Welcome to the net.

Paute, Hello, and welcome to another celebrating Superman edition of Missing Frames.

I'm your host, Sean Eastridge.

Normally on Missing Frames we watch all of the movies we should have seen by this point in our lives.

But as you no doubt already know, I am a huge Superman fan.

So to celebrate the release of James Gunn's Superman, which is finally in theaters as of this past Friday, and it's great, by the way, I've been talking with all of my favorite Superman writers, fans, actors, and more about what makes this character so special.

In my last episode, I spoke with Tom King's brilliant human being behind Superman up in the Sky.

I've also spoken with the likes of Mark Wade, Dan Jurgens, Jason Aaron, and so many more.

Too many more to name, but go check them out wherever you're listening to it.

Literally, if you just scroll through all.

The episodes, all of my recent episodes are Superman interviews, they won't be hard to find.

Definitely share them with your super friends, leave a review if you want.

You can subscribe if you like all this nonsense.

And really, seriously, I am so appreciative of those of you who have been sharing this stuff, writing reviews, sending me messages and kind comments.

You guys are awesome.

Thank you.

So I have a confession to make.

Are you setting down?

Okay?

My favorite ongoing comic book run of the past few years has not been Superman related.

I know, right, blasphemy, but no.

My favorite current comic book is actually Fantastic Four, written by Ryan North, who's been working on the books since I think late twenty twenty two.

I've been a massive fan of this run pretty much since I started reading it a couple of years ago, and I was beyond thrilled when I heard that Ryan would be hopping aboard the Summer of Superman train with a limited five issue special entitled Crypto, The Last Dog of Krypton.

Now not only was I thrilled because Ryan would be writing a Crypto story, but now I had the perfect excuse to bring him onto my show and geek out about Superman, super Dogs, Fantastic Four, Kurt Vonnegut, computer science star Trek.

Is there anything we don't talk about in this conversation?

You will have to listen to find out anyway, if you haven't already checked out Ryan's work.

You seriously need to.

I'm not kidding.

His Fantastic four run is one of the absolute best, not only that his first issue of Crypto.

So it's everything I wanted it to be.

It's everything I needed it to be, and I can't wait to read the rest.

So let's go ahead and celebrate Superman with Ryan.

North, now available to own non video cassette.

Ryan, We're here.

We did it, were we made it, We accomplished the task.

We went all the way to our computers, turned them on, and here we sit.

The word hero gets strolled around a lot these days, but I think in this space it applies, you.

Know, flies for sure.

And I'm when I started thinking about, you know, I'm a massive, massive Superman fan, and I started thinking about.

Like I've heard you know, you've heard this, you've heard this.

It's no I've heard of Superman.

I thought you met you heard of my love for Superman, and I was like, wow, no, just the man himself, like I may have heard of you and was warned by many people not to do this interview, but but I I early on was like, I gotta think of a way to celebrate this movie and just my like find a way to like funnel my excitement into something proactive.

So I was thinking about the list of people I wanted to talk to, and meanwhile, behind the scenes, I am telling everybody I know that you know what, I'm not the biggest Fantastic Four fan, but I think my favorite comic book right now is Ryan North's Fantastic Four run.

And I've been singing this runs praises for however long?

How long has it been going.

On now, Well, it just ended with a new and startup game with any Number one, so it's been going on for two days as of us talking, but before that it was since twenty twenty two.

I think I probably started reading in maybe twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three.

So I've been singing.

The praises of this incredible book for so so long, and it felt like something in the universe heard me, because then all of a sudden, It's announced that you are going to be working on this limited series Crypto the super Dog, and I was like, this is this is meant to be?

This was meant to be.

Like if I could ask the Master of the Universe for anything, It's like, how can I take the gentleman behind my favorite comic and bring him into Superman.

So I have an excuse to chat with him.

This is it and it's happening now.

Thank you, You're welcome.

And also I'm so so sorry.

But I wanted to talk about how does it feel to like you're kind of you've got your foot in both worlds right now?

You've got the Superman movie coming out, we're talking the day before the official release.

Yeah, and then we've got Fantastic Four in a couple of weeks.

You're like in both worlds.

How's that feeling?

I mean's unexpected.

I didn't I didn't machinate this to make it happen.

But someone messaged me on Blue Sky being like, you know, you told me ten years ago the Dinosaur comics guy would be doing tie in to the Fantastic Four and Superman movies and I'd be looking forward to both of them.

I wouldn't believe you, but I'm happy that it's true.

And I was like, yeah, I guess I kind of stumbled into stumbled into that, and.

How did you?

I guess, Well, you know, I was stumbling around and reading stuff about you and trying to figure out, like what am I going.

To ask what are we going to talk about?

And I found this incredible Globe and Mail article that is to Choose your Own Profile.

Yes, and I was going through this.

I died many many times.

You murdered me a couple of times.

It's all based on true stories.

It's all based on a true story, as I understand it.

Who came up with this idea of choose your own adventure?

From what I understand you were.

Adapting shakespeare plays into a choose your own adventure format.

Yeah, but it was.

Mark the interviewer's idea, and he did such an incredible job because it's it's so interesting to sit and be interviewed for a interactive thing like that, because you can talk with a bunch of things, but then you have to find your way to those stories in the process.

But I mean, yeah, I did.

I did to Be or Not to Be, which was an interactive version of Hamlet, and then I did Romeo and or Juliet, which is of course Romeo and Romeo and Juliet done to Choose your Own path adventure game book format.

And I love them there.

What I love about them is that Shakespeare is a ridiculously canonized author.

You know, he's the greatest author in all of English history.

That's how he's considered, that's his reputation.

And interactive game books are the very bottom of the prestige sheet.

Like second person, do you want to go to the bathroom?

Turn to page three if correct, is the very bottom of our cultural prestige.

And so marrying the two felt really good.

It felt like something you were building up to your whole life.

Yeah, yeah, like I was meant to bring these two genres together.

Do you have a favorite between the ones you've done?

I mean, I like them both different reasons, I would.

The neat thing about it is that not every one of Shakespeare's plays lends itself to this.

The great thing about Hamlet and Romeo is that both of those are kind of structured around a quest.

