by Chet Presley

Welcome to 20 QUESTIONS WITH MATT FRACTION. Matt Fraction is the author of the graphic novel FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE (Image Comics), LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS (AiT/Planetlar), REX MANTOOTH (AiT/Planetlar), various shorts, and the forthcoming CASANOVA (Image Comics) and PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL (Marvel Comics).

A young writer by most standards, Matt has proven himself as a talent to watch over the next few years. Below is a candid and honest look at most of his upcoming releases and previous publications.

YMB: 1. Congrats on swinging one of the covers for PREVIEWS this month with CASANOVA. I understand that you put Gabriel Bá - series artist - into a coma for a week after supplying him with a huge source bible. What exactly went into it? How much of it is actually important to the series?

MATT: Thanks for that-- now when the book tanks, they'll say we had nobody to blame but ourselves.

Any coma Bá went into after receiving the bible was a coma of raw, unfettered enthusiasm and pure comics energy. He's one of, if not THE most, enthusiastic collaborators I've ever worked with, and I wanted him to know I was bringing the same amount of energy and vigor to the project as I'd be asking him to give. It was a way for me to collect all my inspirations in one place, too, and submerge myself in the world we were building.

And, on a realistic level, he's from Brazil. Different country, different culture, different contexts. I needed to provide him with exactly the things I was talking about.

What went into it? A lot. Uh, notes on the direction the series was going to take, character sketches, histories, detailed explanations and back stories, and then like 70 pages of visual references, from comics to coloring, art to architecture, fashion and film and everything else. It's all important to the series. It *IS* the fucking series.

I feel like this book has been building in my head my entire life. Anything less than a carefully considered world-building manifesto would be half-assing it.

2. You're working in the $1.99 American model with this project, but with a spin or two unique to CASANOVA. Such as exceeding 16 pages and working in duotone to list a few things. What are the reasons for these differences in approach and how do they help tell Quinn's story?

Well, we exceeded 16 pages for the first issue-- like a two-hour pilot episode was how we pitched it to image-- but from then on it's 16 story pages an issue. The differences in approach... I mean, it's not like we set out to be different. I mean, we're non-"famous" creators doing a non-full color non-superhero book from not-Marvel and not-DC. A little sameness could only help, at this point; the direct market isn't known for embracing novelty.

There was no starting line for CASANOVA. I looked around one day and there it was. All of the decisions were pretty organic and felt like what the material required.

3. Speaking of which, could you go into what CASANOVA's about after all of the influences, tricks of the trade, and solicitation copy are boiled down and we get straight to the meat of the story?

The meat of the story is: you're not your job and you're not your parents; you're not their expectations and their responsibilities are a two-way street. Your primary responsibility in this life is to stay true to yourself and the people you love. As the spy stuff and secret mission stuff pile up, the book's mission statement becomes pretty obvious: life is ultimately about how you choose to define yourself. So CASANOVA is about a somewhat wayward young man with an extraordinary set of talents defining himself in a world where parallel dimensions and triple agent superspies are the samo-samo of his work week. So obviously it's all dressed up in a lot of different genre trappings, but that's the kind of thing I dig and that's the kind of shit that makes me want to write comics and read comics.

4. That sounds like a great theme with a lot of ground to walk. Besides how versatile of a theme it is, what else influenced you to run with it? Is it driven by some personal experiences? Observations made about friends, family, or co-workers?

I think it's driven by where I am in my life now, you know? Or was, a few years back maybe. Everything you write is, in some way, and I think those thoughts and those ideas-- making a family, becoming what you want to be when you grow up-- is sort of my headspace nowadays.

The family thing has always fascinated me, the notion of assembling a family out of what you have around you instead of out of whatever biology and genetics throws your way. I think that idea pops up again and again in my work, people coming together because they
become more than the sum of their parts.

CASANOVA started with the character and the thought that, given a blank slate, where everyone assumed and expected the best from you, what would you do with your life? What kind of man would you become? I think, in a way, that's what fascinates me about "super" characters, about genre characters like this. The act of self-invention, of self-transformation.

5. Speaking of which, where do you personally draw the line between "artistic integrity" and "commercialism"? It seems to be something you talk and think about regularly. As if you're constantly poking around to find that perfect balance between the two.

