*BONUS EPISODE* INTERVIEW: Tommy Stella

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Hello, this is Tommy Stella, writer of The Days in Musantel, and you are listening to the Oblivion Bar podcast. Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Joining us this week on the show is the writer of the days contact self -destruct home the end and the more recent indie all ages horror series mustn't tell it is my pleasure to welcome my friend Tommy Stella onto the oblivion bar podcast. Hello everyone's everyone's clapping. Let's see if that's clapping the round of applause. There it is. There's so many claps. They'll they'll just sound like chaos in the final edit. Hello. Hello. Welcome Tommy. Thank you so much for being here today on the oblivion bar. I realized that me mainly writing one-shot comics means that my introduction sounds so much more impressive than it really is. So many things, each one's one issue, but they're good. But yeah, no, that's thank you very much for having me. Not a problem. You can't expose yourself that early on in the episode. You should just let everyone believe that those were like full -fledged series and all that. They all won several Eisners each. Every possible category you can think of each one one several and everyone listening now You can't see it, but there's just like a lot lines of Eisner's and Harvey Awards behind right now Yeah, there are the shelves always falling over because they're actually very heavy I've held so many of them all my own you gotta find the stud in the wall Tommy. That's the trick You got it. That's where you get the anchor. I I'm too busy writing eyes. They're winning. I can't do that. I literally can't hang shelves I'm too busy writing Eisner winning series There's no time to do it But that once you pick up a stud finder, you put down the, that's right. That's what, that's what, uh, that's what Stanley said was, I was gonna say, was that T S Elliot that you just, that you just, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Was it like a gym mint? What was the name of the show? Tell the people about how we first met. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So some background. I used to do a... It wasn't quite a podcast. It was more of like a resource. A book club? Yeah, well, yeah, we met through the book club, but we created this website and newsletter that the idea was how do we help people get into comics that maybe have no idea what's going on with that. And it's not like that's the only one to ever do that, but we wanted to make it as beginner friendly as possible, you know, open up the gates that people have been gatekeeping. Here's a bunch of resources, here's how everything works, here's like interviews and all that. And then eventually we did a book club where the idea was that we would read like a trade, like a volume one of a trade or like a complete if it's short, and then discuss it every week in a way that was as inviting as possible. So, you know, we wanted to get people sitting down, like picking up a comic for the first time and just having a spot where they can like live chat and be like, ooh, I like this about it, I like that about it, like what do you recommend and all that. And that's how we met Chris. I forget how you ended up on it. It was Mandy perhaps Probably Mandy, but you were on it my girlfriend always said she watched every single one that you were like our best guest because you Really talkative the whole time and I remember back then I did not have a good microphone set up I still don't but back then I did not at all So I couldn't really chime in on like if there was a conversation happening already I couldn't like say anything or also just like and like cut everyone off. So I'm really quiet the whole time Do you remember we talked about? It was a book you picked because that's how we wrote it. What was it? It was a Batman book. Was it Batman Universe? Is that what it's called? No, that's a good guess. I do love Batman Universe by Brian Michael Bendez and Nick Darrington, but it was actually Batman Ego by Darwin Cook. That's also a good one. That's my all time favorite Batman story. And anytime I tell people that they're like Batman Ego, I don't think I've even heard of that. So everyone listening right now from Tommy and I and Mandy and Alana, make sure you guys go read Batman Ego. It's actually... It's kind of like a one shot itself. It's like, like 40 pages. It's not really that long of a story. So it's just, it's an incredible book, but we're not here to talk about Batman ego. We're here talk about Tommy Stella and his work. So Tommy, let's talk about mustn't tell, which is your brand new Kickstarter series. It's an all age horror comic that you just recently put up on Kickstarter. It is the art is by BA Roth and John McDonough. I knew as McDaniel, but I was trying to remember his first name without looking it up. But yeah. So just to clarify a little bit, when the art is drawn by them, we have a really weird specific system in place that I thought of like two years ago that's been lingering in my mind, which is, so the art, like 90 % of it is done by John McDaniel. He has like a very like cartoonish, like Disney -esque style. And then the rest of it is done by B .A. Routh. It's like both with an R. And he's what we say haunting the book, which means that... It's a scary horror book and there's a monster in it. So BA is drawing just the monster and some fear effects is what we call them with John doing everything else. So basically John does the comic then BA comes in and just like messes the whole thing up in like a beautiful, horrific kind of way. And you've worked with BA before on the days, correct? Yes. Yeah. We