Tony Fleecs 0:00

In this episode of the Short Box. When we knew Local Man was wrapping off, Tim had come to me and we were spitballing stuff back and forth. And he had a couple ideas that weren't quite it. But then he sort of knows that I love, like, if you see Uncanny Valley or Feral or Stray Dogs, like obviously I love animation. And he knows that I love like Italian giallo slasher movies. And so he was like, what if we just put those together? What if we did like a princess slasher? And that when he said it, I immediately saw exactly what it could be. And like uh how those two flavors that you haven't seen together would look so cool with each other.

Intro music 0:39

Ladies and gentlemen, The Short Box podcast is recorded live from Jacksonville Floor.

Badr Milligan 1:03

Yoo! Short Box Nation, hello again, welcome back. Thanks for pressing play. You know the deal by now. It's new comic book day, new podcast day. You're here, I'm happy, and I got a great show lined up for you. If you're brand new though, welcome to the show. I'm Badr, and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show where we bridge the gap between the panels of your favorite comics with the people who put their blood, sweat, and tears into making them. And a little extra emphasis on blood this episode. I feel like it's very appropriate to say that considering who we have today and what we'll be talking about. This is episode 517. And joining me today for his second appearance on the short box, which if I may take a quick tangent, I feel like this is the year of the return guest, the second appearances. You know, Sanford Green was just on the show uh a month ago. That was his second time. This is this guest's second time, and I've got another one lined up for his second appearance. I don't know, I don't know, uh, there's a theme going on here. But, anyways, today, joining me is the prolific and critically acclaimed comic book creator and TV writer Tony Fleecs. Tony has worked for every major U.S. comics publisher. You've seen his name on some of your favorite comic book titles like Star Wars, Rick and Morty, Avengers, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Batman, TMT, Transformers, Army of Darkness, and a literal ton of My Little Pony comics. Tony's creator-owned books, which have all been nominated for multiple awards, include Stray Dogs, Feral, Uncanny Valley, and my personal favorite, Local Man. Well, later this year, he'll be adding one more title to that list of creator-owned books in the form of a new series called The Princess Murders, which asks the question: what if Frozen was actually a slasher movie? What if instead of Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty found herself having to uh fight against Jason Voorhees? Okay, this is what The Princess Murders poses, and we'll get answers to all of these pressing questions from Tony directly. We'll also hear about what he's been up to since his last appearance on the show, which was July 2024, for anyone keeping account. But before we get started on that, I want to give a big shout-out to our sponsor and supporters, including Gotham City Limit Comic Shop. It's not only the longest running sponsor of the podcast and my local comic shop, but they're the also, but they're also the best comic shop here in Northeast Florida. If you live in Jacksonville, you can go visit them for yourself right now, today on Southside Boulevard. But if you don't live in the area, good news, you can still buy comics from them online at GothamCityLimit.com. And I want to give a special heartfelt shout out to the loyal supporters over on the short box Patreon, aka the Patroni Homies. Thank you so much for your support. It is no secret doing a weekly high-quality podcast like this one is not cheap and it is definitely not easy on time. It requires a lot of time. So uh I want to give a uh a shout out to the humble supporters who help keep the show going, who help me keep me motivated over on the short box. If you enjoy the show and you want to be counted among the short box elite, consider becoming a short box patroni homie at patreon.com slash the short box. Once again, that's patreon.com slash the short box. If you like the show and you want to help me keep it going and growing, check it out. Thanks in advance. Now, without further ado, let's bring on our guest of honor, calling in all the way from LA. It's comic creator, Tony Fleecs. There we go. Sorry for the dramatic pregnant pause there.

Tony Fleecs 4:23

I had to get the crowd warmed up. Man, happy to be back. Thank you to the studio audience. Great to be here.

Badr Milligan 4:30

Hey man, it's good to see you. It's really good to see you. I was uh uh I when you emailed and you were like, hey, I got this new book coming out. Can I come on the pod? I was like, this is the easiest yes I could give. Yeah, like an easy, yeah.

Tony Fleecs 4:40

Come on. Yeah, it's been a couple years. Uh, you know, I like to check in, like to see how everybody's doing.

Badr Milligan 4:46

Can I go on and give you uh can I give you a heads up and a warning? I I was listening to your interview with Brad and Lisa Gullicks and aka the comic book couples counseling podcast, who I love. I consider them friends. I'm letting you know right now. One, that was a great interview. Secondly, I ain't doing no singing, okay? You're not gonna say, like, I am not following up to Lisa. Like, uh Lisa like smashed it, she killed it. She sung the song that you guys wrote in the comic. I was like, Lisa, for fuck's sake, like save some interview magic for the rest of us. Like, what am I supposed to do?

Tony Fleecs 5:19

She sang parts of the song that we hadn't even created ourselves. She was doing her own arrangements, she was doing like the minor key reprise. Yeah. Yeah. Very impressive. Yeah, yeah. I knew I I hadn't been on that show, but I knew we were gonna get along because I knew she was a singer.

Badr Milligan 5:34

Yeah, she gave you one hell of a welcome. I like that a lot. Speaking of which, uh, Tony, last time you were on the the short box, like I said, that was July 2024. At the time, you were juggling, not one, not two, not three, but four different monthly titles. You had uh uh, I think Feral had just launched, or it was really early on. Um, a local man was still going strong. You had Uncanny Valley with Boom Studios, uh, and you had come on the show to promote what you were doing with Army of Darkness on Dynamite. Two years later, what's life looking like? Are you still going full throttle?

Tony Fleecs 6:07

It's pretty full throttly. Luckily, I'm only doing three books right now. Okay. Um, and that is a little more manageable, but they are, you know, it's still feral, and then this new one, the Princess Murders, are pretty intense as far as the workload. Um, because the we we put a lot into feral. I do I do a lot as the as the writer. I also do layouts and letters and covers and and then it's the same on on Princess Murders. You know, Tim and I write it together, so I'm it's not as big a lift, but then I do the layouts and the letters, and you know, we do the covers together. Tim does a lot more heavy lifting on the covers, but it's still there's still always something to be done on either one of these books. And then Deathstroke, the one that pr uh present presumably sells the most and comes from DC Comics. Uh I just write it and turn it in, and then they hand it over to Carmine DJ on Domenico, and he just draws the shit out of it, and I don't have to it just comes out. Yeah, you know.

Badr Milligan 7:04

Damn, I I I honestly forgot that you were on Deathstroke as well. I mean, man. And you know, uh you brought up Faral, and I looked up, I looked that up for sure today, and I was like, holy shit, this series is up to 26 issues, which I feel like is kind of uncommon, I think, for like ongoing monthly titles, like especially in today's like kind of climate, um, uh, where like not even you know the big two can maintain a a series past like 10 issues. So I definitely want to give you a round of applause for keeping that going strong and the success you're you're feeling there. And I want to like I guess what's the secret sauce behind its success? Like like why is that one an exception to I think the rule?

