The Psychology of Horror Comics: An Interview with Joe Hill about Locke & Key, Hill House Comics, and ghost stories

The Psychology of Horror Comics: An Interview with Joe Hill about Locke & Key, Hill House Comics, and ghosts - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 407

 
[00:00:00] Badr: In this episode of the short

[00:00:02] Joe Hill: box, one of Matthias's studies got a lot of international attention. Him and his coauthors were able to show that during the pandemic lockdown, horror fiction fans fared better emotionally than people who don't like horror fiction. When you ask yourself why, I think the answer is because horror fans have already lived it.

[00:00:25] Joe Hill: They've read The Stand, they read Andromeda Strain, they've seen Dawn of the Dead, you know, and so I think with all that in mind, it's not that surprising to find that horror fiction fans were able to look at the threat of COVID 19 and say, Yeah, been there, done that. I'm ready.

[00:00:48] Intro music plays

[00:01:14] Badr: Yo, short box nation. Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode four Oh seven. Thanks for joining us. If you're new, welcome to the show. This is the short box podcast. The comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about comic books and pop culture inspired by comics ever.

[00:01:32] Badr: My name is Badr and I've got my right hand, man. The Scotty Pippins, my Jordan, Cesar Cordero. Here in the studio with me

[00:01:38] Cesar: I'll take it. Just don't make me Tony Kukoc

[00:01:39] Badr: Wow, a little basketball reference at the top. Oh, you know what? This might be the most sports we've ever talked about in 407

[00:01:48] Cesar: episodes. It ends right there.

[00:01:50] Badr: All right, now normally I don't do shout outs, a lot of shout outs at least, during interview episodes, but this one, this one person deserves a shout out at the top. And I want to give a colossal shout out to the man responsible for the new intro music you just heard. He's a longtime friend of the show.

[00:02:04] Badr: He's a music maker himself. His name is Matthew Vigo, a. k. a. Deathstroke Sound. He makes music, he does audio engineering, he does sound production for films, and he's really talented, right? Who's Vigo? Yeah, it's Vigo, alright? He's given us something incredible to set the tone of the show going forward for this entire season.

[00:02:20] Badr: Check him out on Instagram and online. Links to his music and his work is in the show notes. Once again, big shoutouts to Matt Vigo for the new intro music. Appreciate it, brother. Now onto the show today, short box nation, we've got a guest that is making his short box debut today. And just in time for this

[00:02:39] Cesar: season, please don't do that.

[00:02:42] Cesar: Nope. Nope. You are going to herniate a disc. Please don't do that. Is this why we have the spooky green lighting? Like, ooh, spooky! Well, you chose the spooky

[00:02:49] Badr: green lighting, which I thought was a good touch. Um. We've got olive skin. But, you heard a little snippet in the intro, and if you're watching the video version of this episode on YouTube, you can probably tell that this is someone we are very excited to welcome to the show.

[00:03:03] Badr: I'm talking about the acclaimed horror author and accomplished comic writer, Joe Hill. He's on the podcast today. Yeah. See, I already know the answer to this, but entertainment, right? God, why? How much do you like Joe Hill? And do you remember your first conscious exposure to him? That sounds so

[00:03:18] Cesar: lewd, I don't know why.

[00:03:19] Cesar: Maybe I'm just thinking that. I, well, having said that, he's looking right at me. Haven't spoken, haven't spoken to him face to face. He's backstage. he's, uh, no, he's, he's, he's great, you know. But if I just answered like that, like Bruce Willis in the Fifth Element, like. Uh, uh, no. So I really like Joe's work. I think he's a fantastic artist and that word encompasses everything.

[00:03:45] Cesar: And first conscious exposure, it's weird because it would have probably, I had talked with him earlier about, uh, horns and horns was more or less my first exposure to his work. And, uh, also something that my, uh, wife and I bonded over and it, yeah, it helped kind of like. You know, we, we talked it out over our first sort of dates and that sort of thing.

[00:04:09] Cesar: So it was, it's kind of a, kind of a cool thing not to get all, let's get all mushy,

[00:04:13] Badr: but it's spooky season. All right. Like that's way too fine. Okay.

[00:04:16] Cesar: So, so, uh, I don't know. Uh, I picked up a hitchhiker on the side of the road and he had a hook for a hand and my wife and I met and that guy was like, Hey, do you like Joe Hill?

[00:04:25] Cesar: And I said, I guess I do, Mr. Don't kill us. And he's like, that's cool. And then he just left. So is that, is that good? Are you not entertained? Is that good? Perfect.

[00:04:35] Badr: Thank you. Alright.

[00:04:38] Cesar: That's exactly the story

[00:04:39] Badr: Alright. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, or could just use like a refresher on his long list of accolades, here it is.

[00:04:46] Badr: Joe Hale has been dubbed a number one New York Times bestseller so many times that at this point he might as well just change his birth certificate to include that as a middle name. I don't know if that's legal or not. But he's, he's got the accolades for it. It's legal. It's legal. He's the author of novels such as Heart Shaped Box, The Fireman in Full Throttle.

[00:05:01] Badr: Much of his work has been adapted into TV and film, like his second novel, Horns, which was translated into film in 2014 and stars Daniel Radcliffe. And the Hollywood connection doesn't stop there, because in 2021, his short story The Black Phone was also adapted into a movie and stars Ethan Hawke. Good flick.

[00:05:16] Badr: And if long form and short form prose wasn't enough of a challenge and accomplishment already, he moved into the realm of comic books in 2007 and co created the long running comic book series Lock and Key with artistic maestro Gabriel Rodriguez, which netted him his first Eisner Award for Best Writer in 2011.

[00:05:34] Badr: Since then, he's embraced, he's been embraced so well by the comic community that in 2019, DC Comics just gave him his own imprint, alright? They, they, they was like, this is a great idea, let's give him his own imprint. Is that how it went? I'm pretty sure, we'll, we'll ask him to clarify that. But it's called Hill House Comics, where he curates his own cutting edge line of horror comics with some of the biggest names in horror storytelling.

[00:05:55] Badr: And we're going to talk to Joe about all of this. So without further ado, short box nation, let's welcome for the first time ever, Joe Hill to the show. Joe, welcome

[00:06:06] to

[00:06:06] Joe Hill: the podcast, guys. Thanks so much for having me on. It's our pleasure, man.

[00:06:10] Badr: Yeah. Thank you for, uh, thank you for

[00:06:12] Joe Hill: agreeing to hop on. I like the idea that I have a street team, a whole street team of dudes with, like, hooks for hands.

[00:06:19] Joe Hill: We're just out there roaming the highways of America, trying to push my fiction on anyone who will pick them up. That is the way to

[00:06:26] Badr: sell books. Joe, they

[00:06:27] Cesar: got stickers like black flag logos, buddy, all over the place.

[00:06:31] Badr: I

[00:06:31] Joe Hill: don't have that, but I need that. Joe, you are, uh, you're

[00:06:35] Badr: situated in New England,

[00:06:36] Joe Hill: right?

[00:06:38] Joe Hill: Yeah, I live in the seacoast area of New Hampshire. I'm a New England guy. I've been up here, uh, pretty much my whole life. Okay. Um,

[00:06:45] Badr: yeah. For someone that hasn't, has never been to New Hampshire or, or New England, uh, could you describe it in, in just a few words? Like, what, what is New Hampshire and New England like?

[00:06:54] Badr: Um,

[00:06:56] Joe Hill: you know, uh, uh, it's a lot, it's very densely forested. Pine trees, mountains, old, rotting, covered bridges. Um, you know, uh, families like the crew from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, um, you know, um, yeah, no, it's, uh, it's actually, it's, it's a terrific part of the country, um, you know, I'm. Raising I have 18 month old twins.

[00:07:23] Joe Hill: I'm raising them here. And, um, you know, and it's, it's the part of it, the part of New Hampshire. I live in. If you throw a stick, it'll hit one writer and bounce off and get another, you know, um, Dan Brown, uh, Dan Brown lives around. Oh, wow. Okay. She code. Um, Jody McCall lives around here. Um, John Irving moved out just before I moved in probably because he heard I was coming.

[00:07:47] Um,

[00:07:48] Joe Hill: but, um, The guy who wrote a separate piece, whose name I'm blanking on, Knowles is his last name. So it's just, it's a very, it's a very, you know, um, literary part of the world. A lot of great independent bookstores. A lot of, you know, terrific, uh, independent comic stores, jet Pack comics up in Rochester is an unbelievable comic book superstore.

[00:08:10] Joe Hill: Um, a lot of comic book writers and artists and, um, so it's a, I, you know, I feel really lucky to be here. That's cool, man.

[00:08:17] Badr: Do you find, do you have time? Uh, I, I'm, I'm kind of guessing the answer is no. Considering you have an 18 month, year old i's say, Hey man, my 18

[00:08:23] Cesar: month old's at home,

[00:08:24] Badr: buddy. Okay, , do you have time to, uh, to, to go to the, the comic shop?

[00:08:28] Badr: When's the last time you've been to a shop? Oh,

[00:08:31] Joe Hill: boy. Well, we're getting right to the difficult questions, aren't we? Uh, when was the last time I walked into a comic shop? Boy, oh, boy. Probably the last time I walked into a comic shop was Forbidden Planet in London in the summer and I swept through and I bought a bunch of graphic novels while I was there and a couple board games.

[00:08:53] Joe Hill: Uh, um, Botter, you're wearing a Forbidden Planet shirt, but it's

[00:08:57] right

[00:08:57] Joe Hill: now, but it's Forbidden Planet New York, which used to be part of the same chain, but they, because I know. I've been going to Forbidden Planet since I was a kid, um, so I happen to randomly know that they split apart and now they're two separate organizations, so, um, But yeah, uh, you know, for, um, you know, for comic book geeks, Forbidden Planet London is, like, the center of the world.

[00:09:22] Joe Hill: Um, they've got everything, uh, and, you know, great staff, and, you know, amazing figures, and t shirts, and about a million comic books, and, um, I could stay there all day. Actually, it's actually one of these places where it's hard to shop, because you get overwhelmed by choice. There's too much to get, so you almost don't know how to get anything.

[00:09:41] Joe Hill: You know,

[00:09:41] Badr: I had the same feeling, um, I went to Mile High Comics for the first time in Denver, uh, a month

[00:09:46] Joe Hill: or two ago. And

[00:09:48] Badr: same thing. I didn't know what to buy. I was like, this is kind of more like a museum. I don't want to touch anything. I just want to like soak it in and take it in. Do you recall like what, what trades you had bought?

[00:09:57] Badr: What was like the last couple of comics

[00:09:58] Joe Hill: you bought? Um, I picked up, uh, um, I want to say I picked up, uh, uh, Scott Snyder, uh, horror run, uh, because I just read it, but actually I think it was night of the ghoul, but actually I think that was a comiXology original, so I don't think I bought that one as a graphic.

[00:10:18] Joe Hill: Um, It was a really great post apocalyptic graphic novel that I remember picking up, uh, Kali. Um, with just amazing, I think the artist is Robert Samlin, or Samlin. Extraordinary art, just absolutely mind blowing. Um, I'd probably pick up the, uh, Zoe Thorogood. Um, uh, Yeah, I haven't I'm embarrassed to say I haven't read it yet, but I did read her brilliant adaptation of uh, Rain, which is based on one of my stories, which she did with david bohr.

[00:10:52] Joe Hill: Nice She's I mean she she went out to san diego. She went out to san diego this uh this summer as like, uh Nominated for something like six or seven Eisner awards. Yeah. She was nominated for

[00:11:06] Badr: five and I think she won best promising new comic artist or something

[00:11:12] Joe Hill: of that regard. Yeah. She's super young though.

[00:11:15] Joe Hill: And I think people can expect to see her, you know, she's going to have to clear some space on her shelf because you know, over the next few years, she's going to collect a lot of Eisner's.

[00:11:23] Cesar: I love this conversation because it sounds to any outsider like we're sportscasters but for the nerdiest stuff ever.

[00:11:30] Cesar: Yeah, right. You know, she's got a big future ahead of her. Two points on the board right

[00:11:35] Badr: now. You know, Chuck, I really see a future for

[00:11:37] Cesar: her. You know, two Eisners ago we were thinking the same thing and I feel like ten Eisners later we'll still be thinking she's outstanding. Brought her back to you.

[00:11:46] Badr: Yeah.

[00:11:46] Badr: That's good. I love it. Joe, I like to usually kick off these interviews by figuring out, like, your origin story when it comes to comics, and I asked this during our lit chat, but for the listeners that, you know, don't live in Jackson or weren't there, what was your first conscious exposure to comic books?