met through of all places, the admin of the Wikipedia Twitter account. His name's Jordan. He's the best. He was like, yeah, I got this. There's a... an artist that I know that used to be an editor on Wikipedia, like you guys should chat. And at the time I was like, oh, well, like they probably did like fan art, which isn't quite the same as comic art. So like, I'm not sure if that'll be the best fit, cause that's just kind of how it works. But then I saw some of his stuff and I was like, oh, this is really good. And then I learned that the stuff that I had seen was already like a couple of years old, I think at that point. So then when he sent me like the first page that he did of our thing, I was like, oh my God, he's really good. So it was just. fell on my lap. It was wonderful. I will say too, I love how you, you've kind of combined two forces here with these two different, very specific art styles between McDaniel and Roth and Roth. Anytime that you see this figure and I want to get into the actual story here in just a moment and kind of like the lead up to this, this premiere on Kickstarter and kind of this whole campaign as a whole. But like, I will say just reading the first issue myself, jarring is not the correct word. I don't think, but it is at a contrast to the story. Whereas you, again, like you said, kind of had this like Disney ask very YA. type of creative force that McDaniel is bringing. And then anytime we see this creature, which we don't really know what this is quite yet, and I'm sure we'll talk about it during this conversation, you know, Roth brings in this very specific art style that is again, very haunting. The whole idea kind of stemmed from a very, very specific childhood fear that I have where now that I've like put it out into the world, I realize it's not as universal as I thought it was, but it works in this situation, which is any time a cartoon, or like a TV show that was like not exactly live action, but anytime like it changed the art style. So like a character or a moment was in a different format. So, you know, like the most known example, but it's not the scariest is like SpongeBob that one episode where they had the gorilla come in. That was like a live action person in a gorilla suit. When I was a kid that freaked me out. Courage the Cowardly Dog had a lot of things like that. There was a TV show called Ka -Blam, which you might know because it was like kind of comic adjacent. They were, they... did that all the time. And it always freaked me out because I just didn't like the out of place kind of look to it. Like it didn't belong there. And naturally that turned into nightmares as they do. But it stuck with me for a while. So I thought if we're going to do a monster in this book, like there's only so much you could do with a comic book to scare people. And since we're going for a younger audience, we couldn't really. like rip people's heads off, which I feel like is kind of the default for horror comics, you know, like to add in the gore, add in the like, whoa, they did it kind of moments. So I thought we got to make it as hard to look at as possible. And I mean, you've only seen issue one, which is on the like craziness level, pretty low. We're almost done with issue two. And at some point, BA was just like, I'm going to go, I'm going to go crazy with this. And issue two is already pretty wild. So I'm excited for you to see that as well. But yeah, no, it's all turned out incredibly. spooky and wonderful. And they're just absolutely wonderful to like to work with. It's funny. I love how you kind of compared it to like old media, old cartoons that we watched as kids and how that does like kind of surreal kind of haunting moments stuck with us as kids and kind of brought us into what our, you know, what is our creative process as adults. And it was something that reminded me of that while you were talking there was there's this episode of Batman, the animated series with Clayface where I don't know if you remember this. I think it's called like Clayface to face. It's one of the, or no, I'm sorry. It's called feet of clay. It's one of the earlier episodes of Batman, the animated series. And this is at the time where cell animation was kind of slowly starting to make its way out. But there's this like almost anime esque type of force behind the creation of clay face in the series. Like as we know, like Batman animated series is this kind of like very, it's very, yes, like a static has a very specific look. But then when Clayface is transforming and on screen, He looks almost like Ghost in the Shell. If you're familiar with like anime from the 90s, it all feels very like body dysmorphia, a lot of like bulging eyes and like veins and all these things. And it just, it freaked me out in a very similar way as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. I think the goal is to harness the creative abilities of like those BuzzFeed lists from like 2016 where they're like top 10 episodes of children's TV where they want crazy. That's the goal. That's the goal is that is that one kind of like episode you remember where you're like, why did they do? Why did they go so hard on this? Like that scared me as a kid. Like that's what the comics about. That's the goal there. Well, let's dive in that a little bit. So tell us a little bit about mustn't tell to, you know, kind of give us, give me and the listeners of the show kind of like the elevator pitch that you were, you know, promoting out there for this Kickstarter. Yes. So the, I mean, the elevator pitch is essentially like, what if Disney animation did a horror movie? The goal of the whole story is to tell a story between two