Hamlet gets a quest to kill the king, delays a lot, finally does it game over.

Romeo and do later on this quest to get together.

They do and it goes disastrously for everyone, and you know that feels like someone making some bad choices and getting to have that blop of their faces.

So they're both structured really well.

But like Macbeth, I end up doing Macbeth as a book within a book within Romeo.

And or Juliet.

And the reason for that is that Macbeth, well you might think that similar structure.

Am I going to kill a king?

Yes?

Done, But it doesn't work in an interactive format because what happens next is you feel really guilty about it, and you know, turn to page thirty six to feel guilty.

Isn't a compelling reading experience that much worse than a small format, not in like a nine hundred page book.

So I couldn't do all of them, but I could do some of them.

So you talk about like gleaning a level of satis action taking Shakespeare and kind of pulling him down to this choose your own adventure level.

Was there something satisfying about taking all these characters that are so well known?

And was that the motivation for doing it?

Where you like, you know what, I'm sick and tired of this nonsense.

I'm gonna like throw these people into the most ridiculous situations and find creative ways to a.

Motivation was actually I was driving home and I was listening to radio and there was an old actor doing an interview much like we are now doing an interview.

Yes, as old actors, we go way back.

We go way back.

And he was talking about how when he was a younger man, you would perform a monologue you memorized, and these days everyone want to just read their own scripts.

They can see if they like you.

For the role.

And I was thinking, I don't really have any poems memorized, do I know?

What I really have is to be or not to be there?

So it's turning that to beer not to be speech over in my head and realized it was structured like a choice.

You know, pretty big basic observation.

But this is like the chooser adventure books.

Heaster even know as a kid.

And then the whole thing is like, all right, you can have too multiple plays, characters, and it was all there.

I was still driving home.

I had two hours to go, and so I spent two hours getting really excited for this book idea.

And then when I got home, first and did was google and see if someone had done it.

Thankfully they hadn't.

I was like, right, I get to write this book.

You think people would be jumping all over this idea?

Yeah?

Yeah, I mean that.

The hard point is when you're writing, it takes a year and a bit two years, and so the whole time, I hope no one else out of this idea.

Three weeks before me it worked out.

This is gonna be very a very hard interview because I'm so fascinated by this, But like the whole I coaxed you onto here to talk about Superman.

But you know, as I said, Fantastic four, I love that.

And then literally as we were emailing and setting up the schedule for this, I realized that you were the one who adapted Slaughterhouse five into into graphic novel form, which I had seen.

And I you know, I'm a massive Kurt Vonnegut fan.

Slaughterhouse five is one of my favorite books.

Too, and I think that's skill, Like it made me nervous to, oh, yeah, pickupic novel.

I can't imagine what you felt like.

It's not a book that says, oh, I would be easily adapted into graphic novel format like at all.

And the funny the funny part was Albert monte Is, the audit the artist, also believed it couldn't be adapted, and when he saw the script, he was like, all right, maybe we can do this.

And Albert is great he's such a such a challenged cartoonist.

But the thing with Vonnegut, well, the thing that Vonning is that he's great.

The other thing with Vonnegut is that he will often tell you the gist of a conversation, but not what was actually said.

And that works like getting busters in pros, but in comics he kind of want to see what's being said.

You want to put everything in narration boxes.

And so what I did was I imagined I was a comics editor, and I commissioned mister Vonnegut to write a book for me, a comical book, graphic novel, and he showed up with this prose manuscript.

He misunderstaid the.

Assignment, and I was like, Kurt, I'll fix it, don't worry.

And so I tried to make it feel like it was a It was a text that had been born in comics originally, that was indigenous to the medium.

So anywhere I could do something that you could only do in comics.

It was something I tried to do to make it feel like, when you finish this book, you wouldn't say, Wow, what a great graphic novel adaptation of a pre existing prose novel.

You'd say Wow, what at what a great comic and it would feel like it was meant to be a comic.

There are places where it worked where it worked exceptionally well.

The twelve Famadorian book Bonding, it describes as a series of images urgently described, perceived all at once, and like, that's a page of comics.

That that's what he is scrapping his comics, and how I turned the trial Haamadorian book into a trial Gadorian comic book and you could you could experience it as the Trilamadorians do.

And there's stuff like that that's felt like.

Maybe if Kurt I read a few more comics growing up, this might have been a graphic novel in the first place.

So it was real, I mean honor and joy to get to adapt and pleasure too.

And the funny thing about slough House five, the graphic novel, is that when I read it, even though my name's on the cover, after it's I'm always like, man, I wish I could write a book like that.

It doesn't feel like my book.

And so people commented, I'm like, yeah, isn't that great?

Isn't a cool book?

Well, if I'm met my own books, I always like, oh, it's okay, I'm shy, Okay, it's great, it's really cool.

Well, it's like you got to you got to kind of I don't want to say breathe new life, because that suggests there wasn't life in it already, and there's plenty of life in Vonnegut's books.

But what you did is exactly what you suggest, which is interpreting it in a way that is unique to the art form, that gives it, gives it that life in that art form.

I think.

I think adaptations to some extent have to argue for their own existence, at least initially, because we've all read bad adaptations, and.

Then we think, well, what is the point of this, Like what was it?

What are you trying to do?

And so what freed me was keeping in mind the original prose novel would always be there.

I'm not replacing it.

So can we create something that both exists alongside the prose novel and also exists if you haven't read the prose novel and can still stand on its own.

And that's kind of a tricky tricky thing to do, but it's I found it.

What I've heard.

People have been great people who have like reluctant readers and maybe bounced off the book.

Nothing worked really great in the comics version is that we jump through time a lot in that book, and in text you have to say, okay, now we're in nineteen forty four.

But in comics, the color, the costumes, you see in a second where you are, and it's such a more efficient way to get this story across.

I love it.

So I want to, I guess, ask about what you're I mean, you are obviously a major science fiction fan growing up.

Is that something you gravitated towards from a young age?

How did you get into that genre?

And then simultaneously, like was comics like was that in the picture or was it really just like focusing on literature and fiction itself?