I'm not sure those words mean the same to me as they do to you? I don't think there's a conceptual line that divides them, but rather a literal one-- namely getting paid to do your work-- and they're not mutually exclusive, like, at all. The minute you accept any kind of consideration, financial or otherwise, you've blended the two. Getting paid to do what you love and to create what you want is goal. Taking too little cash to shit out soulless and joyless product that says nothing but what its audience wants to hear is the other end of the spectrum. So the challenge is to exist somewhere comfortably in-between. There's no artistic shame in getting paid, or from working in a commercial idiom. The shame is in pandering.

Are you asking me if I've sold out, and if not, why not?

6. No, not really. And "selling out" I think is more of a personal realization and concern than most give it credit for. It's just that I've seen you talk highly online about certain books that fall under a particular category that most people - lazily - subscribe to and you don't happen to produce works - yet, anyway - under said ambiguous category. Said category would "typically" be comfortable at a publisher like Fantagraphics for Top Shelf. Something a little more humane, personal, and very arguably mature work. Whereas, to date, you've mostly dealt with things that much more genre and action oriented. And despite the example you set - yeah, I know that's a loaded accusation and I apologize - with your work you seem to have a genuine affection and desire to see more of that kind of material made available and celebrated. For a time, I really thought you were going to take a stab at that kind of material with the - I assume - now defunct - ANODYNE. Whatever happened to that? Do you plan to dabble with anything that personal in the future? Or should I stop drinking while asking you questions?

Wait-- so, in that preamble, you use the words "lazily" and "ambiguous" to frame your argument; you use "typically" in a way that denotes, if not speciousness, then certainly stereotype; "arguably," to confirm that you are, in fact, trucking in stereotypes; and then, to top it all off, you qualify your thesis by saying it's predicated on "a loaded accusation" for which you then apologize for making and then-- THEN-- you STILL go ahead and ask the question, which was whatever happened to a book that never came out, that nobody read, and that's only been spoken about in a press release?

Okay.

What happened to ANODYNE is that NIGHT RADIO didn't come out. It exists as 4 10-page scripts that've been sitting on my hard-drive since 2002 when I finished it. I doubt very much I'd let it out in the here-and-now; if and when NIGHT RADIO resurrects itself I'd probably want to write something brand new. Or something that at
least wasn't 4 years old.

I don't know what I'm going to dabble with in the future. I stopped making those kinds of plans a long time ago when things like ANODYNE went AWOL.

You're asking why, as I've advocated books that don't involve guys putting on special outfits and whaling the tar out of one another (or "whaling" the 'tar' if you prefer), why don't I write more books like that? By that rationale, as I've spoken fondly about, say, The Pixies or The Beatles so much, I should be in a rock band? I love
The Pixies and The Beatles but, believe me, I sing like a train crashing in hell. So, world, on that whole me-not-being-in-a-band thing? You're welcome. I will, however, continue to talk or write about The Pixies and/or The Beatles. I will NOT join a band.

Secondly, I talk online about certain books that need each and every person that can talk about them TO talk about them. X-Men, Batman, whatever-- these books don't need any extra advocacy. They dominate the market and need no extra time or attention.

And, the punchline: I write what I want to write. Read it or don't. I don't care. I'm flattered if you do, and if you don't then by god that's wholly your privilege and prerogative. Nobody has the right to project their expectations onto any writer, or creator, or sculptor, or musician, or artist, or whatever. My responsibility is to the work, not to whatever audience I may or may not have been blessed with. I write what I want to write. You read what you want to read. And maybe the twain shall meet. Selah.

And and and, I'm utterly unimpressed that you're trying to place the responsibility for your performance here on the drink. You diminish us both.

7. Matt, I sincerely apologize for any misunderstanding I might've caused with my last question. If anyone's diminished here, it's nobody but myself. I was honestly having a difficult time properly phrasing a question that wasn't meant to be an attack, but was something I really wanted to pick your brain about. I was more interested in hearing about your stance regarding how some of the things you've said before might be interpreted. I think your band analogy has to be the best answer to that sort of sloppy question... ever.

And now that that part of the stage's clear, let's talk about another book you have forthcoming from Image, FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE. Long time(?) friend/collaborator Steve Sanders had the pleasure of illustrating this story, and I understand that he lives close to you if not within the same city. How has that made the collaboration different for this project from any other that you've shared with artists in the past?