[00:12:01] Badr: Like, do you remember that comic that made you a fan of the medium?

[00:12:04] Joe Hill: Yes, I remember all of it. Um, so, so the first book that I ever read that was like, um, you know, not like, uh, you know, uh, Dick and Jane book, you know, was, um, bring on the bad guys, which was a graphic trade collecting the best origin stories of the villains, you know, that Stan Lee had come up with with his collaborators, Dick Doe and Kirby and all the rest of them.

[00:12:30] Joe Hill: And, um, you know, to this day, yeah, Stan Lee. Uh, Bring on the Bad Guys is still one of my all time favorite graphic novels. I mean, I just, you know, I've read the covers off that. I've had two or three copies and just read the covers right off them.

[00:12:42] Cesar: It's funny, I was going to bring that up, uh, because I'd seen in an interview in the past that you had mentioned that book, and I was like, Bonner and I were just talking about these books, like, because it's like you had Origins.

[00:12:53] Joe Hill: Yeah, yeah, you had Stanley and bring on the bad

[00:12:56] guy

[00:12:56] Cesar: Yeah, like you had like Stan Lee in your bedroom with you like hey true believer You want to know about Dread Dwarf Mamu will turn the page and you're like, oh, yeah, I do want to know Yeah, what's up with this dude? He's freaking guy and it's like Those covers are beautiful, too.

[00:13:11] Cesar: They're so good, man. The painted covers, yeah. So I wanted to ask, because this dovetails right into it, are there, do you still keep an eye out for stuff like that, or have you already bought these things five times over in your

[00:13:22] Joe Hill: life? Well, so my, my brother, my brother and I are both, you know, um, Comic books was something we shared, you know, our comic collection was something, you know,

[00:13:32] that

[00:13:32] Joe Hill: we both tended and, you know, um, um, you know, had lots of that was the thing that we talked about the most.

[00:13:40] Joe Hill: That's when we were kids. Um, well, it was good. Then it's not so good now because, you know, because the thing is, is we have 15 long boxes of comics that are sitting in storage and we can't agree We can't divide the collection because we can't agree who bought what. Oh wow. And so neither of us can have it.

[00:13:59] Joe Hill: So the collection now exists out of reach to both of us. That's funny. Because once he starts making moves, like I'm going to help myself to this, then I'm like, that's fine. I'm going to take beans and it gets ugly real fast. This is like the Hatfield McCoys over here. Yeah.

[00:14:16] Badr: I'm glad to see it's a universal problem, by the way.

[00:14:18] Badr: Oh yeah. For siblings. I'm glad to hear there's a universal problem.

[00:14:21] Joe Hill: Yeah, my message to little kids is love your siblings, but don't share your comic book collection with them, because later it's going to be grief. It's going to be, it's going to be a source of constant tension. Don't

[00:14:31] Cesar: do it. I think we got the soundbite to promote this episode.

[00:14:35] Joe Hill: Yeah. Um, the other thing, the other, uh, you know, uh, Sort of early experience with comics was do you remember the comics that came with little floppy vinyl records in them? Yes,

[00:14:48] Badr: they were put out by power records. I've got a few of them like spider man

[00:14:51] Joe Hill: So there was there was one there was a spider man There was a spider man record and comic that you so you you'd listen to the record you put the pages the comic and I remember He fights Draco the dragon And I remember, I remember, you know, um, that was like crap your pants scary to me when I was about, you know, when I was, when I was really young.

[00:15:14] Joe Hill: Nineteen. No, six. When I was like six, you know, I'd listen to like, there was the cultists chanting, Draco, Draco. Yeah, it's unsettling. The dragon sort of materialized out of the stars, and Spider Man's fighting him, and he's like, no one likes a bragging dragon! And uh, I mean, I just about remember the whole record, you know.

[00:15:34] Joe Hill: Um. Recently, Chris Ryle, who, um, is, you know, one of the great guys in the comic business, he's, um, you know, for a long time was sort of the creative editor in chief at, uh, IDW Comics, um, he now, he's got his own imprint at Image, um, he Yep, that's right. And Chris was actually, uh, Chris was actually the best man at my wedding.

[00:15:58] Joe Hill: Um, and, uh, I think for my last birthday, Chris tracked down all those records, the Hulk, Spider Man, you know, from the very late 70s and sent me a whole bunch of them. Um, so I sort of, somewhere over on the vinyl shelf, I think I've got them. That's a good friend right there. Yeah, it sure is. Damn. I wish I had one of

[00:16:16] Badr: those.

[00:16:17] Badr: Um, so cool

[00:16:18] Cesar: story,

[00:16:18] Joe Hill: dude. Chris was the editor on every issue of lock and key. And, um, of course, Gabriel Rodriguez has been the artist on everyone. Chris was my best man at my wedding and Gabe designed my wedding ring. Wow. Yeah, my wife's wedding ring, too. How did that happen? I asked. I asked.

[00:16:40] Joe Hill: You know, because the thing is, so, for those who have never read it, Lock and Key is a long running comic. I think we're up to almost 50 issues now. Um, which actually isn't that long. But it's been spread over. Almost 20 years now. Um, so we just had our 15th anniversary. Um, so, uh, Lock and Key is, uh, set in the town of Lovecraft, Massachusetts.

[00:17:01] Joe Hill: And it's about a house, uh, that's two centuries old, Key House. Um, and Key House is filled with, um, impossible doors and magic keys. Every key opens a different door and activates a different supernatural power. Um, uh. In the way of these kinds of stories, there's one key that should never be used that, of course, is, um, there's a villain named Dodge who wants to collect all the keys and wants to have the power for herself.

[00:17:27] Joe Hill: Um, and, um, uh, Gabe designed every intricate key and lock that appears in the comic. And many of those keys have since been reproduced as sort of collectibles, um, by a Main collectible company called skeleton crew. Um, and, uh, I knew after seeing dozens of Gabe's. Ornate beautifully designed and engineered keys that he would be the guy, you know, to do a really beautiful wedding ring and he did.

[00:17:56] Joe Hill: Goodness. That is so beautiful.

[00:17:58] Badr: That's really cool. Talk about some friendship, Joey, you've gone on to. Um, I, I think you described, I'm, I'm trying to recall like, uh, what phrase you used when, when we chatted for the Lit Chat, but I think you described working in comics as the closest thing to being in a band like the Rolling Stones and, and I, yeah.

[00:18:16] Badr: And I was curious, like, do you prefer that team aspect of working in comics or, or do you like, like that, you know, solo writer, uh, when it comes to like novel writing novels and such?

[00:18:26] Joe Hill: No, I like the team thing. I mean, I have a, I have a friend, um, Josh Friedman who wrote, uh, you know, he did, he was the showrunner on Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chronicles and, and, uh, he's a terrific screenwriter.

[00:18:40] Joe Hill: He's, he did a lot. I think he, I think he co wrote the latest Avatar movie and, you know, Josh is a great guy, but I remember him saying that screenwriters. Are writers who hate being alone even more than they hate writing. Um, and I always love that quote and I think there's a little bit of that in people who love writing and comics, you know, um, writing is a very lonely business writing novels and short stories.

[00:19:06] Joe Hill: You know, you spend a lot of time alone in an office. With the door shut, just listening to the voices in your head, um, and, uh, you know, it's amazing you get paid for that instead of medicated and, you know, put in a, you know, you've spent so much time conversing with imaginary people and actually be rewarded for it.

[00:19:25] Joe Hill: Um, for me working in comics, you know, I have, I have sometimes said it's. You know, I can't play an instrument to save my life, but when I work in comics, I can almost feel like what it might be like to be in a successful touring outfit to be in the Rolling Stones, you know, um, you know, to be in my chemical romance or something, because I write the scripts and when I write the scripts, I'm thinking to myself, what do I really want to see Gabe draw?

[00:19:52] Joe Hill: You know, what would be a fun, you know, what's a storyline that will really. to draw something that's going to blow my mind. And, you know, so I write the script thinking about what Gabe can do with it. And then Gabe turns around and starts drawing pages, which are... Even better than whatever my wildest dreams were even, you know, on a whole nother level than whatever I was imagining.

[00:20:12] Joe Hill: Um, and then Jay photos brings in the colors and I, you know, I've said. Before that, I think that J in some ways is the most ignored part of a really important team because he's not really just coloring the page. He's actually like a lighter on a film set lighting the scene. You know, there's a real sense of the way he's bringing.

[00:20:34] Joe Hill: He's not. He's not coloring the page. He's lighting the page and he does things with sunlight. Um, you know, there's a, I remember in the second issue of Lock and Key, he did a thing with the haze of sunlight coming through a barred window. And even though you couldn't see out the window, you could feel that it was early fall in New England from the quality of that light, you know, and so, so we all, we all, you know, everyone in the team does something that excites everyone else and then we start playing off each other and building up, you know, you have this experience of the story getting built up to something, um, you know, that was more exciting than whatever you thought it could be when you were going in.

[00:21:16] Joe Hill: And that's to me, that's that's that must be what it's like to play live in front of an audience or to go into a studio and record a banquet or something because you're feeding off each other's energy and creativity and bringing out the best in each other. And and it's so much not like work. That you just want to, you could do it all day.

[00:21:37] Joe Hill: I remember, I remember feeling like, especially in the early issues of Lock and Key, you know, almost resenting ordinary life when it began to leak in, you know, when I began to be called out to do other stuff, because I just wanted to write the comic. I could have written the comic all day long. Yeah,

[00:21:53] Cesar: now all I'm imagining is you with like dyed black hair and eyeliner just typing away

[00:21:57] Joe Hill: like when I was a young man.

[00:22:02] Joe Hill: I've always tried to keep, I'm, I'm, I'm super goth, but I've always tried to keep it inside. It's kind of the inner, it's kind of my inner goth. You're doing a great job. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I'm wearing the flannel shirt right now, but in my mind, you know, I'm actually, you know, I don't know, uh, you know, wearing like an Edgar Allan Poe, an Edgar Allan, you know, uh, I can't remember what the name of the frilly tie is, but like that tie

[00:22:26] Badr: and stuff.

[00:22:27] Badr: He's got like the

[00:22:27] Cesar: Joy Division, uh, tattoo

[00:22:34] Joe Hill: on his chest, like, that Edgar Allan Poe is really... Is really the, was, he was one of the earliest popular horror writers and is also probably, probably the last horror writer to make an important fashion statement, you know, because he just looked the part. He just looked good. I mean,

[00:22:51] Badr: he said the template.

[00:22:52] Cesar: Look, if you, if you've been to Baltimore, I mean, he was, he was in a rough neighborhood.

[00:22:57] Joe Hill: You know about the guy, you know about the guy who's turned up for like over a hundred years now in the cape and the mask to leave roses on Poe's grave. What? On the anniversary of Poe's death. So for over a century. On the night of Edgar Allen Poe's death, a man in a mask, a cape, and a, you know, a sort of dramatic black hat swoops in from the dark, leaves roses on his grave, and then swoops away.

[00:23:25] Joe Hill: And obviously it's been going on for a century, so obviously it's not the same guy. The, the story is that it was one guy for nearly 50 years, and then it was his son, and that since then there's been a third guy who has stepped in. And that there's about 12 people who know who it is, who have enabled both the entrances and the escapes.

[00:23:51] Joe Hill: Because TV crews would love to get the guy's face, and they've never succeeded. And I think that the cemetery and the people who run the cemetery have also done some stuff to help protect, you know, his secret identity. But that guy is like, that guy is like the closest thing we have in the world to a superhero.

[00:24:07] Joe Hill: A mass crusader who honors The life and death of Edgar

[00:24:10] Cesar: Allan Poe. He's the ghost who walks, he's the phantom. If it's passed down generationally, it's basically Lee Fawkes the phantom.

[00:24:17] Joe Hill: Isn't it wild that it's more than one guy? That it was one guy and then he passed it on to someone else and no one has ever identified him?

[00:24:25] Badr: Imagine that training manual. Alright, so there's... So

[00:24:29] Joe Hill: here's escape route

[00:24:30] Badr: A. You want to usually take escape route B on Tuesdays. It's your first

[00:24:33] Joe Hill: day at work.

[00:24:36] Cesar: You're like, look, man. I've never done this before. You'll be fine, kid. Listen, uh, take your smoke break at around 9. 30, but don't,

[00:24:44] Joe Hill: don't push it. Every third year, we use the sewer.