Yeah, so yes on science fiction, No, on comics.

I read a ton of like short story collections of science fiction, Golden age sci fi, so much so that you know, I read a bunch of Isaac asma of And if you were a little guy reading a bunch of Isaac asmav almost exclusively, you start to think that's what stories look like.

But Isaac Asimov, his stories, they're great, big ideas, but they're all like two scientists usually men discussing a problem and then they solve the problem and the story is over.

Sudden there's a robot that's involved the problem, but.

There's not that.

Characters are so thin, and it took me a while to sort of learn that characters were important, because all I cared it was a big ideas and like, I couldn't understand why anyone would read something that wasn't science fiction, because science fiction told you what the future was going to be like, and don't you care about what the future is.

Going to be?

Like, I didn't really understand that.

Like, when you're writing an episode of Star Trek TG, your main goal is not to predict the future.

Main goal is to tell a cool story.

I thought it was both.

I thought like they had a whole process to plought out what the world would be like in the future, because it felt so lived and it felt so real.

So I was very much a fan of sci fi.

But I lived in a rural area outside of Ottawa in Canada, and there was no compook stories and this is before the Internet, and so I didn't really read comics until I graduated high school and got a job.

And remember my first paycheck to a comic book store in the big city of Ottawa.

What prompted that, Like, as somebody who didn't grow up with comics, I feel like that, you know, it is something that even today, well maybe not so much today, but certainly like there is a stigma around surrounding comics that it's like once you're like, once you're fully grown, you're in college, it's like.

That can be challenging.

Like I'm maybe in Ottawa, and this was twenty years ago, more than twenty years ago.

The com book shop was right next door at the pornography store, and you know, the porn store had a woman in a bikini in the window and the comic shop had Seahawk in a bikini in the window.

Gets careful which stoor to go in, but it's a challenging.

Place, like it's easy to get confused.

It always felt like, you know, walking into getting your car reparent in a mechanic where I'm like, I don't know anything.

They're gonna ask me a question I won't gore the answer is it looked like a big, big idiot, So it can be challenging.

But what attracted me was I had, you know, through I've seen the Justice League cartoon.

I've seen Fantastic four stuff, Like, I had this vague interest in the characters, and I had a vague interest in the medium.

I was frustrated by newspaper comics.

I could read those, but they were three panels, black and white, very very safe, very very milk toast, and I think I wanted to see more, and you know, grabbing books at random.

I gave myself an education in comics and saw a lot more and got very excited, very much into it.

What were the comics that kind of opened your brain to like, Oh, I.

Can tell you I got the first three I bought.

Actually, that's not true.

I did the first two I bought because I bought three books initially.

One was Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller, Lynn Johnson, not Lynn Johnson, Lynn Varley.

Lyn Johnson does for Better for Worse.

I would like to read Lynn Johnson's version of Dark Knight Returns.

So that's like a classic of superhero fiction.

The other was a book by Paul Deanian Alex Ross.

There's almost a picture book called Superman Peace on Earth.

Yeah yeah, And it's got.

These big, beautiful paintings and the story is Superman being like, I'm Superman, I should be able to solve world hunger.

So he tries to do it and he fails.

And I never thought that you could have a Superman story like that that was realistic and grounded and also like he can't do everything.

He's just a guy.

Yeah, and the third book was no good and I forget what it was, but I.

Do agree it is pretty good.

As far as Superman himself, was that the first time you really connected emotionally with the character or what are your earliest memories of Superman?

Yeah, I think that'd be it.

My earliest memories were I watched the Batman Country and the Bruce tim Show and it was great.

And then I watched the Superman Show and I was like, this is not as good as a Batman Showman show.

That's one of the hardest things I've had to come to terms with.

I love them both, but it's like as a super like I you know, I love Batman, of course, but as a Superman fan realizing, like, damn it, that Batman show really is much better.

Well, that's the thing.

The Batman Show is stellary.

It's a generational show, and anything in comparison that is like, well that's not quite just good, but the Justice League and then just the unlimited shows the game after that were really great and also involved Superman.

That so, I mean, I like the guy.

I feel like you can tell some really good stories about a guy who is never going to let you do and it is always going to keep trying to fix things.

Like that's that's very pure, that's very universal.

But that comic Superman piece of that's the first time where I realized that you could do more than just tell stories about him, you know, punching someone until they stop doing crimes.

You can actually like tell a emotional, grounded story.

And let's not to say they're better stories, but they're a type of story.

It expanded what I knew superheroes could do to the point of like, just as comics can do anything, you can almost tell any sort of story with superheroes too.

And then you get the advantage of it.

You know what other genre do you get to have a guy who represents hope and a guy who represents evil discussing problems and punching each other about it.

Like there's a nice cleanness to the metaphors there that you would have to do a lot of work to get in a romantic comedy for example.

Right, so you were reading comics kind of out of high school, didn't grow up with them.

But no, you I'm trying to understand, Like, Okay, I pulled this quote because I just think it's so amazing and kind of funny.

This is This is on Wikipedia, so this is legit.

It says this is your Wikipedia page.

This is During his academic career, North co authored three papers on cop computational linguistics.

I can't even say it.

Yeah, so you were planning this, like you were studying computer science.

You were not thinking about writing as a career necessarily.

Was it a hobby?

Was or Like, explain this to me, like what was the interest there?

Yeah?

So when I graduated high school, applied to university, and I had two major interests was computer science and writing, and I couldn't do them both, And so I talked to my parents and remember my dad telling me that if I study computers, I could probably write in my spare time, but if I stid be writing, I wouldn't be doing computer stuff in my spare time.

And also he said, you make more money in computers.

So I do computers, and I was like, okay, fine, I'll do it.

But throughout my undergrad which was computer science, I did a minor in film, which I loved because it was a very unusual combination.

But it was such a great thing to like do all this algorithmic studying in the afternoon and then have dinner and go to a screening and write an essay about the film you saw on like film studies is a lot of thinking about film itself but also stories and characters, and I've fund it really useful.

And in my last year of undergrad I started my webcomic Ninstart Comics, which is I still do it today, say pictures, different words better than it sounds.

