SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo, Short Box Nation and new friends joining us for the first time. Welcome to episode 245. I'm your host, Bodder Milligan. What you're about to listen to is my interview of the incredible and talented Sanford Green, which was recorded at CollectiveCon this past weekend. For those of you unfamiliar with Sanford Green's work, he is one of the best comic artists currently active in the industry. His artwork has graced the pages for many comic book publishers and various series. Some of them including Marvel Comics, Powerman and Iron Fist series, DC Comics, Legend of Superheroes, and a slew of creator-owned books like Image Comics, Bitterroot, and Original Web Comic Series 1000. I was fortunate enough to talk with Sanford about all of this and more, most notably growing up on hip hop and comics and having the opportunity to recently work with Hip Hop Legend producer Pete Rock. Before we kick this episode off, I want to remind our new listeners and future short boxers to subscribe to the podcast on whatever your favorite podcast app is. Whether that's iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Google Play Music, and more. Subscribe to the Short Box to stay up to date with our new episodes and interviews just like this one. And make sure to follow us on social media by searching for the Shortbox Jacks. Without further ado, our Stanford Green interview starts now. Shortbox Nation I. Next up on my CollectiveCon interview list is a man that a lot of you guys love, and a lot of you guys have reached out and said, Man, could we please hear our interview? In his words, I'm happy to announce I'm standing right by Sanford Green, ladies and gentlemen. Hello, hello, hello, hello. For those of you that are not aware, Sanford Green is the co-creator and artist for Images Bitter Roots Comic, as well as the creator of the web-based comic book series 1000, and the artist for everyone's favorite dynamic duo. That's right, Power Man and Iron Fist who drew that series as well. Sanford, man, how are you enjoying CollectiveCon so far, man? Oh, it's been great.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Um, just really enjoying the uh the weather. I think that's the thing that I love right now is that weather is not too hot, though it's been a little schizophrenic where you had a superstorm yesterday and now it's uh Florida, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

I was gonna say, you know what? This is you know Florida, even though it's up, you know, upper state Florida, but uh it's still Florida none nonetheless.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So but it's been great, man. Awesome. Sanford, and you're no stranger to the to the con run. I mean, I I ran into you a few times at um at HeroesCon. I know that you tend to do that con a lot. I think you just came off a con prior to this one, correct?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Um, dude, it's all a blur. I don't know where I'm at right now. What day is this? I know I I did um let's see. Oh, Emerald City. Um that's about a month ago now. But uh yeah, it's um you know, it's a lot of shows these days. There's a lot of things happening, and uh, you know, uh be at Heroes in a few weeks, months. Yep, since June. June, yeah. See, it's all a blur. So, you know, trying to uh keep keep up with everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

So when I when I ran into you at HeroesCon last year, one of the bigger things that you were promoting, aside from talking about um the artwork and working on uh Power Man and Iron Fist was your original uh web-based comic book series 1000. Right. How has that been?

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Um it's been great. Um we won a uh Ringo Award for best web comic series, which is pretty pretty dope. Um did not see that coming. Uh thank thank uh thank everyone that voted for uh for it. Um a lot of it was um because the Ringo Awards are industry I think it's industry and fans, but I think it's mostly industry that votes for uh it's kind of like uh it's kind of like the SAG awards, you know, for for for acting.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Well that's gotta be kind of cool, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and if it's industry voted, I mean it's got gotta be kind of cool to know that your peers are like recognizing your work, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Hey man, you know, if you're politic enough, you'll you'll get a few, you get a few votes.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

So so what made you go through go to the the web-based comic book route? And and I think prior to me hitting record, we kind of talked about how um sometimes there's a negative connotation with web-based comics, you know, especially with someone that like you that has worked with an image, a marvel, etc. Um did you get any type of feedback or or questions like web-based comics, man? Like what? Well, you know, I forgot.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Well, I'll tell you what, um I kind of watched those guys uh web WebTunes is the uh the actual publisher. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

But um finishing your pair of glasses, please. Wait, these guys stop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