Oh, lordy, don't apologize-- attack away if you like, that's not the issue. I've said a lot of stuff online, and most of it was stupid. I've been doing it long enough that I'm sure I've contradicted myself and changed my mind over the years-- a SAVANT column that ended with something like "Fuck work for hire. Do it yourself." comes to mind-- and getting attacked for right or wrong comes with the territory. I just had no fucking clue what you were saying or, more pressing, why. So,okay. Moving right along...

I met Steven Sanders in 2000, I think. Maybe 2001. We had a mutual friend that hooked us up and went head over heels for his stuff the second I saw it. I immediately started to write a terrible graphic novel for him to draw, and draw he did-- until around page 40 I realized how deeply and sincerely fucked we were and we scrapped it. Shortly afterwards the Tesla-and-Twain thunderbolt erupted in my head and we went out for a cup of coffee...

Working with a guy that's in town was great-- just the chance to share the same physical space while we worked was excellent. I don't- or at least, on FIVE FISTS, I didn't-- plan my stories out in great detail, I just have the broad landmarks. And I have a day job and Sand has a day job so I was only ever a few pages ahead of him. Then we'd get together and I'd see what he'd drawn and maybe rescript a little and give notes and, most of all, just get inspired. We'd sort of talk through the next scene or two and things would evolve slowly, oh so goddamn slowly, as we went. Steve carried all the original pencils in a plastic bag, like the bag he bought the comic paper in, and every time he'd pull that thing out of his backpack I'd start to get excited. And every time we'd play show and tell, I'd restart from page one and read the whole thing over again.

I dunno how successful or unsuccessful the relationship has been, but I sure feel blessed to have had it and I love the book we made together.

8. Dear reader, Matt was kind enough to allow me an advance reading of the entire FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE graphic novel. It's... in a word, "awesome". Seriously, just wait until you see what's done to the Yeti.

From other interviews you've done recently, you went on to describe being inspired to do this story after seeing a picture of Mark Twain in Tesla's lab and various other... things. I don't want to say this thing is all over the map - not that that's bad either - but you can tell that you had an immense amount of fun writing this. The dialogue's incredibly sharp and doesn't waste a beat too.

How much of the story was planned out in advance and what was left to those whatever-hits-me-when-it-does moments?

The big beats of the plot. The set piece scenes and the ending most of all. Some of the specifics changed-- who was on the train at the end comes to mind-- but the big pieces were always there, from the very instant the book came to me.

That said, the connective tissue between them was wholly improvised as I went along, only ever writing ahead of Steven by a handful of pages. At most I was maybe 8 pages ahead of him, but more likely it was 2 to 3.

In terms of tone and mood, I dunno. We just-- we were constantly going over it together, every week or so. It's not like once the pages were done we stopped paying attention, you know? It still took a chunk of pages to find our footing; I think we got to... 12, 13, somewhere in there, and I had to go back and add a bit I'd missed. After that, though, it never felt like we were off our footing and it all went smoothly.

9. That sounds like a weird working relationship, but I'm sure it's an industry standard. How did you work with Steve to maintain a consistent tone/mood without having hammered out the whole thing before writing. Let alone Steve working a few pages behind your own pace.

I dunno if it's a standard or not, honestly; with FIVE FISTS, practically, it was the only way to keep me honest; creatively, it was what felt right for the book. As... fancy as it sounds, every book I write tends to come out differently. And this was how FIVE FISTS chose to manifest itself.

10. If you had to pick a favorite character out of the story, who would it be and why?

Oh, lord, no, please don't make me decide-- I can't, I won't, I refuse and protest and am holding my breath and stomping my feet. Please, King Solomon, don't make me choose. I had SO much fun on this book that I fell in love with everything and everyone in it-- and every time I'd see new pages from Steve I'd fall even harder.

I just-- our mission was 100% FUN, from the word go. We wanted to make a comic as big and bright and exciting and FUN as we could, a big old pop confection and a guilt-free entertainment. I can't say what OTHER people are going to feel about it, but that's how Steve and I felt during the making of the thing.

Shit, I even enjoyed writing the Yeti.