Tony Fleecs 7:50

Uh well I just have really good collaborators, you know. Like I have really diligent nobody that's on the on really any of my teams, but uh especially on Farrell and the you know, they're the stray dogs team as well. Uh Trish and Tone and Brad, Dennis, our editor, they just are always ready to go, you know. Like uh we have a pretty rigorous schedule that comes out 10 times a year, every year. Where we 27 just came out yesterday. You're wrong about that, butter. 27 issues. I had a meeting today uh with the editor, and we were breaking 30. So we're about to start working on that. 29 gets turned in on Monday. So it's just it's cranking, and it's it really is just up to um the team is always working hard on it. Nobody really I mean, we we find a way to get to get time to chill here and there, take little vacations and stuff, but the book is always moving, constantly, something's constantly being done, whether it's you know, Trish doing her part or Brad coloring or tone doing the backgrounds or me writing or doing layouts. I feel like it's the sort of thing where somebody's always working on it no matter what day it is or what time it is.

Badr Milligan 8:53

Like it's always it always has something going on. I think you were just at New York Comic-Con, right?

Tony Fleecs 8:57

Mm-hmm.

Badr Milligan 8:57

Are you seeing that in person at conventions? Like, are are most of the people coming up to to your table to get things signed or chat with you? Are they talking about Feral or are you seeing the attention or is it an even split among other titles?

Tony Fleecs 9:10

Uh it's a pretty even split. Also, I mean, Feral and Stray Dogs have a sim real similar audience, obviously. But uh, you know, Death Stroke is a different audience, uh, the Marvel stuff that I've done is a different audience, um, and Local Man is a completely different audience. So I can sort of spot and you know, like My Little Pony and all the licensed stuff, you know. Yeah, I can spot uh which fandom these people are coming up from, you know, as they approach most of the time. I can sort of I can pick them out of it, I can clock them.

Badr Milligan 9:40

What's a dead giveaway for someone that's a a feral and uh uh stray dogs fan? What's the dead giveaway?

Tony Fleecs 9:46

Well, so they will look the most like normies, you know, like because Feral and Stray Dogs has a real crossover into like people from outside of uh like regular Wednesday Warriors. Like plenty of Wednesday readers read those too, obviously, but it has a real good crossover. If I see somebody coming up and I'm just like, this lady looks like she works at my bank or something, you know, I bet she's gonna come talk about Pharaoh straight up.

Badr Milligan 10:15

I guess I asked because I I was telling my um I was telling my homeboy I walked into a comic shop the other day. Um, and I I mean if I go to like Gotham City Limit, Ben does a really good job of embarrassing me and letting everyone know, like, hey, this guy's a local celeb, he does a podcast. No one ever reacts. Everyone's like, okay. But I went to a shop where uh definitely no one knew me. And the guy, um, I had asked about like, I think uh beneath the trees where nobody sees Halloween special. And he's like, hey, we don't have a copy of that, but we can order for you. Like, let me explain to you what a pull list is. And I was like, and yeah, I let him talk, you know, give me the pitch, but I was like, ah, I'm good. I'll just um I don't need it like that. Uh and my boy was like, damn, does he not know? He was like, I wonder, he was like, you don't really, I guess you would kind of give like newbie, you know, like vibes. Like someone sees you walk in the shop, they're not like, oh shit, this guy obviously knows, you know, his shit. He's been a fan since like this age and all that. So I'm I now it's got me thinking about like what does a typical Wednesday warrior look like? What is well, you know, you mentioned like being able to clock, you know, certain fans.

Tony Fleecs 11:17

If you if I saw you coming in, depends what time on Wednesday.

Badr Milligan 11:20

You're like, yo, this guy's gonna serve me. Yeah, you're like, I'm not Tony.

Tony Fleecs 11:23

If you came in at lunchtime on Wednesday, I would immediately know that you were serious business. Because that means you're on your break. Yeah, okay. You're a clean cut guy, you're well dressed, come in on lunchtime, you're gonna grab your hold file, you know, you probably browse a little bit and pick up some other stuff. That would be my guess. That's from uh spending a lot of time in comic shops, working in comic shops when I was a kid. But that would be my guess. I wouldn't, if I was out on the street, I wouldn't be like, this guy knows who Longshot is.

Badr Milligan 11:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess I don't, I I guess I don't give forward facing this guy's a fucking nerd, but in my heart, I absolutely am. Of course. But no, I think you clocked me correctly. Uh, because that's actually how I ended up forming my relationship with Ben and Gotham, is that I would go on my lunch break because his shop is right next to uh my my uh you know the office that I work out of. So yeah, actually you clocked it like to the fucking tea. I was a lunch break guy. Sometimes I would just sneak out like during work hours and I kind of still do. But yeah, actually he got me down right back.

Tony Fleecs 12:18

By the way, if I see somebody coming up to me who looks like me, I know that they're here for local man. That's how that's how I can clock those guys. It just looks like somebody from my high school class. Yeah, yeah.

Badr Milligan 12:29

Small town.

Tony Fleecs 12:30

Another gray beard with vibe. Yeah. Graybeard graphic tea. I'm like, he's gonna tell me about local man.

Badr Milligan 12:36

All right, I got another question about Ferrell because I was on uh I was on your website and you got this big ass banner that is promoting. Okay, just uh actually, okay, this is a rotating banner. But when I looked at it today, there was this big ass banner that was promoting like a plushie for I think Lisi, uh uh from yeah, it is right, Elsie. An Elsie plush. And I was like, damn, he got a plush of like in a creator-owned comic, like the lead character from a creator-owned comic. Is that when you know like your comic has made it? When you can like advertise a plushie? Because I think that's a big deal.

Tony Fleecs 13:10

Wow. I mean, what's cool about uh creator-owned comics is it could be a comic that 13 people have bought, and you could have a plushie and advertise it and sell it on your website, you know? Like, yeah, this is not a licensed plushie. This is Trish comes from the sort of fandom where they, you know, like we met in, I was working on My Little Pony, and she was just starting to do My Little Pony stuff, but she sort of came out of that fandom. She's like a real cartoon head, and though those people make plushies, like they just sort of make little toys of their favorite stuff, and and so she knows factories in China, and she knows how to do the designs and designers to work with and stuff. So this one she just designed it and made it, and we uh made a deal with Third Eye to distribute it and stuff like that. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, in the back of uh every issue of Feral, you can just hit a little QR code and it'll take you to the to the website, and you can and then they usually send them out in like two days. Um, but yeah, I wish it was uh like when you reach a certain level, they they give you a plushie. But this one just as it was a matter of like, I think it'd be cool if we had these.

Badr Milligan 14:13

And then Yeah, yeah. I feel like if a creator-owned book reaches something like you said, you know, 27 issues right now. I think when it hits 25, it definitely deserves a cake with some sparklers and a plushie, an accompanying plushie right there. Uh, I think I want to say on the topic of plushies, the coolest plushie I have, I have I have seen was this year. I went to San Diego Comic Con for the first time this year, and I stopped by the IDW booth, and I saw a plushie for beneath the trees where nobody sees it's the the cut up duck, you know, the duck that Samantha ends up like mutilating. And when I tell you I I lost my shit, I damn near stole it. You're like, I'm sorry, IDW. I almost stole that bitch, but there was a lot of people with eyes on it. So I did, I I I behaved.

Tony Fleecs 14:52

I just saw that in person today. I was at uh I was recording, I'm recording three podcasts today, butter. I was at a different one. I was at Revenge of here in LA. And in their studio, they had that thing sitting on the couch. It is super gross. What a great toy.

Badr Milligan 15:06

Yeah, right. It is the Velcro parts and all of that. I'm like, come on, man, this is dope. Three podcasts today?

