Hey everybody, this is Trad Moore, the comic creator behind titles such as Silver Surfer Black, Doctor Strange, Fall Sunrise, and Muther Strode.

And you, yes you, are listening to the Oblivion Bar podcast.

you Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Nolz.

you Hello everyone and welcome to episode 205 of the Oblivion Bar podcast.

I'm one of your co-hosts here, Chris Hacker, and joining me, of course, is my BFF, Aaron Nolz.

Friggin know it.

Friggin know it.

Friggin know it, dude.

Welcome back everybody to the Oblivion Bar podcast this week on the show.

My goodness.

Do we have an incredible, incredible guest today?

I would love to tell you more, Aaron.

And I'll tell you and the listener both that like this right here, if you had asked five years ago on the podcast, when we first started, Hey, who were five creators you would love to talk to on the show?

Of course, what I said, you know, Brian K von would have been probably top of the list.

Jim Lee, probably up there somewhere, James Gunn, among others, but like one very specific person.

would also be definitely include that list.

And that of course would be trad more who was our guest today on the oblivion bar podcast for episode two or five.

Firstly, had to pull a lot of strings to make this thing happen.

If you go to Spotify, Apple podcast, even YouTube, you will probably not see a conversation with the one and only trad more from at least the last five to seven years because he is so sort of off the grid in a way to make, guess, an oblivion bar joke there outside of the fact that He's been on our friend David Harper's podcast off panel who we had on the show last week.

So it's sort of serendipitous that we had David on last week and then also tried on this week.

So very cool to talk to Trad again.

One of my all time favorites.

Of course, he's the creator behind comics that you know and love.

Luther Strode being his first course, Silver Surfer Black, The New World, a bunch of other really cool things.

He did some artwork for a bourbon company or I guess whiskey, not bourbon bourbon be here in Kentucky.

Whiskey in Scotland.

Ardberg, I think is what it's called.

He's just done an incredible.

bunch of things.

and some xenomorph posters as we discussed recently from Hall H.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you for bringing up Dr.

Strange too, because I will say just sort of at the top of the conversation, we don't talk a ton about Fall Sunrise, mostly because, and again, I'm going to admit this to everybody here live on the show before this conversation, I had a bit of a hard time latching onto that story.

I would love to get into it more with Trad at some point, because you'll hear in this conversation, he does eventually want to come back, which is really cool to hear.

And I think like next time I have him on, you know, and I'd love for you to be there as well, Aaron, for the second time, is that like...

I would love to just like deep dive into Dr.

Strange, because if you've never looked at that book, it is very, very hard to latch onto that story.

Well, I am looking for something new to read.

finished a couple of books recently, some webtoons.

So I am on the hunt and you generally have, you know, the several suggestions of what I should read.

So ah you can always text that to me.

Cornucopia uh titles and ideas.

So yeah, send it my way and I'll definitely check it out and I'll let you know what my perspective is on it.

But yeah, I mean, we've discussed tradmore and his art.

quite a bit.

Just it's very particular like him.

Like there's some artists, obviously I love everything they do.

And then there's some artists that you'll like none of what they do.

And then Treadmoor just happens to be for me, one of those people that I like some of what he does, but I, but it has no weight that, that feeling has no weight on my excitement for the things that he could eventually do.

I'm always excited.

As we said before, and I think this is why I love him so much as a creator.

And of course, as you hear in this conversation, he's also an excellent person.

Like he's just a wonderful person.

Yeah, also very much so.

Like just a fun person to talk to.

And I feel like I'm getting smarter every time I talk to him.

I've talked to him a couple of times about the San Diego, of course, here on the show.

And I feel like those conversations I can build off of.

But my point is that like not only is he challenging for the reader, but he is often pressing the boundary with himself, not only as a storyteller, but also as an artist.

And we make a very particular point in this conversation to talk about that exact idea that he refuses to, he's like a shark.

doesn't, he doesn't swim backwards.

You know, he, he will always try to break the mold.

And I just really respect that about him.

And I say this in the conversation, I'll sort of, I'll end my uh preemptive highlighting, guess, of this conversation with, I think he is one of the greats genuinely.

Like I think when you talk about folks like Jack Kirby and Alex Toth and Wally Wood.

And like Bill Finger, all of these folks who like are strong pillars in the comic book world, I think he should be among those because of his particular voice and just so incredibly grateful to have him on show.

Yeah, we could talk about it more after the actual conversation.

I know everyone, you don't give a shit about our preamble here.

We just we feel like we need to wax poetics really quickly before we actually get into this conversation.

But Aaron, we also need to tell everyone if you listen to our conversation again with David Harper from last week, we talked about this a little bit.

David will be joining us along with.

our friends, Brad and Lisa from over at the comic book couples counseling and also our friend, bottom Milligan over at the short box at New York Comic Con 2025.

We're all going to have a live crossover recording together at New York Comic Con, which we're very, very excited about.

So if you're going to be in your comic con, come hang out with us there.

Be great.

It's Friday.

It's October 10th at 1245 and I'm spacing the room number, but check our socials.

It's all over the place.

We've been really, we've been really braggy about it it's kind of annoying.

You know, like we're being a little too.

And I hope we have a Q &A session.

need to stop jibber jabbering so much in these panels.

That way we can actually talk to the folks that come to the panel.

You know, that's what happened last year.

If you go back and listen, because we not last year, two years ago in 2023, we had a panel with, of course, Botter and Brad and Lisa and also Troy.

We all all were together to talk in a very similar way about, you know, as in this panel.

And we just were blabbing too much and we didn't get to the Q &A section.

So we need to remember that this year.

So, Aaron, before we get to this conversation with Trad, I'm going to hand it off to you here.

Do you want to noodle anymore on this conversation?

Like what your sort of overview of this conversation was outside of the fact that you're No, I just, mean, really, uh, I don't want to noodle more.

I want to let the good people get to the conversation and hear what, what this incredible human being has to say, because that's really the gist of it.

He is a, he is a, an inspiring, he is an open-minded, he is a grounded human being and he is just awesome.

Like he's just somebody that I would love to have a conversation.

And there's, there's certain people where you have a conversation with and you can tell immediately that that conversation is going to broaden your horizons.

It's going to open up your mind just like a little bit, even if it's just a small submit bit.

But how about this?

How about we get to the conversation before, before I do, we do our usual rigmarole of telling people how they can support the show and we'll get right into the end of the interview.

Okay.

I love it.

I love you.

Um, you want to support the oblivion bar podcast, consider checking out our page or on for your support, you gain access to bonus episodes each week called the grid grid grid.

a behind the scenes look at how we compare each episode with episode transcripts, patron polls, free goodies, shirts, nicknames, uh, sweet knickknacks, sweet nothings whispered in your ear.

Um, we'll give you a high five at a convention crisp, then also you can give it a shot with the free seven day trial.

If just by going over to patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod, or it's in the show notes, it's just that easy.

That's right.

All right.

Again, sorry we talked so much at the beginning here, but please.

you.

Everybody.

I'm going to shut up here.

We're very, very excited to have trad here on the show and let's go and get into this conversation with the one and only trad more.

This October, Oni Press and Spectrevision are proud to present High Strangeness, a startling new five-part experiment in comic book storytelling.

Inspired by first-hand accounts of real paranormal encounters within the dimly lit borderlands of human experience, each 40-page prestige format chapter of High Strangest will interrogate overlapping phenomena like UFOs, hauntings, cryptid sightings, and inexplicable synchronicities that together seem to indicate a higher unseen order of reality.

Teaming Spectrevision co-founder and real-life experiencer Daniel Noah with an otherworldly cast of comic talents, including Christopher Cantwell, Cecil Castellucci, good friend to the show Christian Ward, and more, High Strangest Book One arrives on October 8th to investigate a 1967 encounter with the strange beings known as the Men in Black, with superstar writer Chris Condon, Ringo Award-winning artist Dave Chisholm, and cover artist Jock.

Look for High Strangers Book 1 on shelves October 8th at a local comic shop near you.

Only from Oni Press.

And now, this week's special guest.

Joining me today is the Eisner nominated comic book creator behind titles like Luther Strode and the New World over Image Comics, Silver Surfer Black and Doctor Strange Fall Sunrise at Marvel, along with an abundance of other prolific work, both inside and out of comics.

It is my absolute honor to welcome Trad Moore onto the Oblivion Bar podcast.

