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start shaking can I ask you a personal question now we in a broken time what if I the I'm a cybernetic organism living dissue over a metal [Music] endoskeleton hello boys and girls ladies and germs this is Tim Ferris welcome to another episode of the Tim ferah show
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where it is my job to sit down with worldclass performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits routines favorite books and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives this episode is a two for one and that's
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because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary which is insane to think about and passed 1 billion downloads to celebrate I've curated some of the best of the best some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade I could not be more
5:26
excited to give you these super combo episodes and internally we been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to yes enjoy the household names the super famous folks but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars
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these are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle perhaps you missed an episode just trust me on this one we went to Great pains to put these
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pairings together and for the bios of all guests you can find that and more at tim. blog combo and now without further Ado please enjoy and thank you for listening first up Nim Nicholas taleb best-selling author of antifragile The
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Black Swan Fooled by Randomness the bed of procrustes and skin in the game Nasim is joined in this conversation by Scott Patterson Wall Street Journal investigative reporter and author of chaos Kings how Wall Street Traders make billions in the new age of Crisis you
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can find Nim on Twitter nntb and you can find Scott on Twitter Patterson Scott is it true that you wrote a resignation letter your first day at a trading job and put it in your desk drawer I read this on the internet I don't know if it's true you can't
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believe everything you read but it was from the guardian so I thought it might be credible one thing is actually say I recommend people do that I wrote that but not on the day I started but I recommended that people because you feel relief when you do it because then you
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can continue on your job without feeling like someone's controlling you you've got the gun loaded the whole idea FL how you thought about that problem so you write the recognition letter and you don't date it I'm very fascinated by your ways of
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thinking the way that you've embraced different philosophies and you emailed me an aphorism in 2010 and you can correct me if I get any of the wording wrong but it stuck with me this is in 2010 here's the aphorism or the quote robustness is when you care
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more about the few who like your work than the multitude who hates it and then in parentheses artists fragility is when you care more about the few who hate your work than the multitude who loves it and then quotation marks politicians
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have you always had that type of robustness or resilience against criticism is that something that is inborn maybe because I was never really someone who took you know established ideas at face value so you necessarily have you know violate some Norms some
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thinking norms and often people protect those Norms by you know attacking a reputation and I realized that while writing full by Randomness hey saying that all I'm doing is random using wrong models these don't work so they attack your reputation so I realized quickly
8:41
was time that my reputation was going to be under some kind of fire and I decided that no my reputation is how few important people or people who know something about the subject view me and it's not like I don't care about reputation I only care
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about reputation in some circles and was people I can talk to to try to explain what it's about and it has worked out so but if you have to go defend your reputation and you're doing the right thing it's too much energy wasted and it's not going to help haters are going
9:17
to hate this resemble another aphorism inspired by Charlie mongers one of Charlie mongers is that do you want to be the most ethical person why people think that you're corrupt who you be the most corrupt person or people think that
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you're ethical make your choice and use it as guideline it's the same thing so except you know there's something in between is that there's some people I care about and I want them to not lose respect for me of course you start with your mother have your children or
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whatever your family members but there also there's a lot of people on the planet and I care about my reputation but in these circles not with the general public so allows you to take much much more aggressive positions which I've done over a long life and
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Mark for example has a lot of enemies and they're going to pick on something and we don't care you're doing the right things and how do you know you're doing the right thing if people you respect approve of Your Action not if the
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general public th what are some of the things that make Nim different or unique in those you've interacted with I have some of my own questions and and thoughts on this but I want I would love to hear yours he mentioned his contrarian nature it's not a contrarian
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nature it's independent so you got in line with it I mean people say I'm contrarian I'm I'm with a conspiracy theorists on many of things I'm against them on many other things some are just contrarian because they have a father problem okay so so to me contrarian is
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is an expit expc rather than attribute so but the other thing is I thought it's not going to be about me it should be about the idea the precaution and he's a lot more interested in literature and philosophy and not Financial Market
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thing that drives him he doesn't look at the stock market page you know every day like some people do he's no you have to figure out what people envious of so you know if you're in a hedge fund business and and you have $500 million in a bank
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and someone else has $600 million you're going to be envious with that person I was always envious of people had more erudition than me okay so more arodes and you realize that that's what makes me thck being envious is not good you see but at the same time if you figure
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out who you tend to Envy I don't believe in this they say oh people having enough there's someone you from eastampton the fellow who wrote cash 22 a lot of interesting folks out there yeah yeah he met the finer at the time for hedge
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funds and the finer said what is it that about you he was an author a very successful one what is it that distinguishes you from me he told him I know the meaning of enough so in other words you knows you're upper bound and effectively I don't play that game meaning I am
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literally and I say envious of people who are aides like if someone knows Latin very well I'm I'm envious If someone knows Sanskrit I'm envious right and I just discovered that early on so I made money on Wall Street because I wanted to make
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money on Wall Street but I didn't think it was worth the effort and luckily with a combination with universa I had so much leverage you know was Mark doing all stuff that the spill over on me was more than satisfactory so I have knock on wood a lot more than I wished so part
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of the reason I'm asking we're talking about the ideas but the person who's acting as the vessel or Communicator of these ideas the developer of these ideas is integrally related to I think the sort of totality that I want to explore
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so part of what interests me about your story and your thinking is how various inputs have impacted your thinking around not just markets but other things for instance like the stoics and the Sonic of the younger and so on or other philosophical inputs did those come
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early and then Aid you you think in your career when you were active in the markets or did those come later and you sort of always had a deep interest but were able to explore them at a later no actually I was started liking the stoics and Al those people I've talked about I
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like them much earlier on in my life but I went overboard for every idea I've had I did the exact opposite of what one should do is like if you had an idea say oh I had this idea right because I don't consider myself so different from others
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and then particularly when you look at history so many tens and thousands Scholars surviving works so I went back and figured out of these Scholars who had similar ideas or who preceded the ideas so and Who start think like that
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so I went into the the empirics the uh Eastern Mediterranean Greco 11 Greco Roman mostly using Greek language thinkers and then of course to others this fundamental skepticism because I noticed a lot of people are skeptical particularly conspiracy theories they're
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skeptical of small things but not about big ones all right they got taken for a ride it's find me a conspiracy theorist find me someone who's naturally skeptic of all things and I show you a turkey so I wanted to find people who are
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fundamentally skeptic being skeptic and be skeptic about important things not about small things because would be an example of a big thing let me give you an example I wrote the paper was never ended up in a book on the stock market and religion all right it's called the
14:50
bishop and The Economist and I said that those who are skeptical about the existence of God the non-existence god skeptical about religious matters typically tend to be complete suckers when it comes to stocks they believe in the stock market or believe in some kind
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of pseudo scientific theory on whatever it is okay so but they don't believe in religion and the reverse all right and people who are religious typically they're harder and there's some I don't know research on that there's a guy
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called Bari Hari Bari I think who did some studies about skepticism people go to religion about Affairs skepticism were it matters and wrote about it I think in the black SW skepticism where it matters and I noticed that a lot of these big Skeptics were not skeptical of
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God and things any you can't do anything about they were skeptical of the charlatan they're skeptical of someone trying to take advantage of you that's where you exercise your skepticism among the great Skeptics there is a bishop UA
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he was probably one of the second most aidite person of his time second was there's a guy called scaller the guy is phenomenal he could translate into Arabic Roman authors Latin authors and vice versa okay scaler scaler there a lot of Pierre Bale Pierre Bale has you
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know a lot of Works he's one of those Skeptics Hume was one of those Skeptics but these people preceded Hume Hume is known because he wrote in a language of a country that had a lot of ships and a lot of trade you know across the world
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but a lot of these ideas came from groups of people in France or among Protestants in France what called anist originates of course in lant and of course you have the great Al gazelle the Islamic Theologian Iranian origin who definitely was showing you how all
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these arguments are weak you know could dismantle arguments you could be skeptical about human arguments about God a lot moreos is coming out of that TR he was skeptical about the text that was these people say Okay transcend these text okay and be skeptical about
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things that really matter and there was actually skeptical School of Medicine practicing medicine so what I went back through history every time I've had an idea I would go back and see in history who preceded me and sure enough I haven't done enough because every year
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or so I get a letter from someone hey how come you missed so and so right okay and sure enough I go back to the inserto and I add that person and this is why it has survived the uh five books the inserto but we're not here to talk about
17:34
these five books but this book well we're here to talk about whatever comes up but I do want to hop over to you Scott and maybe discuss something that you had shared with me as a possible bullet in the prep stages for this conversation which is related to
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poly crisis and the new age of Crisis what does this refer to it's the subtitle of my book most people have focused on the first part of the subtitle is how Wall Street Traders make billions second part is in the new age of Crisis I feel like that hasn't gotten
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that much attention but part of what I'm trying to argue is that we are seeing a magnification of extreme events accelerating and overlapping there's a economist Adam TW who's coined a phrase called the poly crisis which he says these crises are happening on a global
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scale are interacting in ways that the whole becomes greater and worse than the sum of the parts so you've got pandemics you've got economic instability financial crisis climate change which is a big focus of mine in my daily job at
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the journal which I think is sort of the big one in terms of the ever magnification of Crisis that we're seeing we're seeing it in the news every day and what I wanted to do in the in the book is look at Several of these crises and think about how we should be
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approaching them in a sort of a risk mitigation standpoint using ideas from people like Nim I think that the central idea was as I was talking about the germ of the idea of the book was can you take ideas that were created on Wall Street
