An interview with Mr. Lovenstein (J.L. Westover) about webcomics, Kickstarter, and FEELINGS - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 438

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in this episode of The Short Box.

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I mentioned Cyanide and Happiness earlier, just an outsized presence in the comic world and just had a massive audience, still does. Way back then, they have a little tiny section on their webpage just like off to the side and it was titled Stuff We Like. It's all it said, Stuff We Like. And I was such a tiny little operation, I had no idea that they knew I existed. They found me and linked to my website. I went from getting like...

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you know, like a thousand to ten thousand views a month. So just suddenly, like my weak, tiny little baby servers were just like crashing and my website was going down and I'm like, what's going on? Like, what's why am I getting so much traffic? And then I retraced the steps. I was like, holy cow, these guys are promoting me. And like, they actually read my stuff. And that was a huge, huge boost. This was like a year and a half in of just doing it as a hobby.

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Intro music plays

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Yo, Short Box Nation. Hello again and welcome back. Thanks for being here. And most importantly, thanks for pressing play because I would not exist in your head right now. As a voice in your head without you pressing play, the first step is always on you and I appreciate that. Thanks for being here. If you're new, well, welcome to the show. My name is Bodder and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about your favorite comics with the people that put their blood, sweat, and tears into making them.

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This is episode 438 and is brought to you by two amazing benefactors. The first one being our dedicated and kick-ass patrons who make up our ever-growing Patreon community. If you like what we do here at The Short Box and you want to support the show in a more direct way, consider joining the ranks of the Short Box elite at Patreon.com slash The Short Box. Once again, Patreon.com slash The Short Box. Big shout out to our patrons. And last but not least.

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The short box is powered by Gotham City Limit, Jacksonville's premier location for comic books, collectibles, toys, and a whole lot more. If you live in Jacksonville or ever find yourself in Jacksonville or passing through, go visit a shop for yourself on South Side Boulevard right next to Tencent Towne Movie Theater. Tell them I sent you, and you're gonna get hooked up with some killer deals. All right, I put my name on that. They're gonna take care of you, bring up my name when you go to Gotham City Limit. Now with that out the way, let's get on with the main show.

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Today I'm joined by webcomic superstar Justin Westover, AKA JL Westover, who in 2021, just three years ago, made history by breaking into the highly competitive top 10 all time webcomics Kickstarter with his Eisner nominated original graphic novel, Mr. Levenstein Presents Failure. And despite its name, failure was far from that. Failure was funded in five hours and raised over $220,000 to date.

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to bring the project to life. I don't know Justin well, at least not yet. Maybe by the end I'll be able to say he's a friend of the show. But it's safe to say he's not a man who rests on his laurels because he's back with the sequel comic. His new book, Mr. Levenson Presents Feelings is in comic shops, bookstores, and digital platforms like Kindle and Google Play right now. As in, you can simultaneously be listening to the show, driving to your nearest comic shop or bookstore to go pick this up, and it's some...

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amazing meta experience. All right, go pick up Mr. Levenstein Presents Feelings. Now, Mr. Levenstein Presents Feelings is a collection as the name proudly suggests to you. It's a collection of fan favorite Mr. Levenstein comics that celebrate feelings in all forms. Every emotion is on display in this book from joy, sadness, rage, love, anxiety, and you guessed it, horny. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll cry some more. Justin helped us accept our failures and Levenstein Presents Failure.

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And now he's going to help us feel our feelings with a conversation about this new collection and what goes into making web comics. So without further ado, Short Box Nation, let's welcome Justin Westover to the show. Hey, Justin, what up? Welcome to the Short Box. Thank you. Thank you for having me. What's up, Short Box Nation. It's an honor to be here. I can't wait to talk about comics and feelings with you. You know what? How are you feeling?

04:55
today, Jess. And we're recording on a Tuesday. It's a little early for me to say, how's your week going? But I'll ask anyway, how are you feeling? How's your week going? You know, it's not bad. We're out of the Monday. I would love to meet somebody though, who's like, who absolutely loves Tuesdays, though. That'd be a unique kind of person. Like I'm all about Tuesday. Not even like Wednesday, like Tuesday is when I get in my groove, you know? So that ain't me. But yeah, not going bad.

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How about you? How are you feeling? You know, I have a weird relationship with Tuesdays. Tuesdays are my extremely busy days. I do a lot of meetings. I do a lot of emails that day. I also try to squeeze in like that is my absolute last day that I try to edit the pod. I'm also like uploading it. So it's a juggling act and it can go one or two ways. Either I am awake until the wee hours of Tuesday, almost Wednesday.

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trying to get everything situated for a Wednesday podcast release, or I've completed it by lunchtime and I feel fucking excellent the whole day. I feel like super accomplished. So today is a little bit on, it's kind of like in the middle, all right? My Tuesday is going pretty smooth right now. Hopefully I'm getting away, you know? Hopefully I'm not slowing you down. No, not at all, not at all. As a professional comic creator, what is your like?

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Do you have any designated days where maybe you do like work specifically? Like what is the flow of your week? It's a good question. Cause I was thinking about that as you were talking about like, you know, Tuesday's a crazy day because of just like how your production schedule is. Um, usually my schedule has gotten kind of out of whack lately, but usually Tuesdays and Fridays is when I drop like new comics. So there is like actually like a pretty big buildup to those days.

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sometimes working through weekends. But I usually try to have one day in the week, it's like Wednesdays or Saturdays, that's just dedicated to writing and thinking about funny things and doodling and letting my mind wander and trying to generate as much ideas as I can. And then honestly, the rest of it is just, it was right into like comic production.

