it up for awhile. There was absolute carnage. And then they had Null who was like the God that was imprisoned by the planet of the symbiotes and then they tied it back into Captain Universe. So, it was really solid. It works out well, but it's one of those things where they had a lot of buildup. It wasn't one of those nineties moments where they're just like, here's a whole set of new powers. Dan: Yeah. Well, you know. Mike: Yeah. Dan: The nineties, you just had to move on to the next issue. So Mike: Yeah, I have a really soft spot for the eighties and [01:23:00] nineties just because . They're ridiculous in a lot of ways, but. We've talked a lot about, about the, the eighties and nineties series so far. Like, the New Guardians. That's still one of my favorite episodes that we did. Jessika: The New Guardians. Oh my gosh. What a train wreck that, yeah, no, I mean, just like in an interesting, in like surprising way. Yeah. That, that was fun. Dan: I’ll have to go back and listen to that episode. Mike: Okay, well, let's move on to Brain Wrinkles, which is the one thing that is comics or comics adjacent. That's been stuck in our heads lately. So Jess, why don't you start us off? Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. There's been a little bit more distribution drama in the comics industry recently. Mike: Hm. Jessika: Marvel recently switched distribution companies from Diamond to Penguin [01:24:00] Random House. And evidently the first week of Marvel shipments, didn't go well. Um, about 70% of the shipments either went missing or were incredibly damaged upon arrival. And we already are having an issue with, you know, distribution with the logistics of, you know, the, what was going on with the Suez Canal and, you know, a lot of different things that are delaying books getting there. So now this is just one more piece of the delay that I know that, you know, as a retailer, I'm sure it's difficult right now to begin with, with the virus and then not having your shipments come in and not being able to sell your products. I mean, I want the comics industry to do well, you know, so, they had also previously, apparently, received feedback from at least one retailer prior to Marvel's for shipment and specifications on how comics had been shipped through Diamond to kind of give Penguin a chance to, you know, grow [01:25:00] and learn a little bit. And it does feel like growing pains, but unfortunately, potentially a lack of understanding or research when they kind of started it up. However Penguin Random House has issued a statement to the businesses, apologizing for the issues and committing to finding the best packaging and delivering method to ensure consistent deliveries, of intact products. So hopefully we won't be hearing too much more about this. Mike: Oh man. I'm worried about the latest. Brian's then, cause it's been about a month since I was able to pick up my pull list. Jessika: Yeah. We'll have to ask them about that. Mike: Yeah. Uh Jessika: I have to go to Outer Planes, so I’ll have to ask them. Mike: I just got a gift certificate there for my birthday. I'm very excited. Jessika: Happy, happy, belated. Mike: I'm old now. Okay, so Dan, how about you? Dan: Oh, well, two things occurred to me when forwarded me, these questions. And thank you for that, just gave me a moment to think about it. Um, you know, one is just, I think it's a [01:26:00] little bit about distribution maybe, but I'm really interested where comics seem to be exploring different outlets online, uh, especially in the newsletter space. I'm sure you guys have been tracking, especially Substack, has been pushing very hard for comics authors to become a bigger part of their platform. You know, they're all about writers, they're all about expressing yourself. And so they've offered up, uh, apparently quite lucrative deals to some well-known comics creators to come over to their platform and create new properties there, which are going to be offered in this newsletter form TBD, whether that's just straight up PDFs or, you know, one page after another, I think they're probably going to be exploring how that is. So it's not quite web toons, certainly not like a Comixology sort of model, but it's giving a lot of these prominent creators, a pause, and then they're accepting deals and they're stepping away from high profile titles [01:27:00] like Daredevil and, Batman. And they're going over to do their own comics here where they will own the rights. They'll give a, you know, a relatively small amount back to Substack , for the subscription fees, of people signing up, but they'll own the rights and there'll be able to do whatever they want after that. If they want to go and do a published version or another PDF version here or whatever, to me that opens up amazing possibilities, not just for those prominent creators, but for how other people can think about how they want to represent comic-style stories. And I think that's been a very limiting thing as you? know, for a lot of people. How do I get it published? What can I do? Do I go only if you're the big publisher? No there's Kickstarter. Okay. I can do a Kickstarter. Maybe it gets funded, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe this is another way. So, I'm intrigued by that. You know, the other thing just sticks in my head is we're seeing a lot more obviously comic properties that are fueling culture. And, even the horror ones, you know, you were talking about upfront with these, these longer [01:28:00] titles, you know, Something's Killing the Children. The one I want to look up, you know, a Nice House on the Lake, you know, some of these other things, you know, the titles are becoming book like, and even the design of the comics or becoming book, like, the logos and such, but as these things are, then I don't know if they're consciously being done to sell them, to Netflix or some streaming service, but they're certainly a lot of them moving into these things that are fueling pop culture. Right. Sweet Tooth, you know, most recently. And I would like to see more of those properties as they make that transition, do the callbacks to the source material. Right. It's been my big, thing I've knitted on with Marvel, you know, forever. It was like, why don't you have at the end? You know, not just like for Thor will return, but until then, read the Continuing Adventures of Thor in, it costs you nothing. Right. And yet it sort of gives a call back to people who don't know about this, that this is where this idea came from. The Genesis was in this format and in this [01:29:00] medium, that allowed for some type of exploration of idea and synergy that didn't necessarily