But um thank you. But yeah, you know, I watched those guys, you know, from afar. And um at the time, the ed editor in chief Tom Akel, he he was a friend or is a friend, um, and he told me, he said, hey man, keep an eye out for this company. They could be a pretty big you know power here in the next couple of months. And um, so you know, it it it came that time where he reached out and said, Hey man, they're making some serious moves. They they're going after big creators and they want, you know, this really cool content. They want to kind of get their themselves into the American market because uh WebTunes is a Korean-based company. Okay. So but they got you know pretty much all of Asia on lock, you know. Um but now they're they're pretty international, you know, they're all over. So um he reached out and said, hey man, now's the time. And he told me what they were offering in terms of you know uh compensation to come over and create. And um it's honestly two to three times more than I ever gotten at Marvel of DC. So interesting. I was like, okay, that's that Korean dollar. Yeah, there's a c yeah, they do it, they do it a little bigger there. So um I was I was like, yeah, and plus it was something that I had aspire to having, and um it just made me that much more excited to do it.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

And I imagine it, I mean, it's definitely something that probably helped diversify your portfolio, gave you a different exposure, different audience that you're working, you know, that you're creating in front of. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, I mean, just to be able to um to have uh that that variety of audience. I mean, uh, you know, it's it's funny when you have for lack of better words, you have these little teenagers coming up to your booth and they're all excited and like, oh, you created and I'm like, wow, that's a whole but that's what it's all about. It's like bringing in a new audience. You know, as a creator, you know, any creator, I mean, that should be our goal, our aspiration is to broaden our our uh our scope in terms of uh creativity and bringing in uh you know some new uh viewership.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Congratulations again on the success of a thousand webs-based comics series. Another, you know, just kind of talking about an another body of work that I think is getting a lot of attention that you're attached to is Bitterroots. Yeah. The comic book series from Image Comic Books. Yeah. Um I I know, you know, just hanging out on Twitter and the comic book side of Twitter. Yep. Uh Bitter Roots is constantly kind of being brought up. It's being, you know, one of the more fresher things coming out of Image. Right. Can you talk about the well, for anyone that isn't aware of Bitterroots, what is Bitterroots about?

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Um, it's about a family of monster hunters set during the Harlan Renaissance. Cool. And they use steampunk technology and alchemy to deal with this infestation of monsters. And um you as a reader will find out the source of it of that infestation. So you're gonna have to dig. It goes deep. Um, hopefully not too deep for for the broad audience, but it will go deep.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

You got a lot of interesting elements there. Oh, yeah. Monsters, the Harlem Renaissance, that's right, and steampunk.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

That is uh where did this idea get from alchemy? Yeah, and alchemy.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

There you go. So where did that come from? That came from my crazy mind, um, along with the crazy minds of David Walker and Chuck Brown. So we we initially had an idea to do something just in the era, in the Harlem Renaissance um era, and then it just started to grow from there. We started throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot, and we made this big gumbo of crazy fresh ideas. Uh, we did a lot of research. We didn't see anything quite like that out there. I think that's why it stands out so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, you know, it it definitely got the attention of uh folks in Hollywood. So, you know, we're we're just trying to um, you know, um do something that is really innovative. Uh we just don't want to put out a comic to put it out to get to go to the next level per se. We want this to be a great story as well. That's our ultimate ambition, is to just tell a great story, a very original, fresh story. And let me just say this part too. Um, I don't know if you were going to mention this, but you know, me and David Walker, we were at um Marvel for a while, and we worked on you know Power Man Iron Fist, Luke Cage. I did some Black Panther stuff, and we realized, you know, we don't own these characters. As well as this the the success of all that is, we just don't own this stuff. Yeah. So it was just a matter of like, okay, we're doing well, now is the time to take that jump, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

And you know, it that seems to be um uh a trend that I've at least noticed myself is that you've got a lot of uh creators uh that will go do these projects for say a Marvel DC, get their name, get the hype behind them, and then they they decide, okay, let me show you guys what I can do on my own. Here's my creator-owned stuff. Right. So I think it's a strategy that's that's fantastic. Right. And I'm really proud to know that um you know you guys decided to approach the um creator-owned uh route with such a unique and fresh perspective. I mean, uh what other comic boys is making the Harlem Renaissance even more cool?