Trad, what an honor, man.

It's honestly, we talked a little bit before the recording here and I sort of buttered you up already and I'm going to do my best not to do that during the actual recording part.

It really honestly means so much to get you here on the show and the fact that, you know, I think it's known among a lot of our listenership and just in the comic world that you don't often do a lot of these type of interviews.

So it just means a lot and I'm happy to have you here.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

I'll butter you up a little bit too.

It's always fun getting that email from someone when they ask if you want to do a thing and then I get to go down the road and look at your interviews and do this or that.

And I was very impressed with your work and I'm excited to chat with That's awesome.

I'll be feeding off that for the rest of the year.

So thank you.

Bye.

That's all I needed.

I just need some affirmation and now we're good.

We're fine.

We were talking again a little bit before the recording and I do want to sort of share our shared roots within Savannah, Georgia, where we both spent some time in Southeast Georgia in the early parts of the 2010s, the Aughts as they call them.

You were obviously in Savannah or you were at Savannah College of Art and Design.

and I was serving at Fort Stewart while I was in the army.

So I brought this up in our initial email thread, but I remember being so incredibly green with envy for the students there while in Savannah.

And I'll say it just so you don't have to just for the listeners, SCAD is undeniably one of the premier art schools in the country.

And to be surrounded by so many talented, hungry artists, it just sounded like a fantasy land to me.

So I want to start with this here.

All these years later, with hindsight and everything else.

How do you remember your time there in Savannah as a young person learning how to hone your craft?

I loved it.

was uh born and raised in Georgia.

So when it was time to look for and I never wanted any other career, I was I was a specific kid like straight out the gate.

I was like, I want to draw comics and people were like, so you want to work for this or that fine art, blah, blah.

And I was like, No, I'm to draw comic books, you know, and I loved all the other avenues of art, but that was that was always my goal.

It was one of the few places in the nation.

I think it still is, but at the time it was one of the few places that offered sequential art and, you know, animation, cartooning, all that stuff.

So it felt like a fantasy world to me as well.

You know, other people in my family are artistic, but none of them ever pursued it as a career.

So I just didn't, I didn't have any one to look to, you know what I mean?

I just knew that I loved it and that was what I was gonna do no matter what.

And yeah, all those people that I went to school with there, a bunch are working professionals now in the comic world.

The professors, a bunch of them still are doing the good work over there now, teaching students.

I love going over there, meeting students, coming up and it's, I had a really great time.

I learned a lot.

think that to have this special little moment where art is your priority and it's scary, you know, because I remember going there and just thinking like, I'm going to roll up.

I'm going to be the worst person here.

Like I remember I had like AP credits from high school and I rejected them all.

was like, I don't want to come in here with credits.

I don't want to come in here name.

I don't want to come in here with nothing because like I didn't want to be too big for my britches, you know, and end up having all these other students mop the floor with me, you know.

So yeah, it was, was fun to just be in a situation.

It felt like athletics, you know, growing up playing software, it felt like that, you know, where you're, you're on the same team, but you hold each other accountable by wanting to be at the quality of your friends, you know.

And I remember It was always an exciting and kind of scary thing to be given an assignment and then finish it.

And you have the critique day where everyone's got to post their work on the wall.

You're about to just be, you know, crucified in front of everyone, you know, and it was always exciting, you know, where you were kind of like, yo, come at me, let's see what you got.

But then part of you was like, don't hurt me.

So yeah, love, love the, love the city.

Love my experience there.

Yeah.

Nothing but good things to say about my time there.

Yeah, we again, we were chatting about this both at San Diego and here just a moment ago about how much I absolutely love the city of Savannah.

It's easily my favorite city in the U.S.

and obviously I haven't been to every city in the U.S.

but nothing but good feelings when I think about my time there.

And again, the Army wasn't an ideal time for me as a young person.

I joined right out of high school.

But I think I lucked out so incredibly well by getting a chance by having the chance to go there, to go to Savannah, to leave home for the first time and just It just so happened that I ended up in Savannah, Georgia.

And, you know, a lot of listeners here on the podcast know that my best friend slash cohost here on the oblivion bar, we met while we were in Savannah.

And I think a lot of my love of different mediums of art and such, I think stems from my time in Savannah, because it is so important there, right?

Like it's such a pillar of that community.

Scad, of course, being sort of the shining light of all that.

And I wanted to pick your brain a little bit, because we mentioned that, or you mentioned that you've gone back semi recently to sort of host like a, like, was it like a class or was it, you said it wasn't necessarily a seminar, but what was it here recently that you went back to Scout for?

Yeah, going back a few times, do one of the best things about the program there is they really connect students with editorial.

know, Marvel DC, Dark Horse, everybody, you know, they have a big day out there or big weekend called Editor's Day where a bunch of top notch editors.

That's where I met Axel Alonso the first time.

That's where I met Mark Paniccia over at Marvel for the first time.

That was a lot of editors that I ended up.

building a career with, you know, I met basically as a child, you know what I mean?

They were, I don't know if they remembered me later on down the road, but it feels very validating as a young person, you know, to go in there and get like a real critique, you know what mean?

Not from like a friend and not from a teacher who wants what's best for you.

It's like, these people don't give a damn about your life and career.

There, hang out and...

be in Savannah, you know what I mean?

No offense to those predators, you know, but um yeah.

then, but then they also have like artist day, which is a similar thing.

And it was interestingly enough, like that's where I met Sam for green for the first time and he was already a working professional.

And he was like one of the first working professionals I had talked to that, you know, looked at my work and was excited by it and literally has been in my corner ever since then, you know, and now, you know, we have the same art rep, we do covers for each other, you know, but yeah, to have moments like that, I essentially went there in the same capacity that Sanford used to come through.

It's like, obviously artists, artists, you may not be able to get someone directly a job, but it sometimes happens that way, you know what mean?

So yeah, I go there and I meet students and I basically just do like guest teaching classes, little Q &A things.

Basically when I go, I just try to encourage them because I see so much talent when I go to those places, but also like so many nerd groups and so much fear, so much anxiety.

And so yeah, when I go, I just try to encourage them because they're talented and very hungry, you know?

And I try to go get out there, you know what I mean?

Like make the thing.

And yeah, where I can try to connect people to editors, to...

to companies and this or that, know, just try to, I don't know.

I had always imagined in a perfect world, you look at like the history of art, but it's also the history of teaching people things is, know, you have, you have a person in a senior role and you have someone coming up learning under them.

And that's, that's how we pass our knowledge down.

And, and like, I think a lot of times elders in life or in the world have, have disappointed me.

or let me down in ways.

um But when I think of the ones who made a really big impact and who were supportive and life changing, it's like, we need that in art.

So I enjoy having the opportunity to go be the adult that I wanted to see in adults at that age.

Yeah, it's it's refreshing, I think, when you have someone like yourself who is so decorated in this medium that these folks really want to get to.

And it feels almost like and you can tell me if you see something differently here.

And I'm going to tie this into our question as well.

The next question.

But like to not just kick the ladder out from underneath you after you climb up, it seems like maybe the bare minimum.

Like, do you agree with that at all or?

I do.

think it's one of those things where I don't think that every artist needs to pursue teaching necessarily.

But I do think that just being a part of culture, you know what I mean?

I do think that, like I said, you imagine a perfect world, you would hope that we have caring adults who can help people achieve what they would like to.

not see it as a reason to pat themselves on the back or anything like that, just seeing like, this is how we as people survive.

This is how we reach greater heights is through that, you know what I mean?

Through, you know, building staircases, you know, because, know, the vision being whatever we're doing now in a hundred years, we'll seem like child's play to the children of that era, you know, just through walking up the staircase together, you know?

Yeah, it's interesting too that I've often found, and this is a saying that I definitely did not create, but they say that, you you forget what people say, but they remember how you made them feel.

Yeah.

That encouragement, a starving artists like these kids that are at SCAD that are about to go off into the real world and look for their own path.

They cling onto that either encouragement or piece of advice or even like a critique, right?

Like they will, they will cling onto all of that because you are a walking, talking.

embodiment of what they're trying to get to at some point.

uh I had an experience like that.

I went to Dragon Con when I was 21, maybe 22.

I either had just graduated or I was still in college.

That was an era where Olivier Coipel was the artist.

If you're looking at the mainstream, he was the hero.