[00:24:47] Joe Hill: Every third year, we use the sewer escape. That's great. Hope you

[00:24:50] Badr: brought your galoshes, kid. I can already tell the, the, the rabbit holes and tangents were going down in this episode. Yeah, we're having fun. All right, Joe, back to, uh, you know, like origins and, and, and, you know, just starting out. I was able to find, I think what might be your first comic credit.

[00:25:06] Badr: Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it was 2005 issue of Spider Man Unlimited, issue eight with Joshua Ortega on art duties. Do you remember that at all?

[00:25:16] Joe Hill: The artist Joshua Ortega wrote the backup feature. I wrote the first story. Josh's story is actually, his backup feature is actually quite a bit better than mine.

[00:25:24] Joe Hill: Um, the, um, the, uh, artist was Seth Fisher. Okay. Oh, Seth Fisher. Yeah, so there's quite a bit of story here and I'll try to sort of pack it into, uh, you know, the Reader's Digest version. Um, at the time I got the gig to write... Spider Man Unlimited, I was a failed novelist. I had written four novels that I couldn't sell to save my life.

[00:25:47] Joe Hill: Um, you know, I, I spent three years writing one, this big epic fantasy novel that was sort of like a George R. R. Martin thing. Um, that book was turned down by every publisher in New York City. Every publisher in London. And then for a final kick in the crotch, it was turned down by some publishers in Canada, um, which I always say is like, no matter how low you gone, it's always further to fall, you know?

[00:26:12] Joe Hill: Um, and I, I had actually. Uh, mostly given up on the idea that I was, you know, that I had a novel in me. I thought, you know, I've spent years at this and I've taken my best swing. Um, I couldn't sell a book and, you know, um, maybe I'm not a novelist. Maybe, maybe I can't do it. Um, and that's okay. A lot of people aren't novelists, you know?

[00:26:32] Joe Hill: And, and, um, what I, what I had done is I had started to write short stories. And some of the short stories were pretty good. Um, some of the short stories won awards. Um, one of them got in a best of collection, you know, best of the year. Um, and it was in a best, it was a ghost story called 20th Century Ghost.

[00:26:53] Joe Hill: Um, that was in a year's best horror. And at the time that was, this was also, also pre modern internet. There wasn't internet, there was like AOL and stuff. But it was like, you know, there was no Google. Um, or anything, but I bought a lot of magazines, you know, like writer's digest and stuff, looking for opportunities and, um, somewhere, I don't know where I came across the information.

[00:27:20] Joe Hill: Marvel comics had two secret tryout titles. One was X Men unlimited and one was Spider Man unlimited. And they were bringing in new writers, poets, short story writers, playwrights to see what they could do in the comic book form. And I wanted that gig. I wanted that gig so bad. And so, there was a woman, um, named Teresa Fokereil, um, who was sort of their talent scout, and I sent her a copy of 20th Century Ghost in the best of collection, and wrote a letter and said I'd love to take a swing, um, and she gave me a shot at Spider Man.

[00:27:57] Joe Hill: The second or third draft of my script wasn't bad. It was okay, but I, I choked because I was, I was so excited. It was such a big opportunity after, after having written those failed novels to finally get a shot at writing Spider Man, who is my favorite superhero and who I'd loved since I listened to the Draco the Dragon record at like six, you know, it was everything to me and, um, Yeah.

[00:28:19] Joe Hill: And, um, with every editorial pass, my story became more generic and less fun until it finally became this almost completely forgettable 12 page Spider Man story that was saved that did turn out really well, but not because of me, it turned out really well because the artist assigned to the story was Seth Fisher, um, uh, a young, um, impossibly skillful talent.

[00:28:47] Joe Hill: Um, you know, and Seth drew the hell out of it and made all my unfunny jokes really funny, and he made every sequence work, and it became this incredibly fun thing to read. We also had an iconic cover, which has since been used again and again and again to sell Spider Man. And I'm embarrassed to admit, I can't remember who did the cover, but of all the Spider Man Unlimited covers, we got the one that was...

[00:29:14] Joe Hill: Absolutely iconic. So, you look at it and you're gonna say something about the cover. Yes, because

[00:29:19] Badr: I am such a Capcom nerd. It is, uh, the cover is, uh, is by a famous Capcom artist by the name of, uh, Shinkiro. Who did a lot of, like, Street Fighter and just a lot of Capcom artwork. It is, by far, one of my favorite Spider Man covers ever.

[00:29:32] Badr: That's your boy. I'm a big fan of any time, like, manga and, you know, like, video game artists do their take on, um, you know, like, classic American superheroes. So, this cover, like, to your point. Listeners, do yourself a favor. If you type in Spider Man limited number 8, you're going to take a look at it and you're going to be like, Oh my god, I've seen that on XYZ things.

[00:29:50] Joe Hill: Yes, so many times. It's been reused so many times. And you know, and that was on our comic and, um, uh, Seth, Seth inspired me. He, he, you know, he started using connections to get me more gigs. He's an unbelievable guy. Um, we were working on another comic together at the time of his death. Um, he, he died in Japan, he fell off a building at an incredibly young age, uh, leaving behind a, uh, his wife and infant son.

[00:30:19] Joe Hill: Um, and it was just an absolute, you know, absolute stomach punch. Um, you know, and, um, the world really lost comics, really lost a one of a kind talent and a remarkable guy.

[00:30:34] Cesar: Yeah, his work is freaking fantastic. Uh, he did a, uh, in my opinion, he draws the best. Mr. Freeze outside of Bruce Tim.

[00:30:44] Joe Hill: Yeah, he's fantastic.

[00:30:45] Joe Hill: He did a fantastic four series. It was great. He did a terrific Batman series. Wonderful Batman series. He

[00:30:51] Cesar: kind of reminds me of, uh, a little bit of Mobius. You know, his, his line work. Very like Mobius. Oh my gosh. And that's high praise. Anybody who's listened to the show knows we, we really dig. Jean Gerard,

[00:31:04] Joe Hill: you know.

[00:31:05] Joe Hill: Yeah, and so does, uh, and so does Gabriel Rodriguez, just randomly. It's interesting because that's, but I probably a lot, you know, now that I think about it, I think he's, you know, Mobius is kind of the artist that a lot of comic book artists, you know, would wish that they were, you know, to look up to as a source of inspiration and, um.

[00:31:25] Joe Hill: But anyway, so Spider Man, right, so that was, that's, that's where I broke in. And I was a comic book writer before I was a novelist. I was, you know, I did, it turned out eventually I did have a few novels in me. I, you know, that's a whole other story, um, but by the time my first novel was finally published in 2007, you know, I was already well at work on Lock and Key and I had done two other comics, even though they hadn't come out yet.

[00:31:47] Joe Hill: And, um, you know, and, For years and years, I did think of myself as a comic book writer who writes novels, not a novelist who writes comic books. That's

[00:31:57] Badr: inspiring, dude. And really quick, I want to take a, because I've got a follow up question comic book wise, but I want to take a quick detour because you brought up your first novel, Being Heart Shaped Box, which is one that I am...

[00:32:08] Badr: Currently a hundred and I think twenty pages in currently for the first time reading it and it was a book that my man Cesar here Recommended, you know when I was telling him about hey, Joe, he was gonna be here in town the lit chat What should I read? You know, what would I like and he was like, dude, you would love heart shaped box And I do, I, I am like, I'm actually thinking about like reading it tonight.

[00:32:28] Badr: You know, I'm like looking forward to reading it. It got me thinking, this is a weird question, so, so, so stick with me here. It got me thinking, for anyone that hasn't read this book, the, the very high level gist of it is a retired rock star ends up buying a haunted suit, uh, and it causes havoc on his life.

[00:32:46] Badr: It got me thinking about, like, the haunted shit that I've come across, and I firmly believe Cesar will know this. I've got a fish tank that I firmly believe is fucking haunted. I've had it for years. I don't know why I throw it out. Every fish that lives in it has died. Dude, seriously. I don't know. There's something haunted about this fucking fish tank, and it's taken many, many a goldfish that I've, you know, grown, uh, grown fond of.

[00:33:07] Badr: Yeah. When you think about, like, your interactions with, like, the supernatural or macabre, what's been, like, the closest encounter you've had with that? Do you have, like, a story like that? Yeah,

[00:33:16] Joe Hill: I do. Oh, wow. Um, but first, first, do you guys both believe in ghosts? Ooh.

[00:33:23] Badr: I... I don't know. Same.

[00:33:26] Cesar: I'm, I'm of, uh, I, I believe Agnostic on the subject.

[00:33:29] Cesar: I believe whatever Richard Matheson tells me and what dreams may come.

[00:33:33] Joe Hill: So you're doubtful about ghosts?

[00:33:34] Cesar: Skeptical, I would say, but I'm not, I'm not

[00:33:37] Joe Hill: against So you'd be completely at ease if you had to spend a night sleeping, nailed into a coffin, in a house where people had been murdered. You'd be fine with that because there's no such thing as ghosts.

[00:33:46] Joe Hill: Uh, it,

[00:33:46] Badr: well, so,

[00:33:47] Cesar: everyone's been killed somewhere, so. Right, so it'd be fine. Yeah, I think, I think I would be, I just wouldn't like to, I'm claustrophobic, but I don't know if I'm a So

[00:33:56] Joe Hill: just, listeners should know this is, CSR is ready. To spend the night in a coffin in a house. This is your opportunity. Leave comments, leave comments in the podcast, recommending houses where he could spend the night because he doesn't believe in ghosts and he has no reason to be worried.

[00:34:11] Joe Hill: It's going to be fine. He's ready to do it as a community service. Well,

[00:34:14] Badr: really quick. There's a house down the street. I can recommend you sit there.

[00:34:19] Cesar: This is the best part. Cause I'm like sitting here. I'm such a grimy dude and I love making fun of people and I'm sitting here like. Should I hold back? Cause I don't really know Joe like that. You know, I can't just be talking to him like that. And I was like, Oh, game on Joe. Game on. You're good. We're good, buddy.

[00:34:35] Cesar: We've been a family. Yeah, seriously.

[00:34:38] Joe Hill: So Lock and Key was filmed as a pilot for TV on several occasions. And eventually on the third time's the charm, eventually it was made into a TV series that lasted three season on Netflix. Um, but, but prior to that, there was a pilot filmed for Hulu directed by Andy Muschietti, directed IT Chapter One.

[00:35:01] Joe Hill: That unaired pilot is extraordinary, brilliant, and terrifying. And, um, it still bewilders me that we didn't get it on screen. Um, it's an absolute, the energy, the, you know, that, the, you know, both the heart and, and the terror that was embodied in IT Chapter 1. Andy carried that right into his pilot, his, his pilot for, for Hulu, you know, and, and, um, you know, listeners are welcome to start.

[00:35:35] Joe Hill: They're, you know, release the Snyder cut petition to get Hulu, you know, to, you know, throw a couple bucks at the pilot. And actually probably Netflix would've to air it now because I think Netflix, the right situation might be messed up. But I wish people could see how beautiful and how scary that first pilot was.

[00:35:52] Joe Hill: But, but before Andy and Barbara made their unaired pilot. Josh Friedman, uh, who I was talking about earlier, what made a pilot in, uh, Pittsburgh in the winter with directed by Mark Romanek. Um, that would have been about 2010 for Fox. And, um, and at the time I thought, wow, we're going to have a TV show on Fox.

[00:36:15] Joe Hill: This is amazing. And, um, Gabe and Chris and myself converged on Pittsburgh in the winter. I'm getting to the ghost story. There is a ghost story. Take your time Joe, you know, so we converged on Pittsburgh in the winter Which is where everyone found out that? Pittsburgh in the winter is a terrible place to make a TV show and the biggest reason the show never got in the air was Because there was a blizzard that wiped out 30 percent of the film They had to staple the pilot together having only 70 percent of the script shot And actually they did a really good job, but it didn't get on the air.

[00:36:51] Joe Hill: We got the slot for one new show and it wound up being Alcatraz instead of us. So, um, you know, JJ Abrams. He's a brilliant filmmaker and TV show, uh, creator, you know, terrific storyteller, one of a kind talent, but his show got in the air and my show didn't, so he can get fucked. Um, you know, and I, uh, I met him, I met him, he was so kind, he was so kind to me, uh, you know, I actually met him on, on the set of one of the Star Wars films, he let me sit in the Millennium Falcon, and I feel bad about saying that he can get fucked, but...

[00:37:29] Joe Hill: But, but Alcatraz beat out Lock and Key and so he can, and that, there's nothing I can do with that, it's just a fact. Um, but so, so, the best part of the Pittsburgh shooting was spending the night in the bar with Gabriel Rodriguez and Chris Ryle and talking about the comic, which at the time was very much ongoing.