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boring ass social media stuff, the tedious crap. Not to say interacting with my lovely fans, it's tedious and boring. I love it, but it's really just the repetition of like, okay, let's hop on Twitter. Okay, let's hop on Facebook. Let's go over to Instagram and then repeat that the next day. But yeah, it's just a nonstop hamster wheel. I don't know the exact feeling.

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but I know a similar feeling where to me, the funnest part is obviously the creation part. I even like, I'll be honest with you, I even enjoy creating like reels and video clips. Just because I've been doing audio for so long, I think making video stuff is like flexing a different muscle, a different creative thing, but I hate everything that comes after hitting post. You know, the anxiety of, you know, will the algorithms help me out today? Will I get any, you know, is anyone gonna see this? So yeah, I feel you there.

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You know, we should play a little, we should have a little counter at the bottom of this screen, a little field counter every time I say field. Yeah. You know, we'll count that up. I'll just start shoehorning into every sentence. Is it safe to assume though, as a web comic creator, does the marketing, is there a little bit of help in the marketing aspect when you consider that your comics...

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It's being shared online. People are sharing that. Web comics, I feel like, are very easily shared and do well on social media. Whether you have a personal account, you only post things of your family, or regardless if it's even a big brand, I feel like I see web comics shared by a wide range of users. It can be posted everywhere, right? Whether it be on Twitter or Instagram or even Facebook. Who doesn't like a good web comic being shared or reposted? Do you find that in your experience that social media helps?

09:09
Yes, I think it's like a double-edged sword. So on the one end, exactly what you said, like comics, like short form comics like mine, where you read it in like 10 seconds, move on and just a little picture. It's like a match made in heaven with like the modern landscape of social media. Like they were around before social media, but when they like, you know, came together, you know, it was like perfect harmony. Where

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I get the frustration of other traders where it's like you have, even in the comic world, you got a really long story with a bunch of panels and stuff like that. It doesn't organically work well in an algorithm feed. Or if you're an author and you write books or even paintings you think would do well, but people want to be entertained and not be pondering a beautiful painting on their phone. So, absolutely. I don't take it for granted that like...

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my comics are built to do well on social media. On the flip side, social media giveth and social media taketh. Bars. We are completely subservient to the almighty algorithm and what decides to show and not show. What's weird is we kind of live and breathe on social media.

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Our posts have to hang out with everything else going on in the world. My comic about some silly thing going on, someone crying their guts out because they spilled milk or something, has to go up against some crazy news story that just broke and someone posting a video of their cat being silly. We're constantly fighting with basically all other human existence that's being recorded to the internet.

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And it's kind of fleeting, you know, like people like it's, it kind of feels like to a point where people call my comics like memes now, which was not the case before. Now they see as a meme and memes are kind of felt like are viewed as like trash that you can, you know, you just look at it, crumple it up and throw it away. So, um, it takes a while to like get people to actually care about you, the creator and not just, it not just beats another funny little distraction.

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on the feed that they're scrolling. You brought up how traditional comics don't do very well on social media. Do you, I guess, do you have any preference in what people call you when they're referring to your occupation or your profession? Does it matter if someone calls you a web comics creator or just a regular comics creator? Does that distinction mean anything to you? Do you have a preference? I mean, I would love people to refer to me as an auteur or...

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an innovator or a master of his craft. I don't know. But. Ha ha ha.

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I don't get too hung up on that. What's up? But we've got a slight delay on the video. I took that, I was like, man, he holds himself in high regard, his self-esteem is up there. Autor, Justin, the almighty Justin. But yeah, like I don't actually get too hung up on what people think of me as. I do push back a little bit against like, people say like content creator. You know, like he's a content creator and it's just like, like content can just be

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anything like, you know, its content could be anything from, you know, the Sistine Chapel to like, you know, a fart, you know, it's just like, it's, it's kind of immaterial. So I, you know, I usually I refer to myself as like a cartoonist. Sometimes people call me like a comic artist or webcomic artist. Definitely not an influencer. I'll tell you that. But yeah, you know.

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It's something I really don't think about too much on a day to day. I just, I, I, I'm more just like, okay, I'm the guy who does, uh, Mr. Lovenstein and, uh, no one else quite does what I do. And that's kind of my, my job is to keep it that way. Where does the Mr. Lovenstein story start? Like what, what series of events led you to becoming a professional web comic creator, and I guess you could also share any like major milestones or

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chapter markers that got you from your early beginnings to where you are now. All right, well just, hopefully there's no one who can, has like time travel abilities that's gonna, I'm gonna explain and then they're gonna go back and stop me from ever creating Lovenstein in the first place. I'd hate for that to happen. You know? It's like step one, kill Hitler, step two, stop Mr. Lovenstein. In a nutshell, it really did come out of college.

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I mean, I've been drawing my whole life and I even drew comics in high school that were just to entertain my buddies. But in college, I had the bright idea to study art. I wanted to make a lot of money. And they said, you know, go study art if you want to make tons of cash, right? That's the safe career is art. So I'm in art school and I...

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I had been dabbling with animation and comics, but I never took it seriously as like, I'm gonna have a name for it, and I'm gonna make it a series I do regularly. And I finally bit the bullet and made a website, which was a big deal in 2010. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna stick to this. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, every week, I'm gonna put some out, even if it sucks. And it usually did.