11. Well... there went the follow-up question about your favorite moment.

Anyway, early on in the book we see Mr. Twain almost foam at the mouth after leaving a peace rally/convention accusing most of the speakers and attendees of, well... basically being spineless hippies. And he goes on to suggest that in order to achieve peace it has to be forced. Now, I'm not sure where your politics lie, but was this you or the character talking? It's a very poignant scene considering our current political climate. A lot can be read into what he has to say... and do, really, throughout the rest of the book.

A little bit from Column A, a little bit from Column B.

I mean, that WAS Twain's perspective-- the house needs to be on fire before we'll bother buying a fire extinguisher-- and my own is a fairly cynical one as well. It wasn't ever a deliberate comment on What's Going On-- we were coming together in the lead-up to the Iraq War and there were still a lot of unknown unknowns, as it were. I don't recall ever trying to funnel my feelings about the one into the other. Is it commenting on our willingness to let our fear diminish our judgment? Sure. But, as a people, as a society.

It's a rejection of putting faith in the better angels of our nature to save the day. Because we're slothful, prideful, lazy. And Twain exploits that.

12. And how.

Earlier you talked about how much time you were able to spend writing FFoS on a daily/weekly basis. You've already got a full time job with MK12, right? So how do you manage your time so well? I would imagine that you'd be at the beck and call of your MK12 clients needs and that might throw off a routine.

Yeah, the day job comes first and the result is that I've no discernible routine whatsoever. I write at night, when I can, and on weekends, and snatch the time from everywhere else during the week. I wrote the outline for CASANOVA #3 in the back of a car.

You know, both 'careers' sorta got started around the same time and, could I go back in time, I'd maybe slip myself a memo saying, hey, jerkass, maybe take it one empire at a time, you know?

That said my day job is fairly fabulous if exhausting. We've gone around the world, we've had our work screen all over, and we've worked with some of the coolest directors, DPs, cinematographers, and editors in the world-- to say nothing of our clients themselves. I mean, I finished FIVE FISTS in the location of the actual lab Tesla was working in during the timeframe of the book on a weekend during the production of a video we co-directed with Kanye West for Common. Heady times, heady times.

Sleep comes last, I guess.

I'm tired a lot.

13. Not to stir up a hornet's nest, but FFoS was originally meant to come out of AiT/Planetlar, right? What happened with that?

It didn't.

14. Fair enough.

Switching back to CASANOVA - now that I have been spoiled again with the pleasure of reading the complete first issue - I gotta say that not only is the spy angle pretty well covered, but in a lot of - good - ways it reminded me of THE ADVENTURES OF LUTHER ARKWRIGHT. I noticed that the text piece at the end mentioned Bryan Talbot - ARKWRIGHT's author/illustrator - as an influence on the series, but I hadn't seen you mention that anywhere else to date. Obviously, CASANOVA's not strictly confined to the spy genre and you've made plenty of mention that it's just as much sci-fi, but just how much of the book will run around the trickiness that is the alternate reality story?

We're done alternating realities after our first issue. The alternate reality we end up in is the reality in which we stay, explore, live in and learn in and love in and die in.

(See, kids at home, what happens is, our boy Casanova is yanked like a blue gill out of the safe little lake of his life early on in our first issue and is deposited into wholly new waters where he is NOT a clever and brilliant thief and bon vivant. It is, in fact, the Crux of our book.)

WARPING reality? Yes, at every opportunity. But leaving one for the next, time and time again? No, we've driven that train-- I mean, you risk running into that MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE thing where everybody's double- and triple-yanking fake faces off one after the next and you don't have a narrative leg left to stand on. You keep yanking the
rug out from under your story to reveal another rug, and it becomes obvious there's no story underneath.

And if, say, Cass were to be presented with the opportunity to put that minty yet confusing toothpaste back in the tube, I'm honestly not 100% sure what he would do.

15. Interesting. Cass seemed to be the stronger "antagonist" - if you will - in his original reality, and at the end of the first issue - I wouldn't say he's any less of a badass - he's suddenly surrounded by some pretty rough customers and in a stickier situation. Making bad get good again wouldn't be worth it unless you're the best at being bad eventually, and I don't see Cass playing other people's games for long. Sooo, tease us, tempt us... What's Cass up to?