And I kept that up through grad school and when I graduated with my masters in science, I sort of had this choice between using the now fifteen years of education I had accumulated since grade one or doing comics full time.

And to do comics full time.

To do Dinser comics full time, all I had to do was fail to get a job.

It was really easy to do that.

There was no big like quick your day job moments.

Never had the day job.

I just throced into it.

And so to finish my strange secret origin, I did Dinser comics.

I still do today.

But it was ten years into doing Dinser comics that one of my readers, Shannon Waters, had graduated and gotten a job at a combook company and they were doing a Venturetime comic and she thought, why don't we asked a Dicer comics guy if he wants to write it.

So people asked me, how do you break in?

I'm like, don't do what I did.

I didn't want to break in.

I decame with a side door.

But if you do doing your own stuff for ten years and hoping someone hires you, is it works?

But it's not probably the fastest way.

But how do you make that.

Jump, like from doing your own thing to somebody saying, like, you know, adventure Time is a pretty.

Big friend, Like it's it.

Has a following, and like that's something where you kind of not necessarily there isn't the wiggle room and the ability to be creative and do your own stuff and imbue it with your personality.

But it's like when you're dealing with somebody else's characters, and especially with something like that that had been so established, like was there any level of hesitation or were you like, all right, well this is this is how I'm gonna make that leap to doing this as a career.

Oh no, it was instantaneous.

Well, what had happened was Penward, the showrunner, the creator Adventure Time, was also cartoonist, and so we had a lot of people in common.

And there was a point early on where he was like, Ryan, do you want to move down to la and work at a Venture Time with me?

And I was like, Penn, I can't.

I'm here in Toronto.

I can't do it.

And so when the comment came up, I was like, oh, yes, this I can do.

And we're only a.

Year into Adventure Time.

So I knew of this show was great.

I knew it had such a sense of depth and breath that you can do anything with Finn and Jake.

They can do venture stuff, they can do science fiction and stuff, they can go back in time and get all terrific, and so I.

Was very easy to say yes.

And so I'd seen.

Every episode, so I felt confident that would be like, all right, so who's this Finn guy and this dog Jack Jake, what's going on with him?

So it was a very easy.

Yes, And then you know, it was the first time.

It wasn't actually the first time writing a script for someone else to draw, because I've done some mini comics with my friend Rosemary Moscow, but it was the first time doing a monthly basis, and you learn pretty quick what works.

I was gonna say, how was that adjusting to that?

It was very easy.

The artist Brayden Lamb and Shelley Proline are both great, and I can tell you my first script I ever wrote, I was like, all right, this is six panels.

We've got three panels across the top, and then a big panel with the page, and then two panels putting their remaining with and I had every page I n up like that.

And when I got back the pencils, Braden Shelley had completely ignored those instructions and done something that was way better.

And I was like, oh, yes, of course, these are the artists, these are the visual thinkers.

I don't need to give them the bad version.

So now I just write, there's six panels.

Here's what's happening here they're saying, but arrange the six panels ever you want.

And it sort of was a great.

Lesson how this is a collaborative medium and how a comic script is not the recipe for a comic.

It's the starting point for a comic and the artists excited to draw, and they should always feel free to add panels or boot panels, booth stuff around because mine is not the word of God.

I want to make comic with you.

Let's do it together.

Let's not make it a factory.

Let's have a fun time.

And it has to be that because that's the way the medium is.

It's not exclusively one or the other.

It's both in dandem.

I agree, but it's not always like that, like at a lot of corporate comics.

You know, you have a writer, the anchor, the letter, the artist.

Everything it's assembly line.

And I always like it when it feels like we're a couple of pals putting on a show.

So I always like to, you know, meet the artists and hang out with the brit if I can.

And it's been great, like the Brandon Shelley and I are friends.

My artists Squirrel Girl, Erganism and Derek Charm were pals like it's for a while, and he continues this day, I feel like we're very lucky in that you know, Marvel and DC are multinational corporations making money, but they've also been a really great kind of like blind friendship dating.

Service for me.

Right, right, So when did you make that jump to Marvel?

And was it squirrel Girl?

That was the first.

Almost I've done a ventertime for thirty five issues, and then the artist and I were like, we should stop, we don't.

Want to go on a high note.

And I read the same time Will Moss, who was my SCORELGROL editor, had contacted me and like, hey, do you want to do given ideas for squirrel Girl?

And what was your reaction to that?

Because I've I've not I'd not heard of squirrel Girl.

I've heard of her.

I was like, is this the one who talks to squirrels?

So I was like, give me the weekend, And during that weekend I read all the squirrel Girl comics.

There weren't that many at the time, and by the end of it, I knew that I really wanted to be a squirrel Girl comic.

Everyone to be the guy writing it.

I got all these ideas for a vision of who she could be, and so sent to the bitch.

It was all about squirrel Girl and Glackness meeting on the moon like they do in that First Dark and Will was like, all right, this is good, but like, does she have a supporting cast?

Does she have any friends?

I was like, right, girl, squirrel Girl carries her own comics.

Yeah, yeah, so I had to go and invent you know, Nancy and Coy Boy and Chipmunk Honk and that whole group.

But again, like, the nice thing about comics is that it's not a medium you get into to make a lot of money.

It's not film.

People some people with film because they want to be.

Rich and famous.

There's not people in comics because that so everyone who is doing comics is doing because they love it.

It's a very welcoming and support environment in my experience, and that has helped me to like, I have no formal.

Training in writing.

I studied.

I have a master's degree in science and gradus.

But the stuff I needed to learn was allowed to be taught to me, and they didn't fire me quickly.

You heard that stuff.

So when did you get involved with Fantastic four?

I had done Scurorell going for five years, and we ended that for a pandemic, and then it was this big pandemic and.

Tell me more about this pandemic.

It's in the news.

It has with the people.

Okay, I'll look it up, I'll google it.

Yeah.

But in the middle of that, not in the middle of some point in there, I get an email from Tom Freeboard.

I entered on Fantastic for, saying, based the same thing, Ryan, do you have a picture fantastic for?

And he said, just so you know, we have been talking to other people too, so I can't guarantee you this, which is great to hear because you want to know, like, is this minor am I is it mine to lose?