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Right. And that's the thing about it, is like the Harlem Renaissance was just it was already an incredible, uh rich, you know, tapestry of just just on its own. Yeah. And to be able to throw this fantastical element in in it, it just makes sense. It's seamless, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

You know what I what I like about it is it doesn't like I I get uh educational sense, like I'm learning about the harm renaissance while still enjoying the book. That's right. Was that kind of in the forefront? Like, did you guys want to, you know, hey, we need to shine a spotlight on on something as uh amazing as the harm renaissance, but you know, how did you guys keep that balance of educational and entertaining?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Well, I'll tell you what, man, that that's the thing that we probably was the most excited about because we were like, man, just to think that if we play our cards right, we can not only, like you said, do this really great story to keep to entertain, we can hit this whole other audience, this whole other market, if you will, from an educational standpoint. As a matter of fact, um, we've got in the back of each issue scholars from all over the all over the w world really, um, doing essays, you know, based on Afro futurism, um the Harlem Renaissance, uh just uh culture, black culture in general, the history. I mean, it's very rich. I mean, this thing is you know pretty pretty awesome and dense, if you will. Um be doing a panel and a panel sample. And um, as a matter of fact, we have several uh college level professors teaching curriculum, high school as well, teaching curriculum based on our book.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Wow, that is yeah, it's pretty cool. That is really awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and I believe uh the first trade for Bitterroots is coming out sometime, I believe in either May or June, but pretty soon, right? Uh May, yeah, May 15th. And when is the series gonna be, I guess, relaunching?

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Um, that's a good question to some degree. Well, it's it's we have a pretty solid overall time period. It's gonna be in the fall. Okay. Um September, October-ish, somewhere in there. Okay. Um, you know, we're we're working on uh, well, like you said, the trade will be out um May 15th, and then we will have a one-shot uh, if you will, kind of an annual that's dropping in June or July. So we got a lot of things still happening bitter root-wise, and the the one-shot will be uh six creators or six stories based on um each character. And we got um some incredible creators coming in to do uh five of those stories. I'll be doing one along with the other uh creative team uh will be working on uh the entire story for each character.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

You brought up David Walker and your time working with him um at Marvel on Power Man and Iron Fist and Black Panther and Luke Cage. I'm sure that when the news broke out earlier uh in March about um unfortunately uh Luke Cage and Iron Fist were gonna be renewed. Right. I imagine people probably I mean, how did you take the news? Did people hit you up like, oh man, I'm gonna do it. Of course. Yeah, everyone, everyone sending their condolences to effort, man.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

But you know, we kind of already knew the writing on the wall with that because of what's to come, right? Okay. We all know what Disney is gonna be doing. They're gonna have the stream service. Well, the streaming service is gonna all be streaming. Now, when, that's a whole nother thing. I that we don't know. But um the streaming service is is very much in the forefront.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you know, speaking about uh just your time at Marvel, one of my favorite bodies of work that you did was the hip hop variant cover for Hawkeye. You did it based on Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth's um, I believe it was Mecca and the Soul. Mecca, yep. Uh and uh, you know, if you follow if if listeners, if you're following um Stanford on Twitter, you had posted something about you know just feeling really good about Pete Rock reaching out to you to do his album cover, which would be uh the next series was Pete Strumento albums. Yeah, how is that experience getting to work with uh a hip-hop icon? You know, one of the greatest producers of of hip hop of all time.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I mean it it's it's it's surreal, it's full circle, because you know, coming up in in in high school, uh, you know, I think I was a junior or senior when Mecca came out. Yeah. And um man, you know, just to to dream of I used to dream about working not only just with him, but just any iconic figure, right? To to put my artwork with their with their body of work would be that was just something that was so far fetched for me, you know. But at the same time, you have aspirations of doing something like that. And to have him reach out, and um, of course, it really helped to have uh the hip hop variant cover uh series to be a major part of that. It put me right in, you know, right in the the pathway of all these creative, you know, legends in the in the genre, in the hip-hop genre. So it was just like, wow, I'm I'm good friends with um plug one from Day La Soul now because of that. Um again, you know, you got Pete. Um I know a few other uh creative um types um in the industry, more so behind the scenes folks. I'll I will share this because it's not anything other than just a shout-out. LL Kushe, LL Kujay shouted me out. Well um on some yeah, it's pretty crazy on Twitter. It was pretty cool. So, you know, um that was pretty awesome. I was like, whoa, man, you're talking about you know, one of the you're talking about, you know, you were saying Pete. I mean, LL is like one of the figureheads of this whole thing, man, you know. So that was pretty crazy, man.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