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for risk mitigation and borrow those and apply those to other forms of risk management and what Nim and Mark do is they think about the extreme events and how to protect against them Nim co-wrote a paper about this exact issue called
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the precautionary principle it delineates specific categories of risk that you should take the precautionary principle and apply it to he has some specific ideas and he can talk about it way better than I can but you know these are things that can be Global that
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represent systemic risk to humanity things that can be exponential must be fat or exponen exponential things to have these properties that you need to take extreme precaution and not take that risk basically don't play Russian roulette with these risks and that's
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kind of how the book was structured was first looking at the the growth of the strategy with Mark and seam and then moving on on to these other things that the world is facing and seeing if we could think about ways to protect against these risks something like
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climate change you don't really want to mess with that you know it's a bit too late but there's still lots of things that we can do and that's I think the book in a nutshell I was going to mention earlier when you asked me about the birth of the idea of the book when I
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first suggested it to Nim and Mark Nim said no way I'm not I have no interest in in doing that with you it's it took a while and then you were like I have these black and white photos you might want to take a look at so how do you
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convince him to do it it was uh it warmed down I think it was more Mark put the screws on no no no let me tell you what happened I don't know I know that extracted the promise from him to not be portrayed to mention that I don't self-identify as a finance person and
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once he made that promise said okay now we can talk because Finance represents a significant part of my life but I this has been a theme with Nim ever since I've known him so to me it was like the identity piece yeah that he's not
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traitor and I and I thought I agreed because it's true it's he's not been a traitor for a long long time and it's obvious where you know where his interests are and what would it mean or feel like for you to be broadly identified as a finance person but to
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think of yourself more as a scholar I wrote about it in full by Randomness George Soros and I Met George Soros one of the persons on the planet who impressed me the most one of those and I realized that George Soros missed his career he wanted to be a philosopher and
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a thinker okay he ended up making money and spending too much time in it and wrote Drunk articles and books or one book so yeah he was not it was not not what he wanted out of life okay he's a middle European intellectual who would have liked to be remembered as someone
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for who had ideas and he envi of course Carl poer who he claims was his Professor but it was beyond so I wrote about it full by Randomness I said here's this fellow who is say okay but he also does to distinguish himself from other financiers he is also or has
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intellectual aims I said I don't want to be that mhm I want to be someone who produces intellectual work and who happens to have had contact with reality thanks to trading and thanks to Mark guys I'm still have some contact with reality but
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I'm not cut for that when I was writing food by random it was 2019 that I realized I was not I don't want to be like Soros because unlike Buffett and the other people Soros had an identity crisis he wants to be known as a philosopher okay it's a life to control
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of him told me he wanted to write a book I used to cover him and I was leaving the journal at the time to write my second book and he was like oh I really always wanted to write a book and you never got around to it so there you go with you
23:42
know the Oracle of Omaha yeah he wants to be thought of as an intellectual too but well I mean not the same the the S of Omaha has something that I didn't put them a precautionary principle but that's probably very inspiring he understood the asymmetry
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if you say no a thousand times he says no if he doubts and that's the precaution principle could you uh give people the precautionary principle 101 just to back up okay let me ask you you're uh Tim feris flying to go to Mexico you go to JFK and they tell you
24:17
they have uncertainty about the skills of the pilot but we think he's good but there's uncertainty what do you do you're not going to get on that plane say okay life is too uh important for me mhm you'll take a train you you walk maybe you ride
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a bicycle you know take a few months but you're not going to get on that plane okay you change your plans and say okay there are other plans or other countries too and other planes so that's Warren Buffett with his Investments but that's
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my precaution principle the idea that there's an asymmetry is that uncertainty about certain things is not good so the climate for example if you have uncertainty about the climate stop these models all right just don't pollute you got try use something else try to
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mitigate so that's the first part of it people get it right away when I give them a story of plane or I take water say this is glass of water on the table there's no evidence that it's poisonous would you drink it no no evidence spook me there's no
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evidence that so but when you tell them hey you know you should worry about GMOs they says there's no evidence they're harmful yeah but there's no evidence that they're not harmful okay so the asymmetry where you put the burden of the asymmetry on that's a precautionary
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principle but then what we did is we noticed a lot of people in fact it was a counter precautionary principle a lot of people were invoking it for nothing to say we're going to have a non-naive precaution principle by delineating the
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areas where you should exercise such precaution systematically as a planet or as a communal group and what are they number one you need fat tales now what does fat tail mean let me explain to you let's say you go to planet Mars okay Elon would help you get there you
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have connection and you have no news from Earth and then on the way back you hear that a billion people died okay which one is more likely to be the cause Ebola or car accidents Ebola now on a given day if you hear Jo Smith died
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today what's more likely Ebola or a car accident car accident car that's fat tales fat tales you have to identify things in backwards that if you hear of a big thing where it come from and you had against these okay so they have different Dynamics because scale
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differently so in the Black Swan I showed the difference with the following metaphor there are environments where you may have a large deviation it's not going to be consequential because can't be very big so if I take a thousand
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people and put them on a scale and add to that sample the largest human being can find on a planet how much of the total will he or she represent T 30 basis point nothing okay and then if you go from a th000 to 10,000 it dilutes completely so you can have a tail event
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but it's not going to be consequential extremist is different extremist stand if you gather a thousand people and add to that sample the wealthiest person on the planet how much of the total will he or she represent all of it there'll be
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running error there'll be running error I mean there'll be on average the planet Earth all right that' be in total maybe they have two or three million in total and then you have 100 and some billion right next to so this is where you have to focus on
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environment that produ these fat tailes and this is what marketed with universa universa is named after the universal mechanism that generates fat tals that was the name of the so everything we're in it basically intellectually everything all details so we have to
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identify what produces fat taals in the financial markets and why it's getting thicker fat deals means that you have the greatest contribution comes from smallest number of events so concentration like for example you have a lot of people all the weals come from
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one person it so happened that under fat tales the models that we use for risk management on Wall Street RBS this is why I have a lot of enemies this is why I have to protect myself against reputational damage all right so because
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all economists hat me all their models are based on on that so what is Fatale practically everything socioeconomic life is fat tailed what is not fat tailed number of calories we're going to eat tonight how many calories can we have in one day tonight we can only go
28:37
for the gold I'd say I'd say we could e down few thousand calories a piece 2,000 2,000 say I go 3,000 for me all right I can play with fat and stuff 3,000 that's nothing how many calories do I consume a year yeah not a single day is going to
28:50
make a difference mhm can you lose all your money in a single day yes there we go so you have two environments and they're separable so this is why the universal approach that make things separable the fact that you can identify what is fat tailed you identify where
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models don't work you can identify where you have to understand and we have to use more refined tools to figure out stuff and then also in fatness of tales number one pandemics number two Wars I close close second Wars and pandemics
29:21
okay and so you can use that to prioritize application of the precautionary principle or Bingo and let me tell you how for example if cancer is thin Tails nuclear thin tail if you could diversify it it's thin tailes if you can have a thousand nuclear reactors
29:39
all right if you can ensure it rather than one it is s tail if you can ensure it Cil if you can't insure it non insurable fat tails so there a lot of things that are believe to be very risky but they're not like nuclear for me I mean not for one of my co-authors but
29:56
I'll settle it with him with a or what's it English rert Reed is a co-author of and also a major character in the book he's very environmentally focused person he's a leader in climate these days and uh yeah he told me that's one thing that
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he disputed the precautionary principal paper with n which was written with him first drinking you know English single m in an English in an English pub in somewhere in northern England where the portions are like smaller than the what they give you for espresso in Italy you
30:30
know the espresso like you sip them so we had to have like again it's like with you you and the eggs all right so to go back to the insurable we don't have to worry about it and a very simple example I give that when Ebola started or later
30:44
on when Co started people were using the arguments yeah you know 3,000 Americans die every year drowning in a swimming pool that was something by the guy called Dr Phil should we shut down pools at a time less than a thousand Americans
30:56
had died of covid and then I followed this present the following argument I said if I die drowning in a swimming pool my neighbor drowning in her or his swimming pool has not changed if I die of covid the odds of my neighbor dying of covid has increased so you have that
31:15
transmission that makes it fat tail that mechanism of transmission so this is why you cannot compare as basically the press in the beginning the so-called established press was against our ideas because see was racist against China
31:29
they could not distinguish between risks of car accidents and heart attacks and risks of things spreading this is why for example I am in favor of vaccines the risk is th tailed and I'm against GMOs because they spread in the environment just a quick thanks to one
31:50
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out visit Liv mous.com Tim and use code Tim at checkout for 20% off that's live mous l i v m o m n t us.com Tim and code Tim for 20% off and now Todd McFarland Emmy and Grammy winning director and producer co-creator of Marvel's top villain Venom
33:16
co-founder of Image Comics and creator of Spawn one of the world's bestselling comic books and one that earned Todd the Guinness world record for longest running creator owned superhero comic book series you can find Todd on Instagram @ Todd
33:35
McFarland Todd welcome to the show nice to see you Tim thanks for having me this morning appreciate it and I thought we could start with a confession on my side which is ever since I was a kid and to this day I still have a poster of the Incredible Hulk number 340 gry Hulk
33:52
versus Wolverine that features your artwork and I am a long long time collector and fan of your work so it's exciting to have you here and I'm excited to to dig into all sorts of things and I thought we would begin and this might be a dead end
34:08
we'll see where it goes but asking about how baseball informed your approach to Art and Comics if at all if those two things tie together for you so here's what I would say about that and I'll I'll give you a little bit of back history I would
34:26
say it informed me more on the eventual business side the competitiveness on the business side so it's always interesting when you do certain interviews or with people I always sort of think that sometimes interviews are like laying on
34:44
a psychologist couch and they're like Todd why are you like that what drives you here's the answer to that question so we can get that out of the way I think it was the day I came out of the womb and it was in my DNA there's not a single day
34:58
I don't recall not being Todd so what is natural for me I guess for other people cuz I Now understand as I get older their personalities that my personality has been baked every day of my life and it's not an effort to do what I've done in life right so people go oh my God
35:15
you're so tenacious and you go up against people and you're such a rebel and you you fight for what you believe in of course there's no other option in my brain so it's not I'm not fighting I just there's no other option so it's