Or how much effort should I put into this?

So I put together a pitch for a fantastic work up of pages, end it in and Tom was like, all right, interesting, gave me some notes back.

I answered those notes, sent it in, gave me some more notes back.

What was it?

What was the pitch for fantastic for Tanksically.

What it was?

I said, diners, drive ins and dives.

That being guy rolls into town, so he's a problem, fixes it, rolls on to the next one.

I realized afterwards I should have just said Star Trek come to a planet weird planet, weird problem, fix it, move on.

But it wasn't in front of mine for whatever reason.

So we have to going back with Tom and back and forth with Tom a couple of times.

Three times I was like, so I've done three visions, Like am I doing this?

Why do I get to find out?

He's like, oh, you're red misted.

We're not telling you.

No, nobody told me.

So.

The interesting thing with that was that Dan Slot was on the book already.

He was already going to come off in a couple months, and for some reason I didn't expect Marvel to do New number one for me.

So my first issue was going to be Fantastic four number six hundred and ninety two or whatever, and then it became Fantastic four number one.

And I don't know, to my mind, a number one feels like a bigger thing than a number six hundred and ninety three.

For sure, I me some ways from a marketing standpoint, From a consumer standpoint, it's it's you're putting more behind it.

You're saying, here, you want to get this.

It's the start of a new thing.

We're putting a lot of energy into making sure you know this is something you're gonna want to read and pick up.

Yeah, but I had written this, you know, six twenty three that only started Ben and Alicia.

It's such a bold take for a number one to be like, we're not gonna have most pest score in it.

We have two people in a little city, little town, a little adventure, and we'll lead into that.

But my whole big idea was.

I can't get you to care about four people, or really five or really nine with the kids.

I can't get to care about these people in the twenty pages I have, Like can I can do a team scene.

But you won't know who these people are, and so you won't.

Carer And so the only way through I could see was if we do a focus on each of these characters a Ben Alicia issue I read, Sue issue, a Johnny issue, then when they do come together an issue four, we'll know who they are and we'll be happy to see the reunited.

And also that that's the the other secret reason is that it gave me a month to figure out who each of these people were.

It's great, but it also it like it It basically just it sets up the idea of like it is going to be kind of these episodic adventures.

And I know, like right now with one World in their doom, it's kind of become more serialized.

But it's pretty episodic.

Yeah, it's this true, and I but I remember picking it up and like, again, not I've always enjoyed Fantastic For in theory, I've never sat down and read Fantastic for comics like.

The idea of a stretchy guy.

Yes, I like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, the rocks, he punches things, people who can fly and light themselves on fire.

That's cool, Like this is all cool.

And you know, I'm aware of the comics.

I've read a couple of the early ones, and in theory I am a fan, but never, never in my life have I been like I've sought out Fantastic For.

And my buddy TC, who I trust implicitly like he one of the early comics he recommended when we first became friends was Outing's Immortal Hulk, and I read that not as a whole fan, and was like this is this is right up my alley.

And so when he told me, like, you got to read the Fantastic Four, I was like, I don't really care about Fantastic four, but I trust you TC, and I picked it up, and I was so struck by that first issue because, like you said, it's a you think Fantastic four and you're thinking, like, oh, the whole family, it's gonna be something zany, it's gonna have that those family antics and da da.

Da and the quips.

But it was like it was small scale.

It was just the two characters, and it was very like weird in the best possible sci fi way, but so heartfelt in like the way that I absolutely love, like a great.

TNG episode, Like it was just it.

I immediately connected with your comic scratched that itch where it's like the humanity plus the weirdness that I adore.

So I absolutely connected to it right away, and I've loved it.

I'm I'm very behind on it.

I have not gotten to them.

There's no test there, not going to be like so.

Yeah, please, like I, I just want you to know where we stand.

I get the sense that you were starting to like me, and I didn't wait to.

Say what did you think of the new Number one?

And Me'd be like, I thought it it.

Was I thought it was fantastic.

No further questions, No further questions, but you know, I've been recommending it to everybody.

It has that element of sci fi that I think is missing.

Maybe it really hasn't been prevalent in a lot of at least at the mainstream comics.

It does have that science fiction edge that I got from al Ewing's Hulk Run.

But mostly I think of comic books and I'm like, oh, it's adventure, it's fun, but you really love to get into that like very granular science.

Like when Reid Richards is explaining something, all I was thinking is like, oh this this Ryan.

Guy loves this stuff.

He clearly loves this stuff.

I have no like, I would never think of this stuff in a million years.

But I love the fact that you brought that to the table with Fantastic four.

Yeah, I like what it could be.

I mean, I learned this with a Squirrel Girl, where it's a superhero comics.

She has the portional speed and strength of Squirrel, So there's obviously some fantasy stuff there, but the computer science was always real.

She's a computer science student and when she's talking about compeer stuff, it's all authentic.

And Fantastic four obviously deal with super science a lot of time, but there's a lot of room to have actual stuff there.

And when you have the actual stuff, I think it makes it that much cooler.

And this goes back to like me reading Golden age sci fi when I was a kid, where you know, you have these people who had just heard of rotogen rays or what we'd call X rays today, and they have a really fervent, if incorrect understanding of what they do, and so you get these stories that are based on this fantasy X ray but from a modern perspective, it's completely wrong in bonkers, but they get cool stories of it.

There's when we first governed infra red rays.

People are like, all right, so it's light you can't see.

Therefore, if you could shine an infrared light on something, it would disappear.

And you're like, well, hold on a second, that's not that's not quite.

But now that you have that idea, a light that may things disappear, we can do something with that.

Like they're using the actual science as a springboard for the story, whether or not they actually understood the actual science.

I just love the idea of like reading a.

Story getting exposed to a big idea that kind of blows your mind a bit, and then as you're still reeling from that, you're still going through the story.

That's my favorite experience.

There was an FF twenty five I think was Johnny his love story with Angelica Vistoy, and that's based on this proto planet early planet THEA hitting Earth and causing Earth to become Earth.

And while people don't know that theory, and so when you're doing that, A certainly like, oh well that's I never considered this before.

