What is up, everybody?
It is the chairman of the
United States Department of Nerds,
where we are for the people,
by the people, and of the people.
You are listening to the USBN on the DSPN.
Thanks for watching!
All right, what's up, everybody?
Today,
I have a big night for everybody
planned out.
We're getting to sit down
with Bobby Campbell and his
new kit starter,
Tales of the Illuminatus issue two,
correct?
That is all correct.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's great to be here.
So let's just dive right into it.
What is the Tales of the Illuminatis?
I know it's an anthology
book series by Robert Shea
and Robert Anton Wilson, but how did you,
sir, become involved with this book?
Sure, yeah.
So it kind of started out
about twenty years ago.
A friend of mine left the original
book trilogy sitting in my
bedroom and I picked it up.
Opened it up and within about two,
two and a half days,
I'd gone through and read
all eight hundred pages.
I didn't do anything else
for days and days and just
read through and got pulled
through infinity into a
brand new way of looking at the world.
And I just got really into
especially Robert Anton Wilson.
So there's two authors in the book,
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea.
Robert Anton Wilson is the
one that kind of made that
world his calling card.
He went on to write like
sequels and prequels and a
lot of nonfiction books
that pick up the theme of the novel.
So I just, I went to the library.
They had pretty much
everything Robert Anton
Wilson had ever written.
And I just read through the whole thing.
And just a couple of years later,
Robert Anton Wilson opened
up an online workshop space.
He was stricken with post-polio syndrome,
so he couldn't go around
and do his usual speaking engagements.
So we opened up an online
space where he could get
like put on workshops and I
got to know him.
I got to do some artwork for
him and just kind of became
involved in his world.
And then after he passed,
I became involved with his estate,
doing book covers and other things.
Yeah,
so I've been kind of working in this
general world for about twenty years,
and the guy that owns the
media adaptation rights to
Illuminatus reached out to
me just to have a
conversation about possibilities,
and he was kind of hinting
at that he wanted to maybe
have a comic book adaptation of the novel,
and I was explaining to him
why I couldn't do it,
because this book is crazy.
It is...
so it's kaleidoscopic, it's multifaceted,
it's, it's unfilmable, it's undoable.
And I was as I was
explaining why I couldn't do it,
I talked myself into doing it,
because I had found the
path into it while while I
was explaining that there was no path.
And that was, I guess,
about a year and a half ago.
And last summer,
we put out the first issue,
and it all kind of went perfectly.
And so we're back at it again.
I'm not going to lie.
I read your editor.
I think it's your editor.
He edits the book,
and he's also the one that
owns the rights to Illuminatus.
When he reached out to me to say, hey,
will you interview Bobby?
I was like, yeah, sure, absolutely.
He's like, hey, here's volume one,
give it a read, or issue one,
give it a read.
You start scrolling through it,
and you're like,
hell am I reading right now?
You go through eight pages
and then all of a sudden you're,
there's the story.
I think it was like eight pages,
something like that.
Yeah.
The story.
And then you're like, Oh, okay.
And then you start reading and you're like,
Oh wow, this is, this is different.
This is out there.
So that, that drove me to go in.
Okay.
Let me Google the book.
Then I'll read that first few, you know,
few pages of the book.
And I'm like,
I'm like oh damn this is
just out there yeah though
I will say like so
illuminatus is one of those
uh books I always describe
it as like the velvet
underground of literature
whereas like the book
itself never became that
overwhelmingly famous I
mean it it did very well
back in the seventies um but
but it never became like a
bestseller in a traditional sense.
But so many people who read
it then went on to become
influential writers and
artists and like every kind of, uh,
creatives in the world.
Following from what I
gathered from just reading
what little bit I did and
what little bit of research
I had a little bit of time
to do from between everything else.
It's got a cult following
and it seems really popular.
I know there was, um,
Robert Antoine Wilson has,
somebody did a fan page for
him on Blue Sky.
So when I was posting,
I was doing my interview with you.
And I'm like, oh, cool.
Like, you know, I asked the question, like,
oh, how did it feel?
You know,
somebody making your book into a
comic book.
And they're like, oh, he's he passed.
And I'm just tribute page.
I'm like.
Oh, shit.
Like, my bad.
Hang on, let me go back and look.
I went and seen his
birthdays and like when he passed,
I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense,
you know?
Yeah,
but it's been great because his
legend has kind of grown since he passed.
And he's probably more
popular now than he ever was.
The great ones are always that way.
Yeah.
And so it's been wild to
actually like work on
something that has this
like built in audience and
this built in support.
We did the small press expo
and the amount of people we
just we had a steady stream
of people coming by the
table just wanting to tell
us about the first time
they read Illuminatus.
And just there was this
outpouring of recognition
and love that was really encouraging.
and you know I never seen a
single negative thing about
the book when I was doing
my my research on it
everybody was very um
positive toward the book
and what the book
represented and you know
you read like how it made
people feel and like
because it it's do you take
it seriously it's kind of an out there
You know, but it touches on some, like,
especially when his book
was written in the seventies,
the Illuminati and stuff like that,
the occults,
those were huge in during that timeframe.
So for somebody to just drop,
not just a book,
but a whole trilogy of
books about that was
probably for the people in
that the seventies and
early eighties was probably
mind blowing that like, oh, wait,
wait a minute.
What is this?
is this stuff real?
You know, I can imagine, you know,
like people are approaching
you now and going, Hey,
you're the guy that writes
the comic book.
How that like,
like how it made them feel
back then with like, wait,
this is real to some people still.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I think what really
helps its reputation is it
refuses to take itself
seriously in any aggressive way.
There is nothing that you
are being asked to believe.
In fact,
you are being encouraged to believe less.
You're encouraged to be more flexible,
not less.
We want your world to get bigger,
not smaller.
It's definitely an open-minded book.
yeah yeah it's it's it's
like a extended exercise in
what if without any
definitive conclusion to
box you in on to say now
you gotta think this or now
you gotta think that it's
just it's adding
ingredients to your stew
you know like things you
can pick and choose and uh
reject or accept and um
yeah and it's kind of
interesting too because in some ways so
One of the reasons why I
think it's more
recognizable now than it
was back then is because
the Illuminati has become
this household term,
which wasn't even true when
I first read it.
Twenty years ago,
it was not really a thing
that like if you show any
twelve year old a triangle
with a dot in it,
they're going to say
Illuminati confirmed.
They know what that means.
their rappers and other
people have kind of made
this thing out of it and
put it out there and made
it this mainstream thing,
whether it exists or not.
It's out there and it's made
itself mainstream once again.
Yeah, for sure.
And there's a lot of
evidence to suggest that
the reason why it is
ubiquitous right now traces
back to the publication of
this book in an indirect way.
So it wasn't that everybody
read it and started talking
about the Illuminati.
So there's a way in which
not only is the book about conspiracies,
but it actually contains
one within itself that has
grown more interesting as
time has gone on.
And so there's this guy, Cary Thornley.
So Cary Thornley was friends
with Robert Anton Wilson.
They bonded over...
like working in the
underground press and they
were both
anti-authoritarian and all that
sort of like good,
nineteen sixties rebellious
young people kind of stuff.
But Kerry Thornley had an
interesting backstory in
that he was friends with
Lee Harvey Oswald back when
they were in the Marines.
Wow.
And so Lee Harvey Oswald was
a peculiar fella even back then,
enough so that Lee Harvey,
that Cary Thornley wrote a book about him,
like a novel based on him
as a personality.
So when years later,
he hears on the radio that
Lee Harvey Oswald has shot the president,
he's freaked out because
it's essentially the main
character from the novel
he's writing has left off
the page and shot the president,
which is kind of a trippy thing.
So he's kind of- That's a
pass entry up right there.
Yeah.
And he also had, along with this other guy,
Gregory Hill,
they founded a religion
called Discordianism based
around the worship of Ares,
the goddess of chaos.
So here's this guy.
He invents a religion.
It's like either a joke
disguised as a religion or
a religion disguised as a joke.
It's like Judaism.
yeah yeah yeah so carrie
thornley ends up getting
involved in the
investigation into lee
harvey oswald to the point
that when um uh the
investigation kicks up
again in new orleans he
gets drug into it as a
potential co-conspirator in
the assassination
And so when Jim Garrison
charges him with perjury
for lying and saying that
he hadn't reconnected with
Lee Harvey Oswald right
before the assassination,
which so far as Kerry Thornley knows,
he did not.