Tony Fleecs 15:12

Yeah, this, I mean, we're in promotion season. FOC for the princesses is on November 9th. So it's just go, go, go until you know, fall over on November 10th, get the numbers, and then see what see how we see how we did.

Badr Milligan 15:25

God spoke, I already told you, Lisa said the bar like astronomical. I'm just trying to uh hit that. So I hope the the next uh interviews you got are a good use of time. I'm sure they will be. I think they will be. You mentioned uh a local man, and I mentioned in the intro that was one definitely one of my favorite books uh by you. When we talked last time, um, it was July, but later that year, 2024, you had announced that local man was going on hiatus. Um you put out like a, I don't remember if it was a press release or a tweet or something like that, but you were pretty candid about like how challenging it was making that book work and make sense financially as well as creatively. You also mentioned like just the workload you had at the time. Um, and and you mentioned that you and Tim were developing another project at the time. I was curious, was The Princess Murders that project?

Tony Fleecs 16:14

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've been we've been working on this the whole time. Um, since sort of like the right at the end of Local Man. And uh, you know, the first issue, we we sort of put it together over the course of like a year just because it was like finding a little time in between other projects. And we did a a few Marvel things together, and and so it was just constantly like developing this thing and and designing it. And so yeah, it this one had a had a real long uh gestation period.

Badr Milligan 16:42

I guess what what was the genesis uh of the idea? Who who pitched the idea first? Uh and and then how did it go from being like just an idea to something tangible?

Tony Fleecs 16:50

Tim pitched the idea to me, but it was sort of in that time where we knew Local Man was gonna go away. Um but we recognized that our collaboration was something that worked, uh at least, you know, as far as like making the art, you know. Like we're not sure if it is a financial winner, but it definitely works that like we've we both like the work that comes out of it. And part of that is that we're both writers and artists, and so we can write the thing together and we can do the art together, and we can just sort of like split chores on it. Local man, I sort of did more of the drawing, and on this one, Tim does the lion's share of the drawing. I I showed you before the thing started, I do the I do the layouts, but you know, he's uh just actually penciling and inking, and then Brian Reber does the colors, and but we can sort of put a book together minus a colorist, uh basically just by ourselves. And that uh gives us a lot of freedom. And also if we can find the time, you know, we can sort of uh do it cheaply, you know, like our time has value, but if we sort of think about it like I can invest this now, my time, and then knowing that you know, that the on Princess Murders is like knowing a year and a half from now we'll get paid for this. Um but just being able to invest in ourselves like that and being able to sort of like put the whole thing together ourselves, yeah. Um it makes you want to keep working, like if it's like a thing where you make good work together and it's not uh a pain in the ass to do it, you know. Like if we have an idea, we don't have to go like who are we gonna get to draw this, or you know, like let's start assembling a team. It's just like, all right, let's start working on it and start, you know, kicking stuff around. So when we knew Local Man was wrapping off, Tim had come to me and we were spitballing stuff back and forth, and he had a couple ideas that that weren't quite it. And one of them was sort of like Uncanny Valley, and like Uncanny Valley was going on, but he was like, What if we did this thing and it's like all the uh 80s cartoons get together, and I was like, Yeah, I have that. Like that's coming. Like that's a that's a thing I'm doing in this other book. But then he sort of knows that I love obviously, like if you see Uncanny Valley or Ferrell or Stray Dogs, like obviously I love animation. Yeah. Um and he knows that I love like Italian giallo slasher movies. And so he was just like, what if we just put those together? What if we did like a princess slasher, you know? And that when he said it, I immediately saw the what you saw in the in the preview copy that you wrote. Like I saw exactly what it could be and like how those two flavors that you haven't seen together would look so cool with each other, you know, like fit together so well. And I thought also, like I always think when something like that happens, like we should hurry up and do this because it's the sort of thing that somebody will do. Yeah, you know, if we if we don't get to it, somebody else will do it. And you you want to get out there and sort of put your stamp on it and do it, do it the way that you would do it. As we're developing it, um many other friends of ours would would be like, oh, or not, not even friends, like some of them people we're friends with, and some were just like, oh, they're doing another, they're doing like a Disney horror thing over here. Every time we're like, I hope I hope it's not our thing. And luckily it never was, but yeah, it's just like we're in a race to get it out on time.

Badr Milligan 19:58

Yeah. Is it easier to pitch, and I'm not calling the princess murders a a crazy idea, even though I think it's it's an awesome idea. Like it's like you mentioned that Ashcan preview that you sent. I've read it twice now. It's like not only do you and Tim come up with really interesting mashups and ideas, but the execution is always on point. And and I think that's what you guys definitely have going for you, is that even if this ended up becoming like your thing, like, oh, those are the horror animated guys, it's like that, yo, the execution is always gonna be on point. Um, and I I feel no different about this one. But I guess is it cra easier to pitch a crazy idea to a publisher, to a publisher now that you've had, you know, all this creator-owned success, or does each new book still feel like you're you're having to start from scratch? You still got to prove something to the publisher. Like, I I guess where are you at now with like pitching?

Tony Fleecs 20:48

Uh it's become it's become a little easier. It's sort of, you know, straight dogs was a big question mark, you know, and and image really took a shot on us. There was no successful dog comic, you know, besides like, you know, one third of We Three. And I don't even know how successful that was in the grand scheme of Grant Morris and stuff. So they really just were like, this looks cool, we'll take a shot on it. And that that doing well. And then local man, local man did well enough, and especially with like critically and uh, you know, the awards, and it was like a a good book. And so Image is like the only place that that I'm making creator own stuff right now. And so we've sort of built a relationship over the course of these now four books that you know, when I have an idea, I can sort of reach out and you know, you still have to put together at least something. You know, I'm sure like uh you know, Brian K. Vaughn can just call up and say, I'm gonna do a book. And they go, Yeah, whatever it is, we'll just make a spot on the schedule. I still have to put a little bit of something together, but there definitely is a relationship there that comes through you know, having work together and and me and Tim and my collaborators sort of like producing for them, you know, like our books sell at least well enough that the investment that Image makes in us is is a profitable one.

Badr Milligan 22:00

Remind me again, like uh because I always see like conflicting uh things about like you know what it means to to have a book come out with image, what they will do, what they won't do. Um, I had Christian Ward on recently, and he did a pretty good job of of laying it out where it's like, you know, you have as as a creator, it's like, yes, this is a technically a creator-owned book. I own the rights, but it also comes with a lot of responsibility on my end. And image will take care of like the distribution and help with the marketing. Um, I I guess how how accurate has that been for you? And is there anything that you would add to that?

Tony Fleecs 22:35

Yeah, they also help with the book market stuff, which is huge. Um, and foreign licensing, which is also huge. Oh, okay.

Badr Milligan 22:43

Wow.

Tony Fleecs 22:43

So it's it's just all the business stuff that I have no aptitude for. Got it, got it. Even you know, like I did a Kickstarter and I had to deal with printers and stuff, and it was just like completely not my language. So Image takes care of like all the headaches that come with like everything other than creating. And they have the best deal in town, like you get to keep all your rights, they take a flat fee off of every issue, and then they take a small percentage on trades, and then you just can do literally what you want. Like, you know, there was stuff in Local Man that was, you know, sort of shocking and explicit, and nobody ever wrote to us and was just like, Are you sure about this? or we can't do you know, they're just nobody says a word, you know, it just comes out. Um, or like uh we're working on princesses yesterday, Tim and I, and we realized like, oh, we need to add an extra issue here. And so it's not a question of having to, you know, ask somebody if that's okay. It's just sort of we send them a note and say, Hey, we messed up, we gotta add one more issue to this thing. And they go, Okay.