friends, two best friends, who they are working together to essentially defeat a monster that's haunting one of their homes. If you've read any of my stuff before, that's not all that it's about. There's a lot of twists and turns, and it's gonna make a lot of people cry, but that's the Disney -esque part of it. It's one of those stories that has the face value horror plot. but we're also gonna dive into a lot of emotional twist turns. It does a lot of stuff about just like growing up in general. The whole story takes place during the main character's point in his life where he's like in that transitional period where he's kind of too young to know how to handle things, but old enough where he's expected to know how to handle things. But also, I guess, yeah, I should probably talk more about the plot, which is just two friends. They're silly, they're fun. It takes place in the mid 2000s, like 2007-ish, 2005. There's a lot of Nintendo DS playing in it, which a lot of fun. It's essentially like Stranger Things taking place in the early 2000s where they're just going to get a baseball bat and try to kill a monster with it. If you like jokes, if you like nostalgia for that time period, give or take, if you like the feeling of having a play date with your friend after school, and also if you like horror stuff, you'll like this comic. Yeah, this is very much speaking to my era of being a An adolescent for sure. I grew up in like the early 2000s and this the whole first issue is very reminiscent of what a lot of my middle school to early high school days pretty much look like. You know, getting together after school, playing some game boy trading stories. There's even a moment in this first issue where one of their other friends who is not in the actual issue, they find out that is has lied about like some secrets within a game and everyone that everyone listen to this, all the younger people, anyone that's younger than 25. You'll never know this because you've kind of grown up with the internet, but there was a time where you just listened to what someone said on the playground and you tried to look for Mew behind the truck in Pokemon Red, even though he wasn't there. So like these things, these things dominated the discourse as a young person. Yeah. Luigi was somewhere in Super Mario 64. Your cousin told you who he was. He heard from his friend. You got to play it like two in the morning. You got to find. of 69 stars and then go to this spot and you'll find Luigi, he'll be there, you go, wahoo. But yeah, that was one of the first things I thought of was like, what's the essential young boy playing a video game thing and it had to be heard from a friend that the secrets in there. And that kind of kicked off that whole like vibe of the mid 2000s nostalgia for me. There's gonna be a lot of it still going. We have like action figure stuff that we're planning out. We've got like 11 different fake video games that we've like done branding for. We're just, we're being a little freaks for this one, but I'm really excited. You know, nerds love that kind of specificity. They love that kind of, you know, the, the collectibles. And I mean, again, we're talking about it here in the story with the two boys, how they're, you know, that we are nothing, if not just like wanting to collect all the nerd things. And I think I saw the other day and we'll talk about how, you know, you've already hit your limit. Like you, not the limit, you guys have hit the goal. Like the goal was 4 ,000 and you, and you knocked that out of the park in the first, what day or day or two? Those are the first four days. Okay. Yeah. There was a little bit of a lull like the third day, but then all of a sudden just picked up again randomly and we got it. So I was very happy. Yeah, that's incredible. But also I think I saw that you are going to be soon possibly promoting like a like a trading card perhaps for the next stretch goal. Yeah, that's so that's the first stretch goal is we're doing two trading cards with the ideas that we'd have five by the end of the series because it's a five issue series. The trade, it's going to be so hard to explain without the visuals, but the trading card is. Did you have rescue heroes when you were a kid? It was like the buff toys that were like construction workers and like firefighters and police officers. I I remember. Yeah. It's like you just like dug up a repressed memory of my childhood. Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember playing with them. Like I would go to the pool like when I was like five by myself and just sit in like the shallow end and just like pick up water with like a bucket from the construction worker and like pour it on the police officer. Anyways. So it's that the idea for those is, you know, buff dudes that have like these like action packed jobs and like change the world. So we created a fake line of them called Everyday Heroes, where it's buff dudes who have like nine to five jobs. So it's like you got your car salesman, you got an accountant, you got like a restaurant host, you know, the thankless jobs that keep the world going. So from that, we're obviously can't really make action figures for those, that'd be a huge task, but we're doing trading cards for them. So earlier today, and if you go on to the Kickstarter page, you can see a sample of one of the cards. We did one for the used car salesman, which will be tied into issue one. It's just basically, we're gonna make a trading card with like, it's matched like the wonky graphic design of a Pokemon card, but it's for some guy named Stan who sells used Honda Civics. And we added in a bunch of jokes to them and it just, it fits the world of it