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In this episode, we are going to get to know how tom Angleberger became Tom Angleberger!
Tom made a name for himself with the ORIGAMI YODA books, which were first published in 2010. While Tom has been active creating his own characters, he’s also been entrusted with books on Rocket and Groot as well as Geronimo Stilton. But in the Krosoczka house? He will forever be iconic for his Inspector Flytrap books. Like everything Tom does, those books are laugh-out-loud funny and pure fun. Like Tom himself. One of my most prized possessions in my studio? An Origami Lunch Lady made by Mr. Origami Yoda himself.
Every hero has an origin story—even the graphic novelists who create them!
Jarrett: All right. So let me bring in my guest, Mr. Tom Angelberger. How are you, my friend?
Tom: Hey, JJK! How are you?
Jarrett: I'm well, man, it's been ages since we've had a chance to sit down and talk and
Tom: It has been a long time.
Jarrett: Yeah. And I'm looking forward to getting to know all about what it was like for you growing up and how like where, like how you got to Origami Yoda. I have a good sense of what happened after Origami Yoda, and because we had Cece Bell as a guest we have her side of the story of how you intersect with her origin story.
Tom: Oh, I see. Yes.
Jarrett: Yeah. So this is gonna be a nice companion episode. And yeah, so Tom, tell me about what it was like for you as a kid. What was your world like when you were a kid?
Tom: It is interesting that you're asking me this question now, because I've been doing like a deep dive through my memory banks lately.
And normally when people would ask me; "when did you start being an author or a cartoonist?" I would tell him it was the seventh grade. Cuz in seventh grade I wrote a comic strip. About snails. It was about Cowboys that rode snails instead of horses. Okay. That was a complete failure and disaster, but it was... I for a long time, I said that was the beginning. But recently I started thinking further back and I started going back to the fourth grade, which was the worst of many bad years for me in school, it was the absolute worst year. And you just gotta imagine, an undiagnosed autistic kid flopping around the classroom having outbursts, meltdowns. And that's bad enough for your fellow fourth graders, but for some reason, they had put us in a class that was also fifth graders and the fifth graders were like adults walking around in there, and I'm like a, I'm acting like a kindergartner. It was a bad year. It was a big mess, all around a huge mess. Many tears were shed many phone calls to my parents were made, but I ended up finding this one thing in the fourth grade. When I look back on it, it's such a string of disasters, but there's this one thing was that the English teacher had a, a bookshelf in the classroom and on the shelf was - and I don't know if you can pull this image up - a book along the lines of; "101 Outer Space Jokes."
Jarrett: Oh, that's great. I...
Tom: It might have been Space Jokes. It might have been Star Jaws. Remember the seventies, so Star Wars and Jaws were the big things. So Star Jaws was, it might have even been Spaced Out first. It was the seventies and a lot of people were spaced out. So these were spaced out jokes, but these were three.
These are three books. I do not know... Which of these books was the one, but one of them lit a fire under me to start drawing outer space monsters, almost all giant space amoebas. I couldn't stop drawing them. I just drew them and drew them and drew them. And one wasn't better than the next.
It was just one after another. And I didn't even remember that for the longest time, but that was. That's my origin story is somewhere from one of these books and Will Eisner is the guy that put a lot of these books together.
Jarrett: Wow!
Tom: Will Eisner...
Jarrett: As editor?
Tom: I owe it all to will Eisner and I didn't even, I didn't even know that until quite recently.
Jarrett: Okay. So let's, but let's take a moment to really appreciate the sort of historical context of this, if you will. So this was the mid 1970s?
Tom: Late 1970s. It was about 78, I think.
Jarrett: Okay. And...
Tom: 79, maybe, it's in that area.
Jarrett: And your teacher had comic books in the class. Floppy comic books.
Tom: Right.
Jarrett: That...
Tom: These are, were from a lot of these came through Scholastic and they were like the ones that were like the 35 cent check mark, that you would add that you'd get like Bridge to Terabithia, and then you'd ask your mother for an extra 35 cents. So you'd get Spaced Out Jokes, you know what I'm talking about?
Jarrett: Yeah, no, for sure. But I'm wondering, I know that, in the past, 15, 20 years as we've been putting out comics for - graphic novels - for kids and some librarians get flak still to this day by adults who are well meaning, but misinformed, who will say things like; "don't let my kid read another Garfield just a real book."