And he was a person who I loved and I was obsessed with his work.

And I loved how he drew figures and I was just all about it.

And weirdly enough, he was at Dragon Con in Atlanta and it was like, what in the world's Olivier doing here?

um But I met him uh and that exact thing that you're saying I had like, I walked up to him with portfolio all nervous and he was like, you can't look at it now, but come back in a little bit and he pulled me behind the table, sat down with me, gave me a critique and it's really encouraging.

um And I literally rode that high like straight into my career.

You know what I mean?

Where I was like, well, if Olivier thinks I got it, then fuck everybody else.

I'm ready, you know?

And yeah, still, anytime I see his work beyond being impressed by, you know, the quality of his art, I'm always like, Olivier, what a hero.

Love that guy, you know?

Sure.

You know, it's funny, this actually perfectly transitions me to my next question.

And before I get to this question, I do have to set this up by visiting an old friend of ours, I think.

And I'm going to go ahead and share a screen with you here, Tread.

Cheers!

It is a six-issue main series.

It is...

found a...

you gets the book and it...

You Savannah College of Art and Design, 2010.

And then it's got picked up late 2010 and we've been cracking at it ever since.

I'm already on issue five.

So we are gonna hit every deadline like you wouldn't believe.

So seeing that young version of yourself there, I'm just curious, do you remember that moment?

Do you remember that convention?

Do you remember that conversation?

And actually in more, I guess in a more broad sense, do you remember what it's like to sort of have to pitch a story on demand right there in front of a fan or another editor or whomever?

I do.

do.

remember that was in like a high school gymnasium in Florida.

Shout out to Savannah friend, Kevin Ziegler.

He was sitting behind me.

He's the one who did the artwork for y'all's podcast.

So yeah, we, we went to that place and that was, like I said, fresh out of school.

Luther show got picked up.

I had done the, the first six pages of that, the pitch.

I'm pretty sure image still functions this way, but being just send in a blind pitch, you know, we just went, it would be like, what's the trick?

What's the secret sauce you got?

I'm like, I know, secret sauce.

We just went on the website and followed the directions, you know, and got a thumbs up.

So yeah, I had done artwork for that while in school.

Yeah.

Like I said, literally fresh out of the gate, you know, I remember I was selling pages back then for somewhere in the realm of 50 to $100.

uh I actually met a guy or saw a guy again that I had sold a piece that I had done on that show, like $30 to him.

It's funny looking back.

I try not to do that.

Throw uh me in front of myself.

Yeah, but yeah, all those, I do.

That's one of the reasons why I don't sketch at shows, because I really want to invest in people and in experiences.

I do have fond memories and uh close friends that, you know, we're all built from just happenstance meetings at conventions or in travels in this or that.

And so I think to be present in those spaces is very important to me.

Yeah, there they can be a little stressful, regardless of your success or lack thereof.

And I never thought at that time that that guy holding your camera in my face would somehow that thing would that that video has got legs.

uh What it is about.

It's funny.

Yeah, you know, I think one of my favorite aspects, again, referring to this moment, we just sort of relive together following your career for as long as I have.

And I feel like I've been following since about Luther Strode on the evolution of her sequentials is so crazy to me.

You know, again, using Luther Strode as a sort of the basis and then going all the way to Dr.

Strange, Fall Sunrise here recently.

It's significant.

And it definitely that's not a knock towards Luther Strode.

I'm still a big fan of that.

But Even while rereading like Venom 150 and some of your early work with All New Ghostwriter, it's just, was a fascinating experience to shotgun your entire career in preparation for this conversation again and just see that progression in real time.

And I wanted to ask you, do you have maybe a proper way of describing that evolution?

You know, not just like stylistically, but how you feel emotionally or even philosophically about your work in 2025.

Yeah, I mean, this is both a big and small answer.

I think it's just growing up.

know, it was like I started really young and I do my best to just pour the whole of me into everything I do.

But the whole of me changes pretty regularly.

And I, I'm a very emotional person.

uh put it all into the project, but usually when I'm done, I am like capital D-O-N-E done.

Like I never want to look at that fucking thing ever again in my life.

I never want to hold that pencil again.

I never want to look in that cardinal direction.

So yeah, it's, I hit very low lows.

And I think a lot of times for me, art is me trying to pull myself out of these philosophical or emotional.

And I think that's why sometimes the work will hit these wild changes.

Because yeah, like I said, I will experience in my life wild changes.

And the idea of ever repeating myself or doing the same thing is like disgusting to me.

You know what I mean?

It's like, I'd rather just quit.

I'd rather just grind my teeth on cement.

Like, no, no, I will not do it again.

So yeah, it's a...

It's kind of, it feels like going underwater and screaming to me.

That's, that's that's, that's what making art feels like when you go into ocean and you're just punching waves and just screaming like an animal.

That's, that's, that's the art making process for me.

think, um, hopefully I've gotten a little better at that aspect of it of not being like a nightmare or an emotional wreck, you know, in the process of it.

But I do think for me that it's kind of the.

process of is, you know, hitting a wall creatively or emotionally and just going like, I have no idea what to do next.

So I have to either break this wall down or reformat my whole body, break myself down so that I can get around it in, some way.

I don't always know how to get there, you know, and I think that's why sometimes the art kind of has these massive shifts in it.

which I love.

I think that that's like a hallmark of your career thus far is the fact that it seems like every new piece that you do, whether it's in comics or not is different.

It's obviously you, you can see it's a tradmore piece the moment that you see it.

But I think again, going through your entire career here recently in preparation for this conversation, and there were even some that I hadn't read before.

I hadn't read that Eddie Brock Venom 150 before.

I think I maybe, don't think I, I vaguely remember the ARF story in Spider-Man, but it was really refreshing to sort of reread it and sort of look at it with new eyes.

Because I feel like, and you can tell me maybe where that transition is.

And I know you said that you are constantly evolving, but in my brain, it always felt like Silver Surfer Black was like, maybe me realizing you've evolved in a very significant way.

it doesn't, that Spider-Man story actually predates that, correct?

No, that one came, that was kind of immediately following.

It went um Silver Surfer.

Then I had pitched Dr.

Strange.

pitched Fall Sunrise.

We had gotten the green light, but then lockdown happened.

uh And a bunch of people were furloughed at the big companies at Marvel DC.

So they could kind of only keep their big books going, you know, the Bat-Means and the Spider-Means.

and everything else was kind of put on pause.

And during that time, that was when I did the Batman black and white in that Spider-Man short story, because we were basically like, OK, how can we get some cool work in while we see what's going to happen?

And then I did those two things.

And after that was when I started properly on Fall Sunrise.

So yeah, those were good little bite size things to keep me busy.

You said something really profound, think.

uh You know, again, as we mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, it's great to get you here because, you know, you go to Spotify, you type in Trad Moore and there's like one conversation and it's with David Harper, our mutual friend over on off panel.

You know, shout out David.

Thank you so much, David, for actually helping set this up and connecting Trad and I.

And you said something again that really stuck with me.

You mentioned you guys were in the conversation about Cormac McCarthy and how he was often breaking rules and...

uh sort of the example of how like coloring inside the lines with proper grammar and punctuation isn't necessarily always the goal for you in your work.

And you said, and this is the thing that really struck me, I will take beauty over making sense any day.

I just love that.

There was something about that, that it was like one of those moments where I was listening to the conversation with you and David, and I was still thinking about what you had said.

And in like 10 minutes in the conversation had passed and I hadn't heard anything you guys had said since then.

So I was like thinking on that way longer.

So I just need to ask you, can you think of maybe a tangible moment in your history or a moment in your past where you first realized that you could confidently intentionally break those rules in your work.

And it like makes sense to you.

Yeah, it took a long time.

think that the early years, it's so much learning.

know, it's like every with every page of Luther Strow or Ghost Rider.

I was learning how to draw.

was like, damn, I don't know how to draw a car.

You know what I mean?

I don't know how to draw.

How do I draw a stool?

How do I like very basic things?

You know what mean?

Like what a crown molding look like in a in a apartment.

You I don't you're learning about the whole world and you're just like a sponge in your teens and 20s, just like seeing the world in a whole different way.

Like, how the hell do you draw a dog leg?

Like, why are they so weird?

