INTERVIEW: Ram V & Evan Cagle

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Hey, this is Ram V. And Evan Cagle. And we are the creators of Dawn Runner at Dark Horse Comics. And you're listening to the Oblivion Bark Podcast. Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 149 of the oblivion bar podcast, the official podcast of the fancy shop in St. Charles, Missouri. I am Chris Hacker, one of your co -hosts here and I'm alone this week. Everybody Aaron is actually off in Tennessee, officially retiring from the army. So if you have a chance, please reach out to my BFF, who I am extremely proud of to congratulate him on officially retiring from the army after 20 years, 20 years in the army. That's incredible. And as many people may know, just to kind of deviate before we get into this conversation with Ram V and Evan Cagle, Aaron and I actually met while in the army back in 20, I want to say 2011. And he was actually my superior, you know, when I first arrived at my unit in Fort Stewart, or excuse me, at Fort Stewart in Savannah, Georgia. And there are many funny stories with Aaron and I from the army, but he was my, he was my leadership. He was my Sergeant. And, but we instantly bonded from, from. basically the first moment that we met until today. You know, again, as we've talked about, I'm sure many times here on the show, we've a hundred, almost 150 episodes here on the normal show, almost 150 Patreon episodes. I'm sure at some point we've talked about how our relationship, our friendship, everything that deals with both the oblivion bar and our own personal friendship comes from those origins of the army. So I can't really. put into words how incredibly proud I am of my best friend, Aaron. I truly hope that this early retirement, I mean, he's not, he's obviously not very old everybody. He's, he has many, many years left of his life, but the separation from the military, especially, especially for someone who's been in since they were very young can be a tough one. So if everyone could listen to this, please just reach out to Aaron, congratulate him for a successful, you know, years of duty in the United States military and her service. And just kind of wanted to shout that out. right from the beginning. But for our main topic of this episode, we're talking to the creative team of Dawn Runner over at Dark Horse Comics, Ron V and Evan Cagle. Before we get into that conversation, and I think it's a very good one, I wanna quickly point out that this was a very challenging episode for me as a host. Now, most listeners of the show, they know this already. I'm a very anal retentive, sort of overly prepared type of host. I have my hands in pretty much every part of the oblivion bar. So going into this conversation with... both Evan and Ram, I was under the understanding that this would just be Ram. So when I set out to create the transcript for this interview, it was all Ram related. And as many people probably know, listening to this, if this is your first time listening or otherwise, Ram is all over the comic industry. He's writing so many different titles that all the different publishers and Ram I think is in that arena of creators that when he sets out to write something, it is often, it's gonna stick with you. There's a lot to chew on, right? And Evan, Evan is relatively new to the comic industry and unfortunately going into this conversation and not realizing that Evan was there. And I was so happy when we hopped on and Ron was like, can Evan join us with the conversation? I was ecstatic. I was like, absolutely please let's bring Evan into this conversation about Dawn Runner because this is both of their baby. Dawn Runner through Dark Horse is this very interesting story that we'll get into this conversation. But to have both creators on the show is a gift that I will never turn down. And I was under the impression that, Evan had only worked on Detective Comics and Dawn Runner. And that's, I was sorely misinformed. He's worked on Superman and the Authority, Catwoman, which we speak on in the conversation. He's done Indie Comics that he's both written and drawn. There's a lot of different avenues and I just wasn't familiar. So that's my first mistake. The second mistake that you'll hear in this conversation that I find funny, and I found very funny while editing the show, I kept calling it Dawn Runners, plural, and it's Dawn Runner, it's singular. So. Keep an ear out for that, it's very funny. So I wanted to just point out that very interesting challenge from the very beginning because it's nice. It's nice to be kind of thrown for a loop. And it was awesome that Ram sort of invited Evan on for this conversation, because that's an incredible opportunity. But also it kept me on my toes, because I'm again, often over, I'm over editing, I'm over preparing all these things. So it's nice to, they always say you have to be uncomfortable to get comfortable, right? So it was cool to have them both on and just kind of think on my feet with these questions. And I think it's a, It results in a very interesting conversation. So enough preamble. We'll get into that conversation here in just a moment. I want to quickly plug. If you want to support the show, patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod. If you like what you're hearing here, please check it out for your contribution to support. You could have access to the grid, which is our page on exclusive bonus podcast. I just spoke on that a moment ago where Aaron and I put out an extra episode each week, about 30 minutes of us just, you know, a stream of consciousness without filter, which we barely have any filter anyway, but. over there, it is very much just insanity. So you also get episode transcripts. Like I was just speaking about the thing that I usually use to interview these creators or sort of organize the show. You have full access to that. You can look and see how we prepare for the Oblivion Bar podcast, a true behind the scenes, early access to these episodes that you're listening to right now. And I'll do the special shout out at the end of this episode, but Aaron will generally do the special shout out that you get for supporting the Oblivion Bar podcast. Also, you can link and. listen to Patreon exclusive episodes and content over on Spotify. If you go to our page on Spotify, you can click the banner at the top and that will allow you to link your Patreon to Spotify. And that way you can just listen to the normal show, all your other podcasts and Patreon exclusive content over there on Spotify. So once again, that's patreon .com forward slash oblivion bar pod. Let's get into this conversation with Ron V and Evan Kaggle. Hey everybody, our sponsor for today's episode is G Fuel, the official energy drink of eSports. Whether you're a casual gamer, a content creator, an everyday Joe, or an eSports pro, G Fuel's sugar -free antioxidant and vitamin -fortified focus -enhancing and high -performance energy products will give you the edge you need to fuel your grind. No sugar, no gluten, no crash, just natural, clean vitamin energy that's available in over 40 lip -smacking flavors. While stocking up at GFuel .com, use our code OBP at checkout for 10 % off your entire order. That's OBP at checkout. GFuel, performance energized. And now, this week's special guest. Joining us this week on the show is the writer of titles like the Eisner nominated the many deaths of Lila Starr. The Eisner winning Blue and Green, the Savage Shores, Detective Comics rare flavor Swamp Thing, The One Hand and Dawn Runner. The other is a brand new creator in the medium with his work on Detective Comics and Dawn Runner. It is my pleasure to welcome both Ram V and Evan Cagle. onto the Oblivion Bar podcast. Hey, thanks for having us. Thank you. