Sierra Barnes on HANS VOGEL IS DEAD v2
Robots From Tomorrow!
Sierra Barnes returns to the show to discuss the next collection of her antifascist fairy tale webcomic Hans Vogel is Dead. She details her webcomic-to-print workflow, frequently intense production pace, delays, and outlining Volume 3 amid uncertainty about the publisher. Things hinted at in the 2023 interview are now discussed openly, including a major theme Sierra has literally been waiting years to be asked about! The conversation also explores horror as catharsis, comics versus prose from a writer's standpoint, the role of perception and animal imagery connecting to Nazi...
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Sierra Barnes on HANS VOGEL IS DEAD v1
Robots From Tomorrow!
(Originally published on January 26, 2023) Sierra Barnes is a cartoonist whose work combines such varied influences as history, folk lore, mythology, fascism, anti-fascism, war, and foxes that might not actually be foxes. Her webcomic exploration of these topics, HANS VOGEL IS DEAD, was just announced as having its first volume of strips collected with updated content by the folks over at Dark Horse Comics. She uses her degrees in History and German Studies, as well as an MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts, to bring to every page Hans Vogel's death to life. Greg sits down...
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Chris Schweizer on OUTLAW'S APPRENTICE
Robots From Tomorrow!
One of the benefits of doing a show for as long as I’ve done this is not only meeting and talking to new folks, but checking back in with previous guests to see what they’ve been up to since we last talked. Today’s episode is one of the catching up variety. My guest was last on the show back in April of 2022 for his miniseries, Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton, with collaborator, fellow cartoonist, and studio mate Kyle Starks. Do yourself a favor and check that out if you haven’t done so already because it was, and still is, a hoot to listen to. He is a multiple Eisner, YALSA, and...
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Hazel Newlevant on QUEER AND HOW WE GOT HERE: A (PERSONAL) HISTORY
Robots From Tomorrow!
Hazel Newlevant is a Brooklyn-based cartoonist known for creating and editing comics about queer history, bisexuality, polyamory, and reproductive rights. Their cartoonist CV highlights start off with the Xeric Grant-funded mini comic Ci Vediamo in 2012 and the Prism Comics Grant-funded biography of Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladis Bentley called If This Be Sin in 2013.They decided to branch out into anthology editing in 2016 with Chainmail Bikini, which collected experiences of female and nonbinary gamers in a male-dominated space. The success of that led...
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Greg Pak and Dr. Dan Cassino on STOP PROJECT 2025
Robots From Tomorrow!
Going into the 2024 US presidential election, a group of close to 50 comic book creators got together and put out the STOP PROJECT 2025 webcomic -- a non-fiction anthology that broke down the 900-page conservative wishlist that was Project 2025's MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP into understandable chunks and readers know what they were really voting for if they supported it, or why they needed to vote against it if they didn't. Organized by Scott Dunbier and Steve Lieber, contributors included folks like Jen Van Meter, Lila Sturgis, Gene Ha, Cully Hamner, Greg Pak, Matt Fraction, Mark Russell, Sarah...
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Chris Anderson and Corrine Halbert on POWER PULP COMICS
Robots From Tomorrow!
Readers go to the comic shop to get their comics, but the road those comics take from the creator's drawing tables to the shops has changed a lot in the last 100 years or so. Greg talked with documentary filmmaker Wes Eastin back in February about the comic shop/retailer side of things, but today he's flipping the dial and going to the creative side because this episode features two members of the Comics Collective and Distribution -- CEO Chris Anderson and cartoonist Corinne Halbert --and dives right in to how Power Pulp is their growing answer to the question every creator has to face...
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Josh Dysart on THE HAB
Robots From Tomorrow!