come from Hollywood. Right? Cause you get back to that. Well, the only people that can tell stories are people who were trained in, in Hollywood storytelling. And clearly since Hollywood is now mining comics like mad, it says something about the uniqueness of, you know, this friction and frisson of how these ideas are created over here. So I think that's something that would be interesting. those of us in the know, you know, should maybe spend a little more time stirring the pot to remind folks, well, yeah, that’s great annd it's terrific. And boy, that show's wonderful, but it started over here. Soapbox off. Mike: Yeah, I know. I mean, you know, we're both nodding vigorously along with us. We thinkthat's, that's, you know, I think that's a very valid perspective. Jessika: Yeah. And also that's one of the reasons we're here is to bring more comics to [01:30:00] light. Yeah, absolutely. Mike: Yeah. Okay. So. I have been thinking more about how it really feels like we're in another boom period for horror comics. Like the majority of my pull list from Brian's comics and Petaluma is horror titles. And it's the ones that I was mentioning earlier. Something is Killing the Children, the Nice House on the Lake Kyron Guillen's Once and Future, which is like a dark fantasy horror take on Arthurian legends, um, which is also excellent. But I don't think we would have had the opportunity to get comics like this. If the Comics Code Authority was still around and it just, it sort of drove home to me how industries will absolutely hobble themselves creatively when they're the focus of a moral panic. And it's just, it's something that's really been kind of sticking to me as I was doing research for this episode. And again, going back to my history of video games, where we saw kind of our own version of the Comics Code, where it's the ESRV [01:31:00] ratings. And, you know, if you don't have any ESRV rating or your game had a rating higher than M they wouldn't sell it in stores. So just food for thought and how I'm really glad that the Comics Code is no longer a thing. Dan: Do you think it's even, clearly, there are still people who want to be lightning rods, there’s that person who wants to be the know Frank Wortham, and the new Joe Lieberman, who’s, you know, Senator from my home state, who I despise for the reasons, the things he did there, that that way. But, but you know, to me, it's and those people can still stir the pot, right. They can still get on some reactionary, you know, news thing and make issues. But it seems like the restrictive ability is less than it was, right. If you didn't get the Comics Code Authority back in the eighties or nineties, there was nobody else who could put that comic out. There was no other way to get your music out except through the regular publishers. No other way to get your game out, except through GameStop or whatever. But now you want [01:32:00] to piss on my game. Great. I'll put it up on Steam, right? You want to like, act like my music is incendiary. You just made my sales go up and I just put it out on Spotify, you know, or my own Patreon thing or whatever. So, Yes. So thank God there aren’t those things, but, you know, not withstanding the Handmaid's Tale becoming like real, you know, there’s more opportunity for people to be able to out with very unique visions Mike: Yes. Dan: and challenge us and excite us. Mike: I completely agree. I think, it’s one of the instances of the free market actually doing what it's supposed to and, you know, people, politicians especially love to tout the free market in all the wrong ways. But I think in terms of media and media consumption, the free market has made things arguably mainly better in terms of getting content out that would rub certain people in the wrong way. Dan: And also the freedom of distribution channels, right. I mean, the ability to get something out there that's [01:33:00] extraordinarily professional looking, but it does not require that I have to go through this narrow gate. Mike: Yeah. I mean, our show is a perfect example of that. Like, you know, 10 years ago, getting, a podcast up and running, you know, it was incredibly intimidating and these days it's pretty simple. Dan: Right. Right. Mike: granted there's still a learning curve, which if you go back and listen to our early episodes, you can hear it. It's rough. But, but I'd like to think that we sound a lot better these days, but. Dan: I think you guys sounded pretty good from episode one. Mike: Thank you. Dan: So, that is a perfect example. And you know, the ability to move something forward, you still got to do all the work around it. Right. You gotta promote it and all that kind of stuff. Jessika: I just think there's so much more room for the accessibility of finding, so that the audience has increased just in that way, you have people who have the internet, they're able to go on and search for these things. Instead of needing to have a comic book shop near them or needing to have a movie theater near them, usually people have the ability to have the internet where we're at these days, which is [01:34:00] just, it truly does open it up for the audience as well. But that also improves things for the creators Dan: Right. Jessika: In getting their name out as well. Mike: Yeah, Well, again, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come and talk with us. This was super exciting for both of us. I mean, like I said, you're our first official guest on the show, you set the bar really high. Dan: As well I should. Well, no, thank you both. This was a really enjoyable conversation and digging into something that's a big favorite of mine as well. Jessika: Thanks for listening to Tencent Takes. Accessibility is important to us, so text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website. Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer, Mike Thompson and Dan Chichester written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson, Johnson of Bay Area Sound, and today's intro also featured Gothic Horror, from Purple Planet Music. Our credits and transition music is pursuit of life by Evan MacDonald. And it was purchased [01:35:00] with a standard license from Premium Beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who you can find on Instagram @lookmomdraws. Dan: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast account is @tencenttakes, Jessika is @jessikawitha, and Mike is @vansau, V a N S a U. Dan, that’s me, is DG Chichester on Twitter, and you can also find me at storymaze.substack.com Jessika: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen. Mike: Stay safe out there. Jessika: And support your local comic shop.