[00:37:48] Joe Hill: So for listeners who haven't read it, the whole story, beginning, middle, and an end, Lock and Key is a contained story with a beginning, middle, and an end that took place over six books. Since then, there's been more lock and key, but if you just wanted to read those six books, you would have a, you would have a completely enclosed, satisfying experience, you know, and you would not feel like, oh, they left a bunch of stuff unresolved every there's full resolution to all the major plot threads and you, you get a complete story like a novel, you know, um, um, but we had not finished the series or even close to it in 2010 when the pilot was shot for Fox and sitting in the bar, we figured out how to end how to end the series.

[00:38:29] Joe Hill: Actually, Gabe figured out how to end the series, only he thought it was silly, so he presented the idea as a joke, and as soon as I heard it, I said, That's the end! That's how we're gonna end it! Um, and we did. So, um, I could I can't talk about That I can't talk about his solution without spoilers, so I'm not going to do that.

[00:38:51] Joe Hill: Um, just that there was there was a remarkable twist that he threw out there as a joke that I instantly knew solved a number of narrative problems. So, um, and it's a that serves as a reminder that lock and key has always been. It was never my story and Gabe drew the pictures. It's always been our story.

[00:39:13] Joe Hill: Um, you know, where we solve problems together, we, we figured out those people together. I learned as much about the characters from the way Gabe drew them as he ever learned from the way I wrote them, you know? Um, but so anyway, so I was in Pittsburgh and we saw him for a few days. Then I decided to drive home to New Hampshire in a renter car.

[00:39:35] Joe Hill: And I started driving. I thought I was going to drive back to New Hampshire in a day. I drove all day and I was still in fucking Pennsylvania. I couldn't believe it. It was like Pennsylvania never ended. I'm like, how big is this state? You know, and so it got to, it was getting, closing in on getting dark.

[00:39:52] Joe Hill: And I started thinking I'm going to have to find a hotel. I did a little looking online. And I heard about a hotel in Bethlehem outside of Philadelphia. This hotel was a 19th century hotel, beautifully restored. In a 19th century part of town with cobblestone streets and brick sidewalks and, you know, um, gas lanterns, gas lamps, you know, and but they offered a room with a boo.

[00:40:21] Joe Hill: So, the room with the boo was their most haunted hotel room and you can have it for a special price. I remember, I remember calling up my parents and talking to my parents and I'm like, so what happens if I get the room with a boo? And then they find me the next morning dead in my bed and my hair is turned completely white from terror.

[00:40:38] Joe Hill: You know, you did not . Do you think you did? Do, do you think if that happens, they'll still run my credit card? I mean, , I did get what I paid for, you know, and, but so, so I called up to, I called up to book the room with a boob. And they said, it's already booked, we have a honeymooning couple up there, and they're very in love, but they're also kind of goth, and they wanted the haunted room for their honeymoon suite, so we can't give it to you, but good news, we can give you the room right under their room, and that one is also haunted.

[00:41:11] Joe Hill: And I'm thinking, yeah, sure it is. Okay, give me the room right under theirs. That's fine, I'm thinking like, yeah, yeah, sure. As long as I'm, look, as long as I'm paying the one to give me a haunted room, every room in the hotel is haunted, whatever. So I, So I, I got this room, and I had a terrific dinner, and I loved, I could look out the window, there was some snow falling, and I could see a gas lantern, and it was like looking back to the era at ground pulp.

[00:41:36] Joe Hill: You know, it was just You know, it was like time travel and I went to bed and I woke up at one in the morning and there was a woman standing at the foot of my bed staring at me and I couldn't, I couldn't see her. I just knew she was there and I couldn't move my body. And I screamed at the top of my lungs, get away, get away.

[00:41:54] Joe Hill: And the honeymooning couple in the room above me went and fell out of their bed, crashed out of their bed, you know, cause they could hear me screaming through the floor. The rigidity of my body loosened up, the sleep paralysis left me, I sat up, there was no one in the room, you know, I turned on the lights, there's no one there, and of course, there is a thing that can happen to you, it's uh, hypnagogic terror, where you wake up, but you're still sort of almost hallucinating, because you're still in a dream state, and your body is frozen the way it is when you're asleep.

[00:42:26] Joe Hill: It's happened to me. Terrible, terribly frightening. Yeah. There was no ghost, I don't think, I'm not sure. You know, um, but the people in the room above me absolutely got their money's worth. Woken at, Woken at one in the morning by a shriek from hell that they could not explain. They got their money's worth.

[00:42:49] Cesar: It's a funny thing. It's like, yeah, I was like, get away. And it's like, you hear their version. Yeah, we heard get away.

[00:42:56] Joe Hill: Oh yeah, it was not a manly, this was not a commandment. You stop it! You get away from me! I was like, get away! It was, yeah, it was pretty, I was several octaves up from my normal tone of voice.

[00:43:09] Joe Hill: Look, Joe, I

[00:43:09] Cesar: ain't mad at you, man. I, I had an experience, it was, my, so my sleep paralysis demon had, it looked like a ginormous, uh, What's the ghost

[00:43:20] Badr: Pokemon? Haunter, Dastly, uh, Gengar. It

[00:43:24] Cesar: was Gengar. It was a huge like, like weird dark looming form with like cat ears. But it had a Michael Jackson mask. Like one of those fake sort of styrene ish plastic like 60's Halloween mask with the thin string.

[00:43:40] Cesar: Oh yeah. And it was, but it was like Michael Jackson's face. And it was like 90's, late 90's Michael Jackson. I'll just leave that there. Yeah. And I was just like. I can't move. I, I can't move. He's just looking at me and I'm like, uh.

[00:43:56] Badr: I don't think I've ever heard you tell this story. It

[00:43:58] Cesar: sucks, dude. It sucks so

[00:43:59] Joe Hill: bad.

[00:44:00] Joe Hill: All those cheap plastic masks from the 80s are actually so much more frightening than the more realistic full head rubber, you know, sculpted. I don't know why. It's the uncanny valley, right? Isn't it the uncanny valley where you're looking at that face and you're thinking, That's not real. That's not right.

[00:44:18] Joe Hill: Yeah, that's, I don't, That's not right. And you know, you know, it would be bad to wake up at one in the morning and see someone with like the hoghead mask standing outside your window. Oh my god. That would be bad. Oh my god. But it would be worse, but it would be worse to like look out the window and just see someone in a clear plastic 80s mask like, Just like, hi.

[00:44:38] Joe Hill: Not good. Not good.

[00:44:41] Badr: And I'm saying over here, like, the only time my body ever gets rigid and, you know, fraught with fear is anytime I open up my, my electricity bill during the summer, I'm like, get

[00:44:49] Joe Hill: away from me! You know, you want to know what was a great horror mask was, you know, and maybe this is a good conversation for Halloween.

[00:44:57] Joe Hill: I think maybe the one of the best was, um, I'm going to discount the mask and black phone because I'm personally attached. So it's not fair to talk about that. That is a great mask. Freaking awesome. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Um, yeah, it was, uh, Tom Savini had a hand in the design and, um, yeah. And, uh, Jason Baker, I believe, is his name.

[00:45:16] Joe Hill: I'm so embarrassed if I got his first name wrong, but it's, uh, Jason Baker also did a bunch of the design. And, um, I knew the moment I saw the mask that there was a chance that we were going to have A really special film that it was going to be really scary. Um, but, but, but so putting aside the black phone because I'm, I'm obviously biased there.

[00:45:34] Joe Hill: Um, I think maybe 1 of the best masks, um, and, uh, horror in the last. 15, 20 years is the dude in Hush? Yeah. Have you seen Mike Flanagan's hush? Of course. Oh, of course. He doesn't actually wear the mask for much of the film. He actually only wears the mask for about the first half hour. Right. Um, that was a, that was a creepy fucking mask.

[00:45:55] Joe Hill: Yeah,

[00:45:55] Cesar: it's, it's so funny 'cause my wife and I, we love Mike Flanagan and we love that he has the same, uh, team that he works with as far as actors and,

[00:46:04] Badr: uh,

[00:46:05] Joe Hill: creators are Concern. Yeah. That sort of, What is that? When a director has the same cast over and over again, they call that a company, right? Like that's it.

[00:46:12] Joe Hill: The Mike Flanagan company. Yeah. Like a, like a theater troupe. Like

[00:46:15] Cesar: a theater. Yep. You beat me to it. Yeah, absolutely. So it's like funny seeing like Katie Siegel and Samantha, I guess it's Samantha Sloan talking about Midnight Mass before it's even out,

[00:46:26] Badr: you know, it was a

[00:46:26] Cesar: thing and then to see like, just, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, that's, that's Katie Siegel, just chilling out, like being stalked by this freaking creepy, this scary ass mask.

[00:46:38] Cesar: Like, it's such a good, like, if you guys have not seen this film, it's freaking fantastic. It is the season and you know, it's, you know, yeah.

[00:46:47] Joe Hill: That's a good one. And, and while a lot of people have seen it, I also feel like it's flown a little under the radar, you know, certainly, certainly, I, I think the last.

[00:46:58] Joe Hill: So we're 23 years into the new century and I think this has been a great century for horror. It has been, you know, the last 23 years has been one, you know, Blumhouse has a lot to, we can thank Blumhouse for a lot of that. A24. You know, yeah, A24, you know, there's been a lot of, but there's been great horror comics, there's been great horror novels, it's just been an unbelievably fertile time for the genre.

[00:47:21] Joe Hill: So it's hard to point at anyone and say, say, And that that person is one of the cornerstones of why it's been so great. But I definitely think Mike Flanagan is one of the cornerstones of why the genre has been so exciting. Um, so and so vibrant in the last quarter century, you know, because he's just made, you know, his shows have so much shows and his movies have so much heart.

[00:47:46] Joe Hill: Um, and they're so, they're so fucking scary, which is important, but also, but also he also just makes films in an interesting way. He did things with sound in hush that were, um, you know, astonishing and fresh, um, and really exciting. And he always, he brings something special to every film and every show.

[00:48:06] Joe Hill: I've never been disappointed by a Mike Flanagan, anything.

[00:48:10] Badr: So my mom is

[00:48:11] Cesar: very, uh, she, she, she is sort of like in denial about being a horror fanatic. She'll be like, uh, so, you know, uh, my mom, my mom that are both like born and raised Puerto Rico and she's got a real thick accent and I'll suggest a movie for her or a book for her or anything.

[00:48:29] Cesar: And she'll be like, I don't

[00:48:30] Joe Hill: know. Um, it doesn't have a lot

[00:48:33] Cesar: of cussing in it. Is it got, you know, and, and it's so, it's like, why are you being coy? I know for a fact, I know for a fact when I'm not around, you still consume this stuff. Even if this, you know, it's not edited, quote unquote, for television, right?

[00:48:49] Cesar: So I was like, I showed her the trailer for Black Foam. I said, hey, check this out. Cause she was talking to, you know, cause she's watching My Baby at Home. She's like, what, who are you, uh, going to talk to today? I said, well, mom, here's some of his work. Here, I have some of his books on my shelf. And I told her a little about you.

[00:49:05] Cesar: And she's like, oh, that's so nice, honey. And I said, check out this movie. I think you'd dig it, mom. So she saw the preview and she was kind of like, oi, oi, oi, I sung the, what? Oh, my God, with that mask, just like that, and it's funny because anybody on the outside would be like, ah, she's turned off. She's, she's probably going to say something judgmental and be like, you know, I would never watch that sort of thing.

[00:49:29] Cesar: I know her and I'm just like, my work here is done, like, because she's going to go right home and look on her little iPad. My dad's going to lumber out of the, you know, the room, like, and what are you doing? What's going on? She'll be like, shh,

[00:49:42] Joe Hill: shh, I'm watching

[00:49:47] Joe Hill: this My, my wife is not a horror film fan. She doesn't like to be scared. You know, that's not, she'll do roller coasters. I don't like roller coasters.

[00:49:55] Cesar: I'm there with you, man. I'll hold the purse. I'll do whatever you want me to do, but I'm not going on that thing. I

[00:50:00] Joe Hill: actually have gotten a little bit better at them and I've learned a secret about roller coasters, but I, you know, and, and she's willing to do like haunted houses with me.

[00:50:07] Joe Hill: Now, if we get to an attraction and there's like a haunted house or something, she'll usually can be persuaded to go in with me. So we're, we're sort of good about. You know, nudging the person, try something, you know, I mean, but like, we don't push each other too far. Sure. Um, but she doesn't, she doesn't usually watch the horror films with me and we do have an arrangement where I watch one horror film every week.