I'm now imagining what that teacher dealt with in 1978. Like you like, like that was a radical, brave thing for your teacher to have those books.
Tom: Honestly, I never thought about that before. That's very wild. I'd never thought about that, JJK.
Jarrett: And when I see those books, they have Tom Angelberger sensibility, like all over them.
That is there would be like, there would be no Origami Yoda, if you didn't have this Star Jaws spoof in 1978, that's just wild. So you had this teacher who. Put little, like little lifelines for you on the bookshelf. And were, did you have a lot of comics at home? Like what kind of what kind of what kind of media was at your house? Be it TV or books or literature did your parents have expectations of you on on, on like reading and stuff?
Tom: I was a reading... I was a, I was nonstop reading addict, so there were lots of books at home and I did have a few comic books.
I had a few fantastic fours and things like that lying around, but I didn't have anything like this. And I'm I do have to wonder, would my mother have purchased something like this or would she have been like; "no, that's too dumb." Because, my mother was anti the Batman TV show because it was too dumb.
And this is much dumber than the Batman TV show. This is really, and it's intentionally dumb. It's just the...
Jarrett: Right.
Tom: It's just the silliest dumbest stuff they could come up with. And they were obviously having a good time doing it. But, yeah, I don't know that my mother would've bought that. I, now that you mentioned it, I don't know why the teacher had it.
I'm starting to wonder if a kid just left it behind and, I don't, I can't explain any of this now that you mentioned it. It's a mystery.
Jarrett: Yeah. Wow. But thank goodness that those books were there because, we wouldn't it really sounds like that catapulted you into the Tom Angelberger.
We, we knew and we know, and after high school and by the way where did you grow up?
Tom: Oh, now I grew up in the turkey production capital of the world, the Shenandoah Valley.
Jarrett: Oh!
Tom: We've got turkeys growing everywhere. And every - the only places there aren't turkeys growing are places where they've spread the Turkey manure.
Those are the only two op-- actually take that back. There's a third option and that's where they...
Jarrett: Turkey gaveyard?
Tom: Slice.
Jarrett: Oh, okay.
Tom: Yeah.
Jarrett: The processing plant. I don't know why my mind went to a cemetery where they're like; "oh, he had a good life." No, like they're just, they're making nuggets. They're making nuggets.
Tom: Exactly. Exactly. So I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in turkey country and it was a great place to grow up though. I'm not knocking it. It smelled terrible, but it was beautiful place. It was very beautiful there. Very nice. And yeah, I went to this tiny little school in downtown Bridgewater, really tiny little town and little did I know about the horrors that awaited me inside that cute little school house.
Jarrett: Yeah. So you eventually, you survived that schoolhouse. Aside from those silly comics what do you think, what else was it that, that kept you going?
Tom: I think you've got a slide for this too. It's Pinkwater! Pinkwater is to me Pinkwater is like the the touchstone, all of, so many of my books, maybe all of my books are just Pinkwater ripoffs. He got me through middle school. He got me through high school and and then he helped me write books. He didn't know he was doing it, but he helped me figure out how to make booksmyself. I did send you a Pinkwater book, right?
Jarrett: Yeah. I was looking to see if I could find it.
Tom: Oh, there it is!
Jarrett: There you go.
Tom: Big Orange Splot. That's a classic. Absolute masterpiece. And one of the things I love about it, I don't know if you spent time with this book, but...
Jarrett: Yes.
Tom: You know how, when you're drawing with markers and they, the you draw and the markers overlap and you get that line and you're like; "oh, this is terrible. I've messed it all up. I gotta start over." Pinkwater, Pinkwater was like doing that on purpose. You could even see it there on the cover of the book. And man, there's like the guy who's; "hey kids, get your markers and start coloring. And we don't have time to worry about lines. We don't have time to worry about straight lines. We don't have time to worry about marker mishaps. We got a story to tell." That's what I love about Pinkwater. He was just like; "let's do this. Let's tell a great story."
Jarrett: And so Pinkwater really encouraged you to write and so from dipping into Pinkwater's work, did you like, as a teenager who's then gonna be catapulted into adulthood?