Badr Milligan 23:45

Oh, that's cool. Tony, it is uh no secret that you have a knack for taking like these nostalgic, usually family-friendly animations and aesthetics, and then you flip them on their heads by putting them through the ringer, whatever that may be. Sometimes, you know, a horror setting, uh tough uh situation, all of that. The princess murders is no different. It combines the comforting aesthetics of animated fairy tales with some extreme violence and the mystery of Italian horror films. My question to you, good sir, is in, you know, as I was thinking about this, I was like, man, why does Tony love taking these things that make us feel safe, familiar, or nostalgic, and turning them into something terrifying?

Tony Fleecs 24:26

I don't know. I mean, I feel like that's it's something worth investigating, you know. With a psychiatrist worth looking into at some point, but it's definitely, I mean, it's obviously something that I'm working through, you know, like there's a a lot of my work that that deals with these elements. Uncanny Valley is sort of like the sweet version of it, you know. It's like the the like the if it's Stephen King, it's like the standby me, you know. Yeah. Um and all the other ones are like uh, you know, fucking it and characters. Uh yeah. All these things, Disney movies and Don Bluth movies and family movies in general, the good ones always have like a sort of darker element to them, you know, like Secret of Nim is so creepy, and you know, you know, Bambi's mom or you know, Dumbo gets taken away from like there's all this sort of stuff that the the ones that stick with you are the ones that have like these super dark centers, Mufasa, right? And so part of it is just is leaning into that a little bit and going, like, all right, if we're telling a story that sort of uses this window dressing, right? Like if stray dogs is gonna look like Oliver and company or like all dogs go to heaven, then we should do the thing where the darkness locks people in and keeps them invested. But pushing it even further is sort of like where the juice is for me, where it's like this is where I'm making something that nobody else is making, or that you know only Patrick Horvath and me are making, you know, like which is great company to be. Yeah, for sure. But it is like you get a little bit extra out of it because people are invested in these characters because of what they're bringing to it already. You know, you sit down in a movie theater, you see a dog that looks like that, and you go like, oh, this is warm. I'm gonna feel good about this guy. And then just by having that as like table stakes, the story that I that I take them on, the journey that I take them on is sort of like already has some goodwill invested, and hopefully they feel safe so that when we rip that away, it sort of feels even more shocking.

Badr Milligan 26:32

You know, I I think that's a I think you you nailed it. I think that's the appeal of your comics to me is I I am always curious to see how far you're willing to push it past. Like, like I said, it's always like, oh, the concept is cool. He's mashing up these two things that shouldn't go together. So I'm already like interested. But then it's always like, when's the other shoe gonna drop? Like, when is this gonna go off the rails? And you, like I said, always seem to deliver. One thing you said last time that you were on that stuck with me. Uh, horror has an effective way to make readers feel something. When you think about, you know, the princess murders beyond like shock and laughter. What emotions do you want this particular story to leave with the readers? Like, what do you want them to get out of this to feel?

Tony Fleecs 27:13

That's interesting. I mean, it is a story about love and loss. And like good fairy tales, it has, you know, hopefulness and sadness in it. And uh, we're just really trying to take people through the whole range of emotions. Like it's it's not the kind of book that has at the end of it a lesson, you know, where they're just like, oh, that's what it was all along, you know. Part of that is the character that would have taught you that lesson or would have gone on that journey with you to learn that lesson. She's dead. Off the rip, too. Yeah, I was like, damn. Okay. It sort of is like, what do we do now? You know, and it's that it's one of the things about great horror movies or horror stories where you think that you're going one way and then it it takes all that away from you, and then you have to sort of reassess and go, like, all right, well, what what is this now? And so doing that, hopefully we get to take people on on a journey, on an emotional journey like that. But also it's just like hitting all these horror beats where it's like, you know, we want to surprise people with the things that these characters will get up to and the things that'll happen to them, and then also being able to not have it just be a horror movie that looks or a horror story that looks like this, but also bring in the elements of the animation and the fantasy stuff. And I mean, you saw in the first issue, like there's songs, yeah, and and you know, animals show up to to fly around someone when they're falling in love. And so, yeah, we're really trying to not just make it uh something that like a horror thing that looks like an animated cartoon, but have it be the a real feel like a combination of both those things.

Badr Milligan 28:46

You know, you took the words right out of the mouth. This this uh story might not have particularly any lessons to get out of it, but it does have hella music off the rip off the first uh I think the first issue had like three different uh musical moments. Uh, you and Tim uh went all out on the on the musical side of the project. There's even an actual song in the trailer, which I watched before we hit record. I was like, damn, that's what I'm saying. My man Tony, Master at Marketing. This is a great trailer.

Intro music 29:14

Can't you feel it in your heart? It's growing.

Badr Milligan 29:28

Tony, how do you go about writing a musical number for a medium where the audience can't actually hear the music?

Tony Fleecs 29:36

That's sort of one of the fun challenges of this book was we thought about how to do songs in comics. People have tried it, you know, it's been successful. It's been, I think I would say more often unsuccessful. What I think we did successfully with this is we think about it in terms of the rhythm. Like there's a rhythm to storytelling, and there's a rhythm to the way songs are sung and the way music is played. And so it was just a matter of trying to match those two things up. The like the way that the lyrics are broken down in our book is sort of in stanzas. So you read a panel, you read the next panel, and you're and you're hearing it like you would hear it in a song. It's not all laid out in one row. We're sort of breaking it up so it's like boom, boom, boom. And then we could do that because when we write the songs, I have in my head like sort of a melody. If it's not like a complete melody, it's sort of like uh this is one that goes like this, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know, I guess sort of have it in my head so that we can sort of map it out like that. And so far, you know, the in the first and second issues where we have these little song moments, it's been pretty successful. Um, and then we did that song, you know. My friend Nick is a filmmaker and he has this composer, Nima Farkara, who does all of his movies. And we had met, and I reached out to him and was just like, hey, I have this song I want to do. Would this be something that you could help me with? And he went and hired a vocalist, and and I sent him like a voice note from my phone of just here's the lyrics, and then here's me doing like the just sort of humming through it and going like this is what I think it sounds like. And then he just put it together, you know, made it sound exactly like one of those things, and was cool to collaborate the same way we do with like, you know, a colorist or an artist on a book, you know, back maybe try like this a little bit, or this part feels a little more like this, and it's was sort of a really cool collaboration going back and forth.

Badr Milligan 31:29

It sounds amazing. The singer, right? I mean, seriously, it sounds like something that you would hear in a a Disney movie. Like it was produced well. The singing, I mean, uh shout-outs to the singer. Um, yeah, yeah, it it sounded amazing. Was there any one particular, I guess, maybe one or maybe an amalgam of princesses that came like that you had in mind, like their voice when you were writing the lyrics?

Tony Fleecs 31:52

No. Of when we write these princesses, and the different princesses in the book have different personalities and different um motivations and stuff, and you we really get a lot more into that in issue too. But for the main ones, you know, there's Edwidge, who is sort of like the I always call her like the Daria, and then her sister.

Badr Milligan 32:14

Which by the way, uh you you pose her, you know, she's supposed to be the wicked stepsister in uh the classic wicked stepsister trope. But man, I she wanted me over. That's my girl. You like them together. I do.