Oddly enough, Cass thinks the same way. So our second and third issues are about establishing what passes as 'status quo' for Cass, and really trying to earn it-- meaning me, narratively speaking, and Cass, uh, fictionally speaking . So we see him deployed on a mission while secretly having a countermission in 2: he's tasked to retrieve an E.M.P.I.R.E. deep cover agent from somewhere in South America that's gone 'round the bend. The mission in 3 is pretty gentle in comparison: Cass has to infiltrate a graveyard for spies and retrieve a thing from a corpse buried there. Really, though, 3 is about how all the parties involved-- Cass, E.M.P.I.R.E., and W.A.S.T.E.-- deal with the fallout from Cass' first mission "back."

Then 4 sends Cass to steal God. Or rather, a performance artist who has evolved into the next phase of Buddha as is about to awaken. 5 is about the last island on earth with a pre-Stone Age tribe inhabiting it, and how Sabine Seychelle has managed to hide a man there for fifteen years...

16. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Since, we're in the last quarter of the interview, I wanted to hit on a few odds and ends.

What's the status of BIG HAT? Is Kieron Dwyer still attached? Will AiT/Planetlar publish it? Er... other than being a western, what's it about?

It's in the LIMBO file, at the moment. And yeah, it's being written for Kieron, so either it's me-and-him or in LIMBO it stays. I dunno who'll publish it, and, honestly, there's a project called THUG Kieron and I are hotter on at the moment anyway. Besides, the Western thing seems kind of tired at the moment, or at least, it's not the... I don't know that either of us have the charge for doing it at the moment that we did back when we started. LOTI was a western in so many ways that the urge to jump back into it isn't necessarily what it once was.

It's the flip-side to a story like SHANE. The subtitle, cribbed from an R.E.M. song, is "How the West Was Won (And What It Got Us)," which really says it all. It's about the price that comes attached to Manifest Destiny, and how that's reflected in the growth and survival of a once lawless town nobody pays attention to... except the otherwise nameless Big Hat, who returns, ten years after cleaning the place up, to see how the seeds that he and the now-sheriff ended up growing.

It's dark.

It's really, really dark.

17. Cool, cool. Hopefully, it doesn't fall of by the wayside forever, because it sounds like a solid yarn.

What about your stint with the 30 DAYS OF NIGHT franchise? How was that playing in someone's sandbox for the first time in long form? How much involvement did Steve Niles have? What about working with Ben Templesmith?

It was a blast-- Steve and I are pals and to have the opportunity to, uh, defile his baby first was an honor and privilege. In terms of his involvement, he was remarkably hands off. The major thing we'd talk about would be, like, how the world fit together, how the exact physics of "his" vampires worked, and all that. But I think LOTI made him trust me in a way that I admired and respected and appreciated very much.

And it was tremendously great to work with Ben Templesmith-- my god, what a talent. I feel like my involvement with him, the call and response of the way we worked, made me a smarter writer. And I thought it was his career best work, too, until FELL came out. So: honor, thrill, joy, excitement, all that. It was amazing.

In fact, I feel that, no matter how the story ended up (that's not for me to say, necessarily), it's the piece that overall made me a smarter writer. I mean, I suppose that's relative but, technically, behind the scenes, I feel like the story of JUAREZ was like a crash course in what is and isn't possible in comics. Or at least in my comics, in the comics made with my particular skill set. It's the piece that taught me the most about comics' unique language.

18. Which brings us to your next jaunt into work-for-hire, PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL. Compared to past AND present versions of the book and character, how's your run going to be different with the exception of the Punisher being more involved in the MU?

I'm not sure that's for me to say, you know? That's maybe not my place to decide.

In terms of Ennis' most excellent book, it's for a wider audience. I don't want to say "all ages" because it's very clearly not, but it's not as extraordinarily adult and brutal as his run. It's a wholly different animal-- and, I mean, I LOVE his run on the book. So it's not like I feel as though I'm righting some cosmic wrong or anything like that.

Just, you know. He's doing an adult crime comic. We're doing... wow, my god, it's kind of a superhero comic.

19. And what're your thoughts about the superhero genre? How comfortable are you writing a superhero book?

The genre's an awful big place. There's room for a lot of different approaches and styles, lots of different voices and visions. Some of it bores me to T E A R S. Some of it has kept me reading comics since I *could* read. Depending on what way the wind blows, anyway. What's boring is when you get an industry that caters to supporting and facilitating a swathe of creators saying the same thing in nearly the same tone-- like, imagine if pop music was nothing but Beatles cover bands, you know? So... you know. The Beatles are awesome. Once. Because so's Neutral Milk Hotel and Johnny Cash and The Ronettes and Public Enemy. So as much as I wish there were more great books published in more genres than just superheroes, I wish the superhero genre had more diverse voices, and more people trying to pull of new and different shit either from whole cloth or evolving the genre or both.