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And I was drawing it in my off hours just for fun, just to like see if anybody would read this thing and just having fun being in like in the webcomic space because I was a big webcomic fan myself and I was heavily inspired by like the big names of times still around you know like Cyanide Happiness and you know, Nidroid and Perry Bible Fellowship and just all these guys just doing amazing work and I just was like, oh, if I could just get a little...

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piece of what that's like. And so eventually I ended up becoming the comic for the college newspaper. And that really motivated me. Okay, now I got some, I know people are reading this, people who I have to actually interact with in real life are going to judge me now. So that really pushed me. And I did it as a hobby for four years and just incrementally got better and learned what the hell I'm doing.

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and built up a kind of an audience. And then I went, quote unquote, professional 10 years ago where I was like, let's see if I could live off the revenue from my comic, just my comics. And at first it was an absolute nightmare. And I was like, what? This was the worst mistake I've ever made in my life. And maybe it's still this, but I scraped by and kept working at it.

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with the audience and that's just been it. Just since 2014, just making comics every week and hoping to do well. Could you like, if you were to, if I was to ask maybe like that one to identify or pinpoint maybe that one moment where you felt like, okay, this is the turning point or okay, I've made it. Like, do you have a memory or a moment to spotlight?

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I got a couple. One, this is probably the biggest one. I mentioned Cyanide Happiness earlier. Just an outsized presence in the comic world and just had a massive audience. It still does. Way back then, they had a little tiny section on their webpage just off to the side and it was titled Stuff We Like. It's all it said, Stuff We Like. And then it was just links to things that they liked.

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and I was such a tiny little operation that they decided they found me. I don't know how I didn't have no idea that they knew I existed. They found me and linked to my website. And I went from getting like, you know, like 1000 to 10,000 views a month, it's just suddenly like my my weak tiny little baby servers were just like

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crashing and my website was going down and I'm like, what's going on? Like, why am I getting so much traffic? And I'm like looking at my comics, I'm like, these aren't that good. And then I retraced the steps. I was like, holy cow, these guys are promoting me. And like, they actually read my stuff. And that was a huge, huge boost. This was like a year and a half in of just doing it as a hobby. And then.

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Another one was just on my own without the help of anyone else. I had a really viral comic and I also never had that happen before. It's just something that most people, I don't take for granted that most people don't even get to experience anything. It's blowing up and being seen by hundreds of thousands of people. So I just happened to have a good comic and I just happened to post it to the right places at the right time. People liked it.

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And I was like seeing it like at the top of like Reddit and getting multiple hundred retweets, which I was just not. I was like, sometimes I post a comic, they'll get like zero retweets. I was like, yeah, you know, I'll try better next time. What was the comic about? The one that went viral was, it's, I don't even post anymore because I don't even think it's that good at this point, but it was a Christmas themed comic. And it was like these two delinquent kids.

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like spraying graffiti on walls and smoking cigarettes and throwing bottles at cars and just being terrible. And then inevitably Santa gives them coal for Christmas for being naughty boys. And then it turns out that they were like horribly like impoverished and they were like freezing to death and they were going to use the coal to like warm their house up. And the mom's like, for save, we're going to survive. So people liked it.

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That's good. And I find that sense of subversion very common in your comics. Like your this is my interpretation of your art, but your comics range from absolutely absurd to some to to grounded sometimes. And then other times it feels like you're holding a mirror to the inner parts of my soul and what I'm thinking or truly feeling in the moment. If you had to maybe.

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if you had to describe your sense of humor or maybe the things that inspire you when you're creating your comics, other funny things or other comedic things, like what is that Justin West over Blender looks like? What is it part of what? Oh gosh, yeah. Now we're going really deep into the psyche of what horrible things are turning around up in Monoghan. But I'll say like on a surface level, I just, I like.

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comedy like anybody else and I appreciate it. There's mechanics that you need to understand that you learn about timing and setup and like you said, subversion and misdirection. When to like how to land a punch line. There's those little mechanical things that you just got to know. I like slapstick and people getting hurt and falling down and that kind of stuff. But I think what's...

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I think is, I don't know, it's hard to not talk about this without sounding like egotistical, but I think what makes Mr. Lovenstein special is that I do spend a lot of time thinking about my own internal struggles and the struggles of other people and why. This is what led to both making a book on failure and a book on feelings of just like, why do we do the things we do that we end up?

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hating or like, why do we not like ourselves? Why do we get so frustrated with ourselves? And just like the times when people are really vulnerable. Because I think you can cut two ways when you experience something like that, right? When you come across like a very vulnerable, awkward moment. On the one hand, you want to be empathetic and sympathetic and try to help.

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the America's Funniest Home Videos mindset of just trying to laugh through it and make jokes about it and then try to lighten it and try to control it in a way with humor. I'm trying to always straddle that weird middle point of there's some empathy and sympathy, but also we're highlighting there's some humor in the struggle, watching people suffer for better or for worse.

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And I just, I find that funny. It sounds twisted, but I find stuff like that kind of funny. No, I appreciate you saying that you dig deep or within yourself to bring these stories and these jokes to life. I think that's a sign of like a good artist, right? Someone that looks within to bring it forward, whether that be embarrassing or personal or whatever it may be. I think you hit it on the head. I think humor is a very potent medicine when it comes to dealing with.

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difficult topics like failure or even like feelings to some extent. And on the topic of feelings, which I think the counter is up to 71 feelings, this podcast episode alone. Let's get that out. This is the second time that you've teamed up with Skybound to not only launch a campaign, a Kickstarter campaign for both books, Failure and Now Feelings, but they also helps you bring the campaign and the project to life.