Was that, did you have that as; "I wanna be a writer. I wanna make stories"?
Tom: Oh yeah. That, that started That started really early. I just, I can't even imagine really a time when I wasn't doing that. Like I've told a lot of people like, being autistic, you have a lot of different dials and things and what there's a dial for like verbosity and my verbosity dial is so outta whack and I just talked and talked for my entire childhood and.
I finally discovered, if you can write and some of those words will come out on paper, you don't actually have to talk them all. They don't have to be all said out loud. And so far things have gone a lot better with the stuff on paper than the stuff that actually comes out of my mouth.
Jarrett: And did your family like support and encourage that passion you had for storytelling?
Tom: Yes, maybe just so that I would be quiet everywhere.
Jarrett: That's why you started writing cuz they're like; "we can't listen to this kid. I have an idea. Get a pen and paper and you can get a typewriter. You can start typing out the stories."
Tom: Yeah.
My, my mother did buy me a typewriter. Maybe that was part of it.
Jarrett: I think so, that might have been part of it, like; "what are I gonna do with this kid?"
Tom: I thought it was a punishment! I thought it was a punishment, but it was a...
Jarrett: And was there an expectation for you to continue with education beyond high school?
Tom: Oh yeah, I would definitely think so. Yeah. Definitely. And I wasn't a great high school student by any means, but there was definitely that idea that I should continue and find something to do. And I've always been amazed that my parents supported me being an art major because the artwork I was producing... I don't think that it shows all that much promise, frankly and 30 years later, it, I that's correct. There was no promise there. It's all terrible.
Jarrett: It's not terrible, it's you, it's every artist has their own style. I get what you're saying, right? Like you, maybe weren't recreating like DaVinci drawings and making things hyper realistic, but you were...
Tom: Well there's DaVinci right there. There's my DaVinci
Jarrett: Right behind you. Perfect. But you were...
Tom: That's by the way, that's drawn with only smiles.
Jarrett: No way!
Tom: Two eyeballs and like 47 smiles.
Jarrett: That is so cool. That is so cool.
Tom: Yeah. That was a year of my life. Figuring out how to do that.
Jarrett: And so they sent you to art school, I yeah, because that's a big...
Tom: Just move on. He moves on. He knows that's not going in the final edit. He just move on.
Anything that's, anything...
[Inaudible] bit more.
Jarrett: Anything that's visual doesn't work in the audio only part. So that that'll be for the video part. Okay. Because some parents are really terrified to go to art school.
And was there ever any pushback though like you're gonna continue your education?
Tom: There really wasn't I, and like I said, I don't understand it. They were more supportive of me maybe than they should have been, but they were very supportive. I, I tell 'em, I'm majoring in art and they were, they; "yeah, that sounds great."
Jarrett: Wow.
Tom: And I'm still surprised by that. And I'm really grateful they, but they always encouraged me. I was always making comics, comic books. They always encouraged me, even though looking back on 'em I can see that they weren't very good, but my parents constantly supported me on 'em,
Jarrett: But they must...
Tom: Kind of shocking.
Jarrett: They must have seen how happy it made you.
Tom: Maybe so. Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was enough.
Jarrett: Yeah, or...
Tom: But my poor mother was always like; "if you worked so hard on the drawing, why can't you make your handwriting better? Why can't you write neatly so people can read the caption on the comic?"
She was, she pleaded with me so many times and I've... I only now years later have come to realize man, she was right.
Jarrett: Totally.
Tom: I should have done a lot neater job on that handwriting. Maybe people would've gotten the jokes. If they had read that
That
Jarrett: would be a good litmus test on are they being polite or if you did a comic with really poor penmanship, that really didn't say anything so if they laughed, cuz they thought the joke was funny, you would know they were lying cuz there would be no joke there.
Tom: Yeah.
Jarrett: So you studied art and I'm assuming you kept writing in that time as well.
Tom: I did. And in fact, in college that was when I discovered as long as we're talking comics.
Jarrett: Yeah, talking everything.
Tom: That's when I discovered... Yeah. That's when I discovered Steve Rude. And I don't know if you're familiar with Steve Rude.
Jarrett: No.