35:29
just a natural progression on where I want to go but I would argue that whatever that DNA is got enhanced with two things one I had a brother that was a year older and one a year younger and you get three boys together what are you talking about every day was a
35:46
competition who could eat the cereal the fastest who could jump the most steps down who could run to school to fast what are you talking about everything is a competition and then you take that and eventually I was never going to go to
35:59
university I remember being in class when they brought in high school they brought the the recruit in the college and they sort of talked and I go well I'm not going so I just put my head down and continue drawing because I was always doodling and then somebody tapped
36:12
me on the shoulder I remember and they went son why is your arm not raised and I'm like what like what I wasn't even paying attention sadly and I go what was the question they're go who wants to go to college and I looked up and every
36:27
sing single person in my class had their arm up now that's okay but I looked at the two sort of druggies that I know because I'm friends with all of them and I'm looking at them going what are you talking about you're not going to college you got FS like across the board
36:43
you might even drop out in grade 12 so anyways I gave him my reason which is I don't enjoy education and so let's just convert it to broccoli and let's say I don't like broccoli why would I then go and pay people money to eat more broccoli doesn't make much sense does it
37:02
so I go I'm not going now did I go to college of course I did why because I'm an athlete and so I played baseball getting back to your question and somebody offered me a scholarship to go to play baseball so my last three years I was on a pack 10
37:19
baseball scholarship and at some point now you have to get sort of simplistic if somebody's going to give you free education I'm going to grab it did I want it not really but if it's free I'm going to grab it and oddly Tim of the 25 guys on our team only two of us
37:38
graduated with a degree in four years and the other guy was I'm Canadian the other guy was a Canadian I remember the coach going because Canadians don't want to hustle as much in sports right because we got a degree like what are you talking about was free and the
37:50
reason I took it and I got it done for free because the dumb athlete was alive and well but they're not really dumb they just don't go to class and if you don't go to class you don't get your marks and if you don't get your marks then eventually you don't get your
38:04
degree here's the funny thing about that somebody is offering you a free degree and 23 of my teammates decided they wouldn't get it in four years so either they would never get a degree or G to my head this is weird they're going to come
38:19
back and pay to finish it I go finish it the buffet was open the whole time you were there and you chose not to eat like oh my gosh so if nothing else given that I'm sort of a cheap skate I'm going they're going to give it to me for free
38:34
I'm not paying another Penny to come back here I'll take that degree so I got my degree and I was Off to the Races now between the baseball which is competitive and my brothers then all of a sudden 3 weeks before I graduate I end up getting my first job in comic books
38:50
and all of that sort of made me a freelancer and I had to begin taking care of myself and it's like okay just another game another game of competition first job in comic books you have posted I want to say photographs of 350 or so rejection
39:08
letters when did you first start sending those out and did you get any particularly helpful feedback that allowed you to modify things so that you were able to get that first job yes so let's go through it real quick did I get over 300 rejections yes
39:28
is that tenacious is that determination or is that delusion like how many like at what point do you say I'm going to be an opera singer and that and you people keep giving you Nos and you go man look at how determined is at what point do
39:41
you say maybe I just can't sing opera but again so there's a fine line people give me way too much credit for those 300 I think a normal sane person with sort of less enthusiasm we'll leave it at that word than me would have probably at 200 rejection found another option to
39:59
make money but the reason I was able to assimilate that many rejections was because I was going to college so I was sending off samples almost continuously while I was in in school so it's like I didn't have a job I was going to school so I didn't care I had
40:15
four years to basically try and get a job and then at probably at the end of those four years I was going to look at that pie on say maybe I need to find something else my degree is I thought is in graphic design designing and I
40:28
thought I was going to be the guy who's going to do Michel and tire ads I go that's okay it's an admirable job but you know it's a graphic designer that was sort of where I thought the reality of it was going to be but 3 weeks before
40:40
I graduate I get my first job and how did I get it by sending literally 700 samples over the course of those four years and just on one level I think I just wore them out because I sent it to every editor at every company they used to have let's say at Marvel CU my first
41:00
job was at Marvel they have like one submission editor no no no no no the people who give you the work are the editors and they have 16 editors so I would send it to all 16 editors ultimately I went around the submission guy I just want what you got to give it
41:15
to the editors anyways might as well send it directly to the editors so I would keep sending it to the editors over and over and over to every company every editor and I think Tim and hindsight I think that probably had a board meeting or whatever one of those
41:29
Monday morning meetings and they just said something like and I'm making this up but said oh for the love of God that Todd kid that punk that keeps sending us we keep getting like a box of mail from this Guai every two weeks would somebody
41:43
in this room give him a couple Pages just so we don't have to open up his mail every two weeks I think I just I think I just wore them out and I got the job literally 3 weeks before I graduated so I never even have to use my degree what informed me in those yeah it was
42:00
all constructive criticism let me tell you cuz people say oh Todd you got the last La no no no everything they put in those letters was constructive criticism because the people just thought that I was not very good through my portfolio my samples in
42:15
the garbage so everybody who took the time to write back actually gave a little bit of insight and so what I would do they didn't know it was actually going to keep me fueled is that I would take that insight and then redo another batch and send it to everybody
42:34
again so you know where I was making 20 mistakes eventually it got down to 18 and then 16 and then 15 and I think probably when I was at six mistakes I think they finally said hey he's getting better he's not perfect and he seems to be enthusiastic so somebody give him a
42:52
chance see what he can do so for people who don't have any familiarity with comic books penciling anything along these lines what were some of the things you were getting feedback on and getting better at and I suppose this this leads
43:05
into the question like what does it look like as a comic book artist to get better what are you getting better at maybe that sounds like a silly question but I'll give it a shot there's two things that I think make a good artist in the comic book industry one is just
43:19
pure drawing skills right so there are hundreds of not thousands of people who who can draw circles around around me if you can just draw pretty pictures you can go a long way the second piece is storytelling and if you can do great
43:36
storytelling and be average drawer you're still going to have a pretty good career because people then will be entertained by everything you do so I'll use an example and and I hope and because I'm friends with him and I hope he doesn't take it Frank Miller is a
43:52
great great Storyteller he's the one that wrote The Dark Knight for Batman he's the one that you know created 300 that ended up getting turned into a movie and Sin City and all these things he he rejuvenated Dead characters like
44:07
Daredevil I wouldn't say and I think Frank would agree that he's not the best anatomically correct artist and his drawings don't get every muscle right what he does is he tells stories better than anybody else in our industry period
44:25
so he could do it with stick man and you would still be engaged because of his writing the way he does it and what's happening in it so Frank has been able to take that storytelling which to me as I've gotten older is way more important than whether You' got flashy lines I
44:41
came in as a kid who wanted to do flashy lines cuz it would people go oh my God look at all the detail he's doing but then I found out that really what they wanted was less Flash and more clarity on the pages right you should be able to
44:55
give a comic book to a non-comic book writer go next door to your neighbor give it to your mom and at the end they should be able to say hm you know not my cup of tea I don't collect comic books but that was kind of interesting because they understood what they were supposed
45:10
to be reading in the sequence they were supposed to be reading it and if you don't do that you're no good in our industry one more thing if you can't keep a deadline then you're for sure not good at anything as a matter of fact people
45:24
who can keep a deadline in an industry that is driven by monthly deadlines can have long careers and not be very good at drawing because you have to get product out every 30 days so go ahead if you want to be the kid that's flashy and do a bunch of lines and take twice as
45:43
long but they're never going to give you a regular gig because you have to get books out on time period out and I'm embarrassed that I don't know this but I never made it far enough you can still lead a prod productive life Tim don't I'm working on it working on the
45:58
productive side uh but what are the deliverables on a monthly basis are you shipping out a few pages at a time are they waiting until you have the entire book done so to speak what do the actual deadlines and deliverables look like for
46:14
a full-time comic book artist so it has shifted as you can imagine with technology yeah so the way that it used to work and I'll age myself cuz I got into the business sort of pre- Internet I'd have to do my my pages take them to
46:29
the either phone FedEx and they were called fedro Express at that point and so I would have to phone fedro Express when I use FedEx my wife go oh you're so hip calling them FedEx and then eventually they cut on so you'd phone FedEx theyd either come and pick it up
46:44
or sometimes you would miss the call on their deadline they were the drivers were pass I was living in a remote area up in Canada on an island in Canada and so if I missed a driver which is why I hired an assistant to help sort of package stuff up he would drive to the
46:58
airport which was about an hour and 15 away while I was finishing up pages so I go oh I've got another hour and then we drive to the airport do you know how many times I ran down to tarmac cuz it was a little sort of prop plane that
47:11
flew to Vancouver British Columbia and they were I think he was always looking over his shoulder going to to be here in about 2 minutes and I'd be running down the tarmac and i' basically throw my package to him and he'd get it done today all of that's taken away because
47:26
now you can scan your pages and hit a literally a download boom it's gone it doesn't solve anything Tim all it means is you just get to push your luck with deadlines later and later so let's give you an example currently happening the
47:42
biggest comic book that's going to come out this year in our industry is a book called Batman spawn so that goes to print because I just talked to the people at uh DC Comics yesterday it goes to print on Monday you and I talking on Friday Friday I still have to write it's
48:00
a 48 page book I've only written eight pages I've got to finish writing the 40 pages there's 10 pages that haven't been colored I literally talk to the person who does the word balloons after I give them the script to say hey sorry dude we
48:15
got to both work pretty hard over the weekend they're going to probably get the last pages at midnight on Sunday they're going to look at it make sure nobody no pages are upside down or backwards and then they're going to hit send and it's going to go to the printer
48:27
and the printer's waiting cuz when you've got a big print run cuz it's like I said it's going to be the biggest of this year you can't swap out books and say ah we'll just swap out another book can you just substitute not of that
48:39
magnitude they've got lots of printer presses waiting for this one book and it we've got to deliver so how does it work by our chinny chin chin like a lot of other things in the world you just get it done so let me back up for a second
48:53
so I think I heard you correctly now you have delivered so many deadlines even if you've chased down the plane on the tarmac you've you know how to train obviously through I've missed the plane a couple times you've missed the plane a couple times so this is a huge book
49:08
biggest in the industry of this year did I hear you quickly that you said you have eight pages done out of 48 I guess I'm just wondering if you what does that what does that mean yeah writing wise okay wow Tim I'll tell you what that means
49:22
that means before I talked to you this morning I talked to to my what they called letterer the guy who actually converts your script into the word balloons I talk to my letterer and go dude we're going all night T I'm just every three pages I'm going to send to
49:37
you so it's going to be I do three I send it to him he works on it by the time he's done with those three I feed him another three and we're just going to see how it works and we'll get it done Tim we'll get it done like you said earlier a couple years ago I set a
49:52
record I mean spawn is the longest running crater own book we're up to issue 33 five that's over 30 years of doing books and now I do a monthly book every week you just get it done it's just like going to the gym every workout isn't awesome but did you get your
50:07
workout in yeah sure wow by the hair of your chinny chin chin but nobody knows on the other side nobody knows everybody's look at that book and go man it it is look at how professionally done it was so so let's then come back to a word you
50:25
used which is important and that is the longest running creator-owned superhero comic series the creator-owned piece when and how did you decide to start Image Comics because I remember as a kid I wanted to be a pencil for about 10 years so I was I was really tracking all
50:44
of this and then I was an illustrator in high school and then part of college I actually had the I was the graphics editor at a magazine where Jim Lee had been the previous graphics editor so I had a Jim Lee had a DC Comics for those
50:56
know and he had these sketches in the desk that he'd done after getting hammered in college and I thought these were just treasures at the time so this is a lot of fun for me to explore and I remember image being a very big deal so for people who have no context can you