So now he's like literally.
in trouble with the law
because they think he was
involved in it so so and
then here's where it
connects to illuminatus so
carrie thornley finds out
that one of the guys on
garrison's investigation
unit believes in the illuminati
And so what he wants to do
is he wants to basically,
in modern parlance,
troll Garrison by flooding
the underground press with
stories about the Illuminati to be like,
your investigation lacks
rigor to such a degree that
you have people on there
that believe in leprechauns
and crazy things like the Illuminati.
so they flood the
underground press with
stories about the
illuminati so there's so in
the in the sixties there's
all these stories that come
out about the illuminati
which then seeds the
culture with the idea which
then it starts growing
because people are reading
this and they don't know
that it's a joke and so one
of the it's one of those
weird things though
The Illuminati supposedly
has been around since the
Egyptians made the pyramids.
No, yeah, there is a historic basis, yeah.
Yeah,
but when you mix in a little bit of
seeds in it,
it tends to take its own way
of growing and infiltrate
mainstream culture.
Correct.
So it took on a life of its own.
But one of the main places
that the seeds were planted
were Robert Anton Wilson
and Robert Shea were
editors of the Playboy Forum.
And so they planted in
Playboy a fake letter from
someone asking about the Illuminati,
which was one of the higher profile,
more high profile
spreadings of this idea.
They were getting a lot of
weird letters anyway,
and it became tough to tell.
So the thing where they were
spreading the idea about the Illuminati,
it was part of this thing
called Operation Mindfuck.
And so it got to the point
where they were getting all these letters,
and they couldn't tell which were...
things from Operation
Mindfuck and which were
just people expressing
their actual ideas.
And so the idea for Illuminatus was,
what if we just took all
these weird ideas and
paranoid letters we're
getting and just decided
that they were all true?
And wrote a mythology around
this idea of Discordians
versus the Illuminati.
And that was the entry point
for the trilogy.
And it just kind of has
snowballed from there.
no it's it's really quick
it's I even me myself like
my next trip to the
bookstore I'm going to be
looking for this just
because I really want to
dive into it because a lot
of the stuff you just
mentioned this stuff as I
was doing my research was
stains that were kept
popping up into it and I'm
like man this these guys
live this crazy life they
worked on playboy that back
in the glory days of
playboy before it became
what it is today which is just the online
you know, things.
Yeah,
back then it was actually like a
cultural thing that men
read and it was this thing.
It was more,
it was really just about the
articles in it and not just the girls.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
It, the stuff that they were producing,
men were reading and really
taking that to heart and to
mind and going, hey,
this shit's for reals.
You know, people was talking about it.
It has to be real.
Yeah.
Right, right.
But in a little bit,
they were using that to
kind of play a prank on the culture.
So one of Robert Anton
Wilson's favorite tricks is to take
one scoop of truth and one
scoop of fantasy and blend
it together such that you
can't tell them apart
because when that happens,
so his theory was,
you had to start thinking for yourself.
You had to start making discernments
that weren't just given to you.
It was up to you to then
figure out what was going on.
And it kind of disrupted that.
We tend to automatically
believe things that come
from sources that make us comfortable.
And that sometimes makes us
vulnerable in ways that is hard to see.
It's easy to see when it's
happening to someone else.
It's much harder to see when
it's happening to us.
You know what I mean?
You can tell when someone's like, come on,
that's propaganda.
That's not true.
You just believe that
because of this or the other.
But I know for a fact I've
caught myself exhibiting
those same behaviors.
But it's much tougher to
tell when it's happening to you.
And this was meant to be
something that encouraged
that kind of
self-reflection and that kind
of self-awareness and that
kind of flexibility.
And one of the thesis
statements of the novel is,
um that communication can
only occur between equals
and so if you're kind of
like well everyone else is
kind of low information
this or that or and like
but the more um you can
come to a conversation as
equals the more you can
honestly exchange and then
the other thing is like the
other caveat to that uh
principle is everyone lies to their boss
because they don't want to get in trouble.
And so when you look at the
top of the pyramid,
like whoever's in charge of
whatever organization you're a part of,
they don't know what the
fuck's going on because no
one will tell them the
truth because it's just
lies all the way up the chain.
Yeah, exactly.
And some version of it that
doesn't get me in trouble is,
you know what I mean?
Exactly.
That's a universal principle
that everyone adheres by.
And so your boss only has a
very narrow idea of what
actually happened.
And his boss only knows a
fraction and so on.
So that's one of the snafus
we're dealing with.
no but it is great it's one
of those where I mean I'm
saying as I was reading
through the first one and I
I dove into the you know
the first few pages of the
book to try to get my mind
wrapped around it which I I
really don't think I got my
mind wrapped around I don't
think you really can wrap
your mind around everything
that's going on really
within this these books and
this story because it does kind of start
like there's a talking dolphin in there,
you know,
as you walk through the initial
pages of the volume first issue,
like there's a talking dolphin,
there's a lot of weird
things going on before you
get to the actual story.
So let me ask you this.
What's it been like trying
to take this book with all
this intricacies and
there's a lot and make that
into a comic book that is
That make some kind of sense.
Especially the beginning of it.
Where you're kind of like.
What in the hell is going on in this book?
Yeah, so it was in its conception stage,
it was very tough.
And there was a lot of false
starts and a lot of like
wrong approaches that were abandoned.
And it ended up,
the answer was so super simple.
So there was a couple of
problems to deal with.
The first is the book takes
place on a unspecified date,
but that is clearly in the
mid to late seventies.
So there's a lot of
temptation to modernize it,
because you want it to feel
like it's about what's going on right now,
and you want it to be current.
So there was a few ideas
about adapting it so it
takes place in current times.
But like a lightning bolt, I realized, no,
it's a period piece.
And once I got that idea
that it was a period piece,
So many complications just
dropped away and so many
opportunities popped up
because I realized every
single like mundane scene
setting element becomes
interesting when it's set
in nineteen seventy six
because you get you get to
draw a phone booth.
So you get to draw, you know,
you get to draw.
I'm going to bring that up.
um you get to draw record
players you get to draw
like the clothes you get to
draw the cars you get to
draw like just it it just
unlocked this visual
component to it that I was
like oh it's jackie brown
you know what I mean like
it's it's the the time
period right exactly and so
you you kind of get to
cheat because every little
thing if you just focus on
a background element
becomes visually interesting
which is something you know
because when you're going
from a book into a comic
book a book might have
fifteen pages that's just a
guy thinking or just two
people talking which
doesn't really work in a
comic so every little
anchor that you can get to
make it uh more interesting
helps so the period piece
thing was one key that unlocked it
And then the other one was the idea that,
so I tried to, at first,
get a comprehensive
understanding of the book and the world,
but I quickly realized that
that was impossible.
And that I can-
Right.
For sure.
And I have access to people
who are actual scholars of this material,
and sometimes I'll write
them and ask them a question,
and the answer by and large is,
I don't know.
That is not yet known.
Because one of the
influences on this was
James Joyce's Finnegan's
Wake and Ulysses.
Which is the whole point is
to make it so packed with
detail that it's inexhaustible.
So if the point of the thing
is to be inexhaustible,
I'm not going to be able to
have a God's eye view of it
that I can then impart upon the audience.
So if that's not possible,
I cast myself in the role
of one of the two
detectives that are the
main characters in the story.
So I'm not a third-person
omniscient narrator.
I'm a detective on the case.
Yeah.
So you know what I mean?
And then the book then
becomes an invitation to
the mystery as opposed to a
dictation of the mystery.
So the reader is being
invited in as opposed to –
it's not didactic.
It's not being explained to you.
You're brought into the adventure.
Right.
That's what I liked when I
read issue one is once you
got past those first
mind-tricking pages and you
meet the detectives working
the case that's taking place,
it was really like you felt
like you were being...
brought into this story with
these detectives and you
were feeling what they were
feeling because I mean the
guy's calling his wife and
he's like hey I'm not going
to make it home we're
working this case like oh
damn I've been there from
being in the office all day
so right exactly how he's feeling
And there's a part where
they're going through these memos.
So there's been a bombing at a magazine.