Tom: Fantastic comic book, artist. He's so good. Just so, the tightest lines, the most inventive drawings. He's the best. So in college I discovered Steve Rude and immediately wanted to become the next Steve Rude. And, I didn't have, I had never put in the work on anatomy or life drawing.
I had never put in the work for learning, just comic basics. And here I was deciding I wanted to emulate a great one, and so that led me off in sort of some wrong directions. And it took me a long time to say, to realize; "oh, I'm never gonna be Steve Rude. Nobody else is Steve Rude. It's certainly not gonna be me either." It's taken me a long time to come back around and be like; 'hey, I can make comic books with my own drawings such as they are." And it's actually worked. I've now done... What number am I on now? My sixth graphic novel and it's amazingly fun. I still haven't become really great artist, but I'm still having fun with it.
And a lot of it was the fire was lit back there in college. When I just happened to run into those Steve Rude books. Of course, that was the same time that Frank Miller was putting out the Batman book and the Daredevil book. And Ronin. So there was a lot of great comics at the time, and I really wanted to be a part of that.
It just took me 30 years to figure out how to be part of it.
Jarrett: And so for the listeners, if you could just like quickly describe what Steve Rude's work looks like and how I'm trying to imagine a college age Tom Angelberger
Tom: So Steve Rud e total, all, completely doubled down on like Jack Kirby and he learned how to really emulate Jack Kirby. And then he branched out into illustrators,
Illustrators, like NC Wyeth, and Howard Pyle. And so just imagine like Jack Kirby, and superheroes, but drifting towards NC Wyeth. And Steve Rude became a fantastic oil painter and he would paint these gorgeous covers that were superhero action, but NC Wyeth or Howard Pyle kind of style, Andrew Lumis, that kind of stuff.
He's really worth looking up. He's still active. He's still amazing. I had no hope ever of catching up with him. He's just light years ahead.
Jarrett: But you bring up, but that's a great story. And I think an really important piece for the listeners to take away. I Cuz we, a big part of being an artist is we learn by copying, right?
We learn by emulating. But there are times where you think; " I will never be that." And you might feel really insecure about, about that fact, but it's not that you need to be that. You need to be this. Yourself. Like you, like your style is so singular and goofy and fun and accessible. It's exactly what kids need.
Like those like somewhere in this country, like every single school day, somewhere in this country and internationally, there is some fourth grader who's struggling. And floundering and they're coming across a Tom Angelberger book, the way you came across those silly Space Jaws books, like it's so cyclical.
And if you had said; "no, if I can't draw like Steve Rude, then what's the point?" That's, that would've been terrible.
Tom: Absolutely. And that's why I'm always all about having like instructions in my books. And instructional YouTube videos, and trying to show kids how easy it is to get started. And because I just I agree. I completely agree. They're the kids and they're not sure where to go next. And if they aim for perfection, That's the wrong... That's well, for every once in a while, there's a kid that does aim for perfection and reach it.
But for so many people, that's just a way to drive yourself crazy. And...
Jarrett: Yes.
Tom: Ruin your self esteem. I've tried to teach kids, man. It just, get it down on paper, make it happen. I don't want it perfect. I want it big and splashy and loud.
Jarrett: Yeah.
Tom: Like me.
Jarrett: You? I will say in like the 21 years that I've been in the book business without fail, people are their work.
There's like the best work is done by people who just throw themselves into it. Okay. So you now have a degree in art and you have these ambitions of writing and illustrating, making comics, getting published, but there's gotta be a lot that happened between those moments, right?
Tom: Oh yeah. I did a lot of self-publishing, spent a lot of time at the copy store, copying comics out and stapling 'em and taking 'em to a bookstore and being like; "just put this on the shelf. If it sells, you don't even have to give me the money." I just wanted it to get out there. I was just desperate to get the stuff out there.
Jarrett: Yeah.
Tom: And luckily one of my friends in the comic bookstore. And so I he was always super supportive of having my comics there. And a few of them got out there. A few of them got out there. It was mostly just the learning experience and it, was it was great though. It was, it's really fun.