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and into the mass market in a print physical form, a nice physical form. I think Feelings is a nice 200 page hardcover. I do find the size pretty interesting, six by six, which I think lends itself to that webcomic form. How does it feel to catch lightning in a bottle twice? I mentioned in the intro that Failure ran for a month in 2019, fully funded in five hours, raised over 220K.

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You then topped yourself last year with the Kickstarter campaign for feelings. Funded that in two hours, raised over $250,000. Once again, how does it feel to catch lightning in a bottle twice? Very, very lucky. And I dare not tempt fate a third time, you know? But it's it's a combination of things. I do feel legitimately just fortunate and lucky that.

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things went so well. There's just things that can just go wrong. And there were things that went wrong. During the feelings campaign, I don't know if you all remember, but Mr. Musk bought Twitter and it lit on fire instantly. And mid-campaign, you basically couldn't tweet. They limited, you can only look at 600 tweets a day or something like that. It was happening during my campaign. So little stuff like that you can't predict.

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I think what helped was I got a big enough audience and they're really supportive. They're great. I love my readers. And then Skybound was able to give me the resources and manpower and support to take on such a massive project. I would not have been able to do these two books by myself. And I know this because I put out my own little self-published book.

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little known self-published book back in 2015. It was a little modest success, but it sucked the absolute life out of me trying to do that myself. Skybound was very critical to the success of this because while I was able to focus on promoting and talking about the book.

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Keeping up on all my social media, those guys were doing the grunt work of, you know, managing a Kickstarter page and customer service kind of stuff and, you know, the nuts and bolts that go on that you just, you don't see. So that really was a secret sauce and just, it also helped that these are collections and I stand by that they are some of my best comics I've ever made. So I'm.

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isolating and concentrating the best that I've had to offer over many, many years into one or two books. So I can truly without full honesty be like, this is my best stuff. If you want my best stuff, it's all in this book. That sounds awesome to hear. I currently have, I'm on Kickstarter and I guess you could look up, you know, you could apply certain filters and right now I've got a filter on to show me web comic projects on earth.

27:12
sorted by most funded and you are among the top 10. But I noticed the number one and three slot is Ava's Demon Book One and Two, both also backed by Skybound. So I think it goes to what you were saying about Skybound being great partners and helping creators elevate. Yeah, they know what they're doing. What do you think Kickstarter campaigns and creators that utilize that platform, what do you think they most underestimate when it comes to running?

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a campaign on Kickstarter. Do you have any tips that you find, that you personally use, that you find work when it comes to making or having a successful campaign? Yeah, I think a really big one is, like I said, the things you don't see. So you don't see how much prep goes into that launch day. And, you know, the work for these Kickstarters

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five, six months before we hit launch. So you gotta really be prepared for the whole campaign day one. So you know, you gotta have, like we had the book ready to go. We had the page and the promotional videos and the ads we were gonna do and kind of a schedule of how we're gonna promote it. We had guest artists lined up.

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ready to go. They had their artwork done for the book. Email lists, like we gathered emails and had rewards for people if they signed up. Little things like that is critical because you do not want to be scrambling once you hit go because the other thing people underestimate is that it's usually 30 days. So it's like a month of nonstop pressure to get to, you

29:08
get that Kickstarter as high as it will go, because that's the only window you get. So you feel it from the moment you hit launch to the moment it ends. So anything, anything to take off the pressure and to not be scrambling, you know, like the first couple of days, like you didn't think of something or you weren't prepared for something or you didn't plan out your budget,

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like me don't really like to think about. That's really what makes or breaks a campaign. I've seen one too many campaigns where they, like you can tell within like the first week or two they just had no plan. Like they had like a great couple first days and then they're just like, now what? It's still going. And I don't know. I've said everything I wanted to say. And yeah. And then it just kind of...

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freezes, it just grinds to a halt. So yeah, it's really, really in the planning. Just hearing you describe how intense that month, my palms started getting sweaty as a very anxious person. And I don't even have a campaign going on. You said something in another interview that I found interesting that was insightful to me. And, you know, paraphrasing here, but you brought up how Amazon

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has kind of warped our expectations and understanding of like shipping times. And, you know, we're used to things arriving in two days or three days, but with the lens of, of a, you know, comic creator or someone doing a Kickstarter campaign, it doesn't, the reality is, is that one production and shipping is very expensive in the different hurdles, you know, that come with, you know, shipping things out. Can you speak into a little more to that? Maybe providing a little more details or specifics.

31:05
Yeah, I mean, yeah, to get into like some more nuts and bolts. I've straight up seen a couple campaigns that ended up losing money all when everything was done because they underestimated how expensive shipping is. So like you said, yes, Amazon and now other platforms like them have completely warped our expectations.

31:34
of shipping where they'd expect it to be free, they expect it to be fast. And the reality is it's very expensive to ship stuff. When you're not a massive, massive, massive corporation that can get, just through sheer volume can get really cheap rates, to just ship a book costs a lot of money. Especially when you think about it.

32:03
Kickstarter is just like starting from ground zero and then ramping up the production of one product that didn't exist prior. And then that's it. We ramp up, get it made, ship it out. That's it. It's not like we're a factory that churns out web comic books on a regular.