They find the magazine,
their current issue that
they were working on.
and so I just give the
documents over to the
reader and and they can
they're they're the
detective you're on the
case you're on the job um
so as as opposed to it
being a mystery um in a
traditional sense it's
you're you're the detective
you've been given there you
you're in there
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And one of the things that I
have found very interesting
is how much of current
events obviously link back
to that time period anyway.
So there's no effort to make
it about right now because
it is about right now
because the present is about the past.
The past comes forward into the future.
So if you want to chase down
what we're living right now,
The seeds are in the past,
and that's where we're at.
So, yeah,
it didn't take any effort to make
it about now because that's
just how history works.
It's funny you bring that up
because as I'm reading that first volume,
I was just like, damn,
I thought this was about this book.
I'm like,
this feels like it could have
happened yesterday.
Yeah, for sure.
And that was the impression
I get rereading it.
Yeah.
And you're like, oh,
there's kind of always been this tension.
There's always been these divides.
There's always been this
sense that we're at the
cutting edge of incredible
times because that's what
it's like to be in the present.
To be in the present is to
be amongst cutting edge
apocalyptic times because
it's the present because we
don't know what's going to
happen next they felt the
same way back then and so
you kind of get this
resonance from a time
another extreme time when
people were feeling really
really uncertain and felt
like they were in
unprecedented times and um
so yeah there's a lot of
just like there's a little
bit of reassurance too to
be like oh they were super
worried back then too you
know like and maybe we'll
pull through and move on to
stabler times just as it
happened again and again
and again it always happens
it's crazy how it works
like that and how something
that was written shit now like
written in the late seventies, wasn't it?
So it was actually written
in the late sixties and it
took them forever to get
someone to publish it.
So yeah, it,
I think it was sat on for
about six or seven years
before it made it out the gate.
So which must've been like
crazy for them to cause you'd be like,
if I, something I wrote,
six years it sat on the
shelf you'd be so worried
that it wouldn't resonate
anymore but now here it is
time you know what are you
doing in the meantime like
I I just put poured my
heart and soul into this
this piece and it's just
sitting over here
collecting dust waiting for
somebody I mean I mean I
guess it's kind of like how
jk rowland felt when she
wrote the first harry
potter and stuff like that
where it just kind of sure
Just sitting there.
Yeah, sitting on a shelf.
It's just sitting on the
shelf because nobody will pick it up.
Because women don't write, you know?
Right, yeah, yeah.
Only this one was very different.
This was a very... So let me ask,
is this your first comic book?
Is this your first... No, no.
That you're into it?
no I've been making uh indie
comics for about twenty
years now um so I yeah now
this I like all told this
is probably my thirtieth
book um that I've done yeah
about maybe depending on
how you divide it more or
less but uh yeah no I've
been making comics a long
long time um yeah I didn't
know if like it's funny I
put all this these brain
cells into the book and the comic book
And now I'm like, wait,
you know what I didn't do
is pour a lot of brains and
cells and thoughts into, like,
who is Bobby Campbell?
So let's do that now.
Who exactly is Bobby Campbell?
Give us your background and how, like,
you became like this,
how you got into the comic
book world to begin with.
Sure.
What led you to where you
are right now and tell us
about the Illuminatus.
Yeah, so as far back as I can remember,
I've been drawing and writing stories.
So wherever that comes from,
it's pre-memory.
That was always there.
I've been making comics.
steadily since about, um, I, I started out,
I made, uh,
I did seven issues of a
Spider-Man comic called
Arachnophobia when I was, uh,
thirteen and fourteen years old.
And I,
it just kind of never really stopped
from there.
Uh,
I went to the Pratt Institute for a year,
um, uh,
fresh out of high school,
but then kind of realized that it was far,
far too expensive to keep going.
I mean,
even back then in nineteen ninety nine,
it was thirty grand a year.
So it's like that's
expensive for art college.
And also I went and I was like,
because they tell you like, oh,
we have a hundred percent
job placement rate.
And then I went to a party
where a bunch of people who
had graduated and they were like, yeah,
it was fun, but I can't get a job.
And I was like, oh yeah,
but the school has a
hundred percent job placement.
And they were like, that's not real.
And I was like, oh, shut up.
So, yeah, so I moved, I went,
I transferred back to university.
No, yeah, no, for sure.
So I then, I went back to Delaware,
went to the University of
Delaware and chose a much
more lucrative profession
or a lucrative major with a
future philosophy.
so oh um but yeah so I I we
started doing indie comics
um right after I got back
to delaware and we I mean
we when you're making
comics with your friends
and you have no one to
compare yourself to you
just you think you're doing
you know the greatest work
anyone has ever seen and
you're about to set the
world on fire as you're
doing this with your
friends like who's
producing the work for you
who's printing it are y'all
going down to the uh
know the print and press
place and they're like hey
can you print this out for
us uh so the interesting
story with that so we went
to uh one of the early
wizard cons in chicago and
I was uh we brought our
pages and I was standing in
I mean we thought vertigo
was gonna buy us right off
the bat like that's how
delusional we were um so
I'm standing in line hey
I'm sorry no me too
yeah me too so we're
standing in line at uh to
get a portfolio review and
I'm looking around and I
noticed like everyone
else's pages look like jim
lee and my pages are like
really like scrappy indie
stuff and I was just like
oh no I think I've made a
terrible mistake and that
they then they they they
cancel there's too many
people doing the portfolio
review they send everybody
away and so you know I'm
dejected and this guy you
ever heard of phil yeh
It sounds familiar.
He was part of that scene
with Scott McCloud and with...
uh matt graining and the
ninja turtle guys like that
that early run yeah yeah
yeah all those indie guys
he he did a bunch of work
with mobius uh also okay so
so he's like a real guy um
I I hadn't heard him heard
of him at the time but he
sees me walking away and he
comes over and he goes he
goes I'll look at your
pages I'll look at your pages
and so he goes through and
he like because it's indie
stuff he actually likes it
he thought I was going to
be one of the jim lee
clones but it was kind of
something that was that
spoke more to him and he
just explained how to make
mini comics this day cannot
be cloned that man is oh no
for sure for sure yeah no
absolutely but people try
people try incredible
yeah no I I uh watching him
draw is one of the joys of
life it's just yeah there's
a few of them that if I see
them go live drawing I'm
glued to youtube watching
these guys are absolutely whatever
But yeah, he just did one like last week,
I think.
And that was like my life
for like forty five minutes
until I got called away to
do something else.
I'm like, Jim Lee's drawing.
I'm going to watch.
Sorry.
Yeah.
I remember back back when
Image first launched, those guys,
when they did that big tour.
So like that.
there's so many that a lot
of them probably aren't
around anymore but so many
of those uh old comic shops
had doors that were drawn
on by jim lee and I know
the the comic media the
shop in delaware they had a
door that all the guys drew
on and it's just like how
do you how can you draw on
a door perfectly how many
artists come out of that area right there
Not just there,
but that was kind of like
this booming area for comic
creators from what I've seen.
And I'm just like,
because Jersey even now is
still huge in the comic scene.
Especially,
they've got the Hubert School there,
which I think is one of the
reasons why it churns out so many people.
I think that's a big part of it.
I know, like,
even those small little comic
shops up there, Erica Schultz,
who we were discussing
before we went live,
who's doing Rat City and, you know,
Lauren with It's Twenty-Three and
Daredevil's Unleashed Shell
that's currently going on.
She was just up there doing
a signing and I think she's
in that area too.
So that's kind of like her
hometown shop that she just
shows up and does signings.
Yeah, Philadelphia is really, like,
really getting it together.
Yeah,
there's a couple of really good shops
and a lot of really good, like,
indie collectives that put
on these great shows.
I mean, it's hard to get a table at,
and that's for a local show.
Like, that's just the local artists,
and there's so many, like,
really good studios and
really good operations.
It really is, and I don't, like...
I'm in the area, but I'm still far away.
You know what I'm saying?
It's still a day's drive.
And I see all these things
happening and people posting about it.
And I'm like, it's right there,
but it's happening on like
a Wednesday or something.
And now I got to take PTO
and go up there or whatever.
I have to drive you know
jersey's not that far away
to be fair because when we
go to new york city that's
what we do we go to jersey
we park in jersey we stay
in jersey we catch the the
boat across the water to
new york city and that's
how we go to new york city
because it's cheaper to
stay on the jersey side
than the new york side oh
that makes sense yeah yeah and um
But even there, like New York City itself,
I think there's two, three comic shops.