51:11
explain why and when image was founded because I think that's a big piece of this story look at I assume that the majority of people listening don't collect comic books and whatever so we'll keep it simple everybody knows Marvel and DC everybody right if you ask
51:29
the next natural question huh who's number three that has been image comic books for 30 years we were celebrating our 30th Anniversary so was the spawn character because it came out that first year and we've been number three for 30
51:44
consecutive years a matter of fact those first couple months we came out we actually passed DC comic books we were number two for a few months so when people sort of get past you know the Marvel and DC and even in the industry of Hollywood Andor people that are
51:57
looking for ancillary products which you have to because people don't know Marvel's owned by Disney Marvel's owned by Disney they don't share that too much and DCC which is for a long long time has been owned by Time Warner now Warner
52:13
Brothers Discovery AT&T you know but let's call it Warner Brothers so one's owned by Disney one's owned by Warner Brothers okay so your Sony your your Universal your Paramount Studios your Netflix your Apple your Paramount plus what are you talking about where you
52:30
getting product not getting it from Marvel why they're not sharing and you're not getting it from DC cuz they're not sharing so you literally have to go and redact all those books and you're left with everybody else and that puts our books in really good
52:47
position now let's go back because that doesn't answer your question how did we get to image comic books for me personally when I was trying to break into comic books like I said in all those years leading up to breaking in those I was reading everything I could
53:02
get my hands on about our industry and what I found was I was coming across a common theme and the common theme was that everybody no matter how big your standing had been in our industry eventually got pushed out against their
53:25
will and in some cases got the short end of creative and financial sticks these are artists these are artist writers whatever this these stories were had been written over and over and over again and so I remember one in particular reading about there's a
53:44
gentleman his name was Jack Kirby and his nickname was Jack the king Kirby Right to put in perspective to people who are Layman listening that they called him the king for a reason cuz he was and he got the short end of the stick and Jack Kirby's a guy who helped
54:01
create the Fantastic Four and the X-Men and even created the costume for Spider-Man and the Hulk and Iron Man and on and on that's who Jack Kirby was he helped create it with stanlee so I remember reading those articles and this is long before I break into the industry
54:20
and I went man if they can do that to Jack King Kirby they can do it to anyone and so when I got my first job in comic books when I you know 3 weeks before I graduated I went in with my eyes wide open and so I knew what the game was and I go okay their job is to
54:44
exploit me as much as possible can I do the same in Reverse at the same time the win is they're getting something of value out of you you're getting something out of them and the value that I was getting out of them was twofold one I had all these dozens of characters
55:04
in my P portfolio including spawn and I never ever had one second of Temptation to ever pull any of those out and offer them to to Marvel or DC when I was working with them did I create new characters when I got the plots from the
55:18
writers of course I did I was a professional so I help co-create and I'm the visual creator of Venom so Venom's my guy why because that you know we came up with a story and that was what it was okay fine but I never said oh man I'm
55:32
having a good career at Marvel let me reach into my portfolio and offer them my characters never why because in the back of my mind those stories had been haunting me that were there and at some point Tim I was selling more comic books than any human being Marvel was
55:50
employing period to the point that I had set a record on one of the books I helped take over artistically Amazing Spider-Man it was sitting at like number 22 in the sales chart they came and they went hey Todd if you want to draw cool
56:05
cuz I had just finished a run on the Incredible Hulk that you had mentioned and they said whatever you want to do cuz it's sort of in a dumper Spider-Man's in a dumper in short order at some points Amazing Spider-Man became number one or two every single month in
56:19
total sale to the point then that they were like oh and it it's it's really what catapulted my career and just so you know all the things that I was doing artistically to help move it from number 22 to number one I was getting push back
56:34
from the corporate entity up above and the executives up above and the editor and chief up above that you can't do what you're doing Todd you're messing with the icon that's not how we do it let me tell you ladies and gentlemen as an old man now the single greatest
56:49
danger you are going to meet in your life is status quo it is the thing that they are going to fight and battle battle you against more than any other thing in the world and what's staggering about what I just said which is a trism is that there's only two 100 centers in
57:09
the world that I can give you one we're all going to die hate to break it to you it's just a matter of time the second is everything is going to eventually change otherwise we'd be living in caves right now change is part of the human
57:26
condition and yet every day you run into systems that are crushingly holding on to status quo are holding on to yesterday and and for those of us that are wired to think about tomorrow we become the rebels we become the outcast
57:46
we become the people who are rocking the boat who are just Todd why don't you just you relax get along all the things that they're going to tell you and what I'm saying that happened to me has happened to millions of people throughout history that wanted to do
58:01
something different not better let me be very clear not better different so when I was doing my different Spider-Man I wasn't doing it because I thought I was better I wasn't doing it because I thought what they were doing was worse
58:17
which is how they took it I was doing it because I'm a young kid with a career and I need to figure out how to stand out in a sea of people that are doing the exact same job as me and there's only one way I've got to be a little bit different so I started doing some funky
58:35
fun little stuff on Spider-Man and guess what the fans liked it and more importantly it was enjoyable for me to draw because drawing is a lonely occupation like a novelist where you sit in a room for 12 hours a day with you and your thoughts that's your day and if
58:54
you can't entertain yourself it's a long day so I was coming up with crazy little silly things I was putting in the book they were having a heart attack I was getting called on the carpet has the sales are going up I finally quit Spider-Man they go no no no because
59:08
you're selling so many books we'll give you an a new Spider-Man book they were going to do a fourth Spider-Man book anyway so they could have one every week of the month so they gave it to me I've never written before I'm going you're G
59:20
to give it to me I've never written before but I I I got to write which is why I quit I go I want to write and that's because I don't want to draw other people's stories I want to tell my story and they said yeah yeah yeah and that book set a record it's in the
59:32
Guinness book of world's record for the most sales by a single Creator I also own that record on the other side with spawn I own the corporate and non-corporate record for a single issue by a single person done now I'm not saying that bragon I'm just saying it
59:47
has a fact so that now that guy who's setting records when he comes into the office in New York from Canada little Canadian you would think that they would say thank you not you right and instead they're calling me on the carpet going
1:00:05
Todd you've got to stop doing this and this and this all the things that got me and their books were there and I remember having these bizarre conversations with the editors going dudes you don't have to like me personally you don't have to like my
1:00:21
drawing style you don't have to like anything I do you hired me for one job sell comic books you guys are in the Commerce business don't you realize you're a money-making machine you want to sell books I do that better than anybody that you employ why are we
1:00:39
continuing to have these conversations and they wore me out Tim they wore me out so when was there a particular moment when you knew it seems like you had basically in your back pocket the plan to eventually go out on your own because you had all these characters you
1:00:54
developed so what was the day or the conversation where you just like this now is the time oh I'm splitting off I remember with Clarity they had been doing comic books have this thing in the corner called the comics code and the comics code was
1:01:11
created because in the late 50s there was the whole War them scare that comic books were degrading the Youth of America and they had the Senate hearings and it actually in a weird way ended up leading to the sort of the Advent of
1:01:25
Marvel Comics cuz there were Marvel was a company called timely Comics but then they went uhoh we don't want to get caught up in this whole Senate hearing let's sort of whitewash if you will our presentation and they changed her name to Marvel and their first book out
1:01:41
Fantastic Four and then after that here comes Spider-Man Iron Man Hulk and all the other things that we all know right so you can argue that thanks to some Looney Tune in the senate in the late 50s Marvel exists right maybe minus him
1:01:55
there is no Marvel so we actually we shouldn't be giving all the credit to Stanley we should be giving it to McCarthy and Dr Wortham who was the one who wrote the book The seduction of the innocent right so look it up anyways is I'm doing the books because of that
1:02:11
Comics code every now and then they would get you to fix a panel Todd you can't do that why because the comics code okay now I used to ask them could somebody actually send me the comics code so instead of having to guess what's in the comics code and then you
1:02:26
guys tell me I got to redraw something because I have deadlines and I don't like to redraw and redo anything and so it's like burning your pasta then you go ah man I got to cook it and boil the water again it just you get aggravated
1:02:38
the second time around so at some point they kept doing that and then the day came and then it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back cuz I'd been doing it for years and they sat there and it was this issue and it was the sideways issue my last issue at
1:02:55
Marvel it was a sideways issue of the Spider-Man book the one I had I was writing myself except for we were doing a crossover with some of the the mutant X-Men and in this case X-Factor characters the ones where sort of Deadpool and cable came from those
1:03:10
characters and there was a bad guy and his name was a juggernaut and the Juggernaut was like you couldn't beat the Juggernaut right big giant dude and he had armor and you couldn't do it so my thing was well he's got isets he's got to look out those I let and so the
1:03:27
way that I was going to get to him was I had one of the mutants take their sword and put it in the eye and jam it in the eye because then it would be like oh my gosh right you you'd catch him off guard and then if you team tackle him you're
1:03:41
going to win the day so I drew that I still have that page today Tim because it's the page that broke the camel's back right I have the I have the unedited version even better I I I I don't even have the edited version have the unedited version and and so they
1:03:59
phoned me up and they said Todd you got to redraw it and I'm went what what got rraw what you can't stab somebody in the eye with a knife and I go what what are you talking about like the comics Cod I go of course you can because just not
1:04:14
long ago there was this great cover Not only was it in the it was on the cover of Daredevil Frank Miller and he's got bullseye on the cover and he's St stabbing Electra a character on the cover and so I go of course you can stab people and they go well yes you can stab
1:04:35
people but you can't you can't have a rear exit wound and I want what are you talking about did you look at that cover the guy's killing Electro it's going in the front it's coming out the back no no no no no no no no you no you can stab
1:04:48
them and it can come out a rear exit room but you can't tear the cloth so if you look at the drawing you're going to see that it's like you don't really see the sword coming out it's like a teepee it's like a teepee the back of her costume is like a it's it's Tepe but it
1:05:03
hasn't cut so I go so I just want to be clear you can gut somebody and you can have it come out the other side after you gut them you just can't rip the cloth and that won't offend the mothers and the children yes wow okay so there's
1:05:23
no rear exit wound I'm just stabbing them in the eye yeah but you know what people are sensitive to eyes because if everybody gets something in their eye we all know how much pain that is and teeth because if you go to the dentist and he
1:05:35
drills you wrong and I'm having this absurd conversation with five or six of my editors and I'm just going what are so I just want to be clear can can I stab them in the chest yes in the knee yes in the elbow yes in the eye no in the cheek yes in the neck yes in the mouth no
1:05:56
wow wow so somehow I was in Bizarro land and so I had at that moment I stopped the conversation because you never want to have a conversation with anybody where 2+ 2 equals giraffe right never talk to somebody who comes up with that equation so I said guys here's what's
1:06:15
going to happen I'm going to send you the page I'll do a little quick drawing over if you want you guys fix it any way you see fit by the way I'm handing in my resignation I am done I am exhausted I also was a few days away from becoming a father for
1:06:35
the first time and I just want you know what it's time to catch my breath I don't know what being a dad's about these guys have worn me out and alls I do is sell books for them and I just called Uncle and that was it that was the day I walked away now did I have a
1:06:54
plan B of course didn't Tim of course I didn't the plan B was I had spawn as a character and I just went I guess I'll just have to self-publish right not ideal but okay here we go the upside of it was that I was talking to a couple
1:07:12
other people let me also say before me quitting I also was going around trying to create a union I was like the normal Ray I was go come on man power to the people right if we stop drawing put pencils down they got nothing to print we show them our power it was
1:07:30
frustrating for me when I tried it for a few months that the most scared people that will say yeah let's join together are those that don't have a job it was weird to me I'd be talking to dozens of people that I knew that wanted to be in
1:07:46
the business that were in the business but weren't getting steady work that needed a better life and I go come on let's just go let's just create like a an enclave of of people and again you know and and deal with the holes better than the parts and they would say no Tod