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you both so much for being here. I was going to say that that intro song was very on brand for for what we for what we imagine when we think of Dawn Runner. So yeah, yeah. Very like like 1980s, early 90s, synthy kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All of all of my lights turned hot pink. Was there like I imagined I imagined myself driving down a neon highway. Yeah, a red, a red Corvette and there's like a pink sun behind you. Yeah. Well, a little inside baseball for the listener here. When we first were setting up this conversation, I was like, you know, we got with our people at Dark Horse and I said, I'd love to talk to Rom V about Dawn runners. This would be an incredible kind of entry point because this is actually coming out the week of Dawn runners. We hopped on today. Rom and I were sitting here talking and Rom looks at me and goes, hey, can Evan join us? And I was like, please. Like that would be incredible. So, Evan, thank you so much for being here. I would love to kind of start with you. My pleasure. Surprised you have to answer questions now. All right. You didn't want to just sit here and listen that wasn't on you. I mean I was I was gonna I was gonna let Rom answer a couple just so I could get a flavor for a rare flavor perhaps a rare rare. Me talking is by no means a rare flavor. Rob, you have been on the circuit here. You've done a lot of podcasts over the last couple of weeks. Kind of. I'll tell you what, Evan, I'll go ahead and start with Rom here because it does kind of tie into what we're talking about here. All right. I wanted to plainly state just kind of right off the top that Rom you are everywhere in the comic world, you know, not including those titles that I listed there at the top. You've also recently worked on titles like Aquaman, Catwoman Swamp Thing. I already said that the beginning Justice League Dark, the vigil over at DC Comics. We've got Venom and Carnage over at Marvel. not to mention your career on work and your new venture over at distillery. So this first question I have for you is kind of a loaded one, but I'm curious, how do you find the time or creative willpower to do all of this? As I'm discovering that it's not OK to just sleep for four hours every night. Lightweight. No, it's genuinely been a been a case of because I'm relatively new to the industry. I keep saying this. I can't keep saying this forever, but. I only started making comics in 2016. Before then, as a chemical engineer, I'd done some amateur writing. So the point of saying that and why it relates to this is I don't know how to or where the wall is in terms of how much I can, cannot do. And it's something you genuinely have to learn through experience. And it's even worse when you're the kind of person who might appear to be 40 plus. on the outside, but on the inside, you're just like this 12 year old kid who's been told, go ahead, you can do whatever you want. And my first instinct is to of course, do every exciting thing that I want to do. Like, Evan will vouch to this because we'll be discussing Dawn Runner and invariably I will go, and then after we finish Dawn Runner, we're going to do this. And then after we finish that project in 2027, we're going to be doing this. Evan, how does it feel to have your career planned out for the next eight to 10 years? It's a relief. Nice security. It's a relief. I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night afraid of where my next gig is going to come from. And then I remember that Rom has already figured it all out. So it's very comforting. But also, to me, this is a hallmark of a lot of creative people I've met. It is this sort of incessant need to be doing things that are just... creatively exciting like none of none of my career planning is like and in four years We will all be rich and we can retire all of my creative planning is like hey I want to do this project that's going to pay us nothing, but it's kind of exciting to do. Do you do you want to do it? but this is this is genuinely a thing that I've Picked up on from a lot of other people. So at the very least I take solace in the fact that I'm not alone in my lack of any foresight or organization. It was John Cleese said in his book, creativity, that boredom is the best tool for creativity. Do you find that to be true? Rom? Do you, do you often find yourself just kind of sitting around looking at a wall, dreaming up new story arcs for the many publishers or do you have a different kind of method? I want to agree with John Cleese, but also like I'm very rarely bored because, um, yeah, my brain just goes like, Cool, we've got some time. Let's think of something interesting or exciting or fun to a point where I may not even know the story and I've told Evan a lot of stories. When I was a kid, my mother got called into school because one of my teachers wanted to bring up this subject that I kept while she was teaching. It looked like I was just in a completely different world. And she was like, Is everything okay with him? Like, and my mom was like, you must be the world's most boring teacher. Uh, and I would like to say for the record that my mom was absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. Evan, how about you in terms of creativity? How do you, there are so many different schools of thought when it comes to putting pen to paper for an artist, when you start your creative process, when you have a project, when, when Rom comes to you and says, Hey, I have these six projects. Here's number one. How does that start for you? How does it start for me? Uh, I think I probably just look at my sort of internal bank of my sort of visual library that I have inside. And I sort of think about the last few things that have really gotten me excited because I do the same thing. So I'll, I'll just be staring at a wall or, or doodling on a paper or something. And an idea will come to me and, uh, I put those in my cheeks like a chipmunk and, you know, and they sit in there and, you know, every now and again, I'll chew on one a little bit. And then Ram will say, you know, I've got an idea for a story about something or other. And almost invariably, there's something in there that I'm like, oh, I absolutely have the look for what that should be. I think it's maybe different for a writer because you know that the idea is done once you've explored it. And in art, I feel like the idea isn't done until there's a piece of work from it. So it just gets to sit in there. It just gets to germinate. And... and be unborn until there's a reason to bring it out. Sure. I would agree with that even for the writing aspect, certainly in comics. I don't feel like I've written a comic until I see lettered pages from Aditya. Every