[00:50:29] Joe Hill: Um, so there's 1 night a week when I, that's like horror movie night and, um, you know, she's like, that's cool. I've got some, you know, I've got some reading to do. Um, you, you enjoy it every once in a while. She'll watch the film with me, but it has to be, you know, like, um. You know, like a movie from the 1930s is really safe.

[00:50:47] Joe Hill: You know, like a black and white, like when I'm digging out, when I'm digging out some real, like old classic or something, you know, before James Whale or whatever.

[00:50:55] Cesar: This is Carl Lemley's

[00:50:58] Joe Hill: Dracula. Yeah, one of these movies where it's like, you know, oh no, here comes the mummy. We all better walk a little faster.

[00:51:07] Badr: Yeah, yeah, it's like, oh, okay, cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. It's like,

[00:51:12] Cesar: yeah, Boris Karloff's like introducing the, the movie hasn't even started yet. It's like, I can't look. I can't look.

[00:51:18] Joe Hill: I can't. I want to

[00:51:21] Badr: take us back to comics really quick. We've talked about your origin, uh, you know, we've thrown out the names of a lot of, you know, Marvel heavy, right?

[00:51:28] Badr: The, the Power Records, your first Spider Man issue. Let's fast forward by a lot, I'm assuming. How did you end up working with DC and, and how did they give you an imprint? Like, what was the inception of Hill House Comics?

[00:51:41] Joe Hill: So I did a little growing after the days when I loved Draco the Dragon fighting Spider Man on my little vinyl record as a teenager.

[00:51:51] Joe Hill: I had the good fortune to sort of come of age during the great British invasion of comics. So we're talking about, you know, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, um, Grant Morrison. Um, and, you know, the thing about the British invasion, um, A lot of them wrote for what would later become Vertigo, so they were working for DC, but they were writing a kind of comic book that was not like DC's usual bag.

[00:52:17] Joe Hill: Um, and they were doing stuff that was, um, more literary, more sophisticated, with, uh, Characters represented that we weren't used to seeing represented in comics. Um, you know, um, and it was really, it was very graphic and very scary. A lot of that stuff was so Sandman and Alan Moore's run on swamp thing. Um, were, were comics that changed everything.

[00:52:48] Joe Hill: It was, you know, the comics that really, you know, that really changed everyone's ideas about what a comic book could do were Sandman. Alan Moore's legendary run on Swamp Thing, Watchmen, of course, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, you know, and what they had in common was they all pushed the envelope. So they were much more adult.

[00:53:10] Joe Hill: Um, you know, um, Alan Moore, you know, was the first person to say anyone who spends every night climbing into a rubber fetish outfit to get punched is actually gratifying submergence that are kind of disturbing, you know, uh, certainly go beyond just your strong feelings about right and wrong and, you know, uh, stuff like that was, was, was so fresh, you know, and so exciting and, you know, um, um, and I loved it.

[00:53:40] Joe Hill: I just. I just wallowed in it, you know, I just was completely, um, uh, uh, that, those were the comics that shaped my ideas about how to write comics. I sometimes say, you know, Gabe and I figured out how to write, knew how to write Lock and Key because we both loved Sandman. And after, you know, and I realized that we could use the keys the way Neil Gaiman used dreams.

[00:54:03] Joe Hill: That I could use that element. To tell any story I could do a comedy. I could do a horror story. I could do a tragedy that those keys on, you know, no pun intended unlocked on almost limitless range of story potentials. So lock and key was like a vertigo title. But it was published by IDW, not DC. I was always kind of a good match for DC's darker sort of storytelling.

[00:54:33] Joe Hill: And I had begun to talk to an editor there named Mark Doyle, I mean, six, seven years before Hill House happened. I mean, seven years before Hill House happened, I began to, Mark and I began to talk about how I could do a story for them. And at the time I was going to do, and, and eventually what I wound up picking them on was Basketful of Heads, Um, which was a story that I had written the first script for in 2007 and when I wrote it in 2007, I was like, I haven't figured out how to tell the story yet.

[00:55:04] Joe Hill: There's a good plot here, there's a good character, but I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, fast forward 13 years and I figured out how to crack the story and I, you know, I said, I'd love to do this and Mark said, what if we did even more? What if Basketful of Heads was just one title in a whole range of titles that you would sort of curate?

[00:55:24] Joe Hill: And I got very excited about that idea, especially since Vertigo was going away. Initially, I think Vertigo thrived because it was telling adult scary stories. And, and then it began to drift and telling other kinds of stories, which I also thought were really great. Um, you know, that were artistic and, and pushing the envelope of what was possible in comics and just like where they started, but they didn't sell very well.

[00:55:54] Joe Hill: And, and there's something, there's something about commerce there that I think is interesting. Um, I believe that The kind of stories comics tell best are horror stories, and the numbers prove it. So in the 1950s, the biggest selling comics were not Superman or Captain America. The biggest selling comics were Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror.

[00:56:16] Joe Hill: The horror comics wildly outsold the superhero comics, and they were graphic, and gory, and silly, and pretty stupid, and they upset parents. And so, in the late 50s, um, The, they held a series of congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency. A crackpot psychiatrist named Frederick Wortham, Dr. Frederick Wortham, basically came out and used his junk science to claim that, um, tales from the Krypton fall to horror and the horror comics were perverting kids and causing juvenile delinquency.

[00:56:53] Joe Hill: It sent a shockwave through the industry. It led to a lot of people being blacklisted. It destroyed publishing companies. And it led to most. You know, all of that is terrible, but worst of all, it led to a picture of Batman that was like the Batman we got in the Adam West stories. So like, the silly, the silly, goofy, fun Batman and Robin, which is like the worst Batman.

[00:57:19] Joe Hill: I mean, I kind of like the Adam West show, but still, it's like the worst Batman.

[00:57:22] Cesar: But that's done tongue in cheek. This was done as a result of taking the piss out of the darkness of... That made the dark night dark. Right, they had to

[00:57:29] Joe Hill: take any, nothing could be, nothing could be scary, you know, uh, nothing, no, uh, corpses were not allowed, ghouls were not allowed, um, you know, blood was not allowed, um.

[00:57:41] Joe Hill: I

[00:57:41] Badr: think you could even show, like, uh, thievery, like, you know, you couldn't. You know, even like small,

[00:57:45] Joe Hill: yeah, yeah, exactly. Even very, even very, you know, not benign crimes, but even like non gory crimes, you know, like, uh, you know, a guy in a striped shirt, you know, uh, breaking into a house at night was too, you know, might be potentially, no one really knew what the line was.

[00:58:03] Joe Hill: You know, it was, it was, it was so, um, and it's fair to say it wasn't government censorship that, you know, the comics industry bound together and created a comics code. It was government pressure. So it was, to an extent, it was, it was government censorship in all but, you know, um, you know, um, fact and all but, you know, it was, uh, the result of government pressure.

[00:58:27] Joe Hill: That fight about horror comics presaged every cultural fight we've had since then. It's always the same. Sometimes it gets very depressing to see that we can't, that there's no, nothing original happens. It's the same stupid arguments made. Over and over again on junk science. You know, it was comic books in the 60s.

[00:58:50] Joe Hill: Um, it was hair metal in the 1980s. Um, it was violent video games, uh, in the 2000s. It was rock music in the 90s, you know, and it's, it's, it's, there's always, you know, some. Um, hyperventilating, you know, uh, politicians backed by, um, some semi hysterical, um, parent group, um, who thinks, uh, that one standard of parenting is the standard of parenting.

[00:59:19] Joe Hill: You can apply to every kid, um, you know, and, um, you know, and some industry has to defend itself. And I think that the industries have become a little better actually about defending their cultural products and stuff. But, um, it is very frustrating to see America just sort of. Yeah. Recycle the same material over and over again.

[00:59:39] Joe Hill: But anyway, anyway, well, this is a huge distraction for what I was going to say Which is in the 90s though, uh, the comics code died It still sort of existed but had no power anymore neil gaiman and alan moore came in They fixed comics horror comics are booming again when mark doyle said you want to do horror comics and it can be sort of like Vertigo without the vertigo title.

[00:59:57] Joe Hill: I was like absolutely and we had a lot of fun

[01:00:00] Cesar: You mentioned, uh, EC Comics and your love for them in the past. Did you ever get to meet any of those guys? Any of those creators? I met Al Feldstein at Heroes Con. Gosh, a long time ago. Wait, it was

[01:00:10] Joe Hill: before he passed. I have met Al Feldstein. I did meet Al Feldstein, yeah.

[01:00:13] Joe Hill: At Comic Con, yeah. Yeah,

[01:00:14] Cesar: I, I, you know, just a quiet, unassuming little guy. And I got him to sign a little, a print for me, of course. It's the classic guy in the suit with the grizzly. You know, you know, zombie behind him in the quicksand and I was like, you're, you're Ralph Feldstein. He was, he kind of turned around.

[01:00:30] Cesar: It was like, last time I checked, you know, and I was like, I'm sorry, I'm starstruck, sir. I just, could you sign this? And he's like, sure thing kid, you know? And like, you know, damn, he was Ben Grimm. Those guys, they all are somehow all the, because all those guys were working dudes. Like they weren't looking at it.

[01:00:47] Cesar: Like. They weren't looking at it like some fluffy do hipster, like, Hmm, this'll be worth something one day. Like, it's like, no motherfucker, it was like a blue collar job. Yeah. I gotta put food on the table for my family. So I'm drawing a dude, play baseball with another dude's head, you know, like, this is what I'm

[01:01:02] Joe Hill: doing.

[01:01:03] Joe Hill: Do you believe how good John Bachema was? And he drew like one of those pages every day. Goodness. He just drew, like, I mean, he was a machine. Yes. Legend, no artist can draw at that level and do a page a day anymore. How, how could he do it? There's only one way he could do it. He was work for hire, and he needed to keep food in the fridge.

[01:01:20] Joe Hill: That's it. He's like, I gotta get this page done. Yeah, yeah. You know, um, um, what was I gonna say about that? I met Al Feldstein. Yeah. At San Diego Comic Con. Um, I met Ray Bradbury there before he died. Wow, that's great. And I remember, I remember pointing at all of it and saying, All of this is your fault. Um, my favorite, my favorite EC comic story is...

[01:01:44] Joe Hill: They, they were publishing a lot, they didn't have enough material, and, um, so they began stealing Bradbury's stories, and just doing Bradbury's stories, you know, as their own, and doing them in comics. They didn't know that Bradbury read their comics, so Bradbury found that they had been ripping off his stories.

[01:02:03] Joe Hill: Now he, he could have called a liar, but that's not what he did. Instead he wrote a letter, um, to, uh, uh, William Gaines, and he said, I just love the adaptation. You know, uh, sound of thunder. Nice. You know, it came out so beautifully. Um, you have to reach out to the accounting department because the check got lost in the mail.

[01:02:24] Joe Hill: I haven't, I haven't received the check yet for the adaptation. And William Gaines was like, William Gaines saw that and was like, wrote him back and it's like, the checks are on the way. And we'd like to talk about adapting more. So he moved fast to like, okay, wait a second. I'm not going to let this go. Um, so anyway, uh, yeah, I love Tales from the Crypt.

[01:02:45] Joe Hill: I loved, um, you know, all the EC titles. And, um, I'm, you know, my dad had all of them in hardcover. They were reprinted in the 1980s in beautiful hardcover editions. Um, you know, oversized editions. Um, and so when other kids were reading like I don't know, Avengers and stuff. I was, I was reading Tales from the Crypt.

[01:03:08] Joe Hill: I was reading, you know, um, and you know, I give Frederick Wertham a hard time, um, you know, because he said, you know, it's going to mess kids up. It's going to warp them for life. Actually, he was right, though. Look at me. I mean, like, you know, uh, I read about dead bodies for a living. I mean, so maybe he had a point.

[01:03:29] Joe Hill: Actually, so

[01:03:30] Cesar: was, look, I gotta ask now. Was there anything in your house that was taboo? Has anybody asked this question? Like was there anything you weren't allowed? Like, yo, okay, Joe. No, no, no, no. We're not doing this in the house. You can't read this. You can't watch this.

[01:03:44] Joe Hill: No, no. By the time I was 12, I had seen Donna the dead a dozen times.

[01:03:49] Joe Hill: Outstanding. And I remember. Yeah, I love the film. I had the Steve Jackson board game too, which I loved playing, and I was just insane for, yeah, I was, you know, I was a deadhead, um, and I remember for my 12th birthday, asking if all my friends could come over and watch Dawn of the Dead, and my parents were like, Sure, why not?