Tony Fleecs 32:25

Yeah, she's great. I I we sort of thought of it like that in terms of you know the way sisters do. They play off each other well. Yeah, yeah, they play off each other really well. If people from the outside said, like, oh, she's the good one, she's the wicked one, but you know, inside of their relationship, that it's different than than the way other people see them. But yeah, the it's just a big melange of different princess stuff, especially for Lottie, who's just sort of like our She's like all she's like Cinder, she's like fucking sleeping beauty.

Badr Milligan 32:54

She's like Cindera. All of them roll, like perfectly rolled into one. Yeah, like an like an avatar of just everything that's princess. Um I told you before we hit record, I don't think that the research required me to go down a rabbit hole listening to all of these old Disney you know songs and and looking up Disney princesses. Like my wife would be very jealous at the homework I got to do. She is uh uh a proud uh uh Disney adult ball, but not one of those weird ones. She's like, she she's she's got her her, she's still got her morals and integrity, all right. But uh loves Disney um and kind of in a way has made me appreciate it a little more. But man, I've went down a rabbit hole and I've had, I was thinking, like, man, what are my what's my Mount Rushmore of Disney songs? And I I've I want you to react to this list I put together very hastily. I'm sure this will change in no particular order. Pocahontas Color of the Wind. Great fucking song. Great song. Moana, How Far I'll Go. And that is the one I've had stuck in my head all day. No, you can get me started. All right, no one wants to hear me sing. Another classic for you. Jasmine Aladdin, Whole New World. That one, definitely sentimental to me. And this one is not a Disney princess song per se, but I think possibly my favorite is from Mulan, I'll Make a Man Out of You, sung by the great Donnie Osman. Like, come on. Okay. That's the only one I know like 98% of the lyrics. I'm pretty confident I could sing that in a karaoke and nail it.

Tony Fleecs 34:23

If we're doing Mulan, I'm going Reflections all day long. Like that's the fucking song. Christina Aguilera version too.

Badr Milligan 34:32

This is actually on it. Hey, look, I feel you. But my wife is like a Britney Spears stand. Fuck out of here. Oh, she's still fuck out of here. I'm not even allowed to bring it. I'm not even allowed to bring up my girl CA. Okay. I don't, you know, to each his own, but yes, I agree. Reflections is the shit.

Tony Fleecs 34:51

Yeah.

Badr Milligan 34:51

Real good.

Tony Fleecs 34:52

Um modern ones, uh, we don't talk about Bruno, crazy. That whole Encanto I can listen to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Badr Milligan 34:59

Oh my God, yeah.

Tony Fleecs 35:01

Real, real good. Um uh A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes. Uh it really uh works on me every time. I really like that one a bunch. The Udalali from Robin Hood, not a princess. Ah, yeah, yeah. But there's a princess in it. There's a foxy princess in there.

Badr Milligan 35:16

Okay, not to give too much uh uh uh um attention to the the Disney and the Disney princess aspect of of the princess murders. The other aspect of it is is the obviously the horror elements would play which play a big part, and I think really separate this from just being a you know a Disney um uh parody or anything. I understand you and Tim Seely are fans of Giallo horror, which is what this book is is you know uh being promoted as. And the hell it takes place in Italy. So, you know, it ties it all together. For someone like myself who's only familiar with like American slashers, like Scream and Halloween and Friday the 13th, what makes Giallo different and what specific films inspired this comic?

Tony Fleecs 35:58

Well, it's sort of more stylish, you know, like I feel like classic American slashers, like 1980s, 70s uh stuff, the characters were sort of very American in that they were just sort of like they were out to party and then they got murdered a lot of the time, you know, or they're you know, they're out to go mess around, try and get laid or whatever, and then they would get murdered. The Italian ones, I mean, they just have cooler style in general. Like the the women have sort of a breeziness to them, they're all shockingly beautiful, and then the dudes are just sort of all they're sort of casual. They have they have like brown turtlenecks a lot of the time, and they just smoke cigarettes and just sort of like the vibe is very cool. And then the visual aesthetics just of the filmmakers, like they always have so some someone like Darry Argento just has like an incredible eye uh for shots and stuff. And then when they get into the the gore and the violence, it's so over the top. And we do some stuff like it in the first issue where like you'll be in the point of view of a knife as it cuts through somebody's flesh, or you know, they'll do eyeball torture where you're just like right up on it and like a needle will go into somebody's eye. Just stuff where you're just like you can't look away, it's so horrifying. They'll just use like rivers of of fake blood, and it has like a doesn't look like any blood you've ever seen. It's just sort of sort of like this orange, you know, like it just really stands out, but it it stands out against like it the contrast of it stands out like you know, it'll be like a shot of a a room that's sort of lit blue, and then somebody will start bleeding, and it'll just sort of like it'll look electric. Oh wow. So yeah, I I always recommend um there's one called Torso by Sergio Martino, and it stars this uh lady Susie Kendall, and it's sort of like your regular like serial killer stocks girls on vacation type movie, but it has this great twist in the middle of it that I won't spoil, but it's just like you think you're watching one kind of thing, and then and then somebody goes to sleep, and when they wake up, everything's different. And it's just like oh, but like really exciting. They sort of take a lot of cool risks and chances, also because it just became like a churn where they you know, like blood and black lace hits, uh bird with a crystal crystal plumage hits, and then they just start to crank these things out, and so there's you know, they're able to just go, like, oh, what if we try this? What if we try this, you know? And then so they just sort of like take these weird way out uh chances. Lucio Fulci has one called the psychic, which is really gnarly too. Like, there's sort of like um I mean, there's a lot of great directors, but I I you can't go wrong with the Argento ones or the Fulci ones. Oh, you can definitely go wrong with the Fulci ones, but there's always something like he's he's sort of like the solier to Argento's Mozart. Uh and and so he's a lot of time this the script will be a little bit haphazard on either of them, but Fulci more often. Uh, but it'll always be some sort of murder or some sort of violence that you're just like, well, that was worth my hour and a half, you know. So if you like to see things that are fucked up, you know, you won't be disappointed in leaving one of those.

Badr Milligan 39:00

No, I think those recommendations come at a good time. And I also think The Princess Murders comes at a good time for me personally because um uh I should have said uh we're recording this episode Wednesday, uh October 29th. You know, Halloween is two days from now. I had a goal this month to uh spoiler, I have never read a Stephen King book. So this month I was like, hey, you know, I want to get into the Halloween spirit, I want to knock something off my goal list. So I ended up reading The Shining. I thought it was gonna take me like way longer, but it had me hooked. I mean, it's a fucking classic for a reason. So I finished The Shining. I'm in like this horror mindset, and I needed a palette cleanser. And I was up at the shop and I've been picking up like these DC Compact comics, like every chance I get. I think it's one of my absolute favorite, like new uh formats and whatnot. And I always check out for like the new ones, and they had a fables volume one. I'm like, oh shit, something else I haven't read. Tony, when I tell you, that was I'm like, yo, why have I been asleep on fables? That shit is incredible. So you know what I'm saying? Like, obviously, that is a parody on classic uh uh fairy tales. So, like, it's like I've I've got one side of me that's like in this Halloween horror, the shining Stephen King mood, and I just read Fables, and then you present to me the princess murders. Like, it is scratching itch that I didn't, you know, it is scratching my itch right now. So, yeah, we arrived at a great time. Tony, I want to take a quick detour here. I want to I want to pause, I want to take a break from asking you the questions and let someone else ask the questions. I want to get into my uh short box friends and family segment. Big shout outs of Vigo for creating that. The friends and family segment is the segment part of the show where I shut up for a minute. I stop asking the questions, I let someone else ask the questions. In this case, you're gonna hear from Ben Kingsbury, the owner of Gotham City Limit comic shop. Uh, told him you'd be on the show and uh he was like, yo, let me submit something. So here we go. This one is from Ben. All right.