32:32
I'm not like, that's not even considering like international stuff. And so like with failure, a big hurdle we had was we, we did that in 2021. And I don't know if you remember there was this like pandemic going on and uh, we were kind of in the thing. I vaguely remember a thing. Yeah. There's some, something. I think it was in the news. Yeah. You might've missed it, but, um, all the things you heard about, like, you know, like

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supply chain issues, supply chain crisis. We were right in the thick of that. We had the books ready and we had them on a ship, but the places where we needed to send that ship to could not receive the ship. So it just sat in the dock for weeks and weeks and weeks. We're waiting to get the okay for it to start moving. We're getting messages like...

33:30
Where is it? Why is this taking so long? And it's just like, there's literally nothing like we can do. We are up against literal logistical impossibilities. So stuff like that can just really throw a monkey wrench in there. Thanks to just because of our preparedness, because Skybound knows what they're doing, we were able to stay on top of that and get it out. Roughly still on time.

33:59
Luckily, we do not have to deal with that this time. But shipping is a real beast. And production, if you do it by yourself, God bless you. But oh my God, I couldn't do it now. It wouldn't be worth it. If I had to make a book by myself, again, there would never be another Mr. Lovenstein book. Big shout out to Skybound then. All right, let's pull ourselves out of the weeds and talk about something fun, which

34:28
Mr. Levenstein presents feelings. There's something interesting here. I mean, the whole book is interesting, but I wanna highlight one specific thing, and that is these special guest authors that you have in this collection. You've got nine special book exclusive guest comics from other web comic authors, including Extra Fabulous, one of my personal favorites, Litterbox Comics, Hot Paper Comics, Cassandra Callan, Signight and Happiness makes the appearance here.

34:58
I guess looking at this, I think, oh, it must be a very collaborative space. You know, you brought up the story about Sinai and happiness, you know, sharing one of your early comics and that really boosting your work. And I guess is this you returning the favor or is this just kind of like the nature of web comic creators? Like you guys all look out for one.

35:19
Oh no, we are one big happy family. This is not out of the norm. We are always trying to help each other and support each other. It's a wonderful community. I feel very fortunate to be a part of it. Like we just strongly believe that a rising tide raises all ships. So we are always collaborating with each other. I've been, I've done guest art on like four, five, six other Kickstarter.

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projects for my friends. And yeah, it's great that they're always willing to help out. And beyond just making guests work for books and stuff, sometimes we'll just straight up just do a collab comic where we just, like, hey, let's work on a comic together. I'll do the art, you do the writing, stuff like that. Yeah, we are always boosting each other.

36:18
That is awesome to hear. And as someone that runs a local podcast group here in Jacksonville, um, we stress, what is it? Oh my God, I almost forgot our own tagline, collaboration and community over competition because of that same thought process where, you know, if we all help each other out, we all kind of gain because we're building, you know, and strengthening the industry and in the ecosystem of podcasting. That's great to hear. That's kind of like the same thing in web comics, which is probably, you know, true in all.

36:45
kind of creative endeavors and hobbies and things like that. So aside from the guest comics, which I think is a fantastic addition, the other interesting aspect to this new book, Mr. Lovenstein Presents Feelings, this is collecting, so it's over 200 pages of the comics in here. You've included secret panels or additional panels for each comic? Yes. So the secret panels are kind of like a hallmark of Mr. Lovenstein.

37:14
And how it works online is I post the whole comic for you for free. I'm a good guy on whatever social media you like. But to support me a little bit and give you a little extra bonus, I drop a link to Tapas. Tapas is like my digital publisher. They're great too. And on there, I have the secret panel.

37:44
And the only way you see that is if you go there. So if you know about the link I'm dropping, or you already regularly read Tapas. And then the secret panel, originally it was just like an inside joke in my community where I was just hiding them on my website, and I didn't even tell you about them. And then I would just put them on the off comic. And then...

38:09
people started expecting them. Like, hey, there was no secret panel on this one. So I was like, okay, I guess I got to do it for every single comic. And a big question I got when I was putting out these books, because people love the secret panels, is like, are you going to have the secret panels in the book? And how are you going to do it? How are you going to hide them? And for fun, I was thinking like, okay, what kind of crazy ways can I do it? Can I have like a flip up, like a little flap and you see the secret panel or...

38:39
Yeah, yeah. And some kind of like, you got to wear special glasses to see, you know, ridiculous stuff like that. But the elegant solution we came to was, you know, you have the comic on the page on the right and then you turn the page and on the back of that is a secret panel. So what I like is that, you know, you get the comic like you would anywhere else and you enjoy it and you laugh. You turn the page and then you get another extra joke.

39:08
full transparency, I ended up getting a digital copy. You're swiping the whole time. And I still found these secret panels pretty effective because they look different too, right? They're not in color. The main comic is in full color, which by the way, I gotta say your color palette is choice, dude. Like seriously. Thank you. But now I'm like, well now I gotta go get the print. That's a good incentive is what I'm trying to get at. That is a really good incentive that you're including that in the print form, you know? Yeah. And then

39:38
In addition to that, in the book, in Feelings, I did, I think I want to say a dozen comics exclusively just for the book that aren't anywhere. They're online or I never posted them anywhere. And when I did Failure, I did not do Secret Panels. I did the book exclusives. And this time around, I was like, I got to right or wrong here. So the secret comics in my book come with their own secret panels.

40:08
Every comic gets its secret panel on this one. Do you have, is there any specific, now I mean it's going to be kind of hard to, you know, describe these or, you know, I don't want to ruin the punchline or jokes for any of these, but do you have any favorite strips in this collection that might mean maybe something a little more than the rest or for any personal reasons? Oh gosh, trying to make me choose between my babies.