[01:04:08] Joe Hill: So I threw it on, and I was watching, and I'd seen it a million times. I just absolutely loved it. I'm like, you know, eating the popcorn, and I didn't notice that one by one my friends were leaving the room. Until finally, about an hour of the film, I looked around, and the only friend left was my buddy Brian Hannan, who was just lathered in sweat, and he said, I don't, I don't think we ought to be watching this.

[01:04:32] Joe Hill: And then he left the room, and I was like, oh, I guess I'm gonna watch the rest of the film by myself. I did.

[01:04:40] Badr: So that was how I finished my tr birthday. That sounds like a very similar story to when Cesar had me watch Tusk with him. First off, first

[01:04:46] Cesar: off, you're psycho motherfucker. First off, you're not the first person I've done that with and I totally relate Joe.

[01:04:51] Cesar: I've, I'm that guy that's got a trip. Wendy's triple in his hand while Evil dead one is playing and all and laughing, just laughing, and all the gross stuff's coming out in fluids. And yeah, it's corny, but if you've never seen it before, it is pretty visceral if you're not a horror person.

[01:05:07] Joe Hill: So, you know, what's funny is like, I have a lot of friends who write horror fiction or make horror films, you know, who love the genre, and sometimes, you know, a few of us will all go see a horror film together, and the interesting thing about that is, you know, things will happen like, you know, uh, you know, some demented hillbilly will, you know, whack someone's head off with an axe, and the whole theater screams Except for me and my buds, because we're all laughing.

[01:05:35] Joe Hill: And I know that's a fucked up response, but I think that when you really love the genre, you're kind of in on the joke. And so they're, the stuff that is normally scary. Is actually very funny and exciting and you're sort of like, you know, this is hilarious. I love that That was great. I would like to see that scene again.

[01:05:58] Joe Hill: I respond to horror films. I'm still very easily scared, you know, I jump I cry out I am a great person to watch a horror film with because I react but I also laugh a lot, you know, uh, I'm, you know, the classic reaction is I just about jump out of my shoes and then, you know, in fright and then fall back on the couch and I start laughing.

[01:06:18] Cesar: Yeah, it's, it's so, it's so rewarding to still be that way with the genre, and I think a lot of times people, at least, I can't speak for everybody, I'll say, I'll speak for myself, that the, the relationship between, I guess, what makes us sort of animals? Is sort of like being able to look at the dark side, right?

[01:06:39] Cesar: Like if you, if, if you're exposed to a horror movie when you're little, and there's that little part of you that sees the world for not, not like the way it is, but like kinda like, you're like, Oh, we're all like capable of bad things, but not everybody is a monster. But if you can learn to. Recognize the darkness and without getting too meta here, embrace it a little in your own life to help you become a better person, then the more you get exposed to it, the less it scares you and the more insight you get, at least me personally, from, from scary movies or horror in general as a genre.

[01:07:14] Cesar: So seeing a, uh, like say a movie like, uh, Devil's Rejects, where you would see a hillbilly hack somebody, you know, with, you know, the scenario you just described. You, you could get the laugh because like you said, not only are you in on the joke, but you're like, yeah, people are like that. Like, a hundred percent people are like that.

[01:07:33] Joe Hill: And Green, Green Inferno, Eli Roth's Green Inferno is so fucked up. And I laughed harder watching Green Inferno than, you know, many a comedy. And I'm, I don't, I'm not proud of that response, but it's just, you know, Um, I was going to say, I was going to say, uh, I am, I am friends with a fellow named Matthias Clayson, who is a Danish literary theorist, um, who specializes in horror.

[01:08:04] Joe Hill: And Matthias wrote a book called How Horror Seduces. Um, anyone who is a serious fan of the genre will, um, I think find that, uh, uh, you know, a kind of mind blowing read, a remarkable read. Um, it's the best non fiction work about the genre in decades. Um, but, but if you want to know why we love horror, um, the answer is evolution.

[01:08:30] Joe Hill: Evolution is almost always the answer to whatever the question is, evolution almost always turns out to be the answer. So I, I mentioned in the beginning, I have 18 month old twins. And what the twins love is when I get down on the floor, and I drum my hands, and I go, UGH! And then they run for me! They squeal with laughter, and they run!

[01:08:49] Joe Hill: Um, and they like that, and I'll come around a corner, UGH! And, and they squeal, and they run away. That's their favorite thing, they can do that for hours. But you have to ask yourself, why? Why do they want Dad to sort of put on a scary face, and be silly, and sort of chase him? Why do they need, why do they want to run?

[01:09:05] Joe Hill: Why, why do they want to play a game where I'm like a predator, chasing them, and they're like the prey, trying to escape? And that's the answer right there, because for hundreds of thousands of years, we were the prey. And there were predators, and just like puppies play fight, babies, babies through play deal with potentially terrifying scenarios.

[01:09:33] Joe Hill: So in play, they can safely explore a frightening scenario like, what if an an what if an animal was after me? What would I do? I would run! Dad is pretending to be an animal and I'm gonna run, this is really fun! But in the wild, it's possible that at some point, they might actually see a dangerous animal.

[01:09:53] Joe Hill: And then they need to be ready to run and, and you can take that and expand that outward into horror fiction. Why do we love horror fiction? Because we can use horror comics or movies or novels as a playground for our imagination and in the safe playground of our imagination, we can explore scenarios that actually we wouldn't want to live through, you know, you wouldn't really want to be prisoner of that family in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

[01:10:24] Joe Hill: Um, you know, um, um, and it's probably not going to happen, but through horror fiction, you can begin to think about what you might do if it did. And, and if all that sounds like a reach, if it sounds like I'm reaching a little bit, one of Matthias studies, it was, Got a lot of international attention. Him and his co authors were able to show that during the pandemic lockdown, horror fiction fans fared better emotionally than people who don't like horror fiction.

[01:10:56] Joe Hill: If you loved horror films and you loved horror novels, during the lockdown, you almost certainly fared better emotionally than people who hate horror. When you think about, when you ask yourself, well, why? Why? I think the answer is because horror fans have already lived it. They've already had a chance to think about, what would I do if there was a dangerous pathogen?

[01:11:17] Joe Hill: They've, they've, they've read The Stand, they read Andromeda Strain, you know, um, they've, they've seen Dawn of the Dead, you know, with, with infected people walking around trying to bite other people and infect them, um, you know, and so I think with all that in mind, it's not that surprising to find that horror fiction fans were able to look at the threat of COVID 19 and say, you know, Okay.

[01:11:44] Joe Hill: Been there, done that. Yeah. Been there, done that. I'm ready.

[01:11:47] Badr: I do want to turn the corner here and go back to Hill House. You mentioned curating, like, the line, and what does that mean in terms of comics?

[01:11:56] Joe Hill: Let me just note that the marketing team at DC is also glad that you are turning the conversation back to, uh, the Hill House titles.

[01:12:03] Joe Hill: From the bottom of their heart, the marketing team at DC would like to thank you from the bottom of your heart. Look, look,

[01:12:10] Cesar: this is, you know, it's funny, I always make fun of Botter. For being like a huge Marvel head and shilling out to Marvel. I, it's not true, but we, we both have like little inside jokes about how much we love the house of ideas.

[01:12:23] Cesar: But the fact that Mr. Marvel here is like, please, Joe, please. Can we go back to talking to DC for God's sakes, let's go back. Look.

[01:12:32] Joe Hill: But in a lot of ways, when it comes to superheroes, I'm a Marvel guy. I've always been a Marvel guy. You know, um, Don't isolate that quote. My comic book collection began with me tracking down the Claremont Byrne X Men.

[01:12:48] Joe Hill: So I wanted the complete Claremont Byrne. That's how I became a comic collector. Was You know, collecting everything that, that culminated in the Dark Phoenix storyline. Um, you know, it was just, that was, and Spider Man, and Spider Man 2, you know, was like, you know, I, I just grew up, you know, loving Spider Man like so many other kids.

[01:13:09] Joe Hill: It was just, that was my comic. Hit him with it. The DC marketing

[01:13:12] Badr: team right now is like, God damn

[01:13:14] Joe Hill: it! I know, it's killing him.

[01:13:17] Cesar: As far as being a curator is concerned. Because we just got done talking about how awesome horror is and how cool it is to get nerdy on about it on a psychological level. Um, do you find there's sort of like a heavy, heavy is the crown sort of thing where you're like looking

[01:13:33] Joe Hill: for things and...

[01:13:34] Joe Hill: No, and I'm going to say something that will please the DC marketing team. Let's do it. Which is, when you're ready for an adult scary comic, it's time to leave Marvel behind and go check out what's happening at DC. If you want to watch people in, in brightly colored, you know, underpants... You know, making jokes and, you know, punching supervillains, Marvel's great, you know, but once it's time for something with adult themes that are really scary, you know, that talks about people's, you know, sexual lives and adult lives and, you know, grief and pain and mortal fear, you know, then you're going to want to turn to something that's a little more grown up and that's, that's, DC Comics, that's the Vertigo line, that's Swamp Thing, and, and, you know, Hellblazer, and, um, you know, all those great titles, Arkham Asylum, and, and, um, House of Mystery, House of Mystery, absolutely.

[01:14:25] Cesar: Hell, I'll throw in Shade the Changing Man, just for fun. Alright,

[01:14:28] Joe Hill: alright. I don't know, we might be pushing it too far there, but, but so, I'll throw in Shade the It was one of the great pleasures of my career that we were able to do a Lock and Key story that crossed over into Neil's Sandman Universe, which is the Lock and Key Hell and Gone series and, and, um, you know, it was such a blast to write and, and, you know, um, Gabe took it to another level, which is really saying something if you've ever seen any of Gabe's, you know, earlier art, but then, you know, he just rose to a whole new level and it's, you know, that was great.

[01:14:57] Joe Hill: Um, as far as Hill House went, It was a lot of fun. I got to work with, um, some seasoned hands. Um, you know, people who are really terrific. I got to work with Mike Carey, who is a terrific British horror and science fiction writer, probably best known for a novel called the girl with all the gifts that was made into a pretty good little zombie film.

[01:15:18] Joe Hill: Um, you know, I got to, I got to work with Stuart Immelman, um, which still blows my mind. He's, he's astonishing, an astonishing talent. And I remember talking to Mark Doyle and I said, he said, you know, he'd seen this first script for Plunge, and he said, who do you want to get for the art? And I said, can we get anyone who can draw like Stuart Imelman?

[01:15:37] Joe Hill: And Mark Doyle was like, I think we can get someone who draws like Stuart Imelman. And before I knew it, he was, he was drawing the comics. So, um, uh, that was great. And, um, you know, uh, I'm trying to think. It's been... It's been a fun run. Oh, uh, uh, Karma Machado, uh, Karma Machado, Machado, um, did, um, I want to apologize to her for just absolutely fucking mangling her name there, but, um, uh, she did The Lolo Woods, um, which is a really, you know, Beautiful, you know, scary and vivid and there's never been a comic like it, you know, that's what I'd like to see.

[01:16:17] Joe Hill: I hope that will help. We'll see that 1 adapted for film or something sometime soon because it's really great art by Danny, you know, who just, you know, drew the hell out of it. And, um, um, so, so, so we had a chance to 5 or 6 books for, um, Hill House. And, uh, I found it profoundly gratifying and I thought we came up with some really good scary stuff.

[01:16:42] Joe Hill: It was like I got to run Blumhouse for a couple of years, only instead of making movies, we were doing comics. I got to be Jason Blum for like two years. Pretty cool. You know, and, um, and I did some cheerleading and occasionally I did some light editing and stuff. Um, but I found I was working with pros. I was working with great storytellers.

[01:17:00] Joe Hill: I didn't really have to do a whole except, you know, um, tell them to keep it coming. And

[01:17:05] Cesar: Did you have the Stanley mustache or even the, uh, large sort of aviator glasses and

[01:17:12] Joe Hill: Yeah. Uh, no, I have trouble pulling off the mustache. It doesn't really. And what I really want is I want one of these hipster lumberjack beards.

[01:17:22] Joe Hill: I mean, go for it. But I can't really pull it off. I've never been able to, it's like my beard comes out a little ways and then just quits. You know, it loses it's will to live. Joe,

[01:17:34] Cesar: Joe, let's not pretend we haven't seen the jacket covers in some of the novels. Where you're rocking a sweet, sweet beard.

[01:17:42] Joe Hill: Yeah, it's not, it's not that lumberjack thing that we're projecting.

[01:17:45] Joe Hill: You know, I want the one that projects.

[01:17:47] Cesar: Okay, well that's fair, that's fair. You want to look like Sasquatch from Alpha Flight, I understand.