That's really cool.

And also I'm in the story and I just feeling like your mind's being and I think is a really fun.

Experience consistently, and that's what's impressed me the most is that every time I read an issue, I'm like, I feel like I'm learning something.

I feel so much smarter.

It's something that Kurt Vonneguet did extraordinarily well.

And what that is is you take the science fiction and the big ideas and the science, but you imbue it with this sense of heart and humanity and humor.

You do it so beautifully and I absolutely adore it.

Very flattering comparison.

Thank you.

Well, yeah, I mean, I let's bring it all together.

But like, is it is it blasphemous for me to like basically be using my Celebrating Superman podcast to talk with you about Fantastic Four because you know there is this.

Whole not like wholly invented rivalry.

I mean, the rivalry is a fun thing between DC and Marvel, but like, I feel like I want to live in the world where we can celebrate both and enjoy what.

They've met each other.

Yeah, I mean the Fantastic Four, I have met Superman, They've had it your actions in the past, so it's all adjacent Superman adjacent.

I do need in my life the Fantastic Four meat Superman again by Ryan North.

So I'm putting that out into the universe.

Yeah, that would be amazing.

Let's talk about Crypto because Crypto is is the best boy.

What was the impetus of this, Like, what was was it the summer of Superman.

We want to have a Crypto the super Dog comic for the movie that people can go out and buy.

Was it brought to you?

Was it something you were brought into pitch?

Tell me more about this.

Yeah, so I believe they want to just let's have a Crypto comic Summer Superman that sounds a great idea.

And they asked you if I had any crypto ideas, and I was like, yeah, absolutely, I have crypto ideas.

I'm a big dog guy.

And my big idea was just like I've read a lot of silver age crypto comics.

In them, he's not really a dog.

He's a cartoon character, right like you can he vamps like a cartoon character.

Sometimes you can read his thought and they're English, like he's thinking like a human mind, and so he's great, but he's not a dog.

And for me, the more you could make crypto like an actual dog, the more real he would seem.

And that was my pitch, like, let's tell a story about a dog.

And he's a.

Dog who gets lost, he gets detached from his family, and he's all alone on the strange alien world called Earth, and let's let's do that.

I started used as a comparison the Littlest Hobo, which I didn't realize was only a Canadian show.

So most of you, I guess tell by your face you don't know.

This a great Canadian show with an incredible theme song.

Littlest Hobo is a.

Dog sing it right now?

Maybe tomorrow I'll find what I call home until tomorrow.

The whole world is my home might be the lyrics.

That's great.

I'm glad.

No, I was not expecting you to see.

Me stop, I make I make a new friend.

It's great anyway, I gotta watch it.

It's about a.

Dog who travels the rails and he shows up in a town and much like the medastic Foard, there's a problem that a dog can get involved with and he solves a problem.

They're always like, why don't you stay with us?

The Dog's like, no, I'm moving on, going on to the next town.

Were you a fan of the The Bill Bixby Hulk Show growing up?

Never saw it?

Never saw it because it is that it is that it is, you know the show itself.

Of course, it's like pure seventies cheese like TV show.

But Bill Bixby his performance is so good, like so grounded in human emotion.

I think it really elevates it.

But that was the concept was like, he walks to town, the Hulk solves the problem, and then he has to move on.

He can't move on.

Well, he's stole from the Littlest Tobo.

Why the Little Tobo stole it from the incredible hawk.

But anyway, in the process of pitching this, I sent the theme song.

Because it's great to my editors.

I just looked up YouTube little Hoboe theme song gradually suged over and didn't realize that in the one that this fan had chosen of the hundreds of episodes to put on YouTube, it had a thing said guest starring Barbara Gordon, who was the actress.

Well, there's a good sign.

So yeah, I just I want to tell a dog story, and I wanted to tell the story of him being lost on Earth and you know, spoiler for the end, eventually finding his way home to Superboy, and that's what I pitched, and luckily that's what they were looking for, and so we took her from there.

I love that.

And it's going to be six issues.

Five issues.

Five issues.

God, I think I was trying to manifest six because I want as much of it as possible.

Can we can we talk about like little spoilers for the issue one that's already come out.

Let's do it.

I'm almost ever because I'm like, I don't want to know anything.

Have you not read it?

I've read the first issue yet?

First, Yeah, let's just talk.

The first issue because that ends is that story is a Crypto story, but it's from Crypto's point of view.

Yes, And so the thing we came up with as when he's paying attention, we have all caps black word balloons.

When he's not really listening because he's a dog.

It's it's Gray loved that.

But the last.

Page is he he comes to Earth and he's lost and he's you know, not being treated very well, and he's scared and he's running around and then he's find someone who's like, oh, you're lost, aren't you.

Nobody loves you.

I'll take care of you.

What's your name?

Dog?

My name is Lex.

So big twist.

The story is filling in the blanks of what we had with cryptos are I think is normally he comes to Crypton through a variety comes from Crypton through a variety of different means, spending on the continuity, and then kind of like scene missing shows up the book.

Yeah, whenever I bring up Crypto to my non NERD friends, co workers, first and foremost, they're like, oh, you're into Crypto, and I'm like, no, no, no, Crypto the super Doll.

That was my favorite part about this I'd be like, guys, I'm working on a new Crypto project.

I see their face fall and I'd be like Crypto super Dog.

Like okay.

Somebody asked me like kind of one of my favorite things that when people find out I'm such a big Superman fan, people like to then like, yeah, so what do you think about Clark Kent and his glasses?

Do you really think people don't believe?

And I'm like, here's the thing.

I don't care, Like, I just don't care, say, Convince.

Is like, why would they assume he has a secret in it?

There was a great uh, there's a great bit in American Alien by Max Landis which is like.

Do people ever notice that you are Superman?

He's like, yeah, people have mentioned it in a couple of times to me and they just say, hey, you look kind of like Superman and it's like yeah, of course, Like nobody is thinking like, wow, that guy's got that reporter who's weird and awkward has got to be Superman in dis Guys.

So again, I.

Don't need an explanation for it.

I don't need like any like secret meaning behind it.

It's the same thing with Crypto the Superdoc.