That's a really fun thing where... It's all you and it's nobody else has to sign off on it. And you're just down there hitting, go on the copy machine and it's just, it's fun. It can be depressing when you realize not many people are gonna read what you've done or appreciate what you've done, but you can't let that stop you and you can't let that be the metric of "have I succeeded or not" be X number of people read it. You've gotta make it; "did I make something that I learned something? Am I headed somewhere with all of this?" And for a long time I was trying a million different things. I just tried so many different things.
Of course Origami Yoda was the thing that finally stuck, but I had a million other things that I tried, that came and went and some of 'em were good and some of 'em were terrible.
Jarrett: And is I, if I understand it correctly, I understand that you were a journalist for newspaper.
Tom: Oh, so that was the day job was of course when I first got out of I started at a lawnmower parts factory.
Jarrett: Oh, that is a great detail. That is such a cool detail.
Tom: A job at the, a part-time job at the newspaper. And I was juggling as the chicken guy on weekends. And so...
Jarrett: I know what that is, but I think you need to tell us a little bit more about juggling.
Tom: I was a professional juggler and. I made very little as far as jugglers go, but it was great money for somebody who's also making minimum wage at the lawnmower parts factory. Making 50 bucks on a Saturday by throwing stuff around, it was huge for me back then. So I was working seven days a week juggling on the weekends. Part-time lawnmower parts, and reporting on the weekdays and weeknights because the stupid school boards have to meet in the dead at night. Driving around Ohio in this car, in the snow with juggling stuff in the back and... It was a great, it was a great time. And the whole time Cece was in graduate school at Kent State and she was just showing so much promise and it was obvious she was gonna be a huge success. So it was okay for me just to be goofing around and trying 50 different things.
Jarrett: Yeah. Wow. You were at a lawnmower parts factory that, you know, and I, Cece mentioned that she also was helping design like pencil cases for N-Sync and I just love...
Tom: Oh, that comes a little later. Yeah. She was, she really cranked out some amazing work, if you would never think, you see the stuff and it looks fantastic. I bet there were a lot of happy N-Sync fans out there who were like; "wow, this picture of whatever his name is looks fantastic."
Jarrett: Oh, wow. Look you'll hear her episode, but she just spoke so lovingly and highly about how your support was integral to her getting her book career started. So now I'm I, I knew there was, you were a journalist for the newspaper, but now I'm thinking you took so many odd jobs to get food on the table. Juggling, lawnmower parts.
Tom: It was the crazy thing is it was great. The lawnmower parts job was one of the greatest jobs.
It was minimum wage, but we were on a line. There were four of us and I was next to this great, crazy old lady, named Judy, and Judy would just, we would crank these wall parts out and Judy was just having a big, old time laughing and carrying on. And I actually enjoyed it. It was fun. It's a lot of work, it's a long day when you're making, I think we, our goal was something like 1900 of these switches a day that we had to crank out.
It was a long day, but we had so much fun. It was crazy that was a good job, but it was.
Jarrett: Wow. So then tell me about, draw the line, connect the dots for us. Connect the dots for us then between the lawnmower job and like your first traditionally published book, not just a Xerox, but like a big publisher said; "Mr. Angelberger, we're giving you a contract and we're gonna print these copies."
Tom: Okay. So eventually the juggling and the newspaper stuff got more successful. I was able to quit the lawnmower parts. Eventually I got a full-time job at the newspaper. I wrote so many stories. The database ran up to a thousand.
If you had more than a thousand stories, it would just say a thousand stories. So I maxed that out. I was up over a thousand stories. I had done it all. And one of the stories I got sent out to do was the sewage treatment plant, and the sewage treatment plant's getting a big expansion. And I forget why I was complaining. I didn't wanna do the story. My editor's; " you gotta go down there. You gotta go down there and find out what's going on at the sewage treatment plant." I go down there. There's this guy gives me like a three hour tour of the sewage treatment plant. I'm going all through the place. This guy works there, he's used to it. I'm blown away by the smells, the sights, the textures. It's really in your face. You may have driven past a sewage treatment plant, but until you've been like on the catwalk over the poop fountain, you just have no idea what I'm talking about.
Jarrett: Wait, is that really called the poop fountain? Is that the official name for it?
Tom: I don't, I that I can't tell actually it was, I think it was called the aeration unit.
Jarrett: Okay. Okay.
Tom: Okay.
Jarrett: But poop fountain, calling it a poop fountain paints exactly the picture I think we need.