In terms of my level of comfort, I think PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL is sort of the perfect book for me to cut my superhero teeth on-- not to get too obnoxiously art school (but to get totally obnoxiously art school), in a lot of ways I share the same views on the superhero world that Frank has, the tropes and logic and scale of it all. His disbelief and impatience with the world of superheroes is the same as my own. What I hope is that-- it's not like I trained my whole life to write a superhero comic. So I hope we come at it in a way that's unexpected and novel, but still delivers the Punisher book people are looking for.

20. Yeah, I read an interview with Masamune Shirow yeeeaaars ago wherein he talked about story-making being similar to cooking. And I paraphrase: Sure, the dish may be at it's core the same, but it's what YOU put into it that makes it stand out.

Unfortunately, we've reached our last question, Matt, and as a reward for putting up with my bullshit the mic is off to you. Feel free to talk about whatever you want.

Thanks for your more-than-superhuman patience with me on this interview. I think Peter Milligan is second only to the Hernandez Brothers in terms of writing amazing comics that seem totally invisible to people, and that's a shame. I think the noble failure of the psychedelic Beach Boys are better than that Mike Love pap that came later. First live music I ever saw was the KOKOMO era Lovernaut Beach Boys extravaganza with Stamos on the drums and it was a complete bummer. I like Godzilla movies because the sense of scale terrifies me. I don't dislike the films of Ron Howard because he offends me, but rather because he DOESN'T offend me. I say "either" with a hard I instead of the hard E and I don't know why, but I do. I think people that say "rahhhther" are funny-sounding, but I'm cracker trash from North Carolina, so don't listen to me. I get bothered when people refer to the race cars as "NASCARS." They're just race cars, dumbass. I'm not saying that as a fan, or anything, but as a southerner. It's like calling video games "Nintendos" or something. I'm having the most fun of my writing career going between CASANOVA and PUNISHER: WAR JOURNAL and I'm the last person that ever thought I'd say that. I'd rather write with joy than write for cash, and I promise the minute something starts to bum me out or become a chore to complete, I'll bail. Uh. My dog likes to wear his Krypto cape. I think Dwayne McDuffie should be writing JUSTICE LEAGUE comics. I liked IDENTITY CRISIS because SUPERHERO CSI MURDER MYSTERY is totally awesome. I disliked IDENTITY CRISIS because I think using children's iconography to tell that kind of store is woefully inappropriate. I suspect that, had WATCHMEN starred the Charlton heroes as was originally intended I'd feel the same way. Is that weird? Does that make me a prude? Is that somehow ironic as I'm writing the Punisher now? I don't know, but it's how I feel and I'm not sure how to justify it. I don't get JUSTICE but I read it like everybody else. I *DO* get SUPERMAN BATMAN but I started reading it with the second to second to last issue, so, so much for that. Geoff Johns just wrote a TEEN TITANS book that felt like both a TEEN TITANS story AND a DOOM PATROL story, and that's a hell of a trick to pull off. DC should publish a DOOM PATROL showcase volume soon. I think THE TYGER Punisher special that Garth Ennis and John Severin just did is remarkable. I love Ed Brubaker's CAP and DAREDEVIL. I know a little bit that's gonna happen in DAREDEVIL and always wince when he tells me what's going to happen in CAPTAIN AMERICA because I like reading it so much. That's pretty name-droppy, I guess, but I hope it doesn't sound dicky. It's impossible for me not to enjoy a comic that Bendis writes, even if i don't particularly like it, if that makes sense-- that guy's skill and enthusiasm for what he's doing makes even the bummer issues at least fun to read. GØDLAND is the first thing I read out of the box, every month, without fail. I wish I had the new TV on the Radio record, and the new Black Heart Procession record. I like robots. As an idea, I mean. I wish I came up with the idea behind Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's PHONOGRAM first. I'm so proud we're sharing publishers. I have to write CASANOVA #6 soon and am stuck. I'm going to be at HeroesCon, San Diego, and Stumptown up in Portland, OR this year. Come say hi.