But again, that just it's I'm grateful for it. And one thing that we always try to do on the show is is highlight and champion you know, hip hop and comic books, how they tend to go hand in hand. Right. You got groups like Wu Tang Clan, and even like some early Nas lyrics you bring up comic books, and it sounds like it's kind of prevalent for you where hip hop and comic books were just hand in hand for you. Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Bro, yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, going back to you know, as a as a uh kid coming up, you know, in high school, um, middle school even, I would draw to hip hop music. Um I would uh look at the uh album covers and get influence from from them, listen to the lyrics even and what they're saying. A lot of it is fantastical, uh bombastic, hero villain-esque type stories. Um and I was just enthralled with all of that, and it's absolutely you know, fell into my work, you know, seeing the music videos when when that was such a thing. You know, you would you would get super excited when you saw a KS1 Boogie Down Productions video and see how just lively it is, how animated, how great the storytelling is from uh Slick Rick or uh Public Enemy, which they were like the the public enemy was like the Avengers to me, man. You know, that was just like you know, seeing these guys and the personas that they brought, it was just incredible. So it's very, very, very much so a staple in my in my work.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Samford, do you have time to read comic books? Do you do you go into the comic shops or whatever your local one may be, and do you find time to pick up books on a weekly basis?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Not a weekly basis, to be honest. Um monthly, maybe monthly, definitely. Um I am really uh into getting the I know this is kind of like the sacrilegious deal, but um I'm really into um the trades. Oh no, I said it. Yeah, I said it. But I um I also am a fan of the art. I know that sounds uh, of course you would be, but the art is just one of the those things where it's like there's so many great artists out there right now. Um I'm really into James Heron. I don't know if you know his work. What about what's he he did uh he did this book called Rumble, which is pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's pretty awesome with that. You can take one, check it out if you like. But um it's um I'm trying to think. Oh man, he's the first guy that came comes off the top of my head. But you know, you get on social media like Instagram and you see all these great illustrators, you get totally just enthralled with you know what they what they bring, what she or he brings, and you start following them, and the first thing I look for, do they have an art book? Cool, uh comic series or something. So I'll go out and support. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah, and Sanford, we got some people coming up to your table. So I won't you know space your time, but I do want to ask you, man. You got something that you want to champion today. What do I want to champion?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Um, Mr. Miracle. I think that was a that was a dope series. That was a dope series. I know that's kind of a that's one of those upper, you know, easy, you know, easy ones. Easy for a good reason. Easy for a good reason. There's a real dope. It's real dope. Well, I will say this also. Um I will say this. Um I'm trying to think of the name because I picked it up and I was just like, wow, this is just like super duper dope, just with um what they're bringing in terms of it's a it's it's not an oh TKO, the company.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Man, yeah, those guys have been talking about TKO.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Yeah, they're definitely bringing some, they're bringing some some stuff, man. I'm like, okay. They're fantastic. If there was, I'm just gonna put it out there because they've already reached out to me about stuff, but that's the one place that besides Beerroot, uh, from an independent standpoint, I might take a look at those guys. No, that's but I love their format, I love their stories. Real dope. They're definitely here to change the game. Yeah, and I'm gonna do a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Sanford, I want to thank you so much for hopping on the mics with us. Our fans appreciate it. Yes, sir. Have a great rest of your collection weekend, man.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Absolutely, man. Absolutely.