40:36
There's the comics that I like them because they just do so well. I'm like, thank you for being a popular comic. Yeah, they're breadwinners. Yeah, they're my breadwinners. And then some that I just, I like what I conveyed in the comic. And I think a good marriage of those two things was the Walkin' Buds comic. I feel like I just hit all the notes on that one.

41:05
And when you say you hit all the notes, what are some of those notes that you need to hit for you to say this is, you know, top tier? Right. So it's cute, which helps. It's got so it's got cute animals. It's relatable. I guess it helps explain the comic is just like it's two birds. One's a penguin. One's a pigeon. And the penguin is, you know, like I like that.

41:35
We have each other since neither of us can fly. And you know, pigeons can fly. I picked pigeons because they're also just kind of lazy and like to walk for some reason. And so, to the pigeons like, oh, he's about to say like, oh, I'm lazy. And then the penguin reveals that he made this shirt as a gift for both of them to wear as them holding hands walking and we're in the walking buds club.

42:04
The pigeon keeps quiet, puts his shirt on. It hits an emotional, you know, like, you know, like it resonates emotionally. It resonates as like friendship. And it's funny, you know, it's funny that the, this penguin doesn't realize the pigeon can't fly and just ends up being this nice heartwarming thing that people love. Now that walking, but that comic that you just explained.

42:32
It seemed that that comic was specifically mentioned a few times. Like people were asking for, are we going to get a Walking Bud shirt? Like the one in the comic. And I think you guys actually offered him that the Kickstarter campaign, like a enamel pen that at some extent. Do you, do you find a direct correlation between like the, the, the strips that, that, like you just said, hit all the notes for you with, with the ones that, that, uh, I guess generate the attention and are below, like

43:01
Like this one, for example, did you see it becoming a thing? Like that people are wanting the shirt that are, you know, looking for bonuses or bonus rewards for that? So sometimes when I make a comic, I think I got a winner on my hands and it bombs. You know, I'm like, what went wrong here? Like, how am I so out of sync? But then there are other times where I make a comic, like, like walking butts and

43:31
as I'm making it, I just like, I can feel it in my bones. Like people are going to like this. Like I like this. Like when I really like something, you know, the odds go up that other people are going to like it. And I did not really predict that people would want to shirt. That seems so obvious now in like hindsight, but I wasn't really thinking about that. I was thinking about the whole comic, you know,

44:00
in its entirety and the gift was just kind of a means to the end to getting to the final panel. I remember the first day I posted that and it was just like immediately people were like, I want the shirt. Where's the shirt? I want the shirt. I was like, oh my God, I'm so stupid. I should have just, and I made it look like the shirt in the comic. By the time I got to making the feelings book, I knew I wanted to feature.

44:29
The Walkin' Buds Club comic prominently, because it does really capture the ethos of the book of feelings. So yeah, the pin and little stickers of the birds, because they're just cute. They're just really cute. And yeah, so really I rarely go in thinking like, oh man, once this comic's done, I'll be able to sell XYZ. It really is almost always backwards.

44:59
people demand it and I go, oh, that makes sense. It happened with a different comic, which I think is in the book. It's like a little rock. It's like these two dudes talking about how much they love rock. They're talking about music and they got like rock band shirts on. It turns out like it's like a stone on the ground. It's like, oh my God, they love me. But

45:25
the shirts they're wearing. I just was like, I don't want to do just straight up band stuff. So I made like parody shirts and one was like, it was Kiss, but it said, I hope it's okay to say this on your podcast, but it said piss. And then it was like a parody of ACDC where it said like BCAD. And people were like, when I posted that, like every time we were like, oh, I want those shirts. I want those shirts.

45:51
And I still have resisted to this day. Maybe I'll change. But it's just like, I don't know if I want to sell a shirt that just says piss on it. Yeah. Stuff like that happens all the time. Justin, to use your own words against you for the next Kickstarter campaign, that is a wrong that you need to write in the next campaign. We need the shirts, man. We need piss shirts. You brought up the fans, the Mr. Levenstein fans, you brought up the community, you know, how they support you.

46:21
I was curious, what is the overlap between web comic fans and say comic strip fans? Outside of the means, the vehicle for delivering these comics, is there any major differences? Is there much overlap between your traditional comic strip fans and web comic fans? So when you say comic strips, do you mean like newspaper stuff or do you mean like comic books with superheroes and stuff?

46:50
I guess let me try to rephrase that one. Like if I was to ask you, who's in your Mount Rushmore of comic creators? Would it be, would I be silly to assume that maybe a lot of web comic creators, I guess pulling out a little bit, have, I don't know, like Charles Scholes or Bill Watterson or Jim Davis on that Mount Rushmore, or is it such a niche thing, web comics, it's their own ecosystem and whatnot? Like there's...

47:19
traditional comic newspaper comic strips kind of overlap or feed into the web comic community at all? That is a great question Because we we tussle with that a lot as web comic artists like I've said a few times already like I do find it strange that we call our stuff web comics still it feels very antiquated You know, it'd be like calling, you know videos like a Netflix show like a web video like it would sound silly

47:47
But it really is stuck and it really has made a clean demarcation between stuff that we read in newspapers and stuff we read online, even though you can read everything online. Even Gary Larson doesn't want you to. There's a national cartoonist society, I think it's called, and it's got everybody you named and more in there.