So yeah, I felt like during that young part of my career, you know, I was, I was just trying to learn, you know, you know, I wanted to prove myself to myself, but you also want to prove yourself to the world, you know, you're it's, it's odd to, it wasn't me, like in the way that maybe like, like a celebrity grows up, but it's a piece of you that is aging and being critiqued by a very broad audience at a pretty young age, you know?

um So yeah, it was something that I really wanted to, I wanted to be airtight in my chops, you know what I mean?

And then once I got my chops, then I felt like they bored me, you know?

Where I was like, yeah, I can draw every shingle on that house.

I can draw every chain on a chain.

chain link fence, but it's like, but why, why did I do that?

You know, I did it first time to see if I could and to see if I liked it.

Turns out I can and I don't like it.

So yeah, a lot of, a lot of that, know, and I feel like the most extreme version of that was, was legacy of Luther Strode and, uh, and into the new world.

I was like, Oh no, I will draw everything.

And if I draw someone's tongue, I'm going to draw the taste buds.

And, you know, if I do any of this stuff, it's, um, it was neurotic, you know, I mean, it was, it was pretty crazy, but it was important to me at the time.

So I have no regret.

I, think that that was when I can look back at those pages and start seeing like, okay, I'm on to something.

But I do think it was with Sober Surfer that, it was a fraught time in my life.

And interestingly enough, I remember looking at like, late era Frank Miller stuff, which I love.

I love when he just went off the rails visually.

Are we talking like the Dark Knight returns to or the Dark Knight strikes again?

I know that one's a contentious one, but I love the look of DK too.

He's a fascinating career study.

I remember looking at people who really, I cannot either like publicly either push themselves or publicly fell apart, you know, in different ways.

I'm like, okay, what's, where's the line here?

You know what I mean?

How do you, and not uniquely him, but he stood out to me as a, a, you know, pillar of the meeting and I, and I wanted to get there.

You know what mean?

Cause was looking at that stuff and going, I'm going to draw these giant hands.

want to kind of want to break some stuff, you know, but I didn't feel like I could do it on the new world because I had already started with this hyper structured thing.

But the thing is, I feel like by the end of that book, it fell apart.

Not, not in a bad way.

Like, I feel like basically when you get to the last pages of the book, everything looks like it's melting.

And it was like, I felt like I was melting.

I was like, well, yeah, mean, literally by the end, you know, none of that was in the script.

Like no one just covered that guy in milk and set him on fire.

I was just like, that's how I feel right now.

So yeah, like, and I think it was going, I went straight from that into Silver Surfer, like barely any time in between.

And I think because in that time in my life, I felt like I had nothing to lose.

It was kind of like the pressure of the situation where it was like there was a time pressure.

was financial pressure.

There was emotional stuff going on.

And I was like, you know what?

I am not stopping for one second.

That's the fastest book I've ever produced by a long shot.

And it was like, I just didn't stop to think ever.

basically had like, I had like a couple books that were kind of my like visual Bible for if I had a question.

But generally speaking, it was just like on the page, just pure emotional outpouring where it was like, I'm not doing multiple thumbnails.

I'm not doing multiple sketches.

Like if it's in my mind, it's on the page, done, next page, next page, next page.

That's an interesting thought exercise.

You know what mean?

Like this unabashed, just blunt force pushing yourself through a book like that.

I can't imagine what that experience was like, but you, and like you said earlier, you proved that you could do it.

And that is something, right?

That means something very significant, I think.

Yeah, it was an interesting time because I was relatively new to New York at that time, or I was new to New York.

I hadn't even been there a year, I don't think.

And I was lucky enough at the time to be sharing the studio with Cliff Chang and Ivan Brandon.

um And me and Cliff were just in there all the time, which we don't know.

Cliff's work, check it out.

uh Yeah, I think folks that listen to this hopefully.

I'm sure they know, Cliff is as good as they get, know, artistically.

Like he was also just a very, at that time in my life, a good person to look to as a human being.

You know what I mean?

He's enough years my senior, you know what I mean?

To where it wasn't like, but not too far.

think maybe there might be like 10 years between us and we were just sat side by side and super kind.

super efficient, super structured, just like, it would be hard to find a bad thing to say about him.

And if someone did, then I'd be side eyeing that person.

Like, you know, like he's a, what could you possibly say about Cliff?

Well, it was funny because yeah, he was working, he was working on paper girls and wrapping that up while I was working on Silver Surfer Black and just to have that like, consistency in my life at that time was very important to me the consistency of the book in the consistency of that studio.

It was like, genuinely like a lifeline at that time, you know, and I think about that time very fondly, you know, and what stayed in there longer probably because then he had started writing and drawing his Catwoman book as I was starting to write and draw Fall Sunrise.

So it's like we were pitching those books to each other first, you know, I mean, prior to their green light and everything.

But then, you know, like I said, lockdown time pulled people in different directions.

But yeah, was a, so Resurfer was a time.

It was an intense time in my life and I couldn't do it again if I tried, you know what I mean?

And I wouldn't try.

You know, all else could speak just to be in that studio with you and Cliff and I'm sorry, who was the third person there in the studio?

Brandon, uh writer, a bunch of image books, uh verses and uh what's the one with Nick Drifter, Nick Klein.

sure.

Yeah, great book.

Nick Klein's coolest work and he has a career of incredible work but yeah they are, they're a great team.

That would have been just incredible to just sort of be a fly on the wall to see the three of you masters just working at it.

And I wanted to take a step back though, because you said something again, speaking of profound things, you mentioned something in the comics journal that I wanted to sort of noodle on for a moment.

And it was this idea of like measured restraint.

And I'm just going to read the quote just for the listener, but I would recommend everybody firstly, go read that comics journal interview with trad is phenomenal.

It was actually, it was a pillar for me and how I sort of structured this conversation.

And I just want to be honest with everybody that way.

People know where like my inspiration was, but in terms of this quote here, you say, as for artistic nobility, comes from honesty, inclusivity, and measured restraint.

Measured restraint meaning well thought out and intelligently presented, not holding back.

If you ever go to a project and think I'm going to create exactly what I want to, and I'm going to train and study as hard as I can to create it with skill and care, I welcome every single person to experience it.

That feels noble to me.

That feels respectful and it makes me.

feel, sorry, it makes me think of a tree, which I love.

And again, your inner voice for those responses, there's my favorite part of that post there from the comics journal.

So I just want to sort of think about this idea of measured restraint and sort of speak on, if I can have you sort of speak on that idea of measured restraint and if maybe that was like a secret unlock for you in more recent years in terms of how you've, again, evolved your style.

Yeah, it was art and life, the same thing for an artist, you know what mean?

But I think that a lot of times, you know, when an artist speaks, I can be a little abstract, you know what I mean?

But I do think that it's just like universally relatable that that thought again, in the same way it's my stylistic growth.

I think measured restraint also is like the sign of good parenting.

I think that's the signing of a good communication in a relationship.

You know what I mean?

Where you're going to have these big feelings and you want to fully express yourself.

But I think to be intentional with your words, to be intentional with your lines, to be intentional with your boundaries for yourself of what you will or will not accept.

I think that that all is like art.

maturity.

And when you're young, sometimes people have wisdom beyond their years and they have that early on.

I struggled with it at times, you know, and I struggled with it artistically at times where and it's that's part of the fun of being 18.

That's part of the fun of being 22.

As you say, fuck it.

And you set things on fire and you break windows and you scream and it's awesome.

And I loved that.

But, you know, it looks different.

coming from a 34 year old, you know, or a 40 year old.

And I think that things lose their novelty.

So with Luther Schroed, just throwing everything in there, like no restraint.

You know what I mean?

I was just like, no, I'm gonna swing this brush, you know, as if it's a whip.

I think that the measured restraint is, like I said, similar with all that stuff of I know what I'm capable of.

Do I need to scream it?

Do I need to show it all the time?

No.

you know, I mean, do I need to play the full hand all the time?

And I don't think you should, you know.

And I think that, yeah, I don't know if there was a moment where it really manifested for me, but I do remember it was when I was working on the New World and fellow comic artists and just one of my best friends, Ricardo Lopez, we were teens, we were hanging out, you know, sharing work.

with one another.

I can't remember why he was working on at the time, but he's drawn everything from Batman to independent books to everything.

great.

But he saw like how neurotic I was being on the new world.

And like there was a scene where a guy's punching another guy and I measured out the bloods flat.