Josh Dysart returns to the show for a third time to talk about his newest miniseries from Bad Idea, The Hab. Created with David Lapham, Bill Sienkiewicz, Jacob Phillips, colorists Matt Hollingsworth and Crabtree, and letterer Simon Bowland, and printed on old school newsprint-esque paper, The Hab shows us all what happens when a billionaire and his circle of family and staff survive a nuclear holocaust in his high-tech bunker…only to find a worse fate waiting for him. Find out about this something-for-everyone horror story fits in today’s climate, where billionaire Tuttle...
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Josh Dysart on GOODNIGHT PARADISE and UNKNOWN SOLDIER
Robots From Tomorrow!
[This episode is a remastered version of number 664 in a series, originally released on April 30, 2020.] The last time writer Josh Dysart was on the show, back in 2017, the conversation focused on his run as ongoing writer for Swamp Thing. But for this deep-dive talk, the topics range from his latest book with TKO Studios (Goodnight Paradise), his Eisner-nominated work on Vertigo’s Unknown Soldier, his relationship with both books’ artist Alberto Ponticelli, how much fear and panic is a part of his work process then and now, why new publisher Bad Idea is actually a good idea,...
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Halpern + Faste on INFECTED FOR SCIENCE
Robots From Tomorrow!
Today's episode has Greg chatting with Sydney Halpern, a historical sociologist from the University of Chicago who has written extensively about twentieth-century American medical institutions and biomedical science, including 2021’s Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis, and Trigvy Faste, an Associate Professor in the Department of Product Design at the University of Oregon, as well as an illustrator and designer in his own right. Their book, Infected for Science, coming out May 26th from Graphic Mundi, looks at religious pacifist David Miller and a...
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J. Marshall Smith on TESTAMENT
Robots From Tomorrow!
J. Marshall Smith is a cartoonist, illustrator, and educator based in Baltimore (making us de facto neighbors) who came up through the disciplines of painting and printmaking before finding his way to comics. And that background shows, because his work doesn’t look like it comes from someone who learned to draw from comics, but rather from someone who developed a way of looking at things and then figuring out what comics could do with that. He’s built his readership carefully and honestly – self-publishing collections of comics and art through Kickstarter, mailing drawings to his...
info_outlineAditya Bidikar, back on the show after 4 years, is a man of letters in the most literal sense.
In the more than a decade he has been plying the lettering trade, he has worked with every major North American comics publisher and formed strong collaborations with several groups of creators, none more so than with writer Ram V and artist Anand K.
In the words of Multiversity Comics alum and SKTCHD guru David Harper, it is a career consisting of “all bangers”.
But he is on the show today to talk about IN YOUR SKIN, his first major work as a comics writer.
IN YOUR SKIN, with artist SOM and colorist Francesco Segala for Image Comics and Tiny Onion and released on April 22nd, combines Bollywood culture with body horror and erotic fiction. The solicitation also name-checks David Cronenberg and THE SUBSTANCE. We would throw in some Scorsese and Satoshi Kon as well, but… we will get into that.
Aditya is at a fairly unique point in comics: a first-time comics writer with years of experience making comics, a letterer making his own words fit onto the page of his own story, a perennial collaborator stepping into a lead role…however you want to look at it, this is a fascinating time to be Aditya Bidikar, and today’s chat dives into just why that is the case.
[This episode is number 833 in a series.]
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
05:42 – Bollywood & Dance
17:19 – Influences and PERFECT BLUE
18:12 – Male Gaze and Patriarchy
24:19 – Wanting to Be vs Be With
29:13 – Parasocial Horror and Identity
38:07 – Writing Sympathy for Priyanka
42:13 – Drama First Genre Second
45:11 – Priyanka Redefined
47:10 – Script as Blueprint
51:02 – Rewriting to the Finale
53:04 – Ownership and Fingerprints
54:29– The Showrunner Mindset
01:04:28 – Personal Stakes and Finishing
01:10:11 – Lettering and Burnout
01:12:55 – Finding Theme While Writing
01:18:06 – Stories Not Essays
01:21:18 – Outro