really well. And I know that people will probably want to have all five by the end of like the final campaign, which should be exciting. But yeah, if you like dumb jokes and you want to collect some trading cards that have just as many dumb jokes as you can fit on a three by five piece of cardboard, it's, it's. Well, I also love to talk a little bit about and you say here in the Kickstarter on the main page, it's B .A. Roth's little special guy, which is the main kind of our main villain, our monster in this story. How much of this derives directly from your brain and how much does it come from just Roth's creative vision? So I would say a lot of it came from my brain. I actually did things earlier with another artist of just like getting the character design out. And then I asked B .A. to be on it. I'm trying to like. to the line of not spoiling, like, cause this is like issue five stuff. But in the design of the monster, there is a, one of the goals to get of the design, I'm trying to be really careful, was to make it look a little sickly. But when I like showed the original character designs to BA and then kind of like explained to him what the whole story was and what we were trying to go for, he... just started dropping all these medical terms about like what a body does after death and like how rigor mortis can like, there's like different forms of rigor mortis and how it like positions like the body's hands and like different, it was like really dark and gross. It was kind of like the thing that you'd see like a Renaissance painter when they like tear apart a body to better understand it. Like he had that level of knowledge of death. And I was like, yeah, this is perfect to do that. So he was able to like, Obviously, like his now, like the design is one thing, but like the actual movements and the actions is a whole different thing. And he's like kind of perfectly captured, like what makes movements creepy. And it's kind of how you connect them to death essentially. So he's doing these unnatural, but natural movements that when you look at them from this monster, like look like a dead body's moving, but like not like from a zombie movie, but from like, you know, like almost like a strobe effect, you know, cause it's comics, you're doing panels. So he's just so smart where he's able to like have this guy moving in these different poses, but each one is kind of unnatural and creepy. He's not just like pouncing like a villain in a kid's movie. He's, you know, he's creaking along, which I think he's doing an amazing job at. And yeah, that's why that's where the freak part comes into the little freak explanation because he is this big, gross monster. But also B .A. is just like puppeteering him in this absurd way. Yeah, without spoiling anything, I'm curious how much of this monster are we getting? Like how much of the backstory are we going to get during this five issue series? All of it, thankfully. I would say, I mean, this is not a spoiler, this is more of a tease. At the end of issue two, you see the monster. So the plot of issue one is that the boys want to hit it with a baseball bat and they think that's going to kill it. Spoiler alert for beginning of issue two. It doesn't work. The monster has. Another part of the monster is that could basically teleport, which is just tying into like childhood fears of like none of it's logical. So then the next step is just getting visual proof of it because a big part of the mustn't tell aspect of it is it's one of those unexplained things as a kid that you can't quite say to an adult. So issue two is them, they find a camera. The new plan instead of hitting it with a bat is that they're going to get a photo of it. And in the process of getting that photo, you kind of see the monster for what it really is. And that's going to give a little bit of a background to it. Like you get a lot of the design aspects that I can't say right now that are spoiler. But then by the time issue five rolls around, you know exactly what's going on with it. You know exactly what the monster is and what it represents and what the purpose of it is. There's not a lot of mystery in this story by the end of it, but there is going to be a lot of people being mad at me and some tears. That should just be the tagline at the top of your website. Tommy Stella. He'll make you cry. That'll be the issue five one. Like it just says, sorry across the thing. Well, and also kind of along with that, there's another, there's a specific scene in issue one that I kind of wanted to kind of pick your brain out a little bit because it reminded me of again, as a kid, I feel like you and I are probably a similar age. I'm 32. So I think, you know, we grew up in the same era and there's this. one scene in the book where the two boys, the plan is for them to basically spend the night together and attack this monster together, right? And then again, hopefully that's not a big spoiler or anything, but that's kind of like the initial plan. And Jake is like, I'm going to stay up, I'm going to help you, I'm going to be there for you. And then eventually he falls asleep. And I think we've all dealt with this where we have always been that person in a group of friends. We're like, we're going to be the one to stay up the latest. And then when we're the one that stays up the latest, that's when it's the scariest. And I remember very specifically, and again, I'm dating myself horribly in this moment, but I very, very vividly remember as a kid watching the Blair witch out in a garage in the middle of nowhere, like my friends lived out in the woods, kind of essentially rule Indiana and we're in this garage and we're watching the Blair witch and