You know what I mean?

It was all like mathematically done.

There was like a geometric.

Do like a Dexter Yeah, exactly.

And it looked awesome.

I don't obviously, like I said, I needed to do that at that time, you know, because I needed that level of obsession to see if I could do it.

everything in that book is like on a grid.

Everything like makes sense, so to speak, until, like I said, the end when it starts warping.

But I remember him looking at that page and, you know, we're drinking and just hanging out.

And he lovingly said it, but he just kind of like laughed and he said, You're too good to be doing this.

You know, mean, like, basically, like, why are you, why are you hurting yourself?

Why aren't you like trusting your instincts?

You know, and I don't even think that he saw it as a moment of wisdom.

I think he was just lovingly just kind of raving me a little bit.

How did you react in that moment?

I'm just curious.

I don't mean to cut you off, but I'm just like, what was your response in that moment when he said that to you?

I exactly what I just said, like I need to get this out of my system.

You know what mean?

Like I need to do a whole book where it is to my mind, mathematically perfect.

You know what I mean?

Like, like the pupils will always be the same distance from one another.

If there's a character straight on and the character's teeth will always be just this way.

You know, I was, I had to figure it out, you know, but it did kind of plant seed of like, I don't want to live like this.

You know what I mean?

I don't want to.

I don't want to draw like this forever.

And that's usually how I feel kind of by the end of every book.

I'll start each book with like a really strong through line and then I will hate it by the end of it.

I need to be, I need to break this through line and throw it in the trash and never look at it again.

yeah, that was, I think it's good to get feedback.

I remember the first Luther Schrode cover, the one that was, you know, Luther Schrode issue one, I literally almost tore it up and threw it away in Savannah.

I was so upset about it.

And I was like, this sucks.

It's trash.

And my friends came over and they were like, calm down.

It looks good.

Like you just need to ease up and like take a walk.

uh It was actually, that was the trade paperback.

It was, that's the one.

And like I was 21, however old.

And so wrapped that up in a work day, hated it.

Then we just went out for dinner, had a drink, know, just had a good night with friends.

I come back and I look at it and I'm like, you know what?

That's all right.

Glad I didn't tear that one up.

I didn't go feral on that one.

But I think that's why it's good for me to now I work in the studio again.

It's good for me to be able to walk away from the work because I will.

I'll get crazy on, but if I, if I walk away from it.

and come back the next day, usually all of my misgivings disappear once I give it time.

I think you run into, I think again, this happens to any person, but it's very evident in art when you're trying to make a thing.

You enter into a moment with expectations and it's very difficult when reality just takes a fat shit all over your expectations.

And you go, ah.

God, that's not what I wanted at all.

And you can't appreciate that sometimes the reality is good too.

It's not a dumb.

It's just something different.

And I think that happens a lot with art.

You'll have this picture in your brain, this dream image, this person from your dream.

Don't you know that the most beautiful person who's ever lived?

And then you go to draw it and you're like, they're hideous.

Yeah, and then for some reason you hate the drawing and you're also like, do I have...

that had brains, what's wrong with me?

So yeah, think that's giving yourself time to let reality become reality.

And like I said, isn't unique to art.

This is lot of life experience.

You enter a new job, you know what I mean?

Even you get like, who feels good about a haircut the day that you get a haircut?

You walk home and you I look like Jimmy Newton and I want to scream.

But then you give it a day and you do your thing and you're like, you know, okay, I'm, I'm all right.

You know, it's interesting and I would never compare Fall Sunrise to an episode of the Oblivion Bar.

But what you're saying here in terms of how you feel in the moment or how when you spend a lot of time on a certain piece, how you feel after stepping away from it is night and day.

You know, there'll be times where, you know, Aaron, I will do a episode of the Oblivion Bar and I'll think in the moment as like as we're recording it or right afterwards.

Man, we really didn't bring it back that time.

Like a game was not here today.

You know, let's see what I can do in the editing bay.

And then like after I go on there and I tinker with it a couple days later and I listened to the final product again, I'm always, like, wow, that actually turned out a lot better than I thought it was going to, right?

It's also that impossible thing of like, sometimes your taste and the taste of your audience or friends align.

You know, I'd say that happens probably half the time, but then sometimes they don't, you know, sometimes it's completely out of your hands.

Sometimes it's like a David Lynch's Dune situation where he was like, he reviled it and it was like painful for him to talk about and people would bring it up and he'd be like, I don't want to talk about that.

A lot of people.

love that movie to death.

You know what I mean?

I really enjoy that movie.

So yeah, I think it's one of those situations as well where sometimes you just gotta do your best, get done with the thing, and then just give it to the world and say like, that ain't mine.

That's whatever it is to you.

I don't want to pollute that.

And I don't want to direct that in any way, which is actually one of reasons why I don't do interviews either because I don't, I don't ever want like my own.

narrative in making a thing to subtract from anyone's personal revelations that were unique to their own experiences.

And I feel like sometimes that can happen.

You know, I never want to hear a band tell me what songs they've done that they don't like.

You know what mean?

Because then I'm like, I love that one.

Don't take that away from me.

Yeah, it's interesting.

And actually going into our next question here about Silver Surfer, because I honestly would not forgive myself if I had you here on the show.

We didn't talk at least a little bit about Silver Surfer.

I had a question about Silver Surfer Black and it was sort of like my interpretation of what the story meant.

And I know there's a lot of tie in with what was going on with the Guardians and know at the time and all those things.

But like I have a very particular theory on it and I wanted to integrate that into a question.

But I also didn't want you to have to try to explain yourself.

about what you and Donnie were trying to say.

So I altered it slightly.

And I want to take people back, listeners, everybody, to San Diego Comic-Con just a few weeks ago.

You and I had a chance to finally meet in person and we sat there and chatted for a moment and I felt like such a dick because I hate when people do this.

I don't hate it, but I give them a side eye when people do this at cons where they will just take up all the time with the creator.

Like they'll just sit there and chat with them for a half an hour.

Like Chris Claremont will be on a third X-Men story and we're all like, come on, man.

I'm trying to get my uncanny accent whatever.

So, and I accidentally did that with you.

Like I was fortunately one of the first people in line there at Felix's booth to meet you there at San Diego this year.

And I took a knee and we chatted about Silver Surfer and this conversation and a couple of other things.

And I thought, my gosh, it has been at least 10 minutes and I have been here way too long.

And you know, at that time it felt great.

Like I was almost floating.

It felt like you and I were sitting there chatting, but I didn't want to take up any more time.

And one of the questions that I had for you in that moment that we didn't really get to, but you sort of almost loosely answered it in a way there, but I want to sort of noodle on it some more here in this conversation is that, you you mentioned during that conversation, your version of Noren was created not just to sort of emulate the actual physique of Surfer, but there's also some like deliberate effort to design the Surfer as more of like an androgynous being, right?

And along with some of our initial, you know, design choices you had for the book, I'd love to hear you sort of talk about maybe initial North Star with you and Donnie for the story of Silver Surfer Black and what you guys were maybe again, when you and Donnie sat down together to talk about this book, what was the common ground for both of you that you really want to hit these notes going into it?

Yeah, I think we both, you know, we wanted to make something that felt evergreen.

But the reality of the market sometimes is that books that aren't connected to the mainline continuity fall to the wayside.

So it was one of those things where we were like, OK, how do we how do we make this emotionally a standalone?

How do we get across this thing that, you know, if in 10 years no one knows who the hell Noel is, like, doesn't matter, you know what I mean?

And that was kind of our through line, where it's like, okay, right off the bat, let's connect it to the overarching, you know, what's going on in the comic.

But like, I kept thinking of Samurai Jack and how, you know, the intro of that show tells you everything you need to know of...

what is happening and then they can drop you anywhere.

And they do.

And that's what happens in the show.

I was, in terms of getting us there, you know, I was like, oh, let's just do the Samurai Jack, let's just drop him into a black hole.

Then we can take the story where we want.

Cause yeah, at the time I was struggling with every comic feeling the same to me.

And it's like, when you're in a genre, people expect certain things and you do need to be understanding of that and we want to fulfill those needs.

you know, like, how do we not turn this into just like punch kick, you know?

And I remembered that one growing up stood out to me that I think succeeded in that was Silver Surfer Requiem.

Yeah, a sod Rebic and is a sod Rebic and uh Jay Michael Zyrzynski.