time, I've mentioned this term so many times, I just sit there and go like, ah, that's what a comic should look like. And so every project, until that stage comes, it doesn't really feel like you've finished. and you made a thing, you see what I mean? And it's, yeah, and it's like, I'll sketch, or in some cases even do like full pieces of an environment or a theme or a character or something like this. And even after so much exploration, it feels like I'm still just sort of figuring it out. I try to have these big periods where it's like, oh yeah, that was where I was obsessed with things happening in the desert, or that's where I was, you know, really concerned with cloth or... you know, whatever, whatever it was. But like, if I, if I didn't come up with a, a fully fledged idea for it, then there's still stuff to explore. Well, before we get into Donner's cause I do want to talk about Donner's pretty in depth here in this conversation, Ram, if you don't mind, I'm going to kind of butter you up and kind of pick your brain a little bit. So something I've always wondered and appreciated about your work is how you take time to analyze and anticipate how a reader is going to experience that story that you're writing. And that's not to say, that there's anything wrong with like brain candy and comics. You know, a lot of people will tell you I often cater to the smooth part of my brain from time to time, but that doesn't seem to ever happen with you and your approach with writing. You are deliberate and calculated. You feel like your work, excuse me. I feel like your work often requires multiple reads to fully appreciate it. So is that a conscious effort or do you feel like this is just the voice that plops out of your, your head when you put pen to paper? I want to say it is a conscious effort, but. I don't think it is a conscious effort directed at the reader. And so I disagree with that part of it being attributed to me. Only in that I get excited by things having layers. I get excited by things being a little obfuscated. I get excited by the idea that if I do a little bit of work, I'll find this thing that's exciting and says more about the story. I get excited by the fact that... Maybe if you had watched, if you had read the cover or if you'd seen the cover to issue one more closely, you would have known what the story was about the whole time. And these are things that I find exciting about other people's work as well. So a lot of people talk to me and they're like, Chris Nolan, I'm kind of cold on him, but Chris Nolan like tickles every brain cell I've got. And yeah, I appreciate, okay, sometimes his movies are up too, so you can't get the drama in them, but. It's still, it's still, it's always fascinating to me. Um, and so I think because I'm interested in things like that, I tend to do work that does things like that. Cause there's a manipulative aspect to going like, Oh, my reader's going to perceive it like this. And so I'm going to do it like this. And I don't think you can create something that's truly exciting if it's engineered to manipulate rather than engineered to, to challenge. And I think. to truly create something that's challenging, you have to be challenged by it on some level. I guess I never really, it seems silly to say this out loud, but it seems kind of interesting to look at it from the lens that you are doing this to challenge yourself. Of course that makes sense, right? When you say it, that makes sense. But like, I guess from my perspective as the reader, when I'm reading your work, it's always like triple baked in this lore and culture and history. And I just feel like that's like just kind of your... You know, the way you write, that's that's how you do it always. Yeah. And I have always appreciated that kind of storytelling as well. Even in prose, kind of writers who excite me, Paul Oster, very postmodernist, very coming to stories with the understanding that, hey, I'm telling a story, I'm selling a story in the tradition of the American novel. And so there are layers that will speak to that as well. And I appreciate those things about film, about music, about like, like I love to. the fact that you can break their music down into mathematics and go like, oh, isn't this math great? No one but me cares about it. I talk to my friends about tool all the time. People are like, it's music. Why are you looking at spreadsheets of numbers? I'm like, ah, you don't get it. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, looking at your work, it seems like every comic that you put out should have like a cipher at the beginning. Like here's what this, you know, this hit me. Well, I guess I would kind of defeat the purpose of what you're trying to do here. Right. Exactly. I read this post that you put on Twitter the other day where you said, I don't like to explain my stories. I just want them to kind of I want readers to figure it out as they go. And I find that I really appreciated that sentiment because there is to a certain extent. You can tell me if you disagree or not. There is a certain extent in comics and American comics that is sort of playing to nostalgia or playing to beats that. have been done since the beginning of the silver age and before that. And people just want to keep consuming what they've already consumed over and over again and then complain about it later. Yeah. I mean, that's always been the case, right? Like there's always that reader, that consumer who just wants more of the same. And to an extent, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's just not why I do this. It's just not what excites me at all. Don't get me wrong. I've watched. I don't know. I've watched like John Wick half a dozen times. I've watched, I've watched equalizer half a dozen times. Like I've watched and consume everything, but making something has to be about what excites you beyond consumption, right? Like, like, and so I think in that regard, yeah, I don't see the point in explaining your story to someone because the whole idea of telling a story is that the true experience of a story is somewhere lost in between in translation. Like when I write a story outside of the plot and the character and the engineering aspect of it, the true magic and the beauty of a story comes from the fact that I have a certain set of experiences in my life and I have developed a viewpoint of the world through that. And I'm trying to express that in the story. I'm trying to express a feeling. philosophy if you will but not one necessarily that I can articulate in two or three sentences because why the hell would I write a story then I just articulated in a couple of sentences right and then this beautiful magical thing happens where I let go of the story and I have no more control over it and it's going to be whether it's you know straight-up prose and going to be read by someone or it's going to be interpreted by an artist who then expresses their own layer of to that story on top of that and the end product on paper then goes to a reader who is going to read it and they're going to feel happy, sad, angry, unmoved because it says something about their own experiences in their life. So there's this wonderful translation happening of my work through the lens of somebody else's experiences and to explain that would be to deny this aspect of translation because then I'm saying, no, it is this thing. And it doesn't matter what life you've lived or how you've felt about relationships or who you're angry at, it is this thing. And so it is translating, it's sort of articulating something like that almost always makes it less than what it is for the reader. Sure. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, let's go ahead and get into. Dawnrunners because again, this is why we're all here today to talk about this brand new series from Dark Horse Comics, which comes out on March 20th. And I'm going to give the listeners here just a brief synopsis. So a century ago, a portal opened up over Central America and the test that came through changed our world. Now the world bends all its effort to make iron Kings great mechs that must battle the test for humanity's continued survival in this gladiatorial combat. So I get like Francisco de Goya's. The Colossus meets Pacific Rim with a little bit of Ghost in the Shell from this first issue of Dawn Runners. Evan, I'd love to start with you here. What do you hope readers get from this first issue? I wanted to feel sort of like cracking a door and looking out and just sort of getting a glimpse of a world beyond it. In one of the other interviews that we've given together, we were talking about all the pre -production, all the concept art and... and sort of world building stuff. And as I think about that, like most of that stuff is invisible. It's stuff for me, it's stuff for Rom, it's stuff for the trade. It lives sort of separately from the story, but I want you to feel it there, even if you don't see it there, even if experienced it directly, I want you to feel like there's a whole world there that makes sense and that is internally consistent. and interesting and yeah, I want you to be intrigued by the characters and intrigued by the strange and horrible things that are happening to them and yeah. I guess, can I reframe it just slightly? So I don't want you to tell the reader how to feel, but I guess, how did you feel while making it? Yeah, the thing that excites me about what we've constructed is that there's this wonderful balance between the scope and scale of things. The whole world has changed. So everything is new. for you to witness as a reader, but also for us to create from scratch. And yet what I hope is we're telling a story that feels intimate, that feels about powerful interpersonal relationships, about how we think of ourselves, certainly as when it comes to other people depending on us, us protecting other people, our kids, our partners, our friends. And I suppose the sort of quippy line would be it's about the armors that we wear as people, whether that's the armor you put on to go fight giant monsters or the armor that you put on to cope with your inability to help people sometimes that are in need. Now, Evan, you, we talked about this a little bit at the beginning of the conversation, but this is your first work in comics. Well, obviously you've done covers for Detective Comics and those are incredible. I mean, I think when you go to a comic store and you see those covers for Detective Comics, that truly, I mean, obviously besides the ROM written by ROM V on the cover should sell it within itself. But the cover, I mean, you can hand that to anyone. You can hand it to grandma and they go, what is this operatic Batman about? This is incredible. I love that. Thank you. You've worked with on Catwoman as well, but this is like maybe your first big project with interiors. How's that process changed for you? I feel like I've gotten it. a bit better about streamlining over the course of working on Dawn Runner. The schedule for Dawn Runner was thrown wildly out of whack by COVID and has now stretched into the fourth year of production, which is inconceivable. But there it is. And when I started working on Dawn Runner, I was very precious about it and I would labor over it and I would... work and rework and rework. And, uh, you know, it just, it took forever to get that, that first 30 page chunk. And as I've gone long, I've gotten more comfortable with, well, with being inspired, but not knowing the answer with, with sort of jumping in and, and saying, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do, but I'm just going to go with it and, and see what happens. I mean, it's a little like, like Ron was describing in writing. It's, it's walking the knife edge between feeling comfortable in your own. technique and also not having all of the answers and feeling comfortable enough to say, I don't have all the answers and I'm just going to wing it. I mean, I think on some level that applies to any kind of meaningful art. Like you have to be willing to feel around in the dark a little bit. Otherwise, if you know exactly what you're doing, like does it not get boring to just do exactly what you already know you're going to be doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't. We've worked together. now for enough years and not enough things. But I also know that you don't know what I'm going to come up with at any given point. You're going to say, you know, so -and -so walks down the street and maybe they see a cool thing here and a cool thing over here. But I know that I'm going to come up with something that hopefully you like, but that you're not going to expect. Yeah, like, like all the, all the instances of the, of the ghost image in that scene when he's walking through the town in the theater. Yeah. I don't think the ghost image was in the script, but I looked at it and I was like, that's great. Yeah. I was wondering how much we were going to get into like specifics because I did want to talk a little bit about major Ichiro and some of the things that kind of happened there at the end of issue one. And I don't want to spoil things for readers because again, this conversation will come out two days before the actual issue comes out. But I will say that to kind of speak on what you're saying there, Evan, and actually, Ram, you said this earlier in the conversation as well. The sense of scale is truly remarkable in terms of what you've done with these mechs and with the people that are on the ground. It's just wild. There's a spread where you get the title card, I think, at the very beginning of the issue. And I think that's the greatest indicator of what you're about to get into in terms of the story. That is a great primer into, OK, we're doing this. This is like, I kind of mentioned some inspirations there a moment ago on my question, but this is its own thing and it's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think also that spread in particular is such a cool thing because the instinct in any comic is to go with a spread that's like, and then the aliens attacked, dun dun dun. It's like huge spaceships everywhere, explosions, people running. But this is like, I think one of the calmest sports. Two page spread for jogging. Yeah, yeah, exactly. A person jogging. But I think it does do exactly that. It established this sense of both intimacy and scale because it's very intimate because you're watching someone having a moment by themselves. They're jogging on an empty road at an early hour of the morning. And