[01:17:52] Joe Hill: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:17:52] Badr: Joe, I want to play a game with you, uh, cause you're bringing up some of these titles, uh, that have come out through Hill House and you've mentioned some of the titles.

[01:18:00] Badr: So let's just dive into it. I want to hear what words or anecdotes or stories, what, what immediately comes to mind when I say some of these names, it's going to be a good. It's gonna be a mix of like creative partners that you've worked with in Hill House and just some of the titles that have come out through Hill House and I'm very excited to hear, uh, your thoughts or reaction to

[01:18:17] Joe Hill: this.

[01:18:17] Badr: TALENTLESS ASSHOLE!

[01:18:22] Badr: No. I wanna hear, uh, I'm gonna say Leo Max, who was the artist for Basketful of Heads, uh, your first Oh, I love

[01:18:28] Joe Hill: Leo Max. I love Leo Max and he was so great. He was so great on Basketball Ahead. He was especially great when we were about three issues in and I, you know, he was going to draw six issues and then we were three issues in and I was like, do you think you could draw seven?

[01:18:40] Joe Hill: Because I can't finish the story in six issues. And DC was like, we're going seven? Okay, we're going seven. So I think, I think even the first couple issues even say on the cover somewhere, you know, issue one of the six issue limited series. And then it gets to issue three and it's like issue three of the Seven issue limited series That's awesome.

[01:19:02] Joe Hill: But leo max is really leo max is really great. Uh, um, you know, I love that the comics sort of looked like um You know, one of these 1970s horror films, you know, kind of had the, you know, the golden hued look of something like jaws or, you know, um, the kind of grain, the kind of visual grade of something like the exorcist.

[01:19:27] Joe Hill: Um, you know, uh, so he was terrific to work with and he's a little bit. He's also, you know, it also has a feel of like, um, you know, one of these European comic books. Where, you know, where the art is both a little more graphic, you know, you're going to go places that are a little more extreme than you used to, but it's also sort of, um, you know, copybooky kind of, you know, a little absurd, a little silly, and I love that too.

[01:19:54] Joe Hill: Yeah, I think

[01:19:55] Badr: it's safe to say for a lot of folks, that was my introduction to. You know, your comic book stuff, and I admit it to you, like, I only started reading Lock and Key, like, a month prior to you coming down for that Lit Chat interview. It blew me away, but Basketful of Heads was, I think, my first introduction to your comic book stuff, and Leo Max,

[01:20:12] Joe Hill: I want to say this might have been his

[01:20:13] Badr: first, like, American comic book work, but the dude has been

[01:20:17] Joe Hill: around since then.

[01:20:19] Joe Hill: Yeah, he's, he's great, you know, um, and I have to say if someone has never read any of my stuff and wants to get into my comic stuff, hey, you could do a lot worse than start with Basketful of Heads. I think Basketful of Heads is a pretty good, you know, introduction to my stuff. It's, you know, um, uh, the comic worked in the sense of it is a horror story that's a little silly, that's very, I wanted it to feel like one of these, you know, one of these, Kind of funny 80s gross out films like, you know, reanimator or evil dead 2, you know, and so it sort of has an over the top quality to it.

[01:20:55] Joe Hill: But beneath that, you know, there's a lot of gore, you know, a basket full of talking severed heads. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on beneath that. It's actually structured like a pretty classical mystery with misdirections and red herrings. And and then I think a pretty good final reveal. Um, so I'm I'm proud of the way it came out.

[01:21:15] Joe Hill: Go ahead, hit me with the next thing.

[01:21:17] Badr: Okay, I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna switch from a creator to a title that's on Hill House. I'm gonna say The Dollhouse Family. What comes to

[01:21:24] Joe Hill: mind when I say that? Yeah, so, um, what comes to mind when you say that? Um, dollhouses are scary? I just think dollhouses are naturally lend themselves to horror.

[01:21:37] Joe Hill: Um, you know, if you're, if you're watching a horror film and a child is like, goes up the stairs into the attic and there's a dollhouse there, you're like, don't touch it, you just know it's bad, you know, and, um, uh, Mike Carey brought, uh, you know, the skills of a novelist to his six issues. Um, he tells a story that takes place in two or three different shifting time frames, um, you know, it has some great covers.

[01:22:04] Joe Hill: That, that series, those individual issues had some great covers that were almost like photo effect covers with like puppets and stuff on them, little puppet dolls and everything and really, you know, you got your money's worth just with the covers. Yeah, so that's a, that was a good one.

[01:22:21] Badr: All right, let me, uh, stick on a title.

[01:22:24] Badr: Let me go to another title. Uh, Daphne Byrne by Laura Marks and Kelly Jones, the iconic Kelly Jones. Yeah,

[01:22:31] Joe Hill: the pervy, the Gloriously pervy Kelly Jones. No one is better at working a dick into a panel than Kelly Jones. This is the, I would

[01:22:41] Cesar: short boxes. This is why you signed

[01:22:43] Joe Hill: up Soundbite . I would argue there's no artist in all of comics who's better at subtly working a dick.

[01:22:50] Joe Hill: Into a page of comics then kelly jones. Um, it was always my dream to work with him He's just as awesome as I thought he's just as awesome as I thought he would be I have loved every page of his art Uh, like life itself. Um, I have, well before I ever met him, I was able to buy some pages of Dead Man art that he did.

[01:23:12] Joe Hill: It's this Dead Man series set at a circus. Um, you know, I just love that. Laura Marks is a TV writer who worked on one of the Iterations of Lock and Key, um, and she's a playwright, and I love what she did with, with, uh, Daphne Byrne, which I also think is kind of like, Daphne Byrne is almost like a 19th century, you know, like a Victorian reimagining, a Victorian feminist reimagining of the omen.

[01:23:40] Joe Hill: I think if there's one of the Hill House series that sometimes gets overlooked, it's Daphne Byrne, but that's a really good one.

[01:23:46] Cesar: He's the best at suddenly working a dick and then proceeds to go, it was my dream to work

[01:23:56] Cesar: with him. It was my absolute dream to work with him. It's like, it's like, it's like, it sounds like something Robert Evans would say. Like, like I could see it's like. The thing about Kelly Jones, baby, is that he was good at drawing dicks, and it was a pleasure to work with him.

[01:24:09] Badr: Top of the mountain, baby.

[01:24:10] Joe Hill: Top of the mountain.

[01:24:11] Joe Hill: No one you've ever, no one you know got into the comics business because they suffered from too much maturity. Well said.

[01:24:17] Badr: Facts. This next name, um, you've spoken a little bit about him, but me and C are such big fans of his. I just want to hear you talk more about it. Stuart Eminen. I mean, how was it to actually like work with him and get the pages and all that?

[01:24:30] Joe Hill: Tell us, Joe. It was, it was, no, it was amazing. It was amazing. I am proud of the way Plunge came out, and I think it's a really good comic. I wish that my writing had been up to the level of his art. I think that, um... That Stewart delivered, you know, one brilliant page after another. You look at his pages and you're like, this is one of the six or seven best artists and comics right now.

[01:24:58] Joe Hill: There are very few people who can work at the level he's working at. And I, I think the story of Plunge works and is a Good story with some good characters and some great moments. And, you know, I, I love when readers discover it. And I think there's a whole set of readers where it's like, you know. It's just right in a sweet spot, but I never thought my scripts were up to the level of his art.

[01:25:25] Joe Hill: Um, and, you know, if I ever, if I ever get a chance to take another swing, you know, and, and work with Stuart again, you know, I will, I would love to try to deliver something even better than plunge because, um, you know. Um, it's such a great thing to get to work with, with, you know, a legend, like, like Stuart.

[01:25:44] Joe Hill: And it was, it was so inspiring to see his pages coming in, uh, coming in. And I was very fortunate to get to team up with him for a few issues.

[01:25:52] Cesar: Damn. I really appreciate the honesty. Yeah, no, he's like one of those guys. It's artistically a chameleon, like he's the T 1000 of comic book artists. Like, like you could tell him like, Hey, uh, Draw in this style, photorealistic.

[01:26:05] Cesar: And he's just like zzzt, calibrating. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And like, now Yeah, yeah. He's got this beautiful photorealistic style that could rival Neil Adams any day of the week. Oh yeah, he's And then, yeah. Then you're like, ok, give me some uh, more graphic.

[01:26:19] Cesar: Gimme Lichtenstein baby. And then like he'll just go Ha ha ha ha! recalibrating and now it's like very very pop very super super poppy and you're like how is this the same person how can he do this it's like art deco go boop and then like it's it's freaking phenomenal if anybody's listening who's never seen any of Stuart's work.

[01:26:40] Cesar: Check out the D. C. Hill House, uh, line there, maybe? Uh, check out Plunge, um, and then dive deep into Stuart's work, you know? Like, he's freaking next wave. It's crazy. Oh, come on. Don't even get me

[01:26:54] Badr: started. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Classic. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, appreciate it. What's next for, for Hill House?

[01:26:59] Badr: Like, what's on the horizon? Any upcoming projects? Creators coming on board? Yeah. Can you share anything?

[01:27:04] Joe Hill: Well, now we're gonna take a turn into sad territory. It's all been fun until here. I'm actually, I'm actually, um, out of comics for the next few years. Oh, wow. You know, I've, I've written, I've written four novels.

[01:27:21] Joe Hill: And, uh, I'd like to, I'd like to, you know, have at least 10 novels before I'm done being a novelist. You know, I'd like to write at least another 6 novels. And so right now, that's my complete focus is getting the next couple of novels written. The next novel, King Sorrow, is. I've got a hundred, I've got a hundred pages of the book that will follow that one, which is called hunger.

[01:27:45] Joe Hill: Um, and I, I just want to stack up the next two or three novels before I get back to comics. And so I think it's going to be a few years. Um, there's, there's some possible exceptions. Um, I, uh, uh, Chris Ryle has been adapting the novellas for my book Strange Weather for Image, and, um, I would love to do, um, to script one of those adaptations myself, it would be an adaptation of a novella called Loaded, it's actually set in Florida, um, and, um, I would love to do that.

[01:28:21] Joe Hill: You know, uh, that's something I'd love to do. And, and Zach Howard, who illustrated the Cape, which is an adaptation of one of my stories, has said that he'd like to draw it. And so it would be a chance for Zach and I to work together. And, you know, so that's something. But even if I write that, that I probably won't, that might not be until late 2024 or even 2025.

[01:28:43] Joe Hill: Um, there is a small possibility that Gabe and I might Gabe and I have talked for years about a whole nother six book run of lock and key that would be called World War King that would jump back and forth between key houses past and key houses present and pick up with some characters after the events of the original run.

[01:29:08] Joe Hill: It might happen. I hope it will happen. And if it does happen, you know, if it doesn't happen in the next couple of years, it could still happen five or six years down the road. Um, yeah. But there, but Lock and Key is a big commitment. We've done some really good books. I wouldn't want to let readers down by doing anything less than, you know, giving it my full attention.

[01:29:29] Joe Hill: And I can't do that really while I'm working on the novels. Additionally, Lock and Key, I co own Lock and Key with IDW Comics. IDW Comics is not in financially good shape, as far as I can tell. I only know what I see from the outside, but it's my sense That, um, um, it's not, it's not a company that's, that's, um, as financially secure as one would hope that they have struggled a little bit in the last couple of years over the pandemic and so on.

[01:30:03] Joe Hill: Um, I'm rooting for them to get back on their feet and stuff, but I don't know what the future of Lock and Key looks like because I don't know what the future of IDW Comics looks like. Um, you know, so there's a bunch of, there's, there, there are several cross currents which make it hard to predict about what there might be for the future of Lock and Key and I'm rooting for IDW and I certainly hope everything works out and we, you know, wouldn't hesitate to work with them again if the window opened and if it looked like, you know, um, we could put together a good package and, you know.

[01:30:34] Joe Hill: It's very hard to predict the future. But certainly, aside from any other questions, I've got a couple of novels to write, so that's what I've got to do the next few years. So, um, the last Hill House title was Refrigerator Full of Heads, which was a sequel written by Rio Ures. Um, to Basketful of Heads. It has, at one point in the comic, There's a pickup truck with the severed head of a great white shark attached to it by log chains.

[01:30:58] Joe Hill: And the great white shark's head is still magically alive and eating people. Um, and so, you know, I know people wanna read that comic. They want to see that truck with the shark on it. So, so Hillhouse went out with a bang and had had a great final story and, um, no regrets. We left it all in the field.