Ben Kingsbury 40:57

Hey, Tony, Ben Kingsbury, owner of Gotham City Limit, a small but mighty comic shop down here in sunny Jacksonville, Florida. Thanks so much for taking some time to answer some questions. So you've been writing and drawing in comics at a high level for a long time. And I think I initially heard once in an interview, you said you started writing, so you had more to draw. But now it feels like I see your writing all over the place on a retailer level. I mean, I love Farrell, really great. New Death Stroke with the twist with his wife, great stuff. So, my question for you is has your writing now influenced the way you draw because you can see the correlation between the two? Or is it your art pretty much stayed the same and just progressed naturally with you working on it over the years? Well, I'll leave you here to answer. Thanks so much for what you do. We literally couldn't do it without you. And remember, short box nation, always take it to the limit. Peace.

Tony Fleecs 42:02

Big shout outs to Ben. I'm here. I'm always taking it to the limit. Um does my writing influence the way that I draw? I think it's more the other way around. When I write for uh another artist, when I write for Trish or for you know Dave Wactor or for Carmine on Death Stroke, um, I always write thinking visually because I drew so many books before I sort of started, you know, writing more than I draw. And so I have sort of like uh hopefully innate feeling about what fits on a page, you know, what's gonna look good facing another image. Like I'm I'm thinking about these things visually while I'm writing them. And I think that does I don't I'm not saying it makes me better or worse than any other writer. I just think that that's one of the things that I sort of bring to the equation is that I have like that's a a trick that I have up my sleeve. You know, different writers have have different stuff that they're good at, and I think one of the things that I'm good at, or that I that I at least uh have um was sort of built for is that I have drawn so many pages of comics and still, you know, like I said, I lay out Ferrell, I lay out Princess Murder. So I'm always thinking about paneling and about you know what fits in a page, and and you don't do two crowd shots on the same page because every everybody will be tiny, or you don't do, you know, you you want to switch up your uh your shots so that it's not it's not all boring and everybody's looking the same size or the same angle. So I'm always thinking about stuff like that and thinking about, you know, when I write death stroke, I'm thinking about giving Carmine, you know, stuff that that I know he'll be good at, but then also pushing him in different directions, not because I'm trying to make him a better anything. It's just like, you know, I it'll be cool to see him do this, you know, or it'd be cool to see him do this. I know we can do, you know, a over the top action scene, but let's have him, you know, we'll do this scene where he sits in a diner and you know, a father talks to his d a strange daughter, you know, like and and Can we make that exciting too? And in an issue of Death Stroke, I'll always, you know, for the most part, I'll go like, all right, if we've had 10 pages of Slade Wilson at rock bottom, let's do another 10 pages of just shit blowing up everywhere and violence and car chases and stuff like that, just because that's sort of the promise you make with a book like that. It's like this one, it has pathos and emotional stuff, but it's also just like a riproar and action story.

Badr Milligan 44:25

Hearing you talk about uh your collaboration with Carmen, uh it makes me think about the last time you were here, we talked about, you know, I told you how much I loved Local Man, especially like the dual story format in the way like you and Tim approached the same universe, but it was like from two different artistic angles. And then sometimes you could even tell who was doing what. It was like real seamless. What did working on that series, Local Man, teach you about each other that you're applying to the princess murders?

Tony Fleecs 44:52

I was a fan of Tim's before we started working together, and I was a fan of his artwork. Like, like I said, like I'm a 90s kid. Um, I might not have said that just now, but I've said it a fucking million times in my life. So Tim's one of those too, and he draws like that. And so it's something that's just very appealing to me. And so doing Local Man was like seeing him like use this thing that that he usually has to sort of like not necessarily push away from, but he's not getting extra credit for it looking 90s when he's drawing, you know, covers for Vampirella or when he's drawing, you know, whatever else he's drawing. And so in doing that, and when he pitched the idea of this, he was like, I'll draw this one, you know, so you so it'll be easier on you. And I knew right away, like, oh, the way that he draws, sort of like J. Scott Campbell-y, and J. Scott Campbell draws like a Jim Lee Disney uh character, right? Like that's sort of what that's the the ingredients to to make that guy's stuff. So I could see real easily like the pieces of what Tim does and how we could easily just sort of like dial it back a little bit, and and you basically have something that looks like a like an animated cartoon like that. So yeah, just and then just sort of knowing the things that the other one's gonna do and how the other one works, and just having done it, you know. I guess at this point we've done it, you know, oh man, over maybe 30 times, you know, between the Marvel stuff and uh and local man and and then how far we are into princesses. You become accustomed to how somebody else works, and then you can just sort of like I said with Carmen, like I know what he's gonna be great at, and then I also know like what to what to lean into and let him try something new.

Badr Milligan 46:30

Yeah. You know, Tony, the more the more I I hear you chat, and you know, I'm I'm getting your answers. Uh the one word that comes to mind that I think describes you in my mind's eye is clarity in two regards. One, I think what makes your comics stand out is how clear you build out like a distinct visual identity with like stray dogs, you immediately know like what kind of animation you're looking at. With local man, same thing. It's unmistakably like 90s image. And then the other aspect when I say clarity is how you go about pitching your comics to retailers. And I say that because in the Ashcan that you sent me, it has a lot of end matter, like a lot of back matter and promotional material at the end of the book, including like a page that I'm assuming is is for you made, I'm assuming whoever designed it, uh, with a local comic shop owner in mind to help sell the book. Like it has, you know, it has a description of the book, it has key selling points, it's got an elevator pitch, a register pitch. Um, you know, it says, you know, for fans of straight dogs, feral, uh, I hate fairy, like all these like things that to make it easy to to sell the book. Is this something that you do for for all your books? And do you feel like it makes a a world a difference?

Tony Fleecs 47:41

I don't know. I mean, I think it makes a difference. It's it's one of the things that I can do. I always think about uh Robert Rodriguez, he made El Mariachi, you know about this, where he made this movie for six thousand dollars and he just really wanted to make be a filmmaker, and he was like, I got a guitar case, my buddy owns a bus, I got a turtle, you know, I got all these things. What can we do with this? And that's sort of how I think about uh making comics for me. Like I can I can talk to people and I can, you know, I can tell a tell a story clearly and sort of communicate clearly.

Badr Milligan 48:15

Yeah.

Tony Fleecs 48:16

Um, and and those are things that I that I can use to, you know, to try and get the book out there. There's so many creator-owned comics out there. And like you said, with image, like a lot of the getting the word out about them is on you. Like this Ash can you're looking at, like Image printed that and uh Cat from Image helped me put together that last page where it says like you know, retailers might want this and this. But so much of it is like getting it in front of retailers and emailing retailers and and making relationships with them. And that's something that I've been pretty effective at. Uh just because A, like I love comic shops. And so it's like, if you're telling me that I got to go hang out at this the place where I would love to hang out anyway, and then, you know, and then just get to know those people, that's great. Right after I talked to you last time, we went on a tour of like 50 comic shops across the United States. Not in Jacksonville, very sorry.