Tom: All right.
If we're really talking origin story, if you really wanna hear, this is my radioactive spider moment.
This is the moment I get bitten by the spider because the guys like; "yeah, we're shutting down this poop fountain. We're shutting down the aeration unit. We're gonna instead install something, a different, more modern aeration unit. That's more like a jacuzzi." Okay. So this is the moment. This is the moment that changes everything for me. I go back to the office and I write; "The Chocolate Waters will Dance no More" as the lead of my article. And my editor says, my editor just writes back; "are you kidding?" And I, so I changed it. I changed it to whatever it was. Some, the boring major improvements coming to the Christiansburg sewage treatment plant.
But in the meantime, I had shown it to everybody around the office and this one guy, Mike, thought it was funny and he actually, I think, printed it out and posted it up on his bulletin board. And so, quite a bit of time goes by, quite a bit of time goes by, but I always remembered; "man, one person thought I was funny. One person liked this." And I started, and I also had this idea for a kids' book. I was always, there's a lot of broken kids books along the way.
Jarrett: Yeah.
Tom: Lots of ideas along the way that are not even worth mentioning here, but I'm always like, me and Cece constantly like; "here's an idea for a kid's book! Here's an idea for a kid's book!" So I'm like; "here's an idea for a kid's book! What if the kids went down to the sewage treatment plant and then I could write the chocolate waters dance no more?" And so I wrote that book. It got published. It didn't sell a whole lot of copies at first
Jarrett: Because what was the full title for that first book again?
Tom: Boy, it got complicated. It ended up being called the Quick Pick Papers, but when Abrams reprinted it, we did end up calling it Poop Fountain, which didn't go. I'm not sure that really sold a lot more copies, but it was called Poop Fountain.
Jarrett: And I...
Tom: The story was the story of three kids going and experiencing what I had experienced, but having kid adventures along the way, I'm still really ha-- I still love that book.
I'm very fond of it.
Jarrett: I, I also love the thought of clearly there was a conversation amongst the main editors at the newspaper at the time. Who were they gonna send? To the sewage treatment plant, right? Like there, there must have been a discussion. And I imagine the moment they said to you, you were probably like; "this is the crappiest assignment I could get. Figuratively and literally." Right. Like who... And that crappy assignment changed your life.
Tom: Yes, it really did. It did.
Jarrett: Wow. Wow.
Tom: Man, the, it is funny looking back on it. I, there was some, I was always Mr. Oh yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. But for some reason I was like; "I don't, do we have to write this story? It's months down the road before they closed the poop fountain, do we have to write this?" And it was a big [inaudible] and there was a 10, there was a showdown between me and the editor where she was basically like; "go. It's 10 miles. It's just 10 miles down the road. Just go see it."
Jarrett: Wow. That's fantastic. So it was Abrams that picked up that first book, then?
Tom: Actually Dial and Abrams were both interested in it. I chose Dial and it didn't do very well. And then later when after Origami Yoda was at Abrams. My editor, Susan van Meter had always been a big supporter of Quick Pick, the Poop Fountain book from the beginning. And so she agreed to reprint it and then we were able to finish the, make it a whole trilogy.
Jarrett: Ah!
Tom: So the, and that continued with stuff that I had really experienced after poop fountain, there was Rat With a Human Face.
Jarrett: Yes.
Tom: And Rat With a Human Face, there was To Kick a Corpse. And those were all real, like local, legendary things in this area. And , I'm really happy that trilogy got completed finally, it was...
Jarrett: Oh, I'm glad that you were able to finish it too, Tom. And so I wonder, what was it like for you then to have that first book be what sounds like it was like a, a critical failure or financial failure, whatever you wanna call it, like an underperformer were you so fearful? That was it like, this was your first book?
It didn't do well. You're done. Get outta here, kid. You're done in this town.
Tom: Yeah, it could. It could, it was rough and it, but, and it would've been a lot rougher. But I had continued, I'm always telling people; "don't just write one book, keep on writing." So I had kept on writing and I had come up with Origami Yoda by then.
And I was, I knew Origami Yoda, there was, I just had a feeling from the beginning, Origami Yoda. This is a book that actually works. And so I remember I got the letter from Dial that they were remaindering Quick Pick, that it was headed for the recycling plant.