[01:31:16] Cesar: We're back to sports again. There you

[01:31:18] Badr: go. There you go. Joe. Well, let me ask you this then. Just on some, you know, fanboy, uh, fantasy shit right here. If you were given the opportunity to write one character with, with one, or the creative team of your choosing, you know, whether it be from the big two or, or any character within comics, who would that be?

[01:31:36] Badr: Who would get you out of quasi hibernation?

[01:31:38] Cesar: What a very big question of you to ask, Paul. Well,

[01:31:41] Joe Hill: so, so... So the answer, so the answer is, unfortunately, nothing would get me out of quasi hibernation, because the goal is to get these next few novels written. It doesn't matter where I was offered. You know, um, if the window was open to doing comics for free reign, for DC it would be Superman, and for Marvel it would be Captain America.

[01:32:00] Joe Hill: Because, uh, you know, I know my profile as I write the scary stuff. But I, I sort of want to write about that hero who represents the best of what we can be, someone whose, whose basic decency is unquestionable, someone with a strong moral compass, um, who has almost like a childlike belief in right and wrong.

[01:32:25] Joe Hill: In helping people standing up for kindness and decency and, you know, I, I'm a cornball and I find that really moving and powerful and, you know, would love to, you know, would love to explore that with one of those big iconic American characters like Superman or Captain America, which in my mind are very similar.

[01:32:46] Joe Hill: Actually.

[01:32:48] Cesar: That's not corny at all, man. You know what you sound like? You sound like someone who read comics in the 90s. And I'm speaking from experience, and you know, I've had my fill of deconstruction. And I like it. I like it a lot. But it takes... Barter can tell you that my favorite comic book is Astro City.

[01:33:06] Cesar: Um, simply because it deals with sort of a reconstructionist view of, of that sort of stuff, tropes that you've seen before that have been picked apart and like, like hyenas on the, on the Serengeti, you know, like, just mangled superheroes,

[01:33:20] Joe Hill: you know? So if you're with the DC Warner Brothers... Marketing team.

[01:33:26] Joe Hill: This has been a great podcast and it's over. You can turn it off now. Nothing left to listen to. It was terrific. Uh, thank you. Thank you, DC. Thank you Warner Brothers. It's over time to turn something else on. Uh, so, so the gritty DC films. Like, after a while, there was so much grit, it was like, grit my eyes, and, I mean, the, you know, does it, do we really want a gritty Superman, you know?

[01:33:52] Joe Hill: A, a Superman who's like, breaking necks and stuff like that? Like, I think, I think, I, I, I love the Nolan Batman films, uh, I am down with, you know, darker, more adult takes on comic books and stuff, but I definitely think, That the DC universe on screen as depicted, you know, beginning with sort of like man of steel, you know, and through, you know, has not really been a lot of fun.

[01:34:22] Joe Hill: And that's why, right? Because it's like, it's just, you know, this is realism, man. This is like super, you know, and I'm like, no. It's not realism. It's a bunch of guys in capes, you know, and, and so, so I admire them for wanting to do something that was not Marvel, you know, by trying to make something distinct.

[01:34:50] Joe Hill: And I do think they had successes, uh, in particular, the first Wonder Woman film. Which wasn't, but wasn't gritty, you know, wasn't like it was like an embodiment of the character. It was, you know, as both they were like, actually, let's just do, you know, a movie that's really true to the character and stuff.

[01:35:06] Joe Hill: And it was amazing. You know, it was great. Um, I think, um, I think some of the films that have existed outside that DC universe. Um, so, um, Joker comes to mind. I thought, you know, I know, I know Joker has like, Like a kind of a bad rap on social media, but I thought it was like, I thought it was like the Scorsese films from the seventies.

[01:35:34] Joe Hill: I thought it was like king of comedy or, or a taxi driver. I was totally into it, you know, and I dug what I dug what it was trying to do. And, and, um,

[01:35:46] Joe Hill: I'll be right there to see the next one. The next one's got Lady Gaga in it, it's Harley Quinn, it's like gonna be done as a musical, and Joaquin Phoenix was amazing, and you know, so um, um, so I think that some of their experiments outside of that main line of the DC universe have been really good. Uh, I heard Suicide Squad was awesome, it's James Gunn, I haven't seen that one, um, so I'd really like to check that one.

[01:36:09] Joe Hill: But it was great.

[01:36:10] Badr: It's fun. It is. It is excellent. It's like one of my favorite SuperHill films in a long time. Like blew my

[01:36:15] Joe Hill: expectations. I heard Peacemaker. I heard Peacemaker was great too. It's freaking

[01:36:20] Cesar: hilarious. Yeah.

[01:36:21] Badr: So good. You cannot go wrong with Suicide Squad and the Peacemaker show.

[01:36:25] Joe Hill: And Peacemaker.

[01:36:26] Joe Hill: So I should watch them together, right? You watch Suicide Squad and then you watch Peacemaker. Yeah, yeah. Because it leads into it. Yeah, yeah. I want to watch. Yeah, I'm down for that.

[01:36:32] Badr: I'm down for it. And you're only doing yourself a favor. I guarantee you. Well,

[01:36:34] Cesar: you mentioned, uh, Grant Morrison and the British Invasion, right?

[01:36:37] Cesar: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting that. That guy who has he's thrown his hat in the arena of deconstructing superheroes But then because he's so magical and whimsical a lot and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense magic with a K And I love that man so much. Yeah,

[01:36:54] Joe Hill: he takes super

[01:36:55] Cesar: run yeah, and he makes him like sort of um, he creates a magical sigil and Brings out all the hermetic energy from Superman.

[01:37:04] Cesar: And then just says, here you go. Populous. Enjoy your superhero as the Buddha, because if he is God, like y'all

[01:37:12] Joe Hill: all star Superman, so it's one of my favorite comics of all time. So, so just a couple of things. So the best Superman movies, the top three are Superman two with Chris Reeves. The first Superman with Chris Reeves, and then the trailer for Man of Steel, the five minute trailer for Man of Steel, that includes, that includes, uh, Russell Crowe, essentially reading Frank Quitely, uh, no, uh, Grant Morrison's, um, bit from All Star Superman, where he's like, You know, one day they will follow you into the light.

[01:37:46] Joe Hill: I mean, just thinking about it, I get all these goose bumps on me. I'm like, I'm ready to start crying. I forgot about

[01:37:51] Cesar: that trailer too. Dude, when Kevin Costner is like talking to me, he's like, can I just keep pretending to be your son? He goes, you are my son. You are my son! I was like,

[01:37:59] Joe Hill: yes. So, let me just say, let me just say, I have a wonderful dad.

[01:38:03] Joe Hill: I, I love my dad. I wouldn't trade him for anything. But, but, if I had to pick a second dad, I'd pick Kevin Costner from Man of Steel. Because I've sort of always wanted Kevin Costner to hug me, and then I can ask him, can we just pretend I'm your son? And he can get like that choke, choke in his voice, and he can stroke my head and say, and say, you are my son.

[01:38:30] Joe Hill: That would be fucking awesome. Oh my gosh. That would be the absolute best. I just

[01:38:34] Badr: want him to hold his hand up against me.

[01:38:36] Cesar: Well guys, you've been listening to Daddy Issues, the podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Our guest has been Joe Hill and uh, we'll be back with Cookies next week and uh, we'll just cry it out.

[01:38:45] Cesar: Thanks for coming. Next week we have

[01:38:47] Badr: Christina Aguilera on the show as well. Oh shit. Joe, I, I got one more question for you to wrap this up, uh, this excellent conversation I had to have. We're coming up on 20 years since your first short story collection, 20th Century Ghost. Uh, since it's been published and I'm sure that not even sure I know that we have a lot of aspiring writers and comic creators, um, listening to the show and, and I always like to end on this note right here, but what words of wisdom or advice would you give to someone listening right now that wants to be, you know, that wants to get published or entered the industry, maybe based on something like you wish you would have been told as you were entering the industry.

[01:39:21] Badr: Like, do you have any advice or tips or anecdotes to share?

[01:39:25] Joe Hill: Um, yeah. This is, we're, we're wrapping things up and this is the place for me to say something inspirational and profound and I'm drawing an absolute blank. I mean, read a lot, read widely. Um, I guess, I guess I think it's important to recognize what you love because if you, you know, if there's something you love, you can write that.

[01:39:47] Joe Hill: Um, you can't write something because you think it's going to sell. Um, you can only, cause that's not enough to keep going. It's too empty. You have to, you have to hear what, what, you know, what absolutely pumps up your gonads and that's what you're going to write. Um, See, I did find something inspirational.

[01:40:09] Joe Hill: I did find something inspirational to say. I don't think I've ever

[01:40:13] Badr: seen an inspirational quote with the word gonads in it, but I'm here for it. You know, sweetheart,

[01:40:16] Cesar: Joe Hill said I need to pump up my gonads. By God, I'm going to write the Great American

[01:40:23] Joe Hill: Novel. Right. The other thing I would say is, you know, if you ever find yourself stuck, I get asked a lot about writer's block, and, you know, I've known for a lot of years that writer's block isn't a real thing, that it doesn't really exist.

[01:40:36] Joe Hill: When you get stuck, it's because there's something you want to write, and you can't, you're not giving yourself permission to write it, because you're thinking, oh, what if my mom read it? What if my mom read it and then found out the truth about me. First of all, your mom already knows, you know, and second of all, um, if you don't write the thing that's burning a hole in you, your creativity, your imagination will just take a fall and go home.

[01:41:01] Joe Hill: Um, you know, it would just say. We're writing this or we're not writing anything. So you have to follow that. You have to follow, there are things, you know, if you want to write, there are things you love, there are things that excite you, you have enthusiasms, there are things that terrify you deeply, that you have to go into that place and face those things and spend time with them.

[01:41:21] Joe Hill: Um, and if, if you can do that every day and also if you can read a lot, you know, especially the stuff you love though, you know, if you're not. You know, if you're out of school, if you're not in college, you're not in high school anymore, it's time to stop doing homework. It's time to stop reading books that you think other people want you to read or to read books because you think it's worthy, because you think it's going to impress someone, you know, don't, don't You know, read a book because, because you think, you know, I don't know, it's going to make you a superior intellect.

[01:41:55] Joe Hill: Just read a book because you think it's going to be fucking awesome, you know, because it's like, you know, you love horror novels, and so you're going to read one, and then you're going to read another one, you know, read the stuff that, that, that psychs you up, that, you know, and, and you can almost always, that is, that is a trail of breadcrumbs through the woods that will lead you where you want to go.

[01:42:16] Joe Hill: Or it will lead you to the house made of gingerbread where an old woman will shove you in an oven and eat you, you know. But, one way or another you're gonna get some place interesting.

[01:42:25] Badr: Someone at LeVar Burton is like, fuck yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's like,

[01:42:29] Cesar: but you don't have to take my word for it.

[01:42:33] Badr: That was really well said.

[01:42:35] Badr: Joe, this has been one of, I think, see this is, this is a, uh, Hall of Fame interview

[01:42:38] Cesar: right here. Yeah, man, thanks for spending time with us and, and thank your family for us letting us, you know, take you for a while and talk about lizard brains and all kinds of stuff. It

[01:42:50] Joe Hill: was a lot of fun.

[01:42:52] Badr: Joe, one last thing, um, I'm gonna have links to, to your socials, to the website, that'll be all posted in the show notes, but do you have anything else you wanna, you wanna plug or say to the listeners before we wrap up?

[01:43:02] Joe Hill: Well, I got a, I got a short story, uh, an Amazon original right now called Pram, that's part of their Creature Feature collection, um, that includes short stories, three short stories by Josh Mallerman and Grady Hendricks and Paul Tremblay and, um, uh, Jason Mott and, uh, Chandler Baker. Um, it's a really fun collection.

[01:43:21] Joe Hill: I hope people check it out. Um, the Hill House books have all been collected into like, uh, um, trade paperbacks. And I think if you buy the box set, you can get the backup feature, um, called Sea Dogs, which is a, uh, a fact based story about how America beat, um, Um, the British empire by using werewolves during the revolution and it's all true.

[01:43:45] Joe Hill: Um, so, um, yeah, you know, and I hope that people have a great, have a great Halloween and, you know, get a good scary film in and, you know, stay safe and, you know, make sure to eat plenty of your kid's candy, uh, you know, make sure not if it's a poison, then. You know, take care of yourselves. Be well.

[01:44:01] Badr: That's the way to do it.

[01:44:02] Badr: Joe, you've been fantastic. Thank you so much. You're always welcome on the short box. Yeah,

[01:44:06] Cesar: man. Your family. This was a lot of fun. Thank you guys.

[01:44:09] Joe Hill: Yeah, man.