But in Jersey itself,
it feels like there's one
on like every city has a nice one.
Yeah.
No, this is crazy.
So I live in a tiny little town, right?
I got four comic shops
within walking distance of my house.
I've never had such a bounty
of shops ever in my life.
And I'm sure there are
really nice ones too.
Yep, absolutely.
This general area is really
good for comics appreciation.
And I was telling you before
you went live that I...
you when you said you were
in south jersey I'm like oh
I get to add another jersey
guy to my friends list you
know because I do literally
have quite a few friends
that are in that area and
they're both involved with
um you've heard of the pop
break yeah yeah yeah bill
bodkin who runs that he's
there um he's a rutgers
grad um I think he pays me
to say that I'm sure and then um
I got another friend who's
in northern Jersey and
they're involved in the
indie wrestling scene.
So I know all these people
up there and I'm like,
I just need a good weekend,
a three or a four day
weekend where I can just go
to Jersey and spend like
the entire weekend up there
with all my friends and go
to all these really cool
comic shops they have there
because y'all have tons of them at sea.
Yeah, we really do apps.
And then in Philly,
there's this shop partners and son,
and pretty much any big
indie book that comes out,
they'll have the creators there,
they'll do an art show,
they'll do talks that it's
it's incredible.
So, um, so Phil yay,
basically just walked me
through how to do mini comics.
He was like,
here's what you're gonna do
with these pages.
Stop going to
companies stop stop going to
companies and asking them
to look at your stuff and
just take it down the
kinkos and make it yourself
and that kind of just
became the mission
statement for a good long
time and and and then uh as
time went on getting books
printed became easier and
easier like the first the
first couple books we did
were that the old offset
print on newsprint
Yeah.
And yeah, with a thousand copy minimums,
like, Oh man,
do you know how hard it is
to get rid of a thousand copies?
It is,
but it was really cheap to print it
off too.
It was, it was.
Yeah.
In fact, I,
I can't find anyone that'll do
newsprint anymore.
It's very hard.
I miss it.
What's it called?
The heavier stuff, not the gloss, but the,
um,
Ah, damn it.
It's what a lot of the comic
book creators- Oh, card stock?
Card stock, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yeah, to be honest,
I would love to be able to
print on newsprint again,
but it's now this niche market.
It would actually be more
expensive now probably than
printing on regular paper.
You're exactly right, yeah.
yeah um but yeah but then uh
yeah as time went on and
you could just order fifty
a hundred two hundred uh
copies of full color books
um it became much easier to
self-publish um than it was
back in the day and those
those kinko's machines were
unforgiving it had to be
yeah black or white yeah or
white you could have no
grayscale nowadays you can
get grayscale on your black
and white prints but so I
ended up developing this
really weird um like uh
like doing hatch mark and
stipple just to create
tones I basically became a
a human zippitone factory
and so I had this really it
took me a long time to work
out of you if you if you
like get the pages in the
comic and like look really
close I'm still like cross
hatching even though I
don't need to just to have
it go away it's funny you
say that though but a lot
of the guys who write and
draw manga in Japan they
still use cross hatch
heavily if you've ever read
their books and the way
they do it and the amount
of detail they can squeeze
into cross hatching stuff
and it's mind numbingly amazing like
Like, because you get this nice,
pretty cover and outside,
and then inside of it is
mostly black and white.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you get, like,
the crosshatching and how
they do the shadowing, and you're like,
dude, this art is phenomenal.
And I'm like,
you can tell they're just sitting there,
like, hours on a page, crosshatching and,
you know, adding these...
little minute details into
it with cross hatching and
it's like dude I can't
imagine the amount of time
oh man I spent so much time
doing that stuff that one
one you know quarter panel
of a book yeah yeah yeah
but okay so let's go to
Let's talk about the actual
Kickstarter itself.
When are you kicking off
Tales of the Illuminatus issue two?
So we're kicking off on April first,
so Tuesday.
So the pre-save page is already up there,
but we're going to open it
up on August first.
We're going to run it for two months.
August first?
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
April first April.
Like, like, yeah, that's,
we're gonna we're gonna run it for.
We're gonna run it for two months,
we're gonna have a nice,
nice leisurely campaign.
And we're gonna be good to go.
We're going to be shipping
either in early summer or mid summer.
So either June or July,
we'll be sending books out.
And yeah,
yeah yeah so the turnaround
time should be pretty quick
and I think we're gonna
have time to get a jump
start on issue three so
we're gonna try to do uh
two issues um in the
upcoming year so uh we did
we did one uh because I'm
you know I'm I'm a high
school teacher so I have the summers
and so it's real yeah yeah
um so yeah so it's I I
think we're going to be
able to get issue two done
with enough time to get a
jump start on issue three
so we don't have to wait so
long in between two issues
dropping this year and then
to the following how many
yeah that's the goal you
think you're going to get
out of the book because so
I think three books eight hundred pages
That's a lot of comic books.
It is indeed.
And we are currently at
about a page-to-page translation ratio.
So for every page of the book,
we're at about a page of the comic.
We have a couple of...
different contingency plans
so we have because so if we
keep up the pace we're
going as it's outlined I
think it's about twenty
three issues long um would
be to do the full thing um
but we also if the if the
book catches on in a big
bad way we also have uh
prequels and sequels that
we can adapt as well
there's all there's a whole another right
There's a whole other
trilogy and a couple of
side books and stuff like that.
So if we want to keep the
thing rolling past twenty three,
we definitely can.
But I'm also because you
know how indie comics is,
you don't always make it
where you're hoping to make it.
So we have a we have a
collection point we're hitting,
which is issue five is
where we're going to
collect everything together.
And it's kind of one of those things where
It can work as a complete story,
or it can work as a rest
point before we continue on
into the rest of the series.
Once you get to issue five,
you're going to pause it,
do a trade paperback,
and then continue on?
Correct.
The goal is we don't want to
leave people hanging.
We would like to have a complete story.
satisfying read and so we
have something that's
doable with just the free
time that I have if it
doesn't catch fire and
become this juggernaut um
so we'll definitely get to
that and then sky's the
limit if it does catch on
because there's another
like sixteen hundred pages
worth of material that we
can adapt so this thing
this thing could go on
The amount of material
that's out there outside of
just the trilogy,
the prequels and the other things,
it's pretty crazy.
So I know other authors and
comic book creators who do
take books as well.
Like a lot of the Star Wars stuff,
they take the book and they
make it into comic books as well.
How hard has... And I think
I kind of asked you this earlier.
How hard...
is it from just any
perspective really to
translate a book into a comic book?
That's got to,
cause you got to be like a
quarter panel sometimes,
or it could be a whole page is a page.
For sure.
It's it actually has turned
out to be a lot easier than
I thought because I figured
out kind of an approach that works,
which is essentially like,
I'm trying to, when I'm adapting,
I'm paying attention to
what's physically happening in the book.
So like,
cause it might be that across eight pages,
a guy is making a cup of coffee, right?
Like that's all that's
physically happening where
he's thinking back or
thinking of all sorts of
emotions that he's having or, you know,
things that aren't physical.
So rule number one that I
have for myself is to
follow what is physically
happening in the book.
Where are they?
Who's there?
What are they doing?
And so that I focus on
adapting that material first.
And then what you have is
you have this mass of
material that covers what's
happening and you just pick
the best lines.
You pick the best parts.
Yeah.
Eight pages of a guy making coffee.
Like, how do you break that down?
Would you break it down into
four panels per page of him
making the coffee and the
thoughts going through his head?
Or is that like because I
know you're you were saying
you're doing a one to one
almost right now with a page is a page.
Well,
but not literally that's just how it's,
it's breaking down in terms
of where I got to in the story,
but it's not, it's not literally,
if you go to page one, that's page one.
If you go to page two, that's page two.
There's stuff,
there's stuff that there's
stuff that gets cut.
And, and, and so it does.
So really what's nice is, um,
so when you have a panel of
the guy pouring the cup of coffee,
you have.
six paragraphs of material
of lines to choose from.
And so you just get to go, not that one,
not that one, that one.
And then you grab it and
then it goes on there.