we're all kind of, I think we're all having a great time. And we're all kind of like, I were fully invested. I'm probably 10 or 11 years old at this point. And I look around me and. the three other guys that were with me are all asleep and I'm the only one awake. And it's like, she's almost at the witch's house. And I'm like, holy crap. Now, how am I going to fall asleep? Yeah. Like part of the story with that, like between the friendship is there's such like a safety net in your friends just being awake. And I think that's just like, that's another part of the childhood fears is that like, once you have a friend that's awake, like nothing can hurt you even if things seem scary. So yeah, so a big part of like having Essentially Jake the best friend character is always around throughout the story simply because he is like the one safety net that he's gonna get. And anytime you can remove Jake from the story that's when things get a little extra crazy which I'm excited for because that spoiler that will happen eventually in some way shape or form. So yeah, a lot of the safety nets kind of get pulled out of there. And then we also do a lot of fun stuff with like what actually is scary and what's like more perception. And that's another time where like having BA doing a lot of the haunting stuff is like really fun because you can have, you know, scenes where something is only scary to the main character, Ryan. And how we can show that is that it's a normal everyday occurrence, but like BA gets to like kind of trace over some of it and add like some rigidness and some scary, scary lines, if you will. So there's a lot of like kind of fun things you could do with the perception of childhood fears and how they just kind of morph everything around you. Yeah. As a kid or as a young person in general, our perception of life is so limited. We're almost like we're like horses with their blinders on. Everything in front of us is the most important. It's life and death every day, no matter what. A girlfriend breaks up with you. That's the end of your life right there. Right. And with this situation here between the two, these two friends, you know, the moment that you find out that Jake has passed out, it's almost like this is the end for, you know, for Ryan. And that's. I'm curious. I will tell everyone right now, Tommy is obviously my friend and I'm here. I want to promote this story as much as possible, but I wouldn't just outrightly say that I wasn't interested in the story if I wasn't. This is a fun book and I'm excited for you and the entire creative team that again, as we said earlier, this has already hit its goal, but it's going to keep going. We've got, at the time of this recording and by the time that it's released to the public, everyone listening to this right now, you'll still have just over two weeks to go and support this book. And I think you should. And that kind of leads me into my next question for you, Tommy. How does it feel again, after just three or four days, this thing's fully funded. You've got close to a hundred backers. What is like going through your head in this moment? Uh, it was like screaming mainly, um, when we set it up, we, like we're, we're confident that we get to the goal, but I thought it was going to be more of like a last minute thing. Like I was fully prepared to have a month of like sitting at like, 2500 and just being like, I hope it gets like that last day kind of bum. But just everyone that like immediately started sharing it and posting it everywhere. Like, obviously the art, the team was doing a ton of it, but like, I was kind of blown away by just people who like friends, family, people on Twitter that I've never met before were just picking it up and being like, do it like supported and then some people were doing pledges that I wasn't expecting ever. I don't even know how they have that kind of money. Good for them. That's awesome. Yeah, it just blew me away. And then when we hit our goal, I turned 32 weeks ago, or a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, February 23rd. And last weekend, I was having a party with friends from high school and college. We were doing a murder mystery night. And... like while we were all doing that, like the second the game ended, I checked my phone and we had hit the goal. And I was like, I hit the goal and everyone like screamed and celebrated. And it was just like this like perfect little moment. So I was just like 10 out of 10, like I'll always remember that weekend of like when I hit the goal surrounded by all my friends and way earlier than I thought it could ever be. Like when I checked it before then it was like $800 away, maybe even more. And then I checked like at the party and it was like $150 away. And I was like, oh my God. So yeah, so I'm very grateful. Trying to currently plan how to keep that momentum going for future campaigns. Issue three, four, and five are each going to be their own campaign. Issues one and two kind of worked better together. Issue one is just a simple introduction. Issue two kind of sets the stakes of the whole thing. Whereas issue three, four, and five are their own. Issue three is for the English majors is what I've been saying. There's a lot of symbolism. a lot of like crazy moments. It's basically the thesis for the whole story. Then issue four is like a giant battle essentially. And then issue five is the big resolution that's going to make everyone get mad at me. We'll see how that goes. But yeah, so now I'm trying to figure out how to keep the momentum and that like hype from the first two issues for issue three and four and five and different campaigns, which might be a struggle, but I'm hoping to