And I feel like everyone who's like a Surfer fan, specifically from like a certain age bracket, that book was big, you know, like emotionally.

And it made you realize like, oh, the philosophy of the book doesn't have to bow to crossovers.

And it doesn't have to bow to the inevitable fight sequence.

It's like, okay, how do we marry these concepts?

You know?

And I think that was very important for me, because I was just like, I don't want to I don't want to do this anymore.

I don't want to just do the same fight story, but I felt a little trapped by that.

And so, yeah, I think that for me, what I wanted to do was make a beautiful book.

And it felt like I had been dipping my toes into that in other books, but I think I was a little nervous of it.

I think I was a little shy of showing myself at that time in my own taste.

You know, I was nervous to express myself in some ways, but with that one, like I said, I was like, don't, I got nothing to lose.

got no, I'm gonna, I'm just going in on this.

So in every page of that, in every moment, whether it's a poignant moment or whether it's an action or pain, like I just want it there to be something beautiful on every page.

And I find surfer beautiful as a, know, I think there's a reason why the biggest thing that is created in art, you know, over time, it's, you know, everyone is in love with the human figure, you know what mean?

In some way obsessed, whether it, whether you're evulsed by it or whether you're obsessed by it, you know what mean?

The human, as humans, there is an obsession with minds and with our own species, you know what I mean?

You it throughout time.

So I really wanted to dive into that.

I'm like, I have the opportunity to basically draw this beautiful Greco-Roman sculpture 10 times a page for a year.

So yeah, was something more honestly, like in a way of like letting the body tell the story was like, even if I take all the words out of this, like, do you feel something when you see surfer here?

And ah I want to take that to all my work.

That's what I love drawing.

in that, in terms of building like, a universal sense of duty.

I, I love androgyny.

I find it very beautiful.

And I wanted to express that in surfer.

And I wanted to push maybe what people like expected or found normal or strange or accessible or any of that stuff.

And I really just believed that if people were able to spend time with it, then they would, they'd like it.

You know, and it was a hard push on the front end, admittedly, because people, they were nervous about putting it out there because they're a little weird what you're doing.

like, trust me.

I've heard you talk about this recently about how like specifically Marvel was maybe a little nervous about what you and Donnie were doing.

I'm just curious, like, do you remember what it took to eventually convince editorial that this is how this needs to be told?

This story needs to be told.

I don't want to speak out of turn on this one, but it was, there's a lot of conversations.

know, they, like I said, I, my style evolves with each book and they basically were expecting one thing and got another.

And I think that a lot of people just didn't think it would work.

You know, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but basically it's like, was through commerce.

I literally came into Marvel and fought for the book.

It felt like being a student again.

It was literally like artwork on the walls, you know, fight for your life.

Tell me why this has value.

Tell me why this matters, you know.

And I did that and they, props to them, they listened and they said, all right, you seem really passionate about this.

Let's do it.

And I'm very glad that it did work because had it not, I don't know that I would have gotten to do more jobs over there.

it kind of paved the way for Dr.

Strange in a way.

Would you agree on that?

it very literally did.

It was once it once Silver Surfer wrapped up, they're basically, you know, what do you, do want to do next?

And I was like, do I have something for you?

uh So yeah, it was, it was a definitely one thing led to another, you know, very little away.

think one of the best decisions that Marvel has made over the last decade or longer even is the fact that they've given you not just one but two treasury size editions of your work.

And I'll tell you, I'm trying to find a more romantic way to say this, but I think it just rewards to read this.

Silver Surfer Black and Doctor Strange both, and I would say really any work, but these two works specifically, it rewards upon holding it in your hands.

You can read it digitally and you can totally enjoy it.

But I think holding this treasury edition in your hands, and I'm looking at it as we're talking about it.

There's a scene specifically I'm thinking of where it's when you see Galactus for the first time, he sort of erupts from his cube.

And you've got like, basically you've got Noren looking up at him.

And here it is right here.

This scene right here, I think you just cannot breathe this in.

You can't drink this scene in, I think, properly without holding it in your hands.

agree that was one of those signs of success for me in drawing a page is if I start getting dizzy drawing it, then I know that I did something right.

There was a lot of perspective pushes that I did on that book where it's like I'd stare at it for a while and I'd kind of get vertigo a little bit.

And I was like, I did good.

I also remember that one.

I try not to like, in a world where I have infinite time to make a book, I would be.

coloring it myself as well.

So that's what I do for like covers and whatnot.

And that's what I would like to do moving forward.

But it's like, when I'm working with the colors that I really respect, you know, I want to give them direction, but I don't want to say too much usually, because I'm like, the reason why I asked you to be on this book is because I trust you.

But with that page in particular, I remember sending Dave, ah I was like, I want it to look like this.

And it was the inks.

And I literally just made the whole page red and made Silver Surfer white.

was like, and he gave me that back and I said, killed it.

10 out of 10.

No notes.

He does me in a raise.

But yeah, it was, I didn't know that it was going to be printed treasury edition.

And that was like a fun reveal and like a really cool thing to see.

And like I said, props to the Marvel crew.

You know, it went from being nervous about the book to go on like, actually, we love it.

you know, print it on a billboard, you know.

uh So it was one of those things that, seeing like that was really cool, but I didn't actually draw it to be that way.

You know what I mean?

So some of the pages in that are literally like to size.

Whereas with Fall Sunrise, I knew that it was going to be treasury from the get go.

So, you know, I could draw it differently knowing that, you know, I could really go wild on some of my visual choices, because I'm like, this is going to be printed huge.

I don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to read at a millimeter tall.

that kind of helped with pushing the different looks of those books.

Like I said, there's a lot of reasons why they look very different.

But that was one of the decisive factors of like, oh, I know how big this is going to be.

So I know how many leaves I'm going to draw on that tree.

oh uh uh One more small question about Silver Surfer and then we can move on.

Do you feel, and again, in hindsight, you've already mentioned that you don't really like to return to things once you've left them.

And I've even heard you talk about how like Surfer was one of those characters that you really want to get your hands on as a person coming up in, you know, in Scad and so on.

I'm just curious, do you, know, looking back on Silver Surfer Black all these years later, do you feel like you were able to say what you and Donnie wanted to say in this book, the way you wanted to say it?

think so.

I think it was one of those things where it's looking back on it.

The only book that feels fully mine is Fall Sunrise, because it's the only one that is fully mine.

But looking back on all the books that I've done, you know, I feel expressed.

I feel like the collaboration ended up becoming the DNA of the project.

I think if I never did Surfer again, I would feel satisfied.

I feel like that is a character that I could see myself having another narrative to tell with, but there's nothing that's, uh, yeah.

I'm holding up my fingers.

I'm crossing my fingers everybody just so you know what's going on.

I just really love drawing Silver Surfer.

there's like, feel like I could push further into a lot of the stuff that I was dipping my toes into.

So yeah, I feel like in that narrative fully expressed, I do think that I could, I could say more.

Here's hoping that's I'll say.

I'll say here's down the road at some point.

We need more tread more on on Silver Surfer and tread.

I have one final question for you here before I let you go.

And you've been so generous with your time.

I appreciate you again stopping by.

And one thing that I really love about you know not just you as a creator but you as a person is you always are very quick to give credit to your collaborators.

know folks like Heather Moore Justin Jordan Clayton Cowles and Felipe Sabaro like all these folks that you've worked with over the last over your entire career, you're quick to just give them all the praise.

you know, you've mentioned that these collaborations inspire you and are significant towards your growth as an artist.

And so I'd like to hear more about the people or material or et cetera, things that have been inspiring you recently.

So I mean, you're welcome to continue to brag on the crew I just mentioned there, but are there any other comic pros or pieces of work even across any medium here recently that you've just been burning with?

admiration.

oh I work in a very inspiring studio for one.

My studio mates are Ian Bertram and James Tynan.

Who?

Yeah, exactly.

Who's that guy?

Yeah, and Ian is one of my best friends and we're in that studio every day together.

His work is very inspiring and I think, you know, and this goes way back, you know, because when I was When I was working on Silver Surfer, he was working on Little Bird and you have that meeting of minds and those sharing of pages.

They feel like connected books to me emotionally just because it was like we were hanging out and sharing pages with each other.

And then it happened again, you know, while he was working on Precious Metal and I was working on Fall Sunrise, you know, it was important to have each other there.