then right next to them is this towering shadow of a mech that's being taken out for a... test run or whatever. And does that not encapsulate the idea of like, this is going to be about scale, but this is also going to be about character and intimacy and quieter moments, if you will. It seems like such a mundane thing to mention, but figuring out what that camera distance was did take a few rounds. It was something that we talked about, like how much of her face should we be able to see? Like, should we... Should he be way in the background? Should he be way up front? Like, should we drop the camera down so that it's more dynamic? And actually we just sort of landed on like, let's put it front and center and keep her sort of small enough to get scale, but big enough that we can see her face. And likewise, big enough that we can actually get Dawn Runner and the wall in there. Like, it's a - I have to remember that it was a spread that was twice the size of what it is right now. It had - to extra pages. So one more page on either side, um, added onto this, but we thought it might be too much to, to have like a fold out center spread on page four of your comic. It's a little presumptuous. Rom you kind of mentioned there earlier in the conversation about when we first started talking about Dawn Runner, about how, you know, this, the story could be interpreted as like the armor we put on the outside and what, you know, what we're trying to protect on the inside. And I found that really interesting because Annetta, the main character that we meet, we don't even really hear her say anything until about halfway towards the end of the comic. A lot of the kind of exposition that we get about her is that she's just kind of this decorated pilot of the Iron King. And now she's done this for so long that anytime they have a big, like we have one of these testers around, they send in Annetta and whatever she's doing. And we get mention of her previous Iron King and now she's inheriting this new, again, I'm trying to like not spoil too much here. She gets this brand new iron king, which is the Dawn runner. And the twist of that first issue is the bond that she has with this mech and what it does to her there at the end of that issue. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. So what was what was the question again? There really wasn't a question. It was just trying to like think this out with both of the creators right in front of me as I'm staring at them. I thought I thought you handled that that well. You managed to. you managed to get it without giving it all away. Yeah. And that was truly the experiment there was me just trying to kind of lay it out there for everyone. That way they know what they're getting themselves into with Dawnrunners. But yeah, no. And I think on your on your point of Anita not even, you know, speaking up, I think I think the the element that strangely everyone else has told me is like the most interesting element to them is this idea that this endeavor to preserve and save. human existence in the in the wake of these giant monsters that ripped through every human, you know, ripped to the human cities from time to time is the fact that it's turned into this kind of gladiatorial sports national multinational pastime, if you will. Yeah, I thought it was an interesting crinkle to put in. I thought it was going to give great opportunity for story. But I had not foreseen people going like, oh, my God, that's super interesting that that's happened. And what does that say about us? But I don't know if you've ever noticed like really high level sports personalities, like a Roger Federer, for example, like not a very outspoken person, not loud, not very demonstrative, usually comes across as this kind of silent, quiet person. And I find that sort of introverted energy in a person who is clearly going out there to dominate whatever space they walk into. Like when Federer goes out on the court and starts playing tennis, he is dominating absolutely everyone else on that court. And I find that incongruence to be very interesting. So when Anita goes out and fights in her mech, there is absolutely no one who compares to the number of kills she's racked up. And yet outside of it, she's this quiet, semi -intense, almost demure, almost shy. kind of person. I just found that a fascinating character to write. And she doesn't have to say anything just like Federer doesn't have to say anything because their play or their work does the talking for them. Yeah, but the language is physical. Right, exactly. And of course we've got a character in this story, Xavier, who kind of just is this ever -present, just looming like, I wanted to say rival, but just kind of like this chirping bird and then it is... Oh, Xander, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Xander, who is it was just ever so badly. Puppey nipping at her feet. Yeah. Once they wants to beat her in every every facet and she just could care less. So I mean, to go with the tennis analogy and I don't know how many people are old enough to recognize it's the it's the Björg Meckan row chemistry there. Yeah. Like Björg was this like language gigantic, very quiet. but amazing tennis player. And then McEnroe was someone who would have a tirade at the end of every serve. So, yeah. Known for. Yeah. Yeah. Known for. But also both amazing, amazing players. Yeah. Perfectly fantastic player in his own right. But yeah, could not keep his mouth shut to save his life. Well, Ron, I'd love to pick your brain a little bit about the one hand. So, yeah, you, along with Lawrence Campbell, this came out in early February. through Image Comics. And the first issue, in my opinion, is like the definition of the atmosphere. And I think most readers know this by now, but the series runs parallel with Dan Waters and Sumit Kumar's The Six Fingers. This tells the story of a retiring detective and the killer that he's hunting. So what is your relationship to like film noir stories and how has that influenced you with this neo -noir story? Well, I mean, film noir and neo -noir or neon noir have all been super, super influential. I think one of the noir films that had the most profound effect on me the first time I saw it, and I don't think most people think of this as a noir film, is actually Angel Heart. Mickey Rourke. Rourke movie? Yeah, yeah. Interesting, okay. But it is genuinely a phenomenal example of contemporary evolution of noir techniques in... in filmmaking, I think. So I've been kind of in love with that whole light and shadow and everything has meaning, everything has portent sensibility about it and this sort of overarching sense of like everyone is doomed, of course we all are doomed. And so yes, that atmosphere certainly plays into it. I think it marries very well also with the fact that it's the concept and the idea is very much inspired by Cormac McCarthy and I think although to most people Cormac McCarthy kind of evokes this intense American Western frontier writing almost I think there's a very noir sensibility about all of his stories like none of his protagonists are going to end up in nice places you know. So yeah so I think that was a massive influence and then the obvious sort of neon noir influences of ghosts in the show and Blade