Or if then you're like, ah,
this page looks a little bare.
I need something down here.
Then you go back in and you're like, oh,
there's another good line.
And you pop that in.
and it just becomes it
becomes an embarrassment of
riches because you need so
little and you have so much
that it's just like cherry
picking the best parts and
peppering it into the page
yeah and I've seen in other
comic books where they
they've done similar where
there's a book and then
there's a comic book
And you can definitely tell where they've,
like,
it almost feels like something's missing,
but you can tell they had
to make a conscious decision there.
Like, what do I say or what do I do here?
Because the story will kind of be here.
And then all of a sudden, you know,
either a page or a few panels over,
it's like something happened in there.
They had to make a hard decision.
Right.
They cut something.
Cut something, you know.
It's so weird.
As you've done this long
enough and you've read
enough comic books and stuff like that,
you can tell where hard
decisions were made when
something came from a book
into a comic book.
You know what's funny?
What I figured out from
doing this is where the
benefit of experience is.
So I have at this point,
twenty years of comic making experience.
And it's not that the twenty years, I mean,
I've gotten better as I've gone along,
but that's not the main
benefit of experience.
The main benefit of
experience is every time
you find yourself painted in a corner,
I have twenty years worth
of proof that I always get
out of the corner.
And so when you find
yourself in that corner, you go, oh,
it always works out.
And so like it's hard to get
like super frustrated because, you know,
there's always there's
there's some there's a line of dialogue.
There's a caption.
There's an image.
Something will get me from
point A to point B like I
need to if I just leave
that panel right there.
and just think about it or
just let it go for a little
bit the answer always pops
up it always pops up and it
does and then you move on
that's what I was going to
ask like have you ever like
just you're on the page and
you kind of have the way
you want to go but you
already know what you want
to do on this next page you
just go ahead and do the
next page and then just
kind of like come back over
here to this one and go
okay now I know what I want to do
yeah for sure over here
first before you can like
let me flesh this out and
then come back over here
and then I can mill this
and flush it down as well
yeah and then the other
thing the other uh like key
that unlocked it was
basically uh I do marvel
method with myself so so it
you tell the story visually
first and then you go in
and you put the words in
because if it makes sense visually
The words will just add to it.
So it has to make sense visually first.
And then whatever words you
throw on top of it,
it already works because it
works visually.
So if it works without the words.
I think we have to caveat
that with issue one,
the first eight pages, it does not apply.
Yes.
What you want to do in those
first eight pages, well,
there's a couple of games
I'm playing there.
First is I wanted to deviate
from the source material
right off the bat.
Just so no one could,
just so I didn't have to worry about it.
I'm like, I've already done it.
I've already changed something.
So let's get that out of the way.
I'm reading issue one.
in the first page I forgot
what it was but then
there's the the talking the
talking dolphin appears
throughout it and you're
like yeah yeah why in the
fuck is there a talking
dolphin part of my french
if you're not yeah no of
course yeah yeah I'm like
what the fuck is he doing
was there a talking dolphin
My fault for not reading or
catching up on what the
actual source material was first.
I'm like,
I'm going to read the first issue.
It was sent to me graciously.
I appreciated it.
I'm going to read it.
And I'm like,
oh God, what am I reading?
And then I'm like, okay, story time,
finally.
Yeah, yeah.
And I used to get into the
story and I got through it.
I'm like, okay,
let me go figure out what
exactly this is because it, I'm like,
those first eight pages are,
they're out there.
And when I, you know,
I'm telling people this and I'm like, hey,
I just read this book.
The first eight pages were, wow.
But then this story is good.
And they're like, what?
I'm like, yeah, before we see it,
Before we settled down into
a pretty straightforward, like,
Raymond Chandler detective novel,
we wanted to at least make
sure that you knew that you
were in for a different kind of ride,
that it's not just a
straightforward detective novel.
Yeah.
Right on.
Oh, I'm so glad.
I like your reaction to that
because so many people that
read it are already like
initiated into that world.
So they don't even,
they don't even notice that
the first eight pages are weird.
You know what I mean?
Like, because they know to expect it.
They know that like, it's,
I'm like playing the hits on the,
on those early pages, but I,
that's awesome that it,
it stands out as truly bizarre,
which is what I was shooting for.
Yeah.
You you you more than accomplish that,
because like I said, I'm like,
I'm going to have to like
as soon as I got done reading, you know,
you bring up Dr. Google and
you start what it is
exactly that they're accomplishing here.
And you're like, oh,
this makes so much more sense now.
It really is a book that's
built for Google,
even though it was written pre-Google,
because every little thing
is a rabbit hole that goes on forever.
Every little name drop,
every little thing will
just set you off and never return.
I'm not kidding.
If people are as curious as
me when it's something like this,
if they don't have Google
up on another screen on their computer,
they're like, wait a minute.
That's a fucking real person.
Right.
Yeah.
They're not doing the book
justice because you really
bring up Google while
you're doing it and
literally Google events.
And you're like,
this guy was really name dropping.
Yeah,
what's fun about it too is that's
part of the charm of his
writing is that sometimes
you'll get to a point where
it's so ridiculous that you look it up.
And when it turns out that
that ridiculous thing is true,
you then start to look at
the other stuff where you were like,
Well, clearly that's not serious.
And then you start to look
at it differently because
sometimes it does.
Sometimes the weird stuff
does turn out to have a basis in reality.
If not truth, it has a basis in reality.
Yep.
Like even...
Oh, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Well, even the talking dolphin,
it has a basis in reality
because this was written
around the time that John
Lilly was trying to
communicate with dolphins.
And there's that famous
story about them feeding
LSD to dolphins and the
lady falling in love with a dolphin.
And they lived as a couple
in a half aquatic, half...
uh regular house and so like
as as much as the talking
dolphin is like come on
that's insane there's a
basis in reality you gotta
think about it though this
is at the time when lsd was
becoming a huge drug on the streets and
There was rumors of the CIA
conducting experiments with
people and animals using
LSD and other illicit drugs.
There was all these rumors,
some possibly laced with truth,
that was happening at this
time that he wrote this book.
And that's what I enjoyed
about the comic book and
from my research on the
book is there's a lot of
truth here and a lot of
things that people believed were rumored.
But you could easily just as
much Google it now and realize that
there's truth behind that.
Even though the in and out
of self is not real,
but there's some truth in there.
And then to return to our
friend Kerry Thornley,
who at the time that the
novel was conceived was
very upset that he was
being accused of being
involved with Lee Harvey Oswald,
years down the road decides that he was,
and he was mind controlled
and forgot about it.
So he succumbed to, you know,
kind of the pressure of the
moment and his mental health kind of
became such that he was open
to the suggestion that he
was basically like a
manchurian candidate guy
and then so robert anton
wilson right so so robert
anton wilson is trying to
like calm him down and be
like come on you know that
you that you weren't
involved in this and you
were you lived here you did this
And so then Kerry Thornley is like, well,
Robert Anton Wilson is in
on it and he's my CIA handler.
And so he eventually thought
that Mr. Wilson was
involved in the Kennedy assassination.
Wilson had to move his
family because Thornley was
off his rocker and was
showing up at the house half-crazed.
He created a religion where
you worship the goddess of chaos.
In his later years,
he said if he knew it was
all going to come true,
he would have created a
religion around Aphrodite
instead of Ares.
oh that is that's awesome I
like his thinking though I
like it yeah for sure yeah
and even even as he like
kind of went through
various contortions of what
he believed was true he
kind of maintained his uh
his sense of humor and his
kind of whimsy at least at
times um very very interesting guy yeah
All right,
so let's tell everybody what
they can expect from issue two,
not just from the book itself,
but from the Kickstarter.
What are y'all making
available to everybody when
they go and back issue two
of Tales of the Illuminatus?
Sure,
so I'm kind of a bare bones
Kickstarter person still
because I would just want
to make sure that I can get
the books done and I can
get them delivered.
So I don't do, at this point yet,
maybe down the road I will,
I don't really do the bells and whistles.
So it's, we're going back to,
so we sold out,
I'm very proud of this
because I mentioned before
how you used to have to get
a thousand books printed
and they would sit in your
garage forever and ever.
We sold out of the first
printing of issue one
And then so we went back.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
That was that.
You know why that was important to me?
Because it's I'm really
embracing the nineteen
seventies aesthetic.