48:16
And it has very few web comic artists in there. So it almost feels more like an old guard versus like the newer younger people. Because the thing with comic strips as you describe them like in newspapers is just like they just don't happen anymore, right? Like it is so extremely rare for someone to get syndicated in newspapers. You are competing with dead people.

48:46
this point. They still put peanuts comics in the newspaper. And I think that's just as newspapers continue to die their slow death, I think that's just the way it's going to be. But I will say, I don't know if I can speak for all of us, but we do pay a lot of respect to the artists who came before us. We're just building on top of them. We're staying on giants. And we always had the advantage of reading their stuff growing up and learning

49:16
And they put in the work and figured stuff out. You compare comics from the 1920s to the 1950s and 1980s and just see that evolution. It's just continuing on today. It just happens to be online. One thing I'll say that separates us, at least this might be changing, is there's no control.

49:45
on a webcomic, like there was on a syndicated comic strip, right? There's a lot of rules you had to follow if you wanted to appear in a newspaper, like obviously censorship, no swearing. Just because of the nature of the paper, you had to be black and white, had to be simple, had to fit into four panels, nicely laid out on a sheet of paper. So a lot of constraints that webcomics do not have. And that has led to just an absurd amount of variety.

50:15
and voices that you didn't see like voices from small groups, you know, minorities, niche groups, niche fan bases, and that gives them a way of communicating and, you know, talking about themselves and their lived experiences. And I think that's what makes webcomics just their own special thing that as great as the

50:45
were, I just think web comics are just that much more greater because there's no barrier to entry. Anybody can talk about whatever they want through them and it can be beautiful. It can be ugly. It can be short. It can be long and can feature anybody you want. So yeah, that's a great question. We talk about it a lot. And I guess I will follow up that question where if you had to create like a Mount Rushmore of your favorite

51:14
comic creators, illustrators, you know, kind of an umbrella term, whether they be web comics, print, newspaper, etc. Like who is on your Mount Rushmore? When you think about the creators that are pivotal to your story that continue to inspire you that you feel like stand the test of time. Oh, that's so hard. So it's going to be a mix. I do. I would put Charles Schultz on my Mount Rushmore. I do think he just he did things that nobody else was doing way back in like

51:44
the 50s. You forget how old the peanuts were and just how dark it could get, how melancholy it could be, subversive in ways. It's funny to think of peanuts now as subversive, but it really was. He was so consistent throughout his whole career. I read a ton of peanuts growing up. I got several books.

52:11
I love the characters, I love the way he writes, I love his art. And also I would put up on there, I'm trying to remember his name, I think it's Ernie Bushmiller I think is his name. Embarrassing if I forgot it, but he did Nancy, which not a lot of people bring up. People often bring up Kelvin Hobbs and the far side.

52:42
But I think Nancy is just one of the greatest comic strips ever created. It's just so creative and legit. It still makes me laugh out loud. Just off the wall. It's really hard to predict which direction it's going to go in. I've taken a ton of inspiration from them. And then I only got two more spots left. So I got to wrap up my community and I got to say...

53:09
with a bullet, Perry Bible Fellowship by Nick Girwitch. Not only is it worthy of being on Mount Rushmore, I think it's maybe the best comic series ever made. And he's still making them. It's just, he's just like head and shoulders better. You ever just like see something so much better than anything else? Like so good. You're just like, there's no comparison. Like how could anybody look at this and think there's something better? Like

53:37
The art is almost aggravating. Yeah, it's almost aggravating how unfair. You see it and you know that you'll never be better. To your point about the art, cause I'll be fully honest with you. I did not, I guess I've seen these comics before, but I've never associated the name. Now I know it's Perry Fellowship Bible. And I think a part of that is that the art style ranges so much that sometimes I think I don't associate, you know, Perry Fellowship Bible with.

54:06
that strip and then I ended up learning, oh no, that's the same guy. Yes. Yeah, it is some profoundly great comics. Yeah, and just so funny, like on top of the art, it's just some of the funniest stuff I've witnessed as a human being was in a Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip. And the last one's tough, last slot, because there's just so many great web comic artists.

54:36
But I think it's funny because it's like three guys, but I have to say Psy and I in happiness as well. We've name dropped them multiple times already. It's three guys, so it's like a Cerebus three-headed beast that's off to the side of the Rushmore if we're going to continue the metaphor. Just because those guys have just the massive, massive impact they had on web comics and just comics as they exist online.

55:05
and just pushing boundaries and just so creative and all the directions that they've gone on and doing it with very simplistic art. I just got done praising PBF, but remarkable what they were able to do with a purposely restrictive stick figure art style and they're still doing to this day. They've been going at it for 20 years. It's hard to measure their impact.

55:35
Which is saying something, right? You said that they've been going on for 20 years. One, I didn't know they went back that far. I knew they were around for a while, but to me they are probably the most, they're really modern. But when you juxtapose it with how long they've been in, well before like social media was really like a thing and part of our everyday lives, I feel like you look at their comics now and it feels like a part of the social media DNA. Like you brought up web comics sometimes being referred to as memes. It's hard to not,

56:05
say that they've kind of helped develop like that modern web comic meme. Like how many, how many times have you so as someone online sent you a comic of theirs or a panel or whatever it is? Like they've been around so long and I think they probably have a comic for every feeling, every thought, every experience like you could ever go through. Yeah, they've, they've tapped into like every subject matter humanly possible and made it funny.