Badr Milligan 49:06

Uh yeah, we can't show you 2027.

Tony Fleecs 49:09

Next time I'll come just straight to Jacksonville, not 50, just one. Be much easier on me. Yeah. But it was like hanging out in comic shops, and it does, I think helps. I don't know if Distinguish Me is the right word, but it is sort of like in a in a previews catalog or whatever we have now that's not now the previews catalog is gone. But like in a phone book full of new books every month, people see my name and go, like, oh, I know that guy. And yeah, and like I know if I know if he's making it, it's gonna be something that I can sell. And like I said to you before, like, not just to Wednesday people, but to new people, like shops that have a location in the mall, and just regular people come in and they go, like, oh, I like you know, Vision Quest on TV. What uh what else might I like? And they they go, oh, do you like Disney stuff? Do you like horror stuff? You know?

Badr Milligan 49:58

What what type of uh damn, I mean, 50 50 comic shops is a lot. That's uh that's one hell of a tour. Um It was real stupid. It was uh stupid award time. It was like it was just like real, I'm assuming very uh taxing in terms of energy and time and and finance and all of that. Is that the stupid part? Or what would you have done differently? Let me ask you that. What would you have done differently? Well, here's what it was.

Tony Fleecs 50:22

It was right after we finished making Local Man, and I was just starting to do Marvel stuff at the time. Um, and so I was working on the thing, but just I hadn't even written the first issue yet. Basically, I was like, well, I'm not writing and drawing a book every month in Local Man, I'm just making Feral and then this other, and then maybe Uncanny Valley was still going on. But it was like I felt like I was gonna have free time, and so I had told all these shops that I was gonna uh that I would come through and and sign at their shops. And so I just thought, like, all right, well, maybe I can just knock all of them out at one time. And so I reached out to all my shops that I'd talked to and said, like, hey, I'm thinking about going on the road. Tone Rodriguez came with me, uh, you know, the the background artist on Feral. And we just drove in my Prius across the country and stopped, you know, every day at some comic store. We would do comic sign store signings on like a Tuesday, you know, when nobody's there unless they're feral hardcores or straight dogs hardcores. But it was an opportunity to get to see all these different comic shops and try and promote them and also, you know, just spend time with the retailers and hear from them like what works for them, what what's selling for them, you know, like all that sort of like uh like product research. Yeah, yeah. That's a good one. So yeah, that it was just stupid in how taxing it was. And you know, we did it really on the cheap where we didn't want the shops to have to pay for us to go to these places. Sometimes they'd be like, Oh, we'll get you a hotel or whatever, and that would be appreciated. But we that wasn't part of the deal. Like we would just come out and and then my assistant booked all these hotels for us. And at one point we checked out of one after two days, and the bill was like $80. And I was like, this is disgusting. Like you have to you have to get slightly more expensive hotels. This place clearly has bugs in it of some kind, like it smells like bleach. Like we gotta go someplace else.

Badr Milligan 52:07

Was there any one shop, whatever comes to mind, uh a shop or an owner that that left, I guess, an impression on you in terms of like, oh wow, they're doing something really unique here. I I didn't even think about that. Well, what comes to mind?

Tony Fleecs 52:20

Um Yeah, there were some in Texas that were just I mean, Texas is so huge that they just would have these massive stores. There's one that was like the size of a Walmart. I can't remember what it was called.

Badr Milligan 52:31

It wasn't like an Acme. No, it can't be an Acme. That's in Denver. No, no. No, I'm thinking of Mile High in Denver. Sorry. Okay.

Tony Fleecs 52:36

Yeah, it was like Mile High size, but it might have been bigger. But I mean, the collection may be not as big.

Badr Milligan 52:41

Oh, wait a minute. I wonder if it's uh is it that my comic shop? Whatever that website, they got a um store in Texas, I think.

Tony Fleecs 52:47

I think that's Vegas, maybe. But then even like Austin Austin Books, another comic shop in Texas, just this enormous, enormous shop with like so many art books and collections, and you know, where you're just like, oh my god, they have everything. Those so stuff like that wasn't like there, I was like, oh, they're doing something new, but it was just like, wow, they've got everything, you know, stuff that's out of print. I love to find just like a shop that just has like a wall of books that are like, you know, marked up a little, but it's like you can't find this, you can't find this, you know. Um, but one of my favorite ones was in Florida, uh, in Bradenton, Bat City Comics. Have you been to that one? How far away is Brayton? Do you know where Bradenton is?

Badr Milligan 53:24

I do know where it at. It's like uh close. Like if I'm trying to go down to uh Orlando. Oh wait, Bat City Comic. I think I might have met the owner at a recent event. Um at Shannon. Yeah, actually, I think it was at um San Diego Comic Con. I want to say it was it uh um Omar from uh Near Mint Condition. I think might have introduced this. Oh, that's cool.

Tony Fleecs 53:47

Yeah, the their shop is super cool, Shannon and Matt. Um, it's like in a converted house. Oh, the pictures look awesome. Yeah, the layout of it's incredible. The way they sort of like set stuff up, they have like almost like impulse aisles like at a grocery store where it's like, oh, you might want to try this. You might want to get these compact comics.

Badr Milligan 54:05

Um, yeah, it's about it's about four hours. Okay, so it's on the uh by St. Petersburg. So about a four-hour drive, but I will keep that. I just added it to my I have this like running Google Maps list of like comic shops that you know people recommend that I need to check out when I go. I don't think I have, I don't have anything profound to say, but I do think it's interesting, you know, hearing about, you know, you went to 50 states to get your name out. And I think it's like, you know, I think it's genius marketing, even though it requires, you know, it's so resource intense, intense. You know, Tyler Kirkham was just up at Gotham City Limit like a month ago. And this is his second time showing up there. And the line was even crazier, and it was like a lot of returning folks. So, you know, I saw the value in that where I'm like, oh, he's getting like really good FaceTime. Ben goes all out for, you know, for Tyler and makes it a big deal. So I was like, man, I see the value from the coming here to you know being able to have FaceTime, build like these genuine connections, meet the fans in person, do signings, drawing. Like it was a really well done event. And it got me thinking, it was like, man, like, is it good or like it almost feels like is that almost mandatory? Is that like a required thing now to be a create, a full-time comic creator, to like, you know, uh lean into the creator and like is that a necessity at this point? Like you have to do that, like you have to consider at least, maybe not to the extent that you do 50 shops, but like, is that a part of the game now where it's like, yeah, you need to uh uh factor in doing signings and you know, visiting comic shops.