1:08:00
I can't because what if they blackball me I'm like blackball you what are you talking about you're not getting any work from them right now yeah but what if they blackball me I go so here's what I'll do for you right now you have no
1:08:12
job no car no girlfriend no house no money if you join this Enclave I will promise I will make all of those equal to you right you've got nothing to lose other than to go up come on man I'm selling more books than anybody else I'm
1:08:31
making more money than anybody else in our industry and I'm willing to throw it away you should be 10 times more Fearless than me it was actually oddly the opposite so during that time I had been talking to two of my friends and peers that were also in the industry a
1:08:49
gentleman by the name of Rob leld and another one named Eric lson and both of them had that same entrepreneurial let's just call it rebellious trait in them and we were always talking and I remember in one conversation Rob was saying yeah I'm
1:09:05
going to maybe go you know I'm working he's still working for Marvel so is Eric and it's like yeah I'm going to go do my own book and then Eric was on the call going yeah I'm going to go do my own book and I had just quit and at some point during the conversation the topic
1:09:18
came up go wolf you're going to do your own book on your own Rob and you're going to do your own book on your own Eric and I'm planning on it why don't we do all of them together in the same place it's never been done what's happened is people have left Marvel and
1:09:34
DC one at a time where they pushed them out the door think of it like a sports team so you lose a free agent you go get another player so you lose enough but what if 10 of your players on a championship team quit the same year that would be detrimental to that
1:09:51
competition of that team so the conversation was why don't we just join forces so all of a sudden very quickly it was three Rob who super energetic came up with the name image comic books and the reason why you came up with the name so he tells me is that there was a
1:10:07
commercial that was on TV and it was uh Andre Agy I think and it was a it was a camera commercial and he says image is everything so that was the punchline of the commercial so he was like let's do image right if image is everything let's
1:10:23
do image right so that was it image comic books was born you don't overthink people people think that we come up with all this stuff and we know what we're doing no Venom in and of itself was a happy accident we can go back to that in a minute if you want to so the three of
1:10:38
us get together and then and then Rob says Todd I've got a buddy Jim Valentino he does some independent comic books uh is it okay if he comes and like what are you talking about I like there this is a group The more of them areer so we've
1:10:53
got four and then we find somebody to help us publish and we say that's it we're flying to New York and we're going to break the news to Marvel that we're quitting four of us Rob Eric Todd Jim Jim Valentino we fly to New York and I
1:11:14
land the day before we have a meeting with the top people Terry Stewart who was the publishing head at that point and later at that meeting I'll get to was the editor-in-chief who happened to be walking down the hall so I've got a meeting with Terry Stewart the top dog
1:11:29
and to basically say we're quitting here's our reasons why and if it was me I would close this barn door because you may have some more people quitting next week or the week after the week after so we land the day before and I got to blow
1:11:43
some time so I happened to walk around I heard there's an auction somebody selling some artwork I go to the auction and Jim Lee the person you know you talked about the beginning who's now the head of DC Kongo Jim Lee is at the auction and he's like hey to what are
1:11:59
you doing here I'm like oh and I told him and then I start giving the sales pitch Tim let me tell you one thing when I have my passion involved I'm a good salesman I'm a good salesman and so I start pounding on Jim Lee and Jim Lee at
1:12:19
this point just so you know is doing the X-Men and it is the number one selling book he's doing the number one selling book the only time I ever got beat was Jim Lee that guy he was he was my competition like I was Magic Johnson he was Larry Bird okay and so we just we
1:12:33
had our rival but we liked each other and we got along and so I tell him what we're doing and he starts thinking about it and then to my surprise says I think I can go with that now this is a Monumental moment from my perspective
1:12:50
and here's why ladies and gentlemen Todd the rebel leaving was going to be easy for Marvel to basically discount cuz they were going to go ah that kid's always sort of rocking the boat and he's always a bit of a pistol you know what that's fine Rob leld had the same
1:13:08
attitude so it's like ah we were the Bad Boys ah so the bad boys left good riddens Jim Lee was The Golden Child he was the chef's kiss he was the guy he was perfect if they could clone employees an artist Jim Lee was the mold and so when Jim said he would go that was a
1:13:32
thunder clap in my head to go oh my God if the choir boy can go then that means all bets are off and they are going to have to sit up and pay attention because not only are you losing the Bad Boys you are losing the model citizens and so Jim
1:13:50
then says oh by the way I got a pal wils pachio is it okay if I phone and cuz he's looking for work I think he'll join too shoot he was doing another X-Men book I'm going what we're going to get two X-Men the X-Men books are the number
1:14:05
one selling book at that point bring them on so we got six and I'm walking now back to my hotel with the biggest grin on my face cuz I go they don't even know what's about to come and as I'm walking into my hotel I see another sort of Pier a guy by the name of Mark
1:14:21
sylvestri now Mark Sylvester to me at that time was the best artist like just in terms of skill Mark sylvestri don't believe a thing that my son is saying yeah that's my that's my dad I'm taking care of here yeah yeah okay no problem yeah so
1:14:39
Mark sylvestri is there it's about 11 o'clock at night and I go hey Mark what are you doing he goes oh I'm going to bed you got you got you got five minutes for me right and so I sit down and like musini from the balcony I give him the speech right and I give it to him and
1:14:53
he's like oh my God he goes Todd that sounds good and Jim Le's on board yeah he just signed on let me think about it I go Mark here's the gig we've got a meeting at 8:00 tomorrow morning I need to know if you're in or Not by 8 o'clock in the morning he goes so I've got to
1:15:10
I've got to go to bed I've got to think about it whether I'm going to change my entire career and I've got nine hours of which eight of them I'm going to sleep yeah that's it now I don't know what he did or how well he slept that night but
1:15:23
in the morning at 7:30 the phone rings and he goes hey Todd Mark I'm in seven we went to New York I flew to New York with Rob with four of us with four of us and by the time we walk into that office we've got seven oh by the way Mark
1:15:38
Sylvester was doing the Wolverine Comic Book we had literally the Dream Team to put in perspective for people listening again that don't know there's probably every year about that year was probably about six 7,000 comic books come out but from all
1:15:56
companies right because again Spider-Man comes out once a month so it's 12 and then you've got three Spider-Man books that's 36 and then iron men's another 12 and 12 and you add it all up literally thousands of comic books come out the
1:16:08
people who gathered together to create image we had accomplished 44 of the top 50 sales that year just to put in perspective who we were 44 of the top 50 sales of six thousand we were literally the comic book equivalent of the Dream Team the basketball team of that was
1:16:32
happening in basketball that time so I knew this was going to reverberate somewhere and again the stock went down at Marvel the next day take a look at it cuz CNN reported on it and we went into the meeting and essentially it went like
1:16:45
this and here would be a fun interview is to get Terry Stewart's perspective of it because not only has he liter Al lied about it he will tell you otherwise but now as he lied about it but then 30 years later I met up with him and my wife went and talk to him and he's still
1:17:04
is spewing the lie and I get it he's corporate what you going to do he doesn't want to say that it was on his watch that all these people Lo left but here's his lie and it is I got witnesses because there's more than one of us in
1:17:19
that room he's saying we came in and we asked for the copyrights of our characters what are you talking about none of us is that crazy we understood the Dynamics of the business we would like you give me Spider-Man and give him the Xmen what are you talking about he's
1:17:35
saying he had to let us go cuz that was our demand no no the way that it went down was simply like this we are leaving there's nothing you can give us that's going to keep us and oh by the way here's some of our reasons if it was us
1:17:54
you may want to to do something about those reasons because next week you may have another seven quitting I don't understand why you want to keep having people quitting but you know what do what you got to do it's your company whatever now during that conversation
1:18:10
the editor and chief had coincidentally happened to be up on the upper floors don't know why and just came in and whatever he was a good man Tom DeFalco the one that used to tell me can't do that Todd you can't do that Todd on Spider-Man anyway at the end of this
1:18:27
conversation because Rob liel who was in there my wife was there and Jim Lee was there Rob left because he had to go pick up his girlfriend so that was classic Rob like oh you guys just finished this world changing conversation I go get my
1:18:41
wife and got to grab a burger so and this is why I like Rob so much because he's just he's by the cuff and it and and it's what makes him special to me anyways we get in the elevator at the end of this conversation and I will will
1:18:55
never forget the words has the elevator doors are closing just like in a movie the doors are closing and you can see the editorinchief looking at us and he says hey if it doesn't work you're welcome back and the door shut and I remember turning to Jim Lee now just to
1:19:15
give a little background on Jim Lee Jim Lee went to college to become a doctor I think his dad's a doctor this is a smart intelligent human being and for me my dad who you just heard was in the printing business for 40 50 years the
1:19:29
one thing that I knew it's printing and if not I knew lots of people who did so the doors closed and I looked at Jim and I go oh my God they think we're dumb and I'm not that we're smart Tim not that we're smart Tim but you know what printing comic books is ink on paper
1:19:49
that's it ladies and gentlemen ink on paper done maybe a couple details beyond that but that's it every time you pick up a pen and you write on a piece of paper it's sort of kind of like doing comic books it's just if you keep going and draw it in the shape of Spider-Man
1:20:06
or the Hulk you got a comic book it's not rocket science and so I was like oh my God they don't think we can print oh my God so that was it and from there the collective whole of the seven of us left here's sort of the silly funny part of
1:20:23
the rest of that day historically what was happening Tim is that if you quit Marvel you only had one choice you went literally across the street to DC Comics or if you quit DC Comics you quit and you walked across the street to Marvel
1:20:38
that's all you did you literally ping-ponged your whole career back and forth back and forth whenever you got mad you just went to the other date there was across the street so we went across the street to DC comic books and DC sees I had started you know I had
1:20:52
done about a year year and a half there Rob life out had done a year there but Jim Lee and I walk in there Jim Lee has never stepped foot in DC comic books and he's The Golden Child at Marvel and they just go there's only one reason he's in
1:21:09
the office somebody got mad and we're getting The Golden Child and we're getting Todd we'll take the bad boy too cuz he's like that's these are the number one and number two selling guys in the industry woo we hit the motherload the mother oh my God and quickly
1:21:25
they assemble 15 16 people in this room and they pour the coffee and they get us the refreshments and they just go oh my goodness we are sitting here and we sit down and then they hear the Fateful words I go hey guys just so you know
1:21:41
we're not here to work for you just a couple things we just quit Marvel their eyes light up but we are not here to work for you either you could just see the lead balloon and then we're like pardon and it's like no no no we're not here to work for you so and you can just
1:21:54
see the so so we're just clar here so you came here with Jim Lee and walked into our offices and are now dangling and teasing us and saying it's for nothing that's exactly what we're saying wow wow why would you guys do that and I go well because you know we
1:22:15
got some other plans and then then they start giving their sales pitch well here's why you should work for us don't do that DC is your place to be DC DC DC and they go and by the way we just did a new contract that's for the betterment of the creative community and then I
1:22:30
asked them the question for me that was like the dagger for me where I go hey you know no that was super cool that was super super cool you wrote up that new contract for the creative Community could I just ask you just like one one one question here just before we get
1:22:43
going did you ask one Creator to have any input in that contract that is to better the creative community did you ask one single Creator and let me tell you Tim when you get pregnant pauses in rooms it's all you need to know you get your answer at
1:23:02
the pregnant pause of course they didn't of course they didn't and that was the reason this is why we're quitting Marvel this is why we're quitting DC because of your disregard for your community and Jim and I are examples and
1:23:21
we've climbed the top of the ladder just like Jack King Cur and all those hundreds before him this is just a repeat of history and it's time and we thought that that was it and that was when the collective hole not me the collective hole of the seven of us
1:23:40
started Image Comics so the DC visit I'm trying to think of the names involved was there anyone who was quitting DC or did you just go in there to put them on alert and say no we put them on alert and gave them the same sort of speech we gave
1:23:55
Marvel if you think that the dissatisfaction of the seven of us is unique to the seven of us you guys are blind I see so it was a change your ways or become a fatality every conversation is the exact same and if we prove that there's any success on the outside of
1:24:15
the only two bubbles that exist in most Freelancers sort of brains which is Marvel DC or you get another job and I mean another job and another their industry so if we if we move on and we create a third possibility why do that
1:24:31
now to their credit let me say Tim to their credit they did start changing they did start bettering pay and you know even starting to give medical which was never a part of the equation and giving bonuses and being a little more fair-minded on royalties because they