Runner and whatnot. already exist. But another influence that's probably a more unlikely one is actually Paul Oster's City of Glass, which is part of his New York trilogy books and anywhere he was taking the sort of 80s American detective novel as a structural framework to do other complex interesting things with it. And I think part of the endeavor with One Hand and Six Fingers here is to do something similar in taking what is clearly neo neo noir atmosphere, but then telling this kind of story without spoiling anything that I would say, I don't think any of the readers quite know where this is going to end up. Sure. Yeah. Now, McCormick in the story, is that any reference to? Of course. OK. I mean, there's also also there's quite literally a page in issue one that I don't think anyone's figured out yet. There's a, there's one of those sort of doomsaying panhandling people on the street, you know, he's got like this whole prophecy written on a chalkboard. So you see in a couple of panels what is written on a chalkboard. Of course, it's just chunks of text and a lot of it is missing. But those parts are quite literally from Blood Meridian. No, from, from Sunset Limited. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I mean, the, the influence is very much. for anyone who wants to see it is very much there. This seems like, Rom, like, if you've learned anything from this conversation is that your analytical, you know, specific brain, a lot of times you said you like to play with numbers and, you know, very specific, yeah. This feels like a playground for you, it feels like. Oh yeah, and also like I hadn't realized this, but this is very inspired by Sunset Limited and all of Sunset Limited is written as a play, as a conversation between two characters. If you think of one hand, six fingers that way, one hand and six fingers is conversation between two books. And so Dan Waters, who's my collaborator at one point, looked at me and said, yes, you read a dialectical script and then decided to make the most Hegelian comic book ever. So I was like, OK, yeah, that's great. That works for me. Well, you know, speaking of Dan, like we said, he's right in the six fingers. Oh, and you know, actually, It's important to just say before we get into Dan is that both issue one for the one hand and six fingers both sold out. So congratulations on that. People are loving it. Thank you. Which is incredible. And you know, speaking of Dan, you actually have a creature of the black lagoon series coming out through image comics that you're co -writing with Dan and art by Matthew Roberts coming out April 24th. Again, as we just said, you and Dan are often either working directly with each other or bouncing off parallel, similar titles. What's the relationship slash friendship there between you and Dan? I mean, Dan's one of my earliest friends in comics, but also just one of my earliest friends in the UK. I moved here in 2014. I went to Thought Bubble in 2015. I didn't have a single comic book made at the time. And Dan and Casper, Dan Waters and Casper Wingard had just released their first image book called Limbo. We all met. We, over the next few months, realized we all came from similar influences, had similar ideas, certainly similar ambitions with what kinds of stories we wanted to make. And that's very rare to find people who look at the work with a similar, and I don't mean a similar analytical mind, but from a similar place of earnestness and honesty and desire to make something authentic. That's very rare to find people who are like that and who you can vibe with like that. And so Dan is absolutely of the cut of the same cloth, if you will. And yeah, we then got together, established a writing studio called White Noise with Dan Alex and Ryan O'Sullivan, part of the studio, apart from me. And yeah, we've been making comics together ever since. I had an image book the year after that. I did my first DC work the same year as Dan did his first DC work. So it's been a, it's been a journey of sort of pushing each other to do interesting things, but also watching each other grow. Yeah. Speaking of relationships, Evan, I'd love to kind of pick your brain here. How did you and Ram first connect? I don't know if we talked about this or if I've ever even heard the story. Was it just detective comics or was there a more interesting side of it? A confluence of serendipities. Uh, we met at a party in Scotland and, uh, No, that's not at all. I was going to were you based off? I don't think that's It could have been true. It's not, it's not true. It could have been. No, I was going to be like, oh no, what party is this? Why don't I remember it? I'm going to, I'm going to just answer something different every time you ask this question. No, I, I became aware of Graffiti Swallow. What year was that, Ron? Twenty. Depends on what version of it you read. I think it must have been the Dark Horse version, right? No, it was before that. Then it was probably, yeah, 2017. 16, 17 -ish, yeah. So that was when I first ever even heard of you. And I was seeing some stuff on it online, and then I hunted down a copy of it. And then nobody else that I knew had read it, and I started getting really crazy about it because I thought it was... really very good. And in fact, everything that I read that year, because that was sort of a year of re -educating myself in comics, I'd taken some years off. And I was just omnivorous and was reading all sorts of stuff. And I just kept coming back to this when it was really, it just, there was something about it that, yeah, there was a literary quality to it. There was a, there was an earnestness. And frankly, like the voice was unlike anything that I was reading in comics or had ever read in comics. And it was just really unique and unusual. And I couldn't believe that no one else that I knew had read it. And so I started getting really mouthy about it and started following Ram. And then I think Ram will tell you that he secretly started following me for something else. Yeah. Evan had done an illustration called Golgotha, which had this huge Evangelion mech and a young man standing in front of it and I looked at that and I had you know started having this pondering this idea of doing a mech-archaic comic even way back then and I looked at it and went like I should get in touch with this person and see if they would like to make some comics at some point because certainly at that time all of my collaborations had started off like that like on working... Graffiti's Wall was Anand's first graphic novel and so... I remember very distinctly going on to Evan's website and being very pleasantly surprised that there was a 10, 15 page comic that was also on there. So I was oh, this person is actually interested in making comics. I will remember, we'll reach out when the time comes. And then a few months later is when Evan got in touch to say, hey, I really enjoyed Graffiti's Wall and wanted to reach out. and say, I appreciate your work and if you ever want to collaborate on something. So it was, yeah, it was two people. have to say, I don't have a lot of positive things to say about social media in general, but honestly, that has to be the biggest one, the best one, is just the ability to reach out to other people