Jarrett: Yeah.
Tom: And I got that letter and I just remember thinking, man, this would've broken me, but it's not gonna break me because I've got a new horse in the game, or a new, I've got a new bantha in the game.
Jarrett: Yeah. And, but not a contract, but you had this book idea and you believed in it in enough, to then go out with. Is that it like...
Tom: Yeah, I don't think it was under contract. In fact, I, the editor that had published quick pick that first time didn't care for Origami. Yodon very much, I got a pretty much a rejection.
It was one of those rewrite, the whole book. And we'll take another look, rejections.
Jarrett: Yeah. And that is a classic story where editors always have the; " oh, that book was on, on my desk, but I didn't take it." So where, tell me a little bit about how Origami Yoda went from a seedling in your brain, to then a published book like obviously I know you're a big Star Wars fan.
Tom: Oh, of course I was a Star Wars fan all along. So the whole, the origin, Origami Yoda has its own origin story that involves the force at many levels. The force being at work, the interconnectedness of all things. I was on the internet, saw a picture of the Kawahata Yoda folded by Fumiaki Kawahata, the great origami master. His Yoda is incredible. I saw it. I wanted to make one. It was way too hard for me to make just way outta my league. I'm not very good at origami. I've been doing origami since even before I saw Star Wars, I've been doing origami since I'm a little kid, but I still never got good at it.
But I knew enough to try making my own Yoda, just enough to try to see if I could do it. I made a super simple one. It wasn't great, but it had this little opening at the bottom where you could put your thumb in. I put it on my finger. I realized it's a finger puppet. Cece comes home. I'm like; "blah, blah, blah!"
And then I'm like; "oh my gosh, this would be a great book." So then, to skip ahead, the book gets written. It gets sent to Lucasfilm for approval.
Jarrett: Yeah.
Tom: The person at Lucasfilm who has to approve it, shows it to her son's like 12, 13. He's; " yeah. All right. It's you should let him write it. You should let him do it." So I got to do it because this kid in California liked it. And so that, Susan, my editor calls me up and says, we made it. I just have this wow. Moment. It's like when Han not, I almost messed up my star wars, not Han Solo when Lando blows up the second Death Star and he is flying out.
He's; "yeah!" It was this moment. Like that. It was the greatest moment in, in my whole career. Just this moment where I got, I gotten this email. Yeah, we're gonna do it. Wow. And then it grew and grew from there.
Jarrett: And what year was the first Origami Yoda published?
Tom: 2010,
Jarrett: 2010. Okay. So I was Googling the cover of Origami Yoda to put up, with this episode.
And I came across an article that was from a grown adult who had Origami Yoda as a kid. because, the, our first readers are all adults now, which is a weird thought they're all in, in their twenties. And the article was about how in this person's opinion. And I fully agree with them, how, Origami Yoda saved star wars.
And I know you're not gonna take that praise. I know you're not gonna take that praise, but that book came out in a time when there wasn't a lot of Star Wars out. The prequels were still just in the rear view mirror and when the prequels were first released they weren't very well loved universally.
And so Origami Yoda was like this little glimmer of it was a new hope. And then, and obviously then, Disney bought star wars and there's like a bounty of so much media.
Tom: Whoever wrote that is my hero. And I appreciate that. I have a feeling it, it may not have been just me, but
Jarrett: The look, those books also brought in fans. People who were not kids who are not Star Wars fans, cuz those books are very approachable. You don't have to be a huge Star Wars fan to get into the Origami Yoda book. So it's like a gateway that gets you into those bigger stories, but what a wild trip for you to be able to play with that intellectual property that, that you came up on. And, or Origami Yoda was 2010. There was a bunch of sequels, one of my most favorite books of yours.
And I have such happy memories of reading these books with my kids or the Inspector Flytrap series.
Tom: Oh, thanks man.
Jarrett: Oh, so much.
Tom: Oh, thanks so much. I don't know if you know this. I don't know if you know this, but that series just now wrapped up this spring. We had the final book in that series. It is nine books.