56:33
All right, Justin, as we're getting to the end of this, I wanna go back, get some advice from you, right? For the aspiring creator that is listening right now, I'm gonna say creator as just a general thing, whether it's someone that is aspiring to be the next webcomic superstar, or is trying to do traditional newsprint or comic books, what advice do you have for those aspiring creators? And maybe if you could tailor it to something that you wish that...

57:01
someone would have told you when you first started, that would have made your life a lot easier. What would that be? I'd say the most important thing that any creator has to do, and this is painfully obvious, is you have to create. And that sounds bizarre, but there are so many people who get stuck in the planning and conceptual phases of things. You have to create and you have to create a lot. Now that we're in an age

57:31
where it is so easy to reach the world through the internet. Once you are comfortable with what you're creating, if you start small online communities or something like that, you have to get other people looking at it. And you have to ignore the haters, the extreme people, but you have to take what they're saying, really absorb their feedback. If something's not working, you have to be willing to adapt, you have to be willing to evolve, you have to be willing to be critical of yourself.

58:01
so critical that you freeze up, you can't do anything. And keep going even if you're afraid of it bombing, if you're afraid of looking like a fool, like a failure. Just know that all of us have made some of the worst things that we just absolutely are so embarrassed by and hate. But because we made those awful, awful things that got us to where

58:31
made the good stuff, right? It's all on like the same journey. So just getting over just like that apprehension of creating and then once you're in it, the apprehension of failing, like that will get to take you so far, especially truly if you are willing to adapt and evolve. Like if something's not working, you got to change and you got to strive and push yourself to get better.

59:01
And the other big thing I'll say if you really want to specifically get into web comics or something like that is, and this is a mistake I made, was you need to engage with the web comic community, like the other artists around you. And just find people that you gel with. You don't have to go to the biggest, most popular artists and start begging them.

59:30
for attention. There's always going to be someone in your sphere at your skill level, at your audience size that you can bounce ideas off with, talk about your strategies and just shoot the shit, and just talk about the process and collaborate and stuff like that and boost each other and help each other. And if you are a good member of this webcomic community, people will notice you.

59:59
People recognize you and they'll want to put a spotlight on you. I'm always doing that. I'm always looking out for up and coming artists because it makes me feel great. If I find something awesome and the only thing holding them back because not enough people are looking at it and I can just unleash my audience on them and then they can see like, oh, I got something good going on. If you're putting the stuff out there, you will be found. So

01:00:28
That's my advice. I hope it helps. No, that was solid advice. That's a standup move, Justin, to put the spotlight on someone else. Cyanide happens to be for me, so gotta pay it forward. Damn right, we're starting to favor. You brought up something about the creative process and embracing kind of the suck, and I want to recommend something that I kind of found out about through you in a tangential way. Have you ever heard of the Ira Glass, or Ira Glass, you know,

01:00:56
famous NPR podcaster, he has a, I don't think it's a video. I think it might just be him explaining like the creative process. But he talks about the creative process. Part of that is sucking. Like just knowing you're gonna suck in the beginning. And the only way to get better is by doing the reps and embracing the suck. And if you type in Ira Glass creative process in Google, it'll show you like a couple of videos and I'm assuming it's like an audio thing. I found that via one of your AMAs on Reddit, I think you were on like R Comics.

01:01:25
doing an AMA and someone had shared, I think asked a pretty similar question, advice for aspiring creators. And someone in the comments had shared this Ira Glass thing, which I want to bring up your AMA on Reddit, which I think was in 2021 when failure came out, is one of the most entertaining AMAs I have ever been through. I damn near read every single question and post. And I got to ask, because you responded, you responded, but you hyperlinked all your responses to a comic. And I'm curious, did you draw?

01:01:55
every single, I mean, it was like 100 responses or questions that you responded to. Did you draw a comic for every single question? That? So, you're talking about was the, actually AMA for feelings, which I did last year. Oh, okay. It was for feelings. Yeah, and I did. I drew almost every response on the spot. Holy shit. That is just hella impressive, man.

01:02:25
Yeah, just like you said, just to make it all the more fun and entertaining. That's cool. I will include a link to that in the show notes, but it's pretty easy to find if you look for a JL Westover AMA. Absolutely awesome read through. So thank you. I guess with that said, short box nation, we are wrapping up our conversation with Justin Westover, who has a new book coming out called Mr. Levenstein.

01:02:50
Is it Levinstein or Levinstein? Have I been saying it wrong this whole time? I say Stein. Most people say Steen and it does not bother me. One iota. I don't care. All right, there we go. Justin has a new book. It's called Mr. Levinstein Presents Feelings. It's available everywhere you get books, whether they be in a comic shop, in a bookstore, or on digital platforms like Kindle and Google Play. Mr. Levinstein Presents Feelings, available everywhere. Someone who has read an early.

01:03:18
review, I'm telling you, you will get in your feelings, but in the best way. You know, and sometimes you just gotta embrace the feelings, whether it be happiness, sadness, crying, or as the back matter says, or being horny. It's all of that inside of feelings. Check it out. Justin, do you have any closing remarks, any last things that you wanna say, anything we didn't touch on? I think we said it all. And I just wanna say, this has been a fantastic interview. You've asked some great questions. I've had a lot of fun doing this.

01:03:47
I appreciate that man. Best of luck with the rest of the release. I will absolutely be on the lookout for whatever you got next. And now that I know that you continue to do weekly comics, I'll be checking that out as well. There you have it, Short Bikes Nation. That's the end of the show. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for being here. And a special shout out if you made it this far. If you enjoyed this episode and you have some thoughts or comments that you want to share with us,

01:04:15
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