and tell them that their work is amazing and that you'd like to work together and it's worked out surprisingly well. Yeah, it's also quite astonishing when that happens, isn't it? Like it still, it still happens. I don't know if I told you this Evan, but Shannon Timble, who is the creator of Kubo and the two strings for anyone to see that just randomly DMs me on Twitter. It goes like rare flavors. I'm enjoying rare flavors so much. And when he first DM me, I was like, oh cool. Thank you, Shannon. Cause you know, lots of people write to me and they're like, oh yeah, I enjoy your work. And then I'm looking up this guy's like, oh, what has he done? Like, oh, he's quite literally worked on like four things that I thought were amazing and great. I should probably DM him and say thank you. I mean, I won't go so far as to say that it happens more often than not, but it happens with enough regularity that I can't badmouth the social media as a way of making friends with other creators and building relationships. It's great. Yeah. Comics Twitter from 2010 to 2014 was top tier. It's obviously kind of eroded away since then, but those early days... So what Chris is trying to say is as soon as I jumped on it, things would stop. Rom got on the platform and I was like, ah, it's all gone to shit now. Look, I'll leave. What is this? Well, I have one final question for you. And Rom, this is a very specific one for you because, Evan, I'm not sure if you ever met Christian Ward. about Christian Ward, who's a good friend of I know him from social media. Yeah, he's a good guy, but I need honest answers here, Ram. So you guys obviously partnered together for DC's Black Label series, Aquaman Andromeda back in 2022. And I've told Christian this many times, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. The fact that Andromeda did not get an Eisner nom is like a blemish on the committee, the Eisner committee. Because that book, I think we're going to look back on Andromeda in 10 to 15 years and go, man, why was this not like paraded around as like the best book of 2023 or 2022? So I need honest answer. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, of course. And what was that like working with Christian on that book? Is that the only work you guys have done together? It is my experience with Christian actually predates Andromeda by quite some time. My first sort of first opportunity to ever meet Christian was I was walking through a convention in London. and I had no comics made. I had maybe five Xerox copied pages of a book called Black Mumba in my hand. And I was walking by this table and Christian was sat on it and I looked at his art and I was like, man, this is amazing. I didn't really know if Christians worked before then. But interestingly, he was talking to someone else who had asked him advice on, you know, you always get that. How do I break into comics? And for 45 minutes, Christian was just absolutely passing on wisdom to this person. And Christian's a teacher, or at least used to be an art teacher, from what I know. And so it was just a case of me going like, if I just stay here, I'll get free advice without having to actually go and say something to someone. You're just flipping through pages like listening. Yeah, yeah. So I just like lingered at Christian Ward's table for about 45 minutes. Yeah. And no, I showed him my comic. He had very, very... things to say and then years on you know I kept making books and then you know my books did well and Christian was always encouraging of the work so when the time came I was talking to DC editors about Aquaman and we're talking about underwater oceanscapes and Christian was one of the one of the first people mentioned and as soon as the name was mentioned everyone was like oh yeah of course it makes complete sense. And yeah, Christian's work on that book is stunning and beautiful. All the colors are wonderful. And I think people, people resonate with that as to whether whether the book should be nominated or win awards and such. I think that is for better people to decide. I will. I'll carry that flag. I don't know if I'm the one that should be deciding these things, but I'll definitely I'll wave the flag and just add a 10 out of 10. Give me a character check on Christian one out of 10. One being worse, 10 being best. What do you mean as a person? Yeah, yeah. I love hanging out with him. I hang out with him at pubs. Yeah, yeah. OK, agreed. I just want to make sure. 10 out of 10 for me too. I just want to make sure. I want him to hear this. I was hoping you'd say like four. So when he listens to this, he gets mad. Four? No, no, that's that's for private DMs that I send him. You, you four out of 10 person. I'm dying to know who comes on here and you're like, all right, what? like one to 10, where are they on the scale? Who in their right mind is like, yeah, that dude was a two. I would never ask about character except for Christian. He's the only one. That's fair. I thought maybe that was a stock question. Holy shit. No, but also, Evan, I think the more I speak with people who have been in the industry for a very long time, the more you start getting those like, oh, that guy, two out of 10. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'm maybe I'm still just. much of a neophyte but I can't imagine being like, oh that editor? That editor was a straight woman. Screw that guy. Evan, you just gotta stick with Rom and you'll be fine. You don't have to worry about ruffling any other feathers. You just, you guys keep making incredible comics and you'll have to worry about it. No, Evan knows my principle. Always go to all the conventions but never go out onto the convention floor. Just hang out at the bars behind because... No one who actually shows up at the bar and hangs out with you could ever be anything below an eight. You're not, you're not far off. I do. I do. Lose me a convention floor. Yeah. Well, Ron, Evan, thank you both so much for being here. It an honor to talk to you here on the Blooming Bar podcast. Ron, I'll speak to you here. I find your work just so compelling and I feel like you're one of the most intuitive creators in the medium today. And Evan, your work on Detective Comics and in this and Dune and everything that you've done over. the last couple of years and going forward, I'm very excited to see and you're also just an incredible voice in the medium. So I think Evan is an undiscovered master. And I think when people at least a five out of 10, at least a five out of character wise, we'll decide still, but art wise, 10 out of 10 for sure. It's like, this is like, it's like we're deciding your artist D and D sheet. You got to, you got a bad character. Skills are really high. I want you guys to come back every week and we just, we just, a creator out there or person in pop culture and we just give them a rating out of 10. I think that, yeah, I think that needs to be your thing. You need to commit to that. As I grow older and more bitter, like the scale just keeps shrinking. Evan, I'll pass the baton off to you one last time first. Is there anything you want to plug or anything you want to say before we head out of here? God no. Nothing? All right. Nothing. Perfect. I'm clear. I'll do it because Evan's too modest. You have stuff