I think people were kind of like, does he have superpowers?

Did he how did he get the super I was like, well, he came from Krypton, right exactly.

It's like, no, he's just you know, he came from Krypton, showed up and that's it's the same thing as Superman.

But I'm realizing, like there isn't Like you said, there are bits and pieces of like Crypto came from Crypton and was set separately and did a day, but not like necessarily the the origin, like the firm, solid, concrete origin story.

And that's kind of I think where this is headed.

It is it was.

It was kind of an accident because I pitched, like, you know, think of it like an elsewhere else.

I just want to tell a nice Crypto story and I don't want to be too tindy continuity, and so I outlined it and I send in and the result was them being like, you know, if you change a little bit, this fits in perfectly with current continuity, Like we can just make this his origin.

And I was like, all.

Right, oh yeah, let's do it.

Have you read the original Supergirl in comics?

No I haven't.

I haven't.

They're fascinating because they're so concerned with like nady gritty of her origin, like what you were discussing right that.

It's just completely bonkers because they've tweaked it since the original one is that Crypton explodes and Clark sent off to Earth.

But there's a big chunk of Krypton, larger than most and when the planet explodes, it becomes radioactive, which kills Kryptonians.

But this large chunk also had a large rolled up sheet of lead.

Roll that down on the Earth and then be fine.

And then at a certain point they're like, well, this lead isn't gonna last forever, so we should send you off to Crypton to join your cousin because they know the Clark is there somehow, and it's just it's so deeply strange.

And then she shows up on Earth and Clark's like, howdy, great to see you, but I don't want anyone to know you're here.

So you're gonna have to have to seek your identity and you have to live in an orphanage and here's a wig.

That you'll put on to no one will know who you are.

And at that orphanage, she'll be a little boy who's gonna be kind of your Lowest Lane where he's always going to be suspicious that you're Supergirl and trying to trick you.

But don't let him do it.

It's just like it's so deeply fundamentally weird, but also like very very fun and goofy and a real treat.

As all this age comics are.

I've been collecting Superman silver age comics strictly because of the covers, like just like what makes me laugh?

Like what is It's just and it's just a reminder that like these things, if they're heard, you know, you want the heart to be in the right place, you want the emotion to be real and true, but you also want to embrace the inherent silliness of all of it.

And I think it's okay to do that and you shouldn't be embarrassed.

To do that.

Yeah, I mean you can look at Crypto and be like, Okay, so he's a dog with Superman's powers.

That's crazy, that doesn't make sense.

Or you can look at Crypto and be like, oh, he's a pet.

He's a dog with Man's powers.

Yeah, and he can fly and this is great, Like we wouldn't want your dog to be able to fly?

Yes, So I think the best part of Crypto is that he has all the symbolism that Superman does of hope and strength and perseverance and fighting for better tomorrow.

But also he's a dog.

Yes, and it's so much, it's so adorable.

In fact, I'm a bit worried actually because Issue one some people respond to it and being like, you know, I wasn't expecting to cry, and I didn't mean to make people cry, but I realized you have to make people care about your human protagonists or your Kryptonian protagonists.

I have to give the reason to care.

When your protagonist is a dog, people.

Are like, I love them immediate.

Nothing bad that happened this dog, And the only sad thing that really happens is that he gets sent away from Crypton to Earth by mistake.

But you knew that was the that's the price of admission.

Like, I'm worried that if I'm getting that emotional reaction from missu one when some more most stuff happens to the road, I'm just going to be destroying people.

Left right, but in a good way, in a good way, and like you said, we all know how it turns out in the end.

Sorry spoiler alert.

But yes, Crypto and Superman will eventually hang out at some point in their lives.

But yeah, you know, I think you've got to have you gotta have stakes, you got to have those emotional stakes.

But what you continue to do with your writing and why I'm excited is because like it's I feel enriched by your storytelling ability.

I guess enriched is the best way to describe it.

I feel like very moved.

I had to, like, you know, not to just spend this whole time just hyping you up.

But why not.

That's that's what.

You're here for.

But like in general, you know, you're in the hands of a good storyteller.

And you know, for me, the stuff that makes me emotional is not necessarily you know, of course I'm like.

Oh this poor dog.

You know what moved me is is the quiet moments of you know, there was you know, it was shown early on and I knew.

I showed it to my wife.

I was like, oh my god, this is going to be the best, and she cheered up.

You know, she's not a big comic book writer.

But it was a Crypto snuggling with baby baby cal baby keal El.

Yeah, just that panel.

I was like, this is going to be really special.

I'm very very excited for it, but for you, and you know I and I don't mean to get so emotional, but do you think this is a way of you know, you're a dog person.

And before we hopped on for this chat, I read your beautiful eulogy to your dog Noom.

I loved, love, love that story so much.

In a way, do you think this is kind of a means for you to honor him and his memory, like kind of using this as that opportunity.

I mean, there's bits of amend Crypto, the way the first couple of pages they put the food down, they don't let me eat it till they do release and then you can have a food and he just snorfs it uff.

That's all Tomsky.

I mean, I couldn't.

I couldn't write this book about having shared twelve years of my life with a dog like him, because I think dogs are very easy to add thepomorphize, and very easy to become those sort of cartoon characters that you say, what's that Chomsky, little billy stuck down the well.

But that's not how dogs communicate, and they don't understand English like that.

So it's every every frame of.

Crypto, I'm drawing on my experience with a real dog, and I would hope that if people, I hope people love Crypto in the same way that you love all dogs.

Well, so far, so good, And oh, I guess there's a challenge to that too.

I mean, this is very much like we're it's from Crypto's perspective, so we're as the reader, we're hearing the conversations, but Crypto is our protagonists through these stories.

What's the unique challenge of that?

And like writing something that is driven very much.

By a silent protagonists.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean there are places where I'd be like, man, it sure would be great to have this character turn the camera and say here's what I'm feeling, here's what I'm thinking about right now.

But dogs are very expressive.

They let you know what they're thinking all the time by their body language, the way their ears are and their tail they're hackles, the way they're sitting.

You know that when Crypto is on Krypton, he's all dressed out when he's sleeping because he's very comfortable.