kind of get blown away again. What's been the biggest challenge in terms of putting this book on Kickstarter and campaigning at like? You know, you hear a lot of creators bringing their, you know, their stories to Zoop or Kickstarter or what have you. And it always feels like it's like this very sort of strenuous process. So I'm curious. I guess it's like maybe a two -parter question. Number one, are you the one mainly organizing this, this Kickstarter campaign? And number two, if so, what's been the most challenging part about it? I am the one mainly doing it. I feel like as this isn't the case for everyone, but I feel like as the writer. My job is kind of easy. Obviously I have to like obsess over like the script and like creating the world and stuff, but like art is just really, really hard and it takes forever. And I am very grateful for John and BA for like spending, you know, six hours on a page sometimes, probably more sometimes, like it's insane. So my part, like I could do a script in like a week or two, depending on how like much, how many edits I do. So when it comes to like setting up the Kickstarter, even fulfilling the Kickstarter, I mean, I have a lot of experience in that, but. When it comes to doing all the Kickstarter sides of things, I was like, I'll do it and I'll do all of it. So that's kind of been the case. So while they work on the actual issue too, I've been doing the Kickstarter stuff. And I would say as far as the tough parts go, I would say the logistics are the hard part. Usually I'm not very good at selling my own comics. I'm good at selling other people's comics. I love raving about a friend's work or something when it comes to my own stuff. Even at my local comic shop, I brought up that I was doing Kickstarter and he was like, what's it about? And I was like, stuff. It's hard to find the words to, I also do weird comics too, so it's really hard to sell people on those sometimes, but that was surprisingly easy. I think just kind of writing it down as almost like a press release on Kickstarter was easy, but it's the logistics of just shipping things out and the prices and the budget and all of that. It's a lot of numbers when I like words is kind of the main issue. And then you just feel bad for international people because shipping is like 25 to $30 for them. And it's like, it's not that good. I don't know why you're buying it, but I have a lot of international people. Yeah, exactly. Like it's not worth an extra $30. So yeah, so for any international buyers, you get like a little signed postcard from everyone for free. That's just like a thank you for paying the stupid shipping prices. But yeah, if anyone's looking to get into Kickstarter, sign up for like stamps .com so you can like do like test shipment. Pricings. That's kind of the easiest way to figure out how much shipping costs at the exact moment you're doing it. And then just figure out logistics. I am terrified of the actual filming process, even though I have all planned out, but it's just such a, such a task. Yeah, no, absolutely. That seems to be like kind of the hallmark of Kickstarter is just the amount of work that goes into it, but you're making comics, Tommy. This is incredible. Like this is. You know, this is like what this is all about. You're, you're putting out your work and I wanted to kind of transition a little bit to maybe your other work and just kind of like your story behind becoming a comic book writer. You know, I've known you for a couple of years now and I I've always revered your work. I want to specifically shout out the days. The days is the one that I think I reread it in preparation for this conversation. And I think that that is just, and this is not a damn nation against anything or mustn't tell, but like the days I think is you're at magnum opus at this point, it is like truly. I think if you're, if you're ever in a big meeting with one of the big two or someone that you're trying to impress, you need to put the days in their hands because it's, it's great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. That one, um, I had done some, I've done other comics before then, like I'm in like the resume booster phase still, you know, like I'm very much someone that, uh, I I'm surrounded by a lot of writers that are starting out that think that saying I want to write will be enough to like get them. in the correct spots in the meetings and all that. My advice is always like, create something, like make a thing. Like that's why I'm doing so many one shots. You know, you get like a stack of them. You could just hand them to someone and like, here's a beginning, middle and end for you right here. Yeah. I could report of my work. Here you go. Yeah. Yeah. You're some Swiss cheese. Yeah. But I had done a few of them. And like at the time it was like, you know, people were saying these are really good and this is fun. But like, it never really felt like it was anything more than like a little kind of like a fan project. Um, but then when I put the days out, I, I remember I was, this is, it was at star wars celebration last year in London. I was there and I did Disneyland beforehand. And, uh, we have, I was in some like random restaurant in Disneyland eating a lasagna, which is, which fits the story of the days, which I didn't even realize when I bought it, it just looked good. But, um, BA had sent me the final PDF. He was like, it's done. I'm finished. Um, and we, we uploaded it to gum road or. was yeah, we uploaded to Gumroad and I was like, it's being like I had a ton of copies of like a slightly unfinished version that we had printed for celebration in my suitcase. I brought like 100 of them and just gave them out