to plug. I'm just working on the one damn thing, Rom. No, no, you're working. I'm going to put you in trouble. I'm going to ask people to look out for our next project that will be after Dawn Runner as well. No, yeah, Evan and I have a thing planned out potentially at DC, potentially, you know, still a while to go. But. I think it's all very exciting stuff. I genuinely think Evan's like an undiscovered master. I think once people read his work, and I felt the same way about Anand when I was working with him. I think once people see the work in front of them, I think they're genuinely going to have their brains kind of scrambled for 10 seconds before they go, okay, this is now the standard that I expect. Yeah, I'm very excited. So lots more stuff to come out from both of us, I'm sure. Where do they follow you guys on socials? I'm on Twitter, but only as long as it only as long as it takes for the place to burn down, but I'm gonna I'm trying to find a way to kind of Go back to the way things were maybe maybe replicate some kind of form like experience in a Maybe in a discord server or something like that. We'll see sure But yeah, I'm on Twitter interface. Yeah, some were somewhere also where You're encouraged to actually talk to each other than be constantly talking at each other. I'm on Twitter until then. And then I have a newsletter where people can sign up. It's a fly by soul .com. And Evan, I know you said you hate social media, but can people follow you? How can people follow your work in general? Yeah. So I, I upload images to Instagram all the time. Uh, and I've got a, like a, like a vacation, Pieta tear on Twitter, but that I haven't been to. And. I don't know, four years, something like that. Yeah, don't follow me on Twitter. Just go to Instagram. You know that's gonna make everybody wanna follow you on Twitter when you say that. When you They're welcome to, but it's just I literally haven't been there. No, no, all he does is lurk. I'm convinced Evan sees everything that's happening on Twitter. Well, I used to have notifications turned on, and so anytime Ron would post about me, I would get a notification. I'd be like, oh, what did he say? And now I thought, what did he say? Three out of 10. Now I do my best to ignore it. Well, gentlemen, thank you both so much for being here. I appreciate it. And hopefully we can have you back on in the future at some point. Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to. Cheers, Chris. All righty. There's that conversation with Rom and Evan. Thanks so much again to both of them for coming on to the show. Great conversation. Rom has been a creator that I've wanted to have on the show essentially since the beginning, because around the time that we started the Oblivion Bar, He was relatively new in the industry, but he was writing a lot of big titles. Like we said in the conversation, Swamp Thing was a big one for me. Most listeners of the show know that I'm a giant Swamp Thing fan and we didn't get to talk about Swamp Thing very much in this conversation, but I do hope that I can have Rahman in the future to kind of deep dive into that run. You know, the many deaths of Lyle Star, which was an Eisner nominated series, Detective Comics, we didn't get to talk to, excuse me, didn't get to talk a lot about in this conversation, Rare Flavors. We talk a little bit about the one hand. I'm excited to, generally I'd actually love to have both Rom and Dan on the show to talk about both the Six Fingers and the one hand. And then also thanks to Evan. So Evan doesn't go on to many podcasts. So the fact that we had the opportunity to talk to Evan and talk about what it's been like for him to transition into interiors, cause he's been doing covers for comics for a long time, but he's relatively new into the interior part of the medium. It was just so great to have him on. So. Once again, thank you both for coming onto the show. It was an honor to have both of you on to talk about Dawn Runner. And if you're listening to this on Monday, the following Wednesday, so on March 20th is when Dawn Runner comes out. Make sure you guys go to your local comic book shop, pick up that first issue. It is awesome. I cannot promote Dawn Runner enough. It is so awesome. So next week on the show, Aaron will be back and we'll be doing our fan favorite segment. Battle Royale. So prepare your butts for this one. If you're not familiar with Battle Royale, we've done four before. This is our fifth Battle Royale. And I don't want to brag, especially since Aaron is not here, but I have won four. So Aaron, if you're listening, just know that you're in for it. I want to keep on winning for that one. But it's basically, we both pick five fictional fighters across all mediums, comics, movies, television, books, video games, everything. And we put them up against each other. and we debate on who would win. It's the classic nerd conversation. It's a very fun segment. It's one of our favorites. We try not to do it too much because there's enough of who would win between Superman and Goku kind of thing, which we don't do in these segments. There are certain characters that we do not tout. There are certain OP characters that we refuse to put in these battles. So basically we debate on who would win these battles and it's a fun conversation. It's always a good time. It's kind of a leisurely episode. where we get away from the structure and we just talk about characters that we love and who would win in a battle. So make sure you guys check out that. And it's a landmark episode, episode 150. It's a big deal. So make sure you guys check that out, but that'll do it for episode 149 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. Once again, can't wait to have Aaron back next week. I always hate doing these intro outros by myself. And I know Aaron wouldn't want to do it himself, but I'm excited to have my BFF back and talk to him about his retirement from the army. So. Subscribe to our podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Audible, iHeartRadio, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, we are there. Thank you to our patrons, Alex, Alice, Aaron, Botta from the Short Box, Cassidy, Chris from Botta Boom Pod, Christie, David, Elliot, George, Greg from the First Issue Club, Haley, Ham6, Jake from Spektales, Jake S, Jason, Jeremy, Kenny, Kyle, Losey, Mac Miles, Mike, Robert, Travis, and Brad and Lisa from The Comic Book Couple's Counseling. Follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, and threads at Oblivion Bar Pod. Thank you to Omnibus for sponsoring the show. Use the link in our show notes to upgrade how you read comic books digitally. Official merch of the show can be found on our website, www .oblivionbarpodcast .com. Thank you Kevin Ziegler for all of our Oblivion Bar art. He is at the Zig Zone on Instagram. Thank you Dream Kit for all of our musical themes. Thank you DJ Skyvac for our grid theme. Thank you once again to the Fancy Shop for sponsoring the show. And as always, Do not forget to tip your bartenders 20 % or more. That is the right thing to do. If you're tipping anything less than 20%, you are wrong, my friends. And thank you once again for listening to the Oblivion Bar Podcast. From Aaron and I, we will see you next week for episode 150.