And I love, you know,
those old Conan books like
the big giant Conan.
They still make them.
They still produce them that way.
And if you ever read American Splendor,
the Harvey Peacock book.
um another like magazine
size and then also uh will
eisner's the spirit uh back
in the day they used to do
those magazines I know uh
the current run of conan is
the the magazine size
distillery media is doing
okay yeah oh I love it I
love it this one is the new
uh mouse guard uh which is
you know it just dropped this week
but it's the miniature magazine size.
That's why it's in a magazine.
I like it.
Yeah.
But it's only a quarter size
and it's always been done this way.
They do it this way on
purpose because it's about
a mouse and it's small.
I like it.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
But, and then, uh,
Kevin Eastman's new The Last
Ronin is done magazine size as well.
So we are seeing more books
done magazine size here in
the last two or three years
since I really started collecting again.
You do see some.
It lets you spread out a
little bit more and it lets
you just kind of like pack
more onto the page.
I got really into the Chris
Claremont X-Men as I was making this.
And like they would the
amount of action they would
pack on a page.
It takes you forty five
minutes to read one of those books.
These days it takes you seven minutes,
like a, uh,
like I remember reading the
old Warren Ellis Moon
Knight books and it would take me three,
three minutes to read an issue.
Whereas, uh, and they were great.
They were beautiful.
They were composed so well,
but reading those Chris
Claremont X-Men books is
just like every page is
just like it's seven panels
and every panel has every
single character in it.
And so there's just
something about like just
packing everything in.
Um, so that's really cool.
so we went back for a second
printing and we're just
about out of that notice that one
Oh, yeah, yeah.
This is I'm like, I want to get Oh, yeah,
for sure.
This is Todd purse,
the other artist on the book.
This is his cover.
And then so we're going back
to press with the Kickstarter.
So if you missed issue one,
we have a third,
a third variant cover coming out.
That's being drawn right now.
So you can get issues one
and issues to a lot of
people like to get doubles.
So that was a thing that got
requested a lot.
I don't too much care about doubles,
but if I'm going to dive into something,
if the first one is available,
I do like to just go ahead
and grab that too because I
love physical boats, the smell,
the paint.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everything about it is like...
like I was speaking to you
about earlier with when I
was we did we just
interviewed bruno on
saturday morning and uh his
covers were like these
amazingly beautiful
abstract sci-fi things I'm
like dude you know how cool
this would be if it was a
virgin variant he was like
I haven't considered it I'm
like dude you should
probably think about that
one yeah absolutely amazing
And then he hit me back, like,
a few days later.
He's like, yeah, you're right.
I get bright ideas sometimes, buddy.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, no, there's something about that.
The physical copy and the
smell and just the turn of the page.
The whole thing.
The way it sounds.
Absolutely.
I know.
And that's another thing
about doing it magazine size and just,
like, the –
In a way,
the production of a physical item
is half the fun of this.
Doing art online, it's fun, it's great,
but there's something about
having a physical object, mailing it,
packaging it up and mailing it to people,
and then taking it to comic
cons and meeting people.
There's just something about
the production of a
physical object that is so fun.
So we're talking about
magazine-sized books.
This is off the topic and
off the wall here.
Penthouse started doing comic books again,
and theirs as well are magazine-sized.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
Some of the greatest
illustrators of all time
spend time there.
So that's a good thing that
they're getting back into it.
And some of the greatest
artists are still doing their work there.
That's outstanding.
The modern guys, like they're, they're,
you know,
doing the artwork for these
stories and you're like,
you can almost see like, like, Oh,
that's this person.
Oh, how do you know it's that person?
I'm like, Oh, I just know the art style.
You know,
that's one of my favorite things
in the world.
Yeah.
It's like a peach.
My moco does a cover, you know,
it's a peach, my moco, you know,
immediately.
Yep.
She does not need to sign it.
David Nakayama, the same way, Jim Lee,
Yeah, absolutely.
I got the Jim Lee cover on
the new Batman Hush because
Hush is back in Batman.
They're doing another run.
It's like issue one eighty
six or something like that.
Weird.
I don't collect Batman
unless it's something off the wall.
But I missed the first run of Hush.
I'm like,
I'm not missing another run of Hush.
So I told Scott my.
my uh lcs so I'm like dude I
won't hush that's it he's
like you don't even flip
that man I'm like I know
but I won't hush yeah yeah
yeah I love yeah you know
and that that initial run
was so fun too it was and I
haven't intrigued paperback
so I mean I have it but
something about single
issues yes for sure people
don't get it when I talk
about comic books and
they're like dude you're
treating this like it's I'm
like it is like you don't
understand it's like when
you go to the bookstore and
you buy a new book and you're just like
You know what I'm saying?
Or an old bookstore,
that smell in the old bookstore.
And people are like, dude, that's weird.
I'm like, yeah, but it smells wonderful.
You don't have to do that
unless you go in there.
So...
At some point,
I want to find someone that
will do good prints on
newsprint again because
there's something about that.
That would be really cool.
That textured paper is so magical.
The sound of it.
The there's nothing I like
more than flat colors on a
good textured paper.
I think it just there's
something something that
those gradients and those
that the painting rendering
will never capture is just
that that weird, random,
chaotic newsprint grain
underneath bright colors.
I just absolutely love it.
So, you know,
it's funny because I was
telling you earlier, you know,
Comic-Con tomorrow and Luana Vecchio,
I think she's from France, I want to say.
She's doing Lovesick right now.
Like the finale just come out this week,
which is what I'm going to have signed.
But she uses a lot of pinks
and blacks and dark tones
with pink and shades of pink.
And it reminds me of the older stuff,
like the old school.
Yeah, yeah.
The colors were very basic.
It was either black and
grayscale or black and
white with hints of color mixed in,
but not a lot.
But she uses pink as kind of
like the backgrounds of it
with the blacks and the
darker tones on the front
of the pink with the
characters in the book.
And it just works out so
perfectly that it's very color rich.
But it's still very, it's three colors,
four colors on a page.
And it's just so vibrant the
way everything,
the violence that's in the book,
the way it is off the pink, to me,
it's just like phenomenal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How did you come,
how did you think of this?
It is amazing.
And that's another one of
those just little nuances
that certain artists bring to their work.
You know, it's defining moments.
That's one of my favorite
things to walk around the
cons and just see the
endless variety of innovation.
And just like when you walk
around and it's like,
I never would have thought of that.
I know like the, the clever, like, uh,
like, uh, holdings and like the,
the different ways people
will produce the books or
just the art style or the concept.
It's when, when I walk around, um,
like the small press expo,
it feels like I'm walking
around the multiverse and
just seeing all these
different worlds that are
just completely unique and
just uh things I never
would have thought of and
it's just you go from one
to another to another to
another and just I don't I
don't think the comic world
has ever been this vibrant
I don't think it's ever
been has this populated last talent and
have been explosive and I've
been here for every minute of it.
It's been so fun watching
just the evolution over the
last three years.
And we're not talking a
decade here or five years.
We're talking like the last year,
three years.
The evolution of comic books as a whole,
different thinkers, different minds,
different types of art that
have come into the medium
has been phenomenal.
I'm looking forward to what
what else is out there you
know sure for sure because
you know it's just it
didn't evolve for so long
from the golden age silver
age to like here recently
nothing involved to me it
was just it was there it
was the same you know
basically artist you know
doing all the books uh
image come along and kind
of change that a lot
when they were like,
cause they will publish you.
They will keep so much of
the money to pay for them publishing you,
but you make the money.
Yeah.
No images.
Like one of the,
the greatest innovations in
comics that could ever happen.
Entertainment.
Even that was like the first
real evolution to me of
comic books is when image started,
you know, doing that.
And now within the last three years,
we've seen that image again,
leading the forefront of
that when they brought in sky bound and,
We're talking now almost a
trillion dollar enterprise there.
It's amazing.
Think about Invincible, The Walking Dead,
Transformers, G.I.
Joe now.
And it's the creators doing it.
It is.
Ghost Machine now is with Image,
but Ghost Machine is like its own team,
Tiny Onion.
know all these you know with
james tinian like all these
people have their they're
like I'm going to start a
publishing company and then
all the big guys image boom
studios are like hey I'll
take that book or hey I'll
take that book and they'll
they'll they print it for
them and then they take
their percentage for the
print and the distro but
everything is coming back
to the artists now and to
me in the like ghost
machine it's artists it's pencilers it's
um, drawers, you name it,
Jeff Johns and that team
over there are doing some amazing,
amazing things.