for free. But um, when I like hit send on the tweet to post that it was up, it got like a ton of retweets, a ton of share, like people were replying to me, this is incredible, incredible. And it was like the exact like, like that was like the moment like that was like the line in the sand where I was like, oh, like, I think I could actually do this. Like, it was just like, I got this. Reaction that I finally wanted people I gave him out at celebration in London people were crying on the tube They were sending me selfies of just like covered in tears on the subway car And I was like wow this I could do this I guess so yeah, so I'm very grateful for the days I followed it with a story called at the end which I'm also very proud of but it is Garf people are used by Garf And yeah, no, I think the days is really something that I've will always be proud of because it's just like, and there was actually have, I don't think this is a video format, so I'll just show Chris on here, but I have BA's original sketch from one of the scenes. It's the ghost standing with his sister. I had sent him just like, I had sent him the script and then he was just like doodling in a park. And he sent me that and it was the exact, like it was the only time I've ever had it where like this, the script that I had written was perfectly visualized. Like it was exactly what I saw, like with no notes or anything. Um, and I was like, Oh cool. This is it. We did. Yeah. So I'm curious. I, I, I'm sure you've gotten this comp before, but you know, the, a ghost story, the David Lowry movie from a 24. Have you heard anyone kind of compare your story to that? No, I don't even know. What is it called? It's called a ghost story. It's a, it's an earlier, well, not earlier. I'd say it's like a, a mid range a 24 film from 2017 starring Casey Affleck, where basically Casey Affleck is killed in a nearby car accident. And he basically haunts his girlfriend in their old house. And it just, it shows basically the, it's only in like, uh, the only similarities truly are in the, like the visuals and the aesthetic of the story. The stories themselves are very different, but like in the ghost, in a ghost story, basically Casey Affleck, uh, this and a ghost is basically just a sheet, you know, like think about what you think of when you think of a ghost, that's what he looks like. And he's basically just haunting this house for years and years and years, even after his girlfriend has moved on and there's other people living there and like, It even isn't like in the far future where this farmhouse is officially like in like a metropolitan, like this like sort of like sci -fi's Blade Runner type of neo-noir city. Like it's really, it's just kind of a sort of a mindfuck, but it is when I, when I saw the initial cover for the days, I thought, Oh man, that, that kind of looks almost exactly like a ghost story, which is, you know, being your friend, of course I wanted to check it out regardless, but I love a ghost story. That's, that's a, that's one of those movies that's very easy to recommend to people who want to. feel something and hurt for a bit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I just looked it up and it does look really good. But that was like the strength and the weakness of kind of picking like the ghost sheet costume as like the main symbol. I got a ton of like Phoebe Bridger's comparisons right from the get go. It's obviously like Charlie Brown and people were sending me during Halloween time if they'd go to the store, there'd be like little statues, like decorations of that symbol, like the ghost kid. And it was, yeah, it was definitely like a... one of those moments where I knew that if I was gonna do a character that was that universal, I would have to do something with it to make it unique. I think what could have been a weakness, thankfully, I hope I turned into a strength by giving it a ton of character around it so it wasn't necessarily about the aesthetic of the ghost. It was more about the craziness that was happening around it. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun and I can definitely do some easy merch if I just go to a store on Halloween time and just click. buy up some of those ghost statues. Yeah, I got a pretty cool pen at New York last year of the days you gave out some pens there, I think at that convention and I had one. So yeah, I agree. It's it is like a very like visually sort of I'm not I'm not using the right word here, but like visually stunning when you see it, you automatically are like, what is this? Like, what is this little kid with his sneakers and his, you know, his ghost sheet on? What is this story? You know, there's definitely a lot of symbols that. have like a nostalgia, even if you can't really associate it with something. And I feel like just the ghost costume is just like childhood kind of spooky or like, was that like fall time? Um, and yeah, I think I worked out really well. Well, Tommy, I have one final question for you here, and I appreciate you so much for being on here to talk about must tell your career thus far, all the things, you know, I'm going to be following you all the way and, and being one of your, your bigger cheerleaders, but I'm curious, just kind of like as a final question. That way, again, and we talked about this a little bit before the recording, but that way when you're, you know, when you've already occurred more eister winds than you already have, which is in the forties or fifties, if I'm understanding it correctly. The shelf just fell again. I have it under some over soundproof foam, so it just falls on the foam. No noise, but it just fell several times. But I'm curious, you