1:24:52
knew that what we were saying at some point the reality sunk in that we could start losing almost all of our top talent if not a big portion of our talent period and this isn't good for business so even those that were jealous or in our creative community and or
1:25:12
thought that we were crazies or whatever they still whether they know it or not prospered by us leaving because all their contracts got upgraded while they were still throwing darts at us our own community Community as you can imagine
1:25:25
saying you guys go take your big Egos and go do your thing okay so I just came back from a bathroom break you mentioned before we started recording had a camel bladder and that you would talk until I had to take a bathroom break which was true so how is a camel bladder a
1:25:38
competitive Advantage it is and so because people go so what so why so you you don't go to the bathroom I mean I went to a signing not long ago and I got there at 7:00 and I signed from 700 in the morning to midnight and I didn't move from the desk
1:25:53
where I was sign and they had to now again other other human beings had to eat and go to the bathroom Jour so I so I go you better have two teams then you're going to have to rotate them let me just sort of quickly get out of the way first how you
1:26:06
cannot go to the bathroom for 17 hours it's really sort of easy stuff if you don't put anything into your top hole nothing comes out of any of the bottom holes right just it's just basic so I don't eat and I don't drink that's a whole another conversation but like
1:26:21
they're going what what how how do you do that that's another conversation if you don't put anything nothing in nothing out simple easy and I know this to be scientifically true because I've used it to my advantage now because I have a camel bladder two things have
1:26:35
happened in my career that I think have been advantageous one everybody when I go to the conventions would have to go and take a lunch break why because they're hungry they're hungry right my wife would tell you I have never uttered
1:26:46
those words I'm hungry I eat because science says I need to my body needs fuel so I put it in not because I'm hungry because I have to it's an essential ingredient food so I do it but I can Outlast you if you got to go away so people would take off at conventions
1:27:03
and go away for lunch or bathroom breaks or whatever guess who didn't me and here's why that matters because there's people in line and if you've got at the time of our popularity when they used to open it up you'd have at times I'm
1:27:17
telling you literally thousands of people in line waiting for your autograph first off in good conscience I can't have somebody in line for 2 hours 3 hours and then look at them and say cut I'm going for an hour and a half lunch break and the kids's going what
1:27:32
I've already been in line for three hour like I can't do it I can't look at somebody in the eye I won't do it so I said no I'll just figure out how to not do this thing that most humans do and here's where the upside is is it when all my peers have gone to lunch then
1:27:46
people are Wai in the line and then they're just sitting there going well that guy's still signing what's his name Todd Tom Tim whatever what's he do Spider-Man well I like comic books I know Spider-Man and guess what happens Tim they'd get in your line they don't
1:28:01
care really at that point about you they just go he's signing the line's moving I'll get in his line and then they come up you've got 20 seconds you become his gracious as you can to them and maybe you peel off and you've got a new couple
1:28:14
fans and all of a sudden it's like you know I only collect X-Men but you know that Todd was a gentleman and he was very nice and he smiled at me he was very kind you know you know what maybe I'll go buy one of his Spider-Man books
1:28:26
or you know in the future his spawn books and so that's it good right I always be nice to anybody no matter who they are number two on the business end and this one is sadly even easier and it's just pathetic at times I live in Phoenix Arizona and Phoenix Arizona can
1:28:43
be 110 degrees let me tell you I'm like a cockroach I don't care what the weather is I'll survive don't worry about me I'm good but here's what I know about other people they have comfort zones and so whenever I was in some big legal dispute or contract dispute I
1:28:58
would say especially the people in La I go you flyed them to me you fly them to me now this is just the Art of War so my desk is facing a big giant glass window right and I know when the sun comes down that window now when usually when I'm in
1:29:13
my room I bring down the drapes and I put up the AC and I'm comfortable but when the enem is coming I.E the people I've got to negotiate with come I make sure that the blinds are up and that I turn the air conditioning so that it's
1:29:28
actually stuffy in that room cuz why I can endure it I've done it plenty of times and then they always come dressed in a three-piece suit wrong move guys wrong move and then they come in and they come into the room and I close the door and I know it's going to get stuffy
1:29:44
and then I put a giant picture of water in front of them and then I uttered the words guys this has been going on far far too long here's the deal we're not leaving this room until we settle every single outstanding point and during those
1:30:06
conversations they either pour their own water on a constant basis because they've got their three-piece wo suit on I've got my t-shirt and my and I'm in my my Nike shorts and I can just see them getting hotter and hotter and hotter and they keep having to get more and more
1:30:25
water and at some point nature calls and then we get down to the last one and they go I go I'm not moving on point 10 I'm not moving it's a deal break if I don't get it this whole deal and you know how many times I've had people in my room go fine this is how it works it
1:30:41
goes like this time fine you can have 10 are we done yes are we done yes where's your bathroom the very next thing is where's your bathroom because I think in my mind that they literally caved in on the 10th point because they couldn't
1:30:59
hold it anymore and if they could have held it they could have argued longer with me and perhaps I might have conceded or we could have compromised on that point but their bladder cost them too bad how sad right you find your you find your advantages wherever you can
1:31:15
get them oh McFarland the Barbarian what a Savage nice work so let's come back to Venom you you mentioned that Venom came together I think as an accident maybe the was the phrasing that you Ed I mean this is an iconic character known the
1:31:31
world Happy accident so yeah so how how did it come together so we'll go back early in my Marvel career like I said early in the podcast if you can keep deadlines that's a giant value in that industry so I was showing them that I could keep deadlines so I knew then that
1:31:47
that was going to be getting me continuous work so once you get continuous work the next upgrade is can you draw characters that people have heard of right so cuz the first job I got at Marvel was on a a book and it was like an obscure book it was called
1:32:04
Steve englehart's coyote and it wasn't even coyote I was doing a backup in the coyote I was doing an obscure backup in an obscure book it literally was starting in the mail room but eventually I got a steady job over at DC because I
1:32:19
canceled coyote and I got a I got a monthly book over DC un Ely Tim and this is where sometimes one person's break is another person's tragedy an artist on another book who was a fit human being was super awesome artist I followed him was a health freak drank some
1:32:37
unpasteurized milk went into a seizure and had an allergic reaction and died and so I get a phone call and they go hey Todd my artist just passed away can you come on and help us for a couple months and I at that point they had canceled coyote I literally took me
1:32:54
years to get in I was employed for 4 months and then they canceled coyote and I'm like man so I sent my samples back to all the people that were gracious enough to give me constructive criticism except for a thing changed on the resume
1:33:08
Tim I was now able to say um I am Todd McFarland the professional from Marvel comic books the drawing was exactly the same it only been four months it was just as horrible as it was 4 months earlier except for instead of being an amateur I got to go now into the smaller
1:33:23
pile which is the professionals looking for work pile so I get the job go yeah woo I get I I've got some work the guy who was supposed to take over that book because I was only supposed to fill in for two months decided to bail so after
1:33:37
the first issue they said you wanted to take over the book it was a book called Infinity Incorporated and I stayed on that book for two three years so when I went over the Marvel they went okay you can keep a deadline check the question
1:33:49
is you got to stop doing and here's a bizarre thing that was happen at Marvel at that point you got to stop doing what they called they dub the big your Big Dice drawing style and the only reason it was called that because on one page in Infinity Incorporated I drew this
1:34:05
page layout and it was these big giant Dice and then I did panels inside drawings inside the Big Dice and somebody I guess in editorial saw that page and so it was like oh he's the big giant dice guy and so and the reason I was doing giant Dice and doing all these
1:34:21
crazy flamboyant layouts in on Infinity Incorporated because Tim my drawing was mediocre I knew that like at some point you got to be realistic about your skills I was mediocre and I had two choices I could either put mediocre drawings and
1:34:38
boring layouts or I could be flamboyant and baffle them with my BS and get them to look at all this sort of window trimming and not sort of pay attention that maybe I'm drawing my eyes crooked right and it worked and it worked so people were like oh my gosh and so by
1:34:55
the time I left Infinity I think I had risen to the point that I was like voted the fifth most popular pencel at that point so I'm like wow so I go over to Marvel and then they say which was weird because Marvel was always the house of
1:35:08
ideas and at this point they were in they had flopped with DC and they were they were boring and they said you can come but you can't do the giant dice style and I go so what do you want me to do and I go we just want you to do like
1:35:19
a grid now let me just tell you anybody listening that means you take a piece of paper paper and you divide it into six equal equal panels and you go it is the most boring easiest thing to do so essentially they took a guy like me who I thought was an artistic Sprinter and
1:35:34
they said could you put lead boots on shoot this is going to be easy right I don't know why you want to do it but it was frustrating because there was no artistic freedom to do it so I did it they give me the first job back at Marvel and they go hey problem you
1:35:50
usually have 30 days to do a book right once a month but we got we're behind the eight ball we can give you this job but you only got 10 days I gave it to him an eight was it my best job of course it wasn't but was it done in eight yeah did
1:36:03
it get me brownie points right on the spot they were amazed I gave it to them in eight days boom within weeks they're offering me the Incredible Hulk now once you get the Incredible Hulk this is the next step in climbing the ladder all of
1:36:17
a sudden look I've been in the business probably two three four years at that point and when I get the Incredible Hulk finally I hear the words from my mom and dad oh my God you finally made it and the reason was cuz they had heard of the Hulk right so up to then everything I
1:36:33
was doing was like I don't know if he's ever going to make it I was still working at Marvel in DC it just wasn't for books but if you can go to the neighbors you know Halloween party and say my son draws the Hulk they've heard of the word Hulk too so all of a sudden
1:36:45
it's like oh my gosh your son he must be good so it's important to have characters that know because it helps the relatives in your Circle so to think that you're a bigger shot than you are even though it's the exact same amount
1:36:57
of work and the same pay on top of it so okay so you you get to the next step and now you're going ha now you're just fighting for the next step up and I'll quickly sort of get you to this and I know I'm longwinded in all your questions I wish I was better that I
1:37:16
didn't I'm into it okay so I do the I do the Hulk I'm doing penciling and then I go I'm going to do inking because at this point I got fast enough that I could do two books there wasn't too many people that could do two books I was
1:37:27
doing two books so they give me a second book the same editor who gave me the Incredible Hulk gives me another book it's called GI Joe Real American Hero right now the thing that's sort of ironic about that is I was living up in Canada right it never really sort of I
1:37:42
was going wow if they only knew that this Canadian and I'm Canadian up here in Canada drawing their real American Heroes this might be a bit of a problem but nobody's going to tell there was no internet so I did it the first issue of
1:37:54
GI joee and I was doing the Hulk and I get a phone call and I was going back and forth with this writer and it was we were bashing heads every single page of that and finally after the first issue my editor phones up and says Todd I've
1:38:09
got to let you go I'm like one issue I'm one issue in the J Joe I'm making my marks on the Hulk I'm now in the top three of some of the voting artistically and I go what you're going to fire me but let me just tell you it was relief because it was such a pain for that one
1:38:28
month and that my view of comic books and the writer view of Kong books were so diametrically opposed where did you guys Clash on that what kind of decisions or what type of stuff he probably sees it a little bit differently but I'll just show you give
1:38:42
my point of view I assume the people that were reading the Kong books had eyes and brains he assumed from my perspective they didn't cuz he said it assume your reader is an his his words not mine assume the reader is an Aboriginal Bushman and he just came out
1:39:00
of the tundra in Australia and he's never seen a comic book your storytelling must be that clear which basically meant you can't have somebody walk into a house and then cut to them inside the house or even closing the door on the inside you have to grab the
1:39:16
door open the door walk in the room because and I just want I just want Larry I guess I see the world differently I assume silly me that the people reading the comic books watch TV go to movies read books they understand how stories are told and as a matter of fact
1:39:39
on a movie when you cut scenes they don't even have a caption in 99.9% of the time so people just know that it's different people in a different setting it must be a scene cut you don't have to do it but anyways he had his way of
1:39:55
seeing the world I had my way of seeing the world fine no big deal got it so he fires me off it and I remember I was sitting in my apartment up in Vancouver and I leaned back and I looked at the clock and it was like 12:06 and I was like a little bit bum I'm like man I
1:40:12