And it's probably one of my
favorite things right now
between ghost machine and
what's James tending is
dealing with tiny onion.
amazing things so yeah you
know it just occurs to me
that uh neil adams his
vision of the industry has
kind of won to a certain
degree that that he he he
won he he like the the like
kind of stultified uh
extractive companies are on
the decline and the
individual creators are ascendant
and it's it's everything he
fought for it's everything
he fought for it's
everything he fought
against and he really and
like I mean because I'm
sure I know there's a lot
of other people but he like
I feel like he was the
loudest and proudest and
kind of paved the way that
then the image guys took it
and ran with it when they
had that rare opportunity
because I don't think image
could have worked at any
other time in history as a
startup todd did it at the right time
at the right place,
and nothing but positive results since.
Yeah, for sure.
Any other time,
the sales wouldn't have
been enough to justify them jumping ship,
but it just worked out.
He bet on himself,
and he's not looked back since.
Spawn is on to issue three hundred and...
I love that.
It's still only two dollars
and ninety-nine cents.
That's amazing.
He's further along on Spawn
than they were on Amazing
Spider-Man when he left.
That's outstanding.
Him and Jim Lee's run on
Amazing Spider-Man by far
one of my favorite runs, period.
There's something so
exciting about every single
one of Todd McFarlane's drawings,
like especially Spider-Man.
He did a bunch of those
Marvel Tales covers that I
wasn't around for,
so I'll just see them online.
And just like my blood
pressure spikes every time
I see one of those.
It's just like there's
something so... You know
the famous Wolverine claw
with the Hulk in it?
Yeah, yeah.
That's Todd McFarlane.
Right, yeah, yeah.
And then you look at the
number of homages to his
Amazing Spider-Man cover,
where he's swinging through
the city on the web.
Think about how many covers...
have done homages to that one cover.
There's probably more
homages to that cover than
any other cover ever created.
For sure.
And also the weird,
the one from Spider-Man eight,
where he's sitting with the
arm all twisted and he's
sitting in the catcher's position.
Yeah.
Like that, you've seen that over and over,
but yeah, there's something,
something about the way he
draws that just,
even when he's just drawing
something ordinary,
it just kind of radiates.
He's another one.
He goes live on Facebook or.
Instagram or YouTube or whatever.
And they're like, Oh, you know,
people will ask him about drawing.
He's just like, Oh yeah.
Hey, he starts.
Yeah.
And you're like, what?
Stroke number three of your magic marker,
dude.
Right.
Yeah.
But he's so like he's he's
he's weird and he's kind of out there.
But fuck if he's not one of
the best in the business right now.
No, for sure.
For sure.
He's endlessly entertaining,
endlessly like innovating.
Yeah, I really get a kick out of him.
Yeah.
I know we're completely off
course here on what we're
here talking about.
It's actually kind of fun
because most of these that
I get to do are more like
culture shows as opposed to comics.
you're a comic book guy
you're here to talk about
comics for sure comic book
guy yeah yeah I mean I love
pop culture I do a show
once a month on pop culture
whether it be like you know
a show that just ended like
we got reacher coming up
we're gonna sit down we're
gonna talk about reacher
the book that's that's the
new series was based on
we're gonna do all that
we're gonna do one when
daredevil comes to a close
but comic books though to me that's
Getting to talk to another
person who knows comic books,
who's in comic books,
and we could go all night.
I know we don't have all night,
but that's what I feel the
strongest about.
So for me,
I could just do this all night
about comic books and
different artists and stuff like that.
Yeah,
one of the things is that this is a
comic book.
You know what I mean?
This isn't an adaptation
that I would do in any form or fashion.
It's made as a comic book.
And it's kind of funny
because I would say...
Eighty percent of the
people that read it probably...
have read zero other comic books.
It's kind of something that
appeals to people outside
of the comic book world.
It's funny because we go
back and we look at it and go,
it's the Tales of the Illuminati.
It's the first thing that
pops into somebody's head
is the Illuminati.
And it's now being this
cultural mainstream thing now.
And they're like, ooh,
that's about the Illuminati.
Let me get that.
I want to read that.
It's perfect for you.
And then when they start reading it,
they're like,
Wait, what?
Because I'm pretty sure like
until you're probably to this,
this next coming up issue
and probably the third, fourth,
fifth issue is really when
it starts to dive more into that.
the Illuminati type of stuff
that people can expect.
For sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah,
so we've kind of set up our premise now,
and we're going to be
easing into the actual, like,
overarching storyline.
But also what we have is,
and a lot of the things you
saw in those original eight pages,
the opening eight pages, is,
so the novel also has one of those, like,
Simpsons, Springfield,
giant cast subcharacters
So all those characters you
saw at the beginning,
they all cycle back around,
like your Cletus the slack-jawed yokel.
They all become inhabitants of this world.
It's almost like an episode of Seinfeld,
where everything comes back
around full circle in the end.
Yeah.
Um, so, so there's a lot of that.
There's a lot of just like world building,
um, amongst the main storyline.
Uh, I should say storylines.
There's a, there's very, yeah,
very much a multiple storyline thing, but,
but we definitely get more
into the proper, like, uh,
like Illuminati behind the stages,
something that you would
recognize as what you see in pop culture.
There's a very interesting thing too.
So I don't know if you noticed or not,
but the main character,
the main detective,
his name is Saul Goodman.
Yeah, I did notice that.
And obviously the book
predated Breaking Bad by several decades.
So I assume that they are
probably just making the same joke.
That would be my assumption.
Yeah,
that's where my brain went immediately.
I'm like,
this came out before Breaking Bad.
I wonder if they did that as
kind of like a homage or like another...
a joke within a joke so but
there is an interesting
connection between breaking
bad and illuminatus which
is through the x files so
everyone I I don't think
chris carter has ever said
one way or the other but
back in the nineties
everyone assumed chris
carter created that's files
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
I just want to make sure people... Oh,
I'm sorry.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess that's older.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's our generation, man.
Yeah, right.
I still watch... I love the S-Files.
So when the X-Files was first coming out,
everyone assumed that it
was influenced by
Illuminatus because it has
the same general structure.
You have the two detectives
on the trail of the shadowy organization.
You're mixing in all the
conspiracy theories of the day.
It follows very much the same formula.
No one's ever said one way or the other.
But a young writer who got
his start on the X-Files
was Vince Gilligan,
who would then go on to
create Breaking Bad and Saul Goodman.
So if,
if Illuminatus did influence X-Files,
then perhaps Vince Gilligan
was aware of it.
And perhaps it is a reference.
I would say chances are against it,
but it's not impossible.
It's still cool to look at
and form your own modern, like,
you know this is based off of this,
and it's based off of this, right?
Right, yeah, yeah.
Now,
there are some things that it... So Lost,
they... What is it?
Damon Lindelof admits Lost
is influenced by Illuminatus.
And then the two big ones... No,
the good seasons.
The good seasons.
That's right.
That Room XXIII, specifically,
is definitely pulled from Illuminatus.
And then Alan Moore and Grant Morrison,
they're kind of...
You know how everyone's like, oh,
they're similar and they
kind of pull from a very similar world.
They're both heavily,
heavily and admittedly
influenced by Robert Anton Wilson.
So a lot of those
similarities that you see
in Alan Moore and Grant
Morrison trace back to
Illuminatus and Wilson's other work.
They're both huge, huge fans.
And that's where some of
those strands lead back to.
That's cool.
But let's start wrapping it up.
Let everybody know when
Tells of the Illuminatus will drop.
And tell everybody where they can find you,
Bobby.
Sure, so easiest place,
the big catch-all is
TalesOfIlluminatus.com.
That will link you to everywhere else.
We have a sub stack that's
linked on there.
We have a Blue Sky account
that's linked on there.
We have an Instagram account
that you can find us through there.
So everything kind of runs through.
I'm trying to get more back
onto personal web pages.
That's why I'm framing it that way.
We have one too.
And I'm very proud of this.
Talesofilluminatus.com,
all one hundred percent hand coded.
I just I wrote the HTML and CSS myself.