know, five years from now as a writer, what, what are you wanting to do? Are you, do you find right now, 2024 Tommy Sella to be someone who is like really wanting to tell their own stories and. and be someone who is very creator own driven and all these things. Or do you find yourself maybe wanting to play the big two down the road or maybe possibly at a smaller publisher like a dark horse or a boom studios or what have you? Yeah, I mean, I think as everyone usually starts with, you know, they want to do a Spider -Man, they want to do a Star Wars or something like that. You know, I want to do Avengers. But like the more I've done my own stuff, the more I've like kind of established that if I never. get to those, I'll be fine. I think as long as the stories that really mean a lot to me land in the way that they've been landing, but for more and more and more and more, I'll be super happy with that. But also, I wouldn't say no to doing those, basically. I'm still a huge fan of them. I think ideally where my brain thrives is on short form stories. So I would love to do miniseries for certain characters that are six issues max. I really, like my brain needs to go into something knowing what the ending is or else I don't really want to write it. So an ongoing thing might be a little bit tougher for me. I like when I can like change things a little bit more, you know, like certain characters you could do whatever the heck you want with them. And then there are obviously other ones where you can't really adjust them too much and you wouldn't really want to in that kind of way. So yeah, so ideally, you know, down the line, I'd be doing a lot of my own stuff. and it would still be landing and people are still like, hey, I'm crying and I hate you for this. Perfect. And also, yeah, I would love to do like shorter stuff for the big two and really any indie publisher. I just think comics are the best thing ever. I definitely have a bit of a pet peeve these days of comics that feel like they are created just to eventually become a movie and that's like their main purpose. Whereas I love... what comics can do and if something's adapted later on, that's cool, that's awesome, but like make a comic for comic's sakes. And that's kind of my whole vibe right now is I wanna like keep making these incredible pieces of art and hopefully people read them and if they don't, I'm happy that I got to do a thing. That's a perk of being a writer is that like even if like nothing really happens out of it, you still get this really cool thing that you didn't have to draw, but it's like from your brain and now you can hold it and that's really cool. Yeah, I'll always be grateful. I think that's where I'm hoping. to be five years from now is just excited to be there still. That's the perk, that's the pro. Yeah, that's a good way to approach it because five years from now, it doesn't matter what you're doing as long as you're telling good stories, right? And that's really truly what matters. And again, like I said, I'm just, as your friend, I'm very proud of you. And as your fan, I'm going to continue to follow you. So Tommy, once again, I want to thank you for coming on to the Oblivion Bar podcast. Once again, everybody listening to this right now, check out the show notes. All of Tommy's links, including the mustn't tell Kickstarter will be in the show notes. So that way, if you, if, if our conversation has encouraged you and motivated you to want to support this story and we hope that it did go check it out in the show notes, Tommy, I'm going to pass the baton off to you one more time. Is there anything you want to plug or say or anything before we head out of here today? Um, I think we covered just about everything. Definitely check out the Kickstarter. If you can follow John and BA on like Twitter or blue sky. I'd really appreciate that. I tend to hog a lot of the spotlight and I don't like doing that, so I want to make sure that they also are getting attention. They're incredible. They're insanely talented. They post a lot of random fan art as well, so it's not just must -and -tell repeats and all that. They're the best and I love them. They're the best. Go follow them. Then yeah, as far as the Kickstarter goes, any pledging is appreciated. It's a very good gift for anyone that you might want to get into comics. I should have honestly been pitching this a lot more, but... It serves as a really good jump in point for comics. It's gonna be five issues. The story is straightforward but has a lot of emotional twists and turns but nothing complicated. Obviously you don't need to know a back story to jump into it. I think it's gonna be one of those kind of stories that if you give it to a kid who's 13 in a few years, they'll probably try to reread it over and over again just to relive that moment again. It's one of those kind of stories. And yeah, I appreciate any support you can throw our way. And how can people follow you on the socials? My main one is unfortunately Twitter, just because that's where my biggest following is and I can't quit it. That one's Tommy underscore Stella. I'm also on Instagram and TikTok. I think the Instagram is Tommy two underscores Stella, because that other one was taken already by my arch nemesis. But I think TikTok might be Tommy Stella with no underscores. So just have fun. You'll figure it out. You'll find it. It's all complicated. That's right. Well, once again, Tommy, thank you so much. I hope to have you on in the future. Talk about must entail or whatever you're working on in the future. And again, if nothing else, I'll definitely see you at a convention here in 2024 at some point. Yeah, you will. Thanks for having me on here.