never been never been fired right so it was like oh man at 12:14 bring I am telling you no lie 7 minutes I was unemployed for 7 minutes bring Todd yeah hey this is dip jono over at DC now remember i' left DC to go back over to Marvel remember when you
1:40:31
left you said the only reason you would come back is to draw Batman yeah well we've got this book first there was Batman The Dark Knight then there was Batman year One and they had another project called Batman year 2 we've got a book called Batman year 2 it's a
1:40:48
four-part story and the artist quit after the first one can you finish the last three what like what you're saying I my choice right now is either stay on which I didn't have an option but stay on GI Joe that I just got fired from
1:41:03
that was basically like putting daggers in my eyes or do Batman and that was the only character I'd come back for so I jump on Batman year two now it gets a little crazier by that point because because at this point I was only being the pencil artist and in comic
1:41:20
books they bring in another person who is the inker some people call him the Tracer it's not true good inkers add a lot to pages I thought I had my drawing style is what I would call sort of this new wave 90s style and I was constantly
1:41:37
getting inkers that were like these 1960s old school brush guys I was drawing in a way that I thought you should be using a pen because there's a different technique with it and they kept putting brush guys on me and it was so transforming like you like they
1:41:53
literally would bury the artwork from if you saw what I was drawing you saw the printed page it was like to me night and day so I do this part two of Batman year 2 then I do part three and then they send me the samples and I and I finally
1:42:08
get another one of those moments in my life with Clarity that I look at it and I see the splash page and the splash page has a Commissioner Gordon and he's holding the gun and to me it looks hairy right I go it's metallic why is it looking har and it's because the incor
1:42:26
was doing these lines that worked for him I guess and then I looked at like another panel and it was the hallway and when you're doing like a downshot of a hallway you the lines get closer it's basically perspective I won't bore people but it's just the illusion of
1:42:43
depth and i' done all these drawings or these lines to give that illusion and they were horizontal and then I looked at the panel and he had done the exact same thing it was brilliant except for he did them vertically and it was these
1:42:56
moments and so it wasn't that one was better than the other right they both worked it was again I just sort of try to get as simple as possible the reason and I don't know if anybody sort of could understand this concept but the reason I made them go up and down
1:43:17
vertically was because silly me I wanted them to go up and down vertically because if if I had wanted them to go horizontally which was another option I would have drawn them I can draw horizontal lines equally as well as vertical lines the reason they
1:43:35
were vertical because I must have meant horizontal that's why I did like what are you talking about just copy the lines and do your thing with the lines that are there and so I phone the editor and I go hey Denny I don't mean to do this to you cuz
1:43:52
you're lost one artist and I don't mean to do power plays cuz I don't like doing that I don't want to be that guy but here's the gig if I can't ink the last chapter of this book and let me be completely honest I've never Inked
1:44:04
before so I'm a complete Noob I can't do this I can't have people literally going in the opposite direction of my artwork I can't do it so he kind of was in a tough spot he was like oh okay fine Todd can you get it done by the deadline yeah
1:44:19
sure so I did my first thinking so thanks to all those inkers for turning me into an inkor and from there on out I was my own inker I started inking the Hulk if you look at it I went back to my editor on the Hulk and I go well they let me ink the Batman and so he's like
1:44:36
oh okay I guess you can ink The Hulk and so and now I'm going to eventually get to your question about Venom so it was a long-winded way sorry eventually it's okay let me pause you for just a just a quick sec so for people who have no
1:44:47
contacts on your art I mean very fine details and when you're talking about the older School inking lots of thick black I me lots of maybe obscuring you simplify it yeah so you simplified right and and so so when you went from penciling to I need to Ink this or I'm
1:45:07
out what were the biggest differences between penciling and inking as someone who's never Inked I'd be curious to know what you learned or felt or if it just mapped over really easily what was it like to do your first thinking hey Tim here's the first shock that my sometimes
1:45:25
my enthusiasm gets the better of me and there's nobody that hates Todd more than Todd at times cuz it's like what are you doing Todd so then I learned the magic I'm now going to do two jobs right if you if you pencil a book you get 30 days
1:45:42
if you ink A Book Like I pencil it they give me 30 days then they hand the pages to you Tim you ink it you get 30 days if I want to pencil and ink they don't give me 30 plus 30 right there's two of us it's 30 plus 30 I get 30 you get 30
1:45:58
they're going you can do two jobs Todd but you still only got 30 days essentially you're doing twice the work and you have to do it twice as fast because the book still comes out and so lesson learned if you're going to pick up more work you might want to ask how
1:46:14
much extra time do you have and when the answer is zero you might want to rethink your ask um so because eventually I got to the point going I'm going to write my own stories too right and that extra time also is zero uh so but that comes a
1:46:32
little bit later in the career so the first shock is I've now got to go faster what it taught me personally because now I'm doing two books and I'm inking right I like so I'm a bit of a unicorn at this point because very few people can even pencil two books was I
1:46:47
had to create for myself efficiencies and this goes into business now right and even though we're doing art this is just efficiencies so I do the efficiency and I go I don't have time to do a lot of what they call underdrawing I I got to literally draw
1:47:04
with ink I don't have time to do the job twice I can't pencil and then ink my own work I have to do it all in one Fell Swoop which is horrifying to people who've never ink themselves because every person I've shown amongst some amazing peers among some amazing peers
1:47:21
when they see what my processes they go I can't even make out what's on your page and I go that's okay I'm just going to finish it with the ink and I go no no no no no no no you can't go with the ink I'm like why because it's permanent I'm
1:47:34
like what if you make a mistake uh there's a thing called white out you just white it out and they're going yeah but what if you make another mistake I just use white out oh let me ask you a question in Reverse what happens if you draw a pencil and you
1:47:46
make mistake oh I just use an eraser Well why can you use an eraser and I can't use white out it's the same thing yeah but it's ink it literally was this mental wall for people and these are people that I would sit next to at a
1:47:59
convention that would do 20 sketches with a pencil and never erase one line and I used to turn to them go why couldn't you why couldn't you have done that with ink and their answer was always the same what if I made a mistake you didn't I've been watching you for
1:48:12
four hours you haven't made one mistake why is it if I changed the tool that somehow you're going to make a mistake but you know what you do you I'll do my thing and so I had to just pull back the drawing and figure it out kind of in one step so I could keep the
1:48:28
deadline that was my learning experience now question number two did I hit the ground running of course I didn't of course I didn't but if you look at my inking at the beginning it's very very crude and even on Spider-Man which is
1:48:43
the book that catapult me if you look at the thickness of the webs on his costume you will see a noticeable difference I think from issue 300 when I started Spider-Man and if you look at like about issue 320 for sure by the time I get on
1:48:59
the new Spider-Man book that I'm drawing for sure there's a dramatic difference visually so I was constantly learning that trade it was Todd the professional who's been penciling for five six years and Todd the Newbie inker I wasn't going to be a five or six year vet Incan I was
1:49:14
a new inker so I had to learn that trade and catch up those five or six years that the other half of my brain had already sort of tackled with penciling so go ahead so I because eventually now this is going to get me to Venom yeah to
1:49:28
Venom okay so so very quickly so then I finished the Batman project and now I'm back down to only one book so I can do two book and so again I I'm looking for another book and all the editors at Marvel said hey yeah yeah yeah you know come and talk to me but whatever you do
1:49:42
don't go into the Spider-Man office because it's a shambles now you may or may not have gathered that Todd doesn't seem to color inside the lines a lot of the times and so yeah you don't tell me don't go into that office right cuz to
1:50:01
me unless you want Todd to go into the office yeah what are you guys doing so I went I went into the office and it was it was he the editor Jim srep at that time good man was losing and turning over artists the books were in a bit of a sales decline like I said when I
1:50:17
picked up the book it was like get number 2122 and I said hey I can do another book and we had a chat and I said I I want to Ink the book and then they're like well you know maybe in a couple months and I go on ining the Hulk right come on go
1:50:33
talk to Bob the editor on that book and he's like well you know just give me a couple months you how about it's starting at 300 you can ink the book and I'm like yeah okay we'll do it but the other piece of it was oh just one other sort of slight problem Spider-Man's got
1:50:49
a black costume and this is this costume that was created for this book called Secret Wars which is the black costume with the white spider on it and I go that's not Spiderman to me maybe I'm just old school Spider-Man's that guy in the blue and the red with the webs on it
1:51:06
Spider-Man so let can we just get rid of that black costume and and uh get back to Spider-Man then this is sort of the happy accident he said well you know the editor-in chief really likes the black costume and I don't think he's going to
1:51:20
go for that so he's not going to want to get rid of it he had something to do with Secret Wars and you know they they kind of digging it and I went a man I just I don't want to draw Spider-Man and Black costume it's like doing Batman and
1:51:33
polka dots doesn't make any sense to me so what if I come back to you with some designs we just rip the costume off him we put it on somebody I create another character give it to the writers we just figure it out and then we still have the black costume and then we can get the
1:51:46
red and blue back on Peter Parker and it's a win-win win he was like okay that might work so I go way I do the drawing I the costume was alive so I go oh it must be an alien so I created this big giant hulking alien and gave him the big
1:52:02
eyes and the slobbering teeth and to me it was a gorilla it's like an alien gorilla and then the claws and everything else and that was a design for Venom like here we didn't have a name at that point it just go here here's the new bad guy here it is go and
1:52:16
they looked at and went oh that's kind of cool we'll give it to the writer and so they gave it to the writer they cleared it through upper management they said yeah yeah yeah that seems like a reasonable thing the writer comes back to me and says uh Todd the guy is Eddie
1:52:28
Brock and I went whoa whoa whoa whoa The Writer's name was David whoa David Eddie Brock Eddie Brock's a human did you see my design like information I could have used earlier I would have designed it differently if I knew it was a human
1:52:43
that I was putting the black costume on but I sort of like the design I thought it was cool and it was Giant and I thought that it would be more for a for Spider-Man to go up against something that was way bigger than him than another human humanoid form this is sort
1:53:00
of the geeky stuff that us creators go through and so I said but man if Bruce Banner little can turn into the Hulk then by gosh why can't Eddie Brock somehow be buried in this costume somewhere right so we never sort of wavered from it Venom comes out has a
1:53:17
big play and issue 300 Amazing Spider-Man 300 say go crazy we knew we had something on our hand cuz every time Venom kept coming back the mail again there was no internet but the mail kept getting bigger and people were like oh
1:53:31
my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh and so now fast forward with hindsight and Venom is you know a a worldwide brand you know made a billion dollars for Sony in a movie so again there's the happy accident and if you look at issue 300 if you want to go buy it it comes with a
1:53:48
couple of things one it's an anniversary book sales have gone way up on it one it's anniversary book issue 300 Amazing Spider-Man goodbye some of the very first early work of me on Spider-Man and my first inking job on Spider-Man but
1:54:02
more importantly it's the origin of venom and so for people they spend hundreds of dollars if you get these books great it's thousands of dollars so you can get the origin of venom I don't consider that book if you were to ask me is that the origin of venom no it's the
1:54:16
issue how do we get that damn black costume off Peter Parker so I can draw the classic red and blue costume because that's Spider-Man to me right Venom I didn't care at that moment about Venom it was like get rid of it the last page
1:54:29
of that issue Peter Parker gets rid of the black costume because he has a fight with venom venom goes on his way and he pulls a box out from underneath the bed and he pulls out the classic uniform the red and blue the one that to me is Spider-Man and the last page which I
1:54:44
still have today cuz it was like finally I'm drawing Spider-Man cuz I started on this 298 no black costume 299 no black costume and every page but one of issue 300 but that last page it was it even says I think a caption it says and a new
1:55:00
beginning and to me I go finally I get to dress by this was for me finally now somehow Venom was the byproduct of that right now here's what should happen Tim an employee should come into the office they should say no he's wearing the black costume we want to give you the
1:55:17
job on Amazing Spider-Man one of the granddaddy books of the company and most sayane employees will go yes sir yes ma'am when is a book due I don't know Todd is Todd and yeah right and so I just was like no I need the red and blue
1:55:36
costume and and and but because of some of that arrogance ego immaturity whatever you want to call it your byproduct is you've got a character called Venom that now creates Carnage in this whole slute right so if I was that guy that employee all of that maybe
1:55:55
never materializes that's the true possibility of that and then I just take all of that remember Marvel's at their boring storytelling I start pushing the boundaries of Storytelling to make it more I thought Dynamic I thought everything we do in Kong books is just a