So Ian's work is always very inspiring to me.

Um, that one, that one stands out, you know, and I think a lot of what James is doing with tiny onion is his company is it's very inspiring in terms of what it could mean for the industry, you know, and in terms of creators, supporting creators and, uh, offering platforms to people.

person who I collaborate with as well, who's always inspiring to me, if Jensen Ekwall.

she did in Fall Sunrise, the two kind of like storybook sequence pages.

And those were really important to me to have a truly different voice in there, because Jensen typically works in like children's book illustrations.

And I felt like that was perfect, kind of like the, you know, the Cale Bill sequence that's an anime, you know what I mean?

I needed to be that different, you know what I mean?

And uh that's part of the beauty of being in New York is that, you You just have people from all different walks of life creating around you.

Another friend of mine is animating a video game coming out, Peter Schmidt, and the game is called Cyber Lich.

And Peter's been showing me this artwork for this game for years, and now it's finally out there and kind of making waves in the indie dev community.

but I feel like I learned something from all of these people.

You know what mean?

Because it's like, where else would I get to see hand drawn 2D video game animation and children's book animation?

then Ian doing these huge, you know, like all his pages, like his comic pages are, you know, bigger than a human being half the time.

Much less when he's doing these big, incredible, like paintings that he does.

Yeah, gosh, there's just so many.

people out in this community that I'm in that are really inspiring to me.

Yeah.

What about uh work like books, movies, television, other comics perhaps?

I know it's hard to read comics when you're working in comics sometimes, but like, is there anything else, know, like something that's really just tickled you, I guess.

There's always something that has caught me.

This is going because I, you know, you never know when something's going to jump out at you.

But I just started looking at uh within the past few years was I'm new to a little comic called Prince Valiant.

And it's awesome.

And artworks amazing.

So that's been a fascination of mine.

And I've been like, my God, did we peak early?

Has anyone drawn better than Foster?

I don't know.

I don't know that we've done better than that.

So that was inspiring to me.

I feel bad.

I can't remember the name of the creator, but I read, someone gave me, it's kind of like a manga-sized thing, but it's a Western drawing.

It's called The Princess and the Dressmaker, or The Prince and the Dressmaker.

And it was a really just cute, sweet, well-made comic that felt very...

Jenway, yes, that book was great.

Really loved that book.

And I feel like it's like a good...

I feel like it can work for all ages, but I feel like specifically for like teens and whatnot, would really do well.

If you like that one, Jen also has a really great book called Ashes Cabin from First Second.

That is really great.

Well, because I think that one is first, second, I can't remember.

be.

Yeah, no, was, was, that one came out of nowhere.

Someone like gave it to me.

And I was just so, it's one of the first comics that in a long time, I've just kind of like accidentally read cover to cover.

You know what mean?

It's been minutes since I like sat down and tore through a book.

There's always more.

I went on a big reading Arthurian legend over the past couple years.

So.

Almost all of my reading has just been Lancelot and Versicle and all these things.

So, you know, there's never any tail on what's going to inspire you in these moments.

That's true.

That's very true.

You did a symphony of the night, Castlevania symphony of the night poster for Mondo not too long ago.

And my gosh, like the fact that I missed out on that, I will never forgive myself.

The fact that I can't find that now in the aftermarket, I'm so bummed because that is one of, I mean, I have a catalog of things that you've done really well that I think just immediately it was like, have to have that at some point.

one, if I get extras, you're first on the list.

Oh yes.

For sure.

But yeah, that one was personal.

I don't have the opportunity much in my life presently to play games, but they were just such a huge part of my life for so long.

That PlayStation cover is like cigarette burned into my- And it's like that all of her artwork, I'm I mispronounced you, but Ayami Kojima, she was just so influential to my work and also to just like my perception of beauty, you know, in her work where it's like that, that, I want people to look like that, you know.

um And so to have the opportunity, you know, where it was like, was already something that I've been kind of like extrapolating on for my entire career, where it's like, basically I've had a question of like, How do I make a person look beautiful?

I would look at either her work or Amano Yoshitaka Amano, Final Fantasy artist.

And I'd just have books from both of them like, I don't know how to draw this note.

How did Amano do it?

All right, I'll do it like that.

So yeah, that character design, everything about Symphony of the Night is likewise burnt into me.

So I knew I had to uh bring my A game on that one.

And you did.

mean, it's awesome.

know, Chad, I'm going to let the facade fade away.

OK, here it goes.

My journalistic integrity is going out the window and I'm just going to full on fanboy for about.

Can you give me 20 seconds and I'm just going to fanboy.

I know you have like I've heard you talk about this before that you don't really love this sort of hero obsession.

Is that the correct way to say it?

Right.

But what I'm about to say to you is probably going to make you uncomfortable.

But truthfully, you are just one of my all time favorite voices in comics and.

When I think of the greats, truly, like the greats, those creators that have like the singular voice of their era and whose legacy will outlive me, you, everyone listening to this conversation right now, Tradmore, think, should be in that conversation with Alex Toth, Mobius, Jack Kirby, among other greats, right?

uh That I just can't list right now because we need to close this conversation out.

But the medium is unquestionably more interesting today because of the work that you've contributed to it.

and will hopefully to you'll hopefully contribute to for years to come.

the last thing I'll say, I'll stop.

Okay.

Side back.

All right.

Journalistic is I'm here.

Here I am.

I don't think they have to be separate.

think you did.

It's all you and you do it.

I don't really do a great job of hiding my fanboy in general, but you know, it was something that I had to get over really quickly here on the podcast because I'm interviewing so many incredible people on a regular basis.

I don't know why they keep letting us talk to folks like you, but you know, they do.

And therefore I have to like, I have to come out this with some kind of integrity and be like, I'm here to ask you questions, not tell you how much I love your work.

But I guess I could do both, but like, you know, there's that line, I guess.

But truthfully, I just, feel so grateful to have the opportunity to sit down with you today and chat.

here on the Oblivion Bar podcast.

And I will truly, I will quite literally jump at the first opportunity that I get to have you here on the show again, when your availability or interest pops up again.

love it.

Thank you so much.

It's tough to take in that much kindness at once, but I'm doing my best and I hope you know.

um I'm very grateful and very gracious um for this conversation and for your enthusiasm and uh it means a lot.

Let's chat again.

Let's do it.

When am I coming out with my next book?

I don't know.

Well, let me ask you, I'm not trying to mind you for any information, but to sort of close this out, is there anything, I know you're not on the socials, you don't have a sub stack like most creators, here's another thing that I really love about being a fan of Trad Moore is that in order to keep up with what you're doing, you have to sort of intentionally seek it out.

But two part question to close this out, is there a way for people to follow your career in some way?

And also, is there anything that you can sort of...

either tease or even just say about what you're working on.

And of course, if you can't or don't want to, please don't feel pressured.

I'm just curious.

Like you said, I do like making people work for it a little bit.

So basically, I post up my work on my dang website, like an old person.

uh And I love it.

um I feel like I'm bothered by all the platforms for lots of reasons.

But one of them just being a very basic thing of content issues, you know what I mean?

Where I'm just like, god.

Like I'm going to draw new people.

Come on.

I'm not this pretty thing I'm doing over here and I'm going to put it into the world.

You know, so yeah, if you check in on my website, you'll probably find new things on there and not probably sneak little things on there.

love using dead platforms.

If you're still on Tumblr or Flickr, you can find me there.

Can I be on, can I be in your top four on MySpace, please?

my gosh, absolutely.

Wait till you read my live journals, they're scathing.

In terms of what I'm doing next, I don't know that I can talk about some of those things or that I'm ready to work on another creator on the thing.

It's not set in stone, but that's where my heart is and that's where I feel like the next step is for me.

But it's so early on that it's not like.

I'm not like hiding something behind my back like, ooh, here it is.

It truly is like a thing of like, I think that's what's next for me.

I don't even know if I can say this, but I guess I will.

I'm working on a little short thing that I'm writing, drawing, coloring, lettering, a little short story over at Skybound right now.

So y'all will find out what that is whenever it's allowed to be said, but.

It's gonna be cool.

Yeah.

And it's gonna look really pretty.

So I'll have something on the shelves with the next months foreseeably.

But until then, yeah.

Well, you know.

Yeah, get on Myspace.