Tony Fleecs 55:37

I mean, everybody sort of does it to their uh to the level at which they're most they're comfortable, you know. But I do think if you're somebody like on my level, you know, where it's like has some independent books, has a couple, you know, I'm not Scott Snyder, you know, I'm not Scotty Young. I'm I'm a I'm a uh I wouldn't say struggling, like because that would annoy people who are actually struggling. Like I do good. Yeah. But I'm at a I'm at a level where there's still room to grow. And I think one of the things that I can, like I said, it's it's everybody has their different like little bag of tricks. And one of the things that I can do is I can go real hard for a long time. And so like that, going to 50 different comic shops at the time, you know, I was single. I just, you know, I had somebody watch my dog, and then I just, you know, could go out and drive around for seven weeks uh with my buddy. But that's something that you know was in my bag of tricks that you might not think of, but like you're saying, Tyler Kirkcomb's line got longer the second time he was there. One of the main reasons we did that was because I there was this shop that I uh had signed at twice, and I went back a third time and the line was okay, like it was always a decent line there. But then I asked them about how my books were doing, and because I had I was sort of like a face at that place, and and people who I assume people who might not just order it out of previews, they said they had 40 pulls for Uncanny Valley. Oh wow, which is like not my most successful one, you know. It's it was sort of like that's sort of like it's a it's like a B side, you know? Like it's like, oh, if you like Tony Fleecs, you should check this one out, right? Like you probably haven't heard of this one. Uh and they were selling 40 of them at like not a this isn't Mile High or like Coliseum or you know. Yeah. And so I definitely thought about that. Like if I go to these places and I go shake hands and I sign books, you know, and and just sort of become a presence at a place like that, you know, I'll sell more books that they'll it'll, you know, set up little franchises.

Badr Milligan 57:38

Yeah, you end up becoming like uh a like the shops, like a shop favorite, you know, like you know, one of the one of the uh I don't know, one one of the homies, you know. Huh. That's interesting. Okay, that was really good. That was a really good tangent. Um, Tony, you know a thing or two about this comic book game. I that's what I like to do. I do know a thing or two one would say. Um also love the quote. I can go long, I can go hard for long. Not to be confused with the Viagra commercial uh slogan. All right, Tony, to wrap up, I want to try something uh uh new. Um I want to try to do, I want to start incorporating like a lightning round for the last part of the show. So uh I'm gonna have you be my guinea pig. I've got a couple of uh fast-paced lightning round questions for you, and we're just gonna see how this goes. Okay, so obviously, you know, we're talking the princess murders. Uh, we've been talking about uh Disney princesses and all that. So some of these questions relate to that. Your first lightning round question. What's the best animated princess movie ever made? Sleeping Beauty. Okay, I like that. Which Disney princess would survive a slasher movie? Belle. Oh. Can you give me a justification? She already got kidnapped by a beast, you know.

Tony Fleecs 58:44

So she sort of acquits herself pretty well, already.

Badr Milligan 58:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I did think about this answer. I I'm stuck between um, I'm stuck between Mulan. Yeah, Mulan's got swords. And yo, she she drafted herself into the military to save her father from having the joint, like, come on, she's got guts, she's got bravery. And you're right, she's got a dragon and swords. And then I I also said for this answer, oh my God, I just had it and I had a complete brain fart. Who the fuck was the other one? It'll come to me. But right now, Mulan is my best answer to that. Okay. Good call. Next question I got for you. What's one comic you read recently that made you put the book down and say, damn, that was good?

Tony Fleecs 59:27

Man, what's one comic, what's one comic I read recently, period. I mean, I still buy them. They sit there, they're stacking up on my kitchen table.

Badr Milligan 59:38

And it doesn't gotta be like a new book or anything that just came out like in the past week, but it just one that you just read recently. Or the last one you can recall.

Tony Fleecs 59:45

A couple years ago, uh they did a uh like an old man buffy at Boom Studios, like a Buffy, the vampire slayer, but like set, you know, like 20 years in the future, basically set now, if Buffy was in the 90s. And it was a real cool take. Art was cool, it just sort of had like neat ideas about like where that world would have gone. Uh, Casey Gilly wrote it. Um, there's an artist named Joe Jaro who drew some of it.

Badr Milligan 1:00:11

It's called the like the last vampire. I like the last. I read that recently. Yeah, Buffy the Last Vampire Slayer, a 2021 comic book miniseries by Boom Studios that draws heavy inspiration from Marvel's old man Logan, written, like you said, by Casey Gilly and illustrated by Jo Jaro. That looks pretty cool. Okay. Yeah. Uh two more, two more questions for you. What's more important for you right now? Sales and acclaim or having the freedom and resources to keep creating?

Tony Fleecs 1:00:37

I mean, it's always the freedom and resources to keep creating. That's that's why you want sales and acclaim, is so that you're is so that your the deck is sort of cleared. You know, the better my stuff sells, the easier it is, like we talked about earlier, for me to get stuff greenlit and and to get stuff come out. So it's all about I've got this big list of things that I want to make. And, you know, there's a notebook full of like eventually I want to do this thing and I want to do this thing. And it's just about getting the time and having the resources to be able to do that. Whether that's you know, and sometimes it's the publisher says, like, we'll fund this book, or sometimes it's like the book hits big enough that you can, you know, fund the next one.

Badr Milligan 1:01:16

I like it. All right, and last question for you. What should people know about the princess murders going in and what can they look forward to without getting into spoilers? Without getting into spoilers.

Tony Fleecs 1:01:26

So there's been a murder, right? And it happens in like within the the world of like an animated princess movie, and it's up to a wicked stepsister and a and a fairy godmother to find out who the killer is before the killer strikes again. Um that's sort of like the the register pitch like we talked about. But yeah, if you like uh you know Disney princesses, if you like slasher movies, if you if I mean especially if you like Italian Giallo movies and Disney princesses, I would feel personally offended if you skip this one. Uh but uh but yeah, if it's just sort of like I I have a feeling that there's a a crossover between Disney people and horror people because they're such similar fandoms, you know. They both um they'll both watch any of them, you know. Like you sit me down and say, I'm gonna throw on a horror movie, I'm like, all right, you know, that'll be fine. And then and I know I'm gonna get something out of it. And I think it's the same with cartoons and with uh you know, with animated fairy tale stuff. Like the stuff that you want from those, there's at least a little bit of it in all of them. Um and I think the fans like that sort of thing. Like, I horror fans generally they'll have their favorites and they'll have stuff that they don't like, but they seem up for it, you know. Like they're just like, I'll check that out.

Badr Milligan 1:02:42

Hey, look, I'll co-sign that as someone that is in the middle of the road of both of those. If it appealed to me, I can guarantee it can it will absolutely appeal to the diehard Disney and horror fans. Um Tony, that was fantastic. Uh, one of you thank you for giving me one of your patented Tony Fleecs uh register pitches. Like I said, Clarity, man, you got such a clear vision. With that being said, I think uh this is a great part to stop the episode and say, ladies and gents, this is the short box podcast. We just talk finished talking to Tony Fleecs about the princess murders. We talked about this. Is the most that we've ever talked about Disney and princesses in one episode. All right. So this is sure. Yeah, this is a new world record for the short box. Uh, once again, the princess murders will be available at comic shops on Wednesday, December 9th. But final order cutoff, that very important date is Monday, November 9th. So tell your local comic shop you want to add it to your poll right now or before Monday, November 9th. Once again, issue one hits shops Wednesday, December 9th. Uh, I'll have a link to the trailer uh uh of the first issue in the show notes. Um, you gotta hear the song. I I know Vigo put in the the the little snippet, but you gotta check out the full trailer. I'm gonna have links to follow uh Tony on all socials. So uh smash, click, follow, and all that good stuff. The show notes is where it's at. Check it out. Thanks for listening to the Short Box podcast. My name is Badr. My job here is done. Big shout outs to the Patronies and everyone at home. Stay tuned for the uh outro to hear more messages, and I'll catch you next week. All right, peace.