1:56:10
Broadway play you must everything should be big and you should be talking and and Performing for the lady with bad hearing that's in the last row at the theater so that's what comic books are it's bravado and so was doing all this fancy
1:56:24
storytelling and my editors were going Todd you can't you can't you can't you can't and I'm like yeah yeah yeah okay but I just kept doing it and then I eventually I was asking them and I go why can't we and I go well the editor-in-chief Jim Jim shooter he
1:56:39
doesn't like that I found that to be impossible to believe impossible to believe Jim shooter wants vanilla when he can have Tutti Frutti or a banana split hard to believe so we went and had a meeting one time my editor Bob Harris who ended up being the top dog at DC I
1:57:00
think he still is maybe and we went into this meeting with Jim shooter the editor-in chief where every every editor was literally shaken in their boots from Jim shooter he was like this authoritarian sort of figure And he as we're walking in the meeting all Bob
1:57:14
says is don't ask him about storytelling to cuz he just wanted to say hi to me cuz I was you know this new guy on the Hulk and my career was starting to Bud and he just wanted to say hi to me it was just a casual conversation we have a
1:57:26
nice pleasant conversation and then it's like he goes okay I've got to get to my next meeting and I'm go yeah yeah yeah and as we get up because I wanted Bob to be moving I went oh hey Jim just have one one quick question can I change storytelling like
1:57:39
let me just ask you am I allowed to have characters burst out of the panels because that was what they I was doing with Spider-Man they're going you can't you can't and he was like looked at me quisi ofely and went yeah sure why okay but can I can I do this other thing
1:57:54
and he went yeah yeah yeah sure and I went so it's okay for me to to because I go I think I heard somebody it wasn't Bob my editor standing in front of you it must have been somebody else told me that somehow that you said you can't
1:58:08
have things punch you can't have panels overlapping and you can't have characters punching out and I walked them through a couple things and he was horrified and he was like what what are you saying Todd and I'm go yeah yeah that's just what they're telling all the
1:58:21
artists and he he was like no and he got angry at that moment he goes no I never said that he goes here's what I said and I knew this was the answer Tim I knew this was the answer he said you can't do bad overlapping panels and bad drawings
1:58:38
of people jumping out and then he explained to me the difference between a bad version and a good version right and I knew what the bad and good version was basically don't have a guy jumping out of a panel and you're covering up half the drawing of the next panel as long as
1:58:54
you're doing it in some negative space you're okay just as long as the storytelling is clear I don't care how you design it Todd I knew it ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding and shoot from that meeting on you take a look at my layouts in Spider-Man it it
1:59:09
it started getting crazier and crazier now Jim shooter gets push out very quickly I keep doing my Todd thing on Spider-Man I keep and here's what I did on Spider-Man that literally catapulted my career it was a simple move they were
1:59:24
doing Spiderman emphasis on man I flipped it to Spider-Man emphasis on the word spider so when he put the costume on I thought he was an insect and I didn't care about Anatomy I didn't care whether it mattered I just cared about the Dynamics of this character looking
1:59:40
like a bugman and crawling in a way and then as part of that I added more webbing on his costume and then I had to come up with a new way of doing his webs that have been done this way for 30 years I go it doesn't work if you want
1:59:56
to shoot it towards camera or if you want to create a false sense of volume which is the only thing we have as artists you must give the illusion of 3D given that you're drawing on a 2d piece of paper so again all these silly things that bore people but I was doing it and
2:00:12
oh by the way it looks cool it doesn't bore me no this stuff is this is key this is these are important moment so so it Go and it looks cool and here's the moment I was talking about earlier the moment you start missing with anybody's
2:00:27
icon status quo comes into the equation and I'm now messing I probably could have done what I did with a lower tier character but not Spider-Man Spider-Man at this point again they're a public company he is on their checks every check's got a little Spidey on it he's
2:00:44
on their he's on their quarterly reports he's on their internal memos and I'm messing with that look right and so they came and they were sitting there and they took it as I was doing something I thought they were doing it wrong and I
2:01:02
was right no no no no no here is the reality of it and I've said it plenty of times I thought that the look that had been presented the classic look that was there the one that everybody if you close your eyes you have in your mind if
2:01:13
you're a certain age was literally the Norman Rockwell version of Spider-Man it was perfect and the best I could hope for as a young budding artist is to do a bad version of that and go man that's almost as cool as Norman rockwolf painting let me tell you if you're going
2:01:30
to be a painter never paint like Norman Rockwell the best you're going to get is man he's almost as good as Norman that's the best you can hope for you will never be better than Norman right he's already conquered that Hill go find another Hill
2:01:43
and make it your own you can take pieces of Norman Rockwell but you can't be that exact same look so I was putting these different looks together and coming up with some crazy stuff and just making the spider part of it the eyes got bigger more webs I reinvented the
2:01:59
webbing I I made the blue a little bit darker I I forgot about anatomy and I put them in these cool funky poses that the readers just went crazy for and every single time I walked into the offices what so I didn't go there that often they would call me on the carpet
2:02:15
and they would say no no stop it stop it and Tom denies it I'm like Tom there are moments of clarity in my life this is one of them Tom DeFalco was the editor-in-chief he's an Italian guy and he was giving me heck again wiggling his
2:02:30
finger going you got to stop doing the big eyes and this and this and then he got so mad I remember his face getting a little red and he goes and that webbing those damn spaghetti webbing you got to stop it now all now from my perspective
2:02:44
ladies and gentlemen if you're in my head it's like a Charlie Brown sort of cartoon alls I heard was blah blah blah blah blah spaghetti webbing and I want went oh my gosh I've got a name for them now so I was like so happy in that moment cuz Tom gave me an official name
2:02:58
for them they've been known ever since has the spaghetti webon thank you Tom DeFalco I think he was cussing me out and giving me heck at that point I I wasn't paying attention though CU I was like oh super cool I've got I've got a
2:03:10
name for it he then says in that same meeting you got to you just got to control this stuff and my answer was and if anybody is under the age of 30ish listening I'm going to give you a bit of a golden rule anybody asks you to do something especially somebody in
2:03:26
Authority always say yes even if you're not going to do it it's just way easier you get out of the room faster no confrontation just nod your head yes and agreement and go do what whatever the hell you want and I knew that the editors would only Circle back like
2:03:41
every 90 days and look at the books and do their evaluation and I walked out of that room not only did I not make the webbing smaller I'll show you the issue they got twice as long right cuz they just look cool I got to tell you Tim they look
2:03:55
cool and by the time I came back the next time I've seen the books I've seen them I've seen them I have been home wigg they wiggle their finger at you and they go no and next time I go to New York they go no Todd but here's what was happening and here was their
2:04:10
conundrum sales were going up sales were going up and at one point again I had that conversation of that it's like Tom what do you care how I draw what do you care all you should care about is that I am selling you comic books and you gave
2:04:31
me the task of moving Spider-Man Amazing Spider-Man from 21 up the ranks and it's at number two right now Jim Lee and the X-Men were beating us and I was at one meeting it was odd there was this stranger in the room I never met him
2:04:43
before didn't know who he was and he just sat there silent the whole time he had this big fat book I didn't know who he was and then at the finally at the end of an hour conversation when I said that I go I'm selling more damn books than almost anybody you employ right
2:04:55
here right now this dude I found out later was an accountant he opened up his big giant accounting book Tom came behind him the accountant didn't utter a word he just pointed at something on his data sheet and he shook his head yes what he just said yes sales are
2:05:13
going up and it was you could just see that it was like what do we do right it's working but we disagree agree with it because the status quo is getting let me tell your audience here's the Bizarro thing in now that years have passed
2:05:30
everything they told me not to do on Spider-Man that I was rebellious against and I just stuck to my guns and I did it and the sales are do you know that if you're a young person right now and you go to Marvel and you draw Spider-Man do you know what style you have to draw
2:05:46
Spider-Man in Todd McFarland so the guy who was told not to create it I've now bizarrely as I was going no I'm not going to draw that status quo I'm going to do something funky that my style is now the new status quo and I don't think anybody
2:06:05
should draw on Todd McFarland's style because the next person they should be encouraging to do their thing because it might be five times better than what I ever came up with I don't understand corporations of just coming up with an
2:06:19
idea and glomming on to it so hard yes I'm talking to you IBM and then this little dudes in the garage come up with this little computer and they call it an apple and somehow they beat you eventually because you become dinosaurs and this is the thing there is nobody in
2:06:42
the world that's ever made change and everybody liked them especially the people who were had the power and the Prestige and the money ahead of them nobody if you go to any Corporation and you say I've got this new idea you will never hear the words from the people
2:07:01
that are the industry leaders that sounds super cool let us get out of your way so you can just do that on your own unfettered are you out of your mind they will take out Bazookas and blades and put down the the strips and the throwing darts and they will do
2:07:18
everything in their powers to discourage you because they are industry leaders but eventually they become Their Own Worst Enemy Todd we are at almost 2 hours now I've realized that we've barely scratched the service we've established a lot of the background of
2:07:37
course the personality the rule breaking the camel bladder and we have not even touched upon your personal relationship with Stanley which is of great interest to me we have not talked about the toy empire we have noted about how any of
2:07:52
that started TV film music spawn I mean there's a long list of things that I would love to cover with you would you be open to doing a round two I think people would certainly be interested in listening to One could I convince you to come back for a around two Tim you'll
2:08:09
find that like I'm not shy at opening my mouth and talking to you know to the point I'm always going am I am I boring people cuz I actually know all these stories cuz I live them but yeah I think there are some interesting Forks in the
2:08:24
road that may be not interesting for my career but just sort of the human condition of what happens when you get to certain walls I've been talking about what I had to do in one industry but now because of that success what you just
2:08:43
mentioned I and was able to break into multiple Industries and found some of the same sort of repetition and how you navigate the Sharks when you're a guppy right so uh yeah I'll I'll come back I appreciate you given hopefully we haven't bored people these two because
2:09:04
they'll go why would I want to listen to another two so I'll it's your show I'll let you decide whether that works ultimately I mean uh let's call it selfish self-interested if I keep it interesting for me just like you in those 10 12 hour days you got to keep
2:09:20
your artwork interesting to you because otherwise and even maybe still it can be really lonely so for me I just try to scratch my own itch and asking questions about the things I'm interested in so I'm very interested I'm sure we'll have
2:09:31
plenty of people along for the ride and people can find you on all the social handles that I mentioned of course are there any other places you'd like to point them so they can find you on Instagram at Todd McFarland Twitter Tod mfar people they type it you can find it
2:09:45
these are hipsters right I'm the old guy type in your name they'll find yeah whatever people if you're interested you can you can find it what I'll try and Endeavor the next time is to answer more than three questions because I think
2:09:55
that's all you got in and I I need to I need a temper and get like Todd he just asked you how old you are you don't have to talk about the entire sort of evolution of humanity to get to that answer but but I think that a little bit of backstory to get to the reasoning why
2:10:15
when you make that call at that moment matters oh yeah it's critical yeah so so we've now painted hopefully some of the personality so now we can just maybe be a little more vared in the questions and we can pepper and jump around a bunch of
2:10:31
Industries and I can tell you some silly stories about those ones too yeah we'll get into the trenches and we can hear more of your Art of War Stories right and creative I almost killed today I almost killed Eddie veter we we'll talk about that one there we go so that'll be
2:10:49
that'll be the Cliffhanger and everybody listening as usual we will put show notes and links everything in the show notes at tim. Blog podcast and uh until next time don't be afraid of rocking the boat and consider your upside downside
2:11:04
just like you were talking about those those artists earlier and image it's uh human nature what a thing Todd thank you for making the time today so it'll be continued and we'll figure out a time for round two hey guys this is Tim again
2:11:17
just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter my super short
2:11:32
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2:11:47
includes articles I'm reading books I'm reading albums perhaps gadgets gizmos all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and
2:12:02
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2:12:18
tim. blog Friday drop in your email and you'll get the very next one thanks for listening this episode is brought to you by eight sleep I have been using eight sleep pod cover for years now why well by simply adding it to your existing
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