Make sure you guys check out Trez Zanga if you still know what that website is.

Exactly.

Oh my gosh, have you all heard of Linewire?

You can get music.

That's right.

Well, try it again.

What an honor, what a privilege.

Again, would love to have you back on at some point, but until then great chatting with you and we'll talk to you soon.

Awesome.

Thank you again.

This has been great.

And yeah, let's talk again soon.

I'll try not to hide from the world so often.

Alrighty, there's that conversation with trad more again trad if for some reason you're listening right now my gosh Thank you so much for coming on to the show so great that you would take just a little bit of your time to chat with me and I'm sorry that I fanboyed so much in that conversation because you know Aaron as we've talked about many times on the show we've gotten better about not fanboying as much when we have creators on that we admire and I take no credit in that.

Aaron loves the fanboy.

You know what?

I can't blame you because again, I am obviously susceptible to that as well.

I did it here in this conversation with trad, but I appreciate him.

Basically let me bounce that off of him and let me sort of gush on him for a moment while he I have him in front of me.

And that conversation that we had in San Diego just a couple of weeks ago before this conversation came out, I knew as I say it in this conversation, we chatted for like it felt like 30 minutes, but it's probably like 10 minutes.

And I felt bad afterwards because I hate when people do that to me at a con.

But I could tell in those 10 minutes that we were chatting that we're going to have an incredible conversation.

I was telling some of our friends over in the comic book world.

Again, we've already talked about Brad and Lisa.

I was telling them at San Diego that I knew in that moment when I get them on the show, I don't even have to go into the transcript.

I could have just, we could have just sat down, pressed record and we would have found our way into a fun conversation.

I don't even know if it would have just been fun.

I feel like there is no way to avoid a deep enhancing, just a moment in time when you talk to people like Trad.

It's going to be an experiential conversation just simply because that man does not think in small talk.

He does not exist.

in the normal world that we do, because he is just, and that's a cool thing about it is like, I love the part in the conversation, even at the end, but like, you could tell this is a guy that is mindful, that is, that lives in the moment that really respects the people that he works with and the industry that he does, not just because, again, just the whole thing.

And also, by the way, thank you so much for calling out uh our humble origin story in Savannah, Georgia.

like, isn't that nuts?

That's crazy.

crazy.

But like, I just love the fact that this conversation just went into a complete like, I don't know, it was just like, was like a, it was a way of exploring not only his past, but like your connection, but his connection to the industry and his love of art.

And it was just so eye, so eye opening in so many different levels.

And honestly, like I'll probably go back and listen to it again, simply because I just, I really enjoyed hearing, uh, not just him talk.

but you guys kind of discussing in depth, like his story arc, I'll say.

Yeah, I will say that when I went into preparation for this conversation, when Chad and I got in contact with each other and started emailing about this and he eventually agreed, which I I was, I was levitating Aaron.

I was absolutely just on cloud nine when he, I sent you like the screenshot after I got the, like when Chad sent us the okay that he wanted to come on.

my main goal in this conversation was not so much to explore his career, but like get to know him.

I want to, I wanted to be able to pick his brain a little bit more about not only like his work now, but like how it's evolved.

That's something I noticed because obviously I've been a big fan since Luther Strode on.

think that's pretty apparent in this conversation, but to see the progression from Luther Strode to Dr.

Strange, Fall Sun, Rise and On, my gosh, it's like looking at another artist almost in a way.

Like you could tell it's Trad as I say in the conversation, but like it's so wildly different.

And I, I really love in this conversation.

One of my favorite parts of this conversation was talking about or hearing him talk about measured restraint and how you hone your craft to a certain point.

You master it to a certain level.

But then like you sort of learn to not go all in, right?

Like, you know your abilities and you know that you can go the distance.

Like he's talking about drawing the taste buds on a tongue.

Like he can do that, but he doesn't like he won't do that because he knows that he knows that he can push himself to that limit.

But there's a certain level of intrigue that goes along with measures of restraint.

Again, I just loved it.

I know that when you have the ability of a trad more and you have that type of restraint in your work, that is a level of craft.

That's a level of intentionality that you cannot teach.

You have to blunt force, get yourself there.

And I just, loved it.

It was incredible.

for some reason, just that bit of information reminds me incredibly of the, the conversation between Robert Downey Jr.

Yeah.

And Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder.

I really want to, but you never go full retard.

The same thought.

I sure.

I think there are definitely melding I apologize if that offended anybody.

It's how my brain thinks.

It thinks in movie scenes and GIFs.

absolutely does.

So does mine.

But you know, I'm I measured in my restraint errands.

So I don't always have to I don't go for you know, you know, Exactly exactly I'm not there We're not gonna even try.

You know, again, I will say very, this is the very last thing I'll say because I'm so grateful not only to Trad, but I will give a very specific shout out to David Harper, because he is the reason why Trad and I got in contact.

Again, as I said at the beginning of the conversation in the intro, that if you go to Apple Podcasts and type in Trad Moore interview, as of today, it'll be my interview with Trad and then also David's from, I think earlier this year.

He doesn't do any interviews and I just am.

I feel very, very grateful.

I'm feeling warm.

feeling, I feel accomplished.

And I am officially now Aaron, say two for two with having my heroes here on the show and it going well.

I feel great about that.

you absolutely should.

And all jokes aside, this is, again, it's uh a testament to this show.

It's a testament to the fact that we, ah you do a lot of good work.

We we do a lot of great work.

the Royal we yes.

I will say that this is okay.

This last thing I'll say and then we'll sort of end the show here is that when I sat down with trad, we talked for like 15 minutes before we pressed recording, press record.

And I wanted to, know how we, you and I do this too.

We'll pop on, we'll immediately start talking.

And I'm always like, save it, cut it off.

We need to save this for content.

Everything's content, everything's content.

I couldn't do that with him.

Like he starts talking.

I'm like, Hey, let's do this thing.

I'm not gonna.

Right.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

My gosh.

Okay.

Well, again, thank you, Chad, so much for joining us.

It truly was an experience and I'm just so grateful that not only did you come on the show, but you also sort of tease that he's doing a skybound thing, which is really cool.

It sounds like it could potentially, I'm not, I don't know this everybody.

I'm totally speculating, speculating like all of you.

It sounds like it could be maybe transformers maybe in that realm in the inner John universe somewhere, whether it GI Joe or transformers or, what have you.

So anyway, be on the lookout for that.

just very, very uh grateful for this conversation.

And let's go on to next week, Aaron.

Next week on the show, we're going to be chatting with the one and only Anna Meyer.

She'll be joining us to talk about St.

Catherine, which is her OGN from First Second.

I had a chance to read that last month.

And it was one of those situations, Aaron, where when I read it, we didn't have like a set up conversation with First Second.

I read the book, fucking loved it.

And I reached out to Anna on Instagram.

I was like, hey, can I please get you on the show to discuss this book that is, I think, just one of the masterful works of 2025.

If it's not in conversations as like best of it at the end of this year, that'll be a great disservice to what Anna does with this book.

I think Aaron, I'm going to be in that conversation with Anna alone, but I highly recommend you and the listener today to go check out St.

Catherine.

It's absolutely phenomenal.

So that'll be next week on the show.

We'll also be talking to Tiffany Smith and her work over in the masters of the universe work over at Dark Horse.

I'm pretty sure.

that it's a one shot dealing with just the character of Andra and Tiffany Smith, of course, is the voice actor for Andra in the Netflix animated series.

So very cool.

Very, very excited.

Aaron, was I was excited for you because I know you're a big Masters of the Universe fan.

So.

even though don't have any of my toys anymore.

Are you going to show up in a Speedo and just a big sword?

ah have the power!

All right.

Well, that'll be next week on the show, everybody.

So make sure you guys check us out there.

Snark.

It was snarf.

That's right.

I'm not I'm not a kid of the 80s or early 90s, but that'll do it for this week for the show.

Thank you so much for listening.

Aaron, take us out of here.

Oh.

Right.

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That was like different enunciating method there.

I just- Thank you.

Why don't you record it beforehand?

Yeah, well, we can't try new things like this.

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I agree.

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I say that in the conversation.

I'm going reiterate it here twice, two time here because his work really rewards upon holding it in your hands and looking at it on a physical page.

Alright everybody, thank you so much for joining us here on the Oblivion Bar Podcast.

We will see you next week for episode 206 of the show.