There's no platform.
It is just me writing code.
That's right.
Some of them know what they're doing.
Yeah, so there's zero platform.
It is just me writing my hack code.
So we're starting the
Kickstarter on Tuesday,
on April Fool's Day.
It's going to run for two months.
We're going to do weekly
updates where you're going to see,
we're going to drop some of
the world building stuff,
some of the background stuff.
We have a couple of guys,
Steve Fly and Dan Robinson,
who do music for us.
One of the threads in the
novel is about a rock
concert and competing record labels.
So we have a couple of
people making music for us
to kind of bring that world alive.
I just had another
Kickstarter that did
something similar to that.
There's an album that goes
along with the comic book.
It's really cool.
Yeah,
so we do indeed have an album that's
going to be associated with this.
So yeah,
we'll do weekly updates for the
next two months.
The book should,
if everything goes perfectly,
it'll come out in June.
If things go normally, July.
And if things go terribly, August.
And that's kind of my time frame.
And it's...
I guess this is how probably
most people do Kickstarter these days.
It's not like we don't need
the money to make it.
It's a pre-order.
The book's going to come out either way.
The threshold's going to be really,
really low.
It's really more of a pre-order.
I know a lot of artists like
Bruno over the weekend.
He's a hundred percent
funded through Kickstarter.
There are some, like in your case,
where you're like, yeah, absolutely.
The book's going to come out.
You can order it off the website,
depending on the Kickstarter.
But for some, like Bruno,
it's a hundred percent crowdfunded,
which is really cool.
I appreciate people who
appreciate the work that
goes into these books and
back Kickstarters that way.
Absolutely, yeah.
It's an avenue for people to
put their work out there.
And I will never...
I will support that for as
long as I humanly can.
It's got to be the best
thing that's ever happened to indie media,
in all honesty.
And when you click around,
it's kind of like that thing.
This has happened to me a
couple times where you see
a stand-up comedian and are like, oh,
I've never heard of this guy.
And it turns out he's
selling out stadium tours.
Like he's got his, this whole world.
Like I was clicking through,
you click through
Kickstarter sometimes and you're like, oh,
cool.
A comic book about hockey.
I wonder what that's doing.
Six million dollars.
And it's like,
I never even heard of this
book about hockey doing six
million dollars.
And it's just,
there's all these worlds out
there waiting to be discovered.
Lady death just did their own.
They left Kickstarter.
and form their own
Kickstarter through their
own internet service, their own web page.
Oh, nice.
Kickstarter, but it's just Lady Death.
That's beautiful.
That's even better.
That's more like the more
direct you can get, I think the better.
And I think that people are
going to keep figuring out
ways to get to cut out more
and more middlemen and just
get direct between creator and reader.
And I think it's a beautiful thing.
It's a beautiful thing.
The middleman who would be
taking some money off of
their plates and went a
hundred percent on their own, which I,
again, it's one of those where I'm like,
that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
I mean, it still goes to the stores, too.
I mean,
you can still buy Lady Death at
your local comic shops,
but you can literally get
it direct from them and
save yourself a couple of dollars.
You know,
I think I think comic people are
inherently become half
business people because
ever since I was little,
there's been the chicken
little like the industry is going to end.
So like ever since I was twelve years old,
I'm like thinking of ideas of like,
how can we save comics?
How can comics work?
And I think a lot of people,
we got pretty close there to lose.
Yeah.
for sure and that's always
so so there's a lot of like
very uh creative uh
innovations that come out
of the comic industry
because of that mindset so
uh it's it's an interesting
place to to operate because
there's there's always
something cooking it really
isn't I always tell people
there's something for
everybody even your
children yeah for sure and
that that's that's that was
uh scott mcleod you ever
read um what is it uh
reinventing comics by scott mcleod
I haven't, but I,
I know exactly what you're talking about.
I know the book you're talking about.
He basically predicted everything.
Like he wrote the book in the year,
and predicted essentially
just about where we are right now.
And like the explosion of genres, the,
like it,
not just being a delivery system
for one type of story,
but a delivery system for
every type of story.
And here's what I loved
about the uprising of Indy.
comics is we know it's no
longer about the
superheroes right villains
you look at um jg jones in
his new book dust to dust
phenomenal thriller based
out in oklahoma it's
written by jg jones it's
drawn by jg jones the
covers are done by jg jones
and there's another guy I
can't remember his name
who's also a really good
writer himself who helps
him write the book but it's a thriller
And then you have people like James Tinian,
who to me has redefined
what we know as a hero with
Erica Slaughter and
something that's killing
the children in the House of Slaughter.
So, I mean, it's what a time to be in it,
man.
yeah for sure and it is like
we're finally moving more
towards like where they're
at in um europe and in
japan where these are
things that everybody reads
everybody reads them
because everyone has
something that's up their
alley it's just pictures
and words it's just
pictures and words like it
can be anything it can be
anything and I'm so glad to
see it becoming more things
you you bring that up I had
a friend of mine from work he we
we have kids around the same
age and we were talking with it.
He's like, yeah,
my daughter's interested in manga.
I'm like, okay, let her read it.
He's like, well, what is it?
My dude is a comic book essentially.
Yeah.
Like he's like, but you know, she needs to,
I'm like, dude, just let her read.
Yeah.
Reading is reading.
That was my point.
I'm like, dude, reading is reading, man.
Your daughter wants to read something.
Yeah.
That's, that's amazing.
That's awesome.
She was like a kid.
you know of course you know
I made sure it wasn't
nothing too you know
violent or graphic you know
yeah yeah my daughter
literally has shelves upon
shelves upon shelves of
bookcases of manga dude
your daughter is literally
asking you permission to
read a book right why would
you say no and they're not
right yeah some art can be
expensive but for the most
part seven eight ninety
nine eight ninety nine yeah
it's not bad I look anyway
I got into trouble.
My kids got real into One Piece.
And there's a window of
those books where the print
runs are kind of low.
And so it was like, eight dollars,
eight dollars, seventeen dollars,
thirty three.
I was like, oh, no.
I spent a lot of money on One Piece.
But it was amazing.
It was like, thankfully,
my daughter never got into that one.
Yeah.
But it was great.
Yeah.
Um, cause you know, I,
I couldn't get them to read, uh,
the old Spider-Man comics
from the nineties because
that's not of their world.
They needed something that
was of their world that was
of the moment and that's
where the work was being done.
And, uh, it was awesome.
I, I, I tried my best.
I, I,
I couldn't read it myself because it
wasn't of my world.
You know what I mean?
Like, but it was,
it was just pictures and
words and it did the same
thing for them that those
old books did for me.
And, um,
Your kid is asking you to read.
Parents out there, if you listen to this,
if your child is asking for a book,
a magazine, a comic book,
they're asking you to read.
Let them read.
Yeah, for sure.
It's that simple.
They're literally asking you
permission to read something.
Let them read.
Yeah, it's a beautiful, magical thing.
Let them read.
Or whatever the word is for manga.
Yeah, yeah.
So I don't understand that.
Just parents,
let your kids read if that's
what they're asking for.
It's simple.
They're going to be smarter
at the end of the day.
Yeah, for sure.
It's better than just
passively consuming something.
It's an active process.
Your brain is processing information.
It's stitching it together
just like it does on its own.
Yeah, exactly.
So, all right, Bobby, let's wrap it up.
You got it.
April first,
everybody tells the
Illuminatus issue two will
be out on Kickstarter as
soon as it goes live.
And I see Bobby and his team post it.
I'll share it across my
social media platforms as well.
Bobby,
did you tell them where they could
find you?
Yeah,
so talesofilluminatis.com is the best
place to find the book.
Bobbycampbell.net is the
best place to find me.
And there's links to all the
social media things.
But again,
I'm trying to plant the seed of
the personal website.
So I think HTML, CSS,
and RSS are the wave of the future.
Hey, everything goes back around.
That's right.
But as always,
you can find me on Blue Sky
at USDN Chairman and across
all of the other social
media platforms as USDN Podcast.
That is all we have for you tonight.
April first, the Kickstarter goes live.
We hope you would come out
and support that and Bobby
and his team and what
they're doing out there.
But with that, ladies and gentlemen,
Bobby Campbell tells of the
Illuminatis are now USDN approved.
Everybody have a good night
and a safe weekend.