Inspector Flytrap got three Didi Dodo got three, and then DJ Funkyfoot got three. And so we just now came out with the third of the DJ Funky books. DJ Funkyfoot books illustrated by Heather Fox. And it's been very sad for me to say goodbye to the Inspector Flytrap universe. Anything was possible in the Inspector Flytrap universe, nothing, nothing could not be done. Oh I had so much fun trying to think of stuff that would challenge the artists on that. It's just had a ball with that.
Jarrett: They're silly. They're fun. They're. Like literally laughed out loud, reading the book with my kids, both, both me and the kids. But before we go though, tell us a little bit about your newest stuff that you've been up.
Tom: Oh, wow. So yeah, this is the culmination of all of it. This is, and this is one of the reasons I've been delving back into my fourth grade me, this Two-Headed Chicken, that's my 101 Outer Space Jokes for today's generation. It's the dumbest stuff. It's just... I always use the word dumb with it. I'm sure my publisher probably doesn't like it, but it's dumb jokes. It's just for fun. It's just to have a good time. It's just for laughs. One of my favorite things in kids' books right now is the way Dav Pilkey will put the word "laffs" on the cover of one of his books, L-A-F-F-S that's like my mantra. Laffs man, we need some laffs.
And so I tried to write a book that would have just every goofy thing in it where. Just like the 101 Outer Space Jokes books. They were like; "well, the stuff that the kids are really enjoying these days are Star Wars, and Jaws, and astronauts. So I'll make a bunch of dumb jokes about 'em." The stuff kids are enjoying these days are like, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse, and Dr. Who, and Mad Max, and Star Wars, and I can't even think of, I can hardly remember all the other crazy businesses in there. It's all kinds of just nutty stuff. If I could think of it, it went in the book. If I could figure out how to draw it, it went in the book. This, it's all about jumping between parallel universes, which once again, meant anything was possible.
If I had it, had the idea, there was nothing stopping me from figuring out a way to stick it in the book. So yeah, this is my version of that 101 Outer Space Jokes, and I'm sending it out there to that fourth grader. That's having a crappy year.
Jarrett: Here's, if you're watching the video version of this, I just pulled up a photo of Tom, young Tom Angelberger on.
What's funny here though, is it's on a Christmas ornament, but also I have Tom in a circle in the video. So it's two to Tom Angelberger Christmas ornaments right there. How old are you in this picture?
Tom: That must have been third grade. That kid in that picture is like so happy and innocent and he doesn't realize he's about to walk down the hall from the third grade classroom to the fourth grade classroom into hell. He doesn't know it. Ignorance is bliss for that dumb kid.
Jarrett: Oh I'm glad that kid persevered after he walked down that hall because you are a gift and a joy to all of comics and children's books and publishing and our community.
And I'm so grateful for that time when we were both at the national book festival and we were, I was getting out of the cab and I saw you from a distance and I yelled your name. That's how we first met in person. Was me accosting you, screaming your name as I stumbled out of a cab. Cause I was so excited to see you.
Tom: That was awesome. That's when I felt like I had made it, that's, and I'm not even kidding. It was like; "oh my God, he actually knows who I am. I can't believe it."
Jarrett: Yeah, dude.
Tom: That was a huge moment. That was great.
Jarrett: Oh man. I'm grateful that you were able to take this time so we could connect and I could learn more about, all of these odd jobs and really it all weaves together.
Every experience that you've had has. Has weaved together, even when you had the crappies of crappy assignments, you, I would say there's some sort of really gross when life gives you lemons make lemonade, but I'm not sure I want to go there with that.
Tom: I'm sure I've been there. I've been there. I made all this jokes that were possible.
Jarrett: When life sends you to the poop fountain...
Tom: It's been weird talking about myself and not asking you for your origin story. Of course, I read a book about your origin story already. It was a hell of a book.
Jarrett: Thanks man. One great thing about having written really intense memoirs. When you start with a new therapist, you could like, why don't you just read the book and that'll save us like the first two months sessions. Save us a lot of time.
So thank you to Tom Angelberger. I appreciate you, man. I hope we get to see each other in real life before too long.
Tom: Yeah, we need to do some drawing together, man.
Jarrett: Let's do it. Let's do that. Love to Cece as well.
Tom: All right. Thanks a lot, JJK.
Jarrett: Be good, man.
Tom: Appreciate it.