When he's lost on Earth, he's curled up in a little bobs.

He's less secure and trying to take up a space.

So there's all these dogs are so expressives, all these ways of dogs are supresed what they're feeling.

That I never felt like I was trapped in anything like that because he's always telling you what he feels.

And the nice thing about dog expressions that they're very similar to human expressions, so we can read them very easily, and they're not shy about they.

Have no gile.

Dogs have no guile at least Chompsky never did.

Like if he was trying to get away with something, you would know instantly if there was something else.

Yeah, my dogs are exactly the same way.

Yeah, there's no there's no secrets.

Yes, what's what's the artist's name, Mike Norton.

So Mike does a really really beautiful job of conveying that, like I think, because it could be hard because it's like you know, again, like you said, dogs are.

Very expressive, but how do you convey that in art form?

And so far it's been so so wonderful and very very excited to see where it goes.

Any teasers you want to.

Give, I will say this issue too is super cool.

Issue three is super cool?

All right?

All right, I'm in.

Issue four, a little sad.

Issue five.

Is issue for those sad, but super cool.

I would say, so, yeah, Okay, I think they're all.

I mean, I may be biased, is it impossible to say?

But I think it's super cool.

How about Superman as a character?

Is that somebody you'd want to write some day?

Do you have.

Like if somebody came to you, I mean, I well, this is this is maybe a silly question, because if somebody came to me and said, Sean, would you rather write a Superman story or.

A Cryptos story?

I feel like as big of a Superman fan as I am, I might be like, I take the Crypto story.

Yeah, that's the thing.

So that's kind of not a fair question.

But is Superman a character that you would consider or like to do someday?

Superman and Batman are the two characters I read first, and those three books versus read and so they've always to me been the most impossible, like untouchable, Like I read them when I was just reading comics.

So of course I would never write these characters.

And so you know, you asked, You're very fantastic four and those characters been around since before I was born.

They go back to nineteen six one.

There's a lot of history there.

But I'm like, yeah, I can do that, no big deal, right, But Superman Batman, I'm like, well that's Superman of Batman.

These are big guys.

So there there is, in all honesty, some trepidation that I would have to get past.

I talked to writers who've written Batman and Superman have been like, aren't you afraid?

Like, what if you screw it up and you write such a bad story that no one likes supermandom Batman anymore?

And they're like, well, A, that won't happen, and B you don't worry about it.

So it's a it's a me thing.

It's not a Superman Batman thing.

But they do have a lot of I don't respect what the word for it is, admiration.

Yeah, they seem bigger than life in the way that other characters don't to me.

So it's one of those It's a maybe maybe someday you'll feel up to the challenge if it's the right if it's the thing that sparks, or if you have a story idea that sparks something, Yeah, maybe maybe someday.

I'm just saying that would be awesome.

How are you about James Gunn's Superman?

Is this a movie that you would be excited to see if you were not kind of like in the world, are you excited in general for a new Superman movie?

And like, yeah, absolutely, I mean this is I mean I know nothing of only seeing the trailers, but everything in those trailers is like, oh, this is what I like to see.

This has Crypto and Cryptos being a dog.

This has all the cool weird stuff like this Superman robots and the Fortress of Solitude being the way it is, and it just feels very much like a Superman movie that is unapologetically about Superman.

And I mean I grew up as I'm guessing you did too, with you know, the early X Men movies where they were.

Ashamed of the costumes and all that stuff for it.

There's a bit of like, yeah, we're all here for combook, but we all know they're kind of not that great.

And I never agree with that.

I think they are great.

I think there's a sincerity and a real hard in the sleeve to all these aspects of these characters, and it's great to see a movie bees like, Yeah, this is awesome.

Look at this, this is cool.

Let's do that.

So I'm very very excited for it.

Nice and do you have any peace on Earth?

It sounds like is probably your top Superman comic?

Are there any others you love that you would recommend for people out there?

And Crypto of course, like they've got to read Crypto, But is there another favorite?

You're like, you know what, this is the one I think i'd recommend personally.

I mean, I'm going to say Kingdom Come.

And I read that very early on in my comic reading career, and it's probably not a book you should read that early because it's steeped in history.

I didn't know who most of these people were.

I didn't.

Yeah, now I've been reading it for like twenty years and I still don't know who have the people in it.

Yeah, but you don't need to know it, like you just have the sense of even if you're meetingized people for the first time, the relationship between Superman and everyone else, especially Wonder Woman and Batman there is so well realized and so it's real that it's it doesn't matter that you don't know sixty years of continuity.

You can just read this story and have a really great time.

It's beautiful.

It's kind of the opposite of Piece on Earth, but also really really good.

And Alex Ross, you know that kid's got chops.

I think he's going wat, he's gonna go far.

I think yeah.

And then what do you think this is?

Like?

I guess this is the million dollar question.

But Superman's been around for almost one hundred years now and we're still talking about him, we still care about him.

Why what do you think it is about Superman that makes him so special, that makes us.

Love, like, just embrace that character so much.

I think it comes back to something we were talking about earlier, where here is a guy who is always going to do the right thing.

He's never gonna let you down.

He's never gonna say it's too hard, he's never gonna be like, well, I'm real sleepy.

It just there's a sense of trust there that I think is really nice, really pure.

There's not a lot of Superman stories where he's a big screw up he likes because that's not who the character is.

He's a character who sees a problem and then solves the problem as best he can and that I think is really gratifying me.

It's a crane that I've been using for Fantastic Four.

Right, Like, they see a problem, they roll in the town, they see a problem, they try to solve it.

They move on the next problem.

That is a version of Superman in the way sense that most, if not all superheroes are descended from Superman in somewhere.

That's part of this resonant story that still works, that always works, and Superman is the purest instantiation.

Of that, I think, and Crypto is all that.

Plus he's a dog.

He's a do you make him a little dog?

Make him a dog?

Actually that's it.

Well, Ryan, this has been a genuine treat.

Really really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for hanging out and celebrating Superman with me and and accidentally but not really accidentally celebrating Fantastic for and Kurt Vona getting all the other things too.

Why pleasure