iTunes Exclusive Episode Spotlight On James Venhaus And Night Owl Society

Greetings Empire member and or members.
If you are hearing the sound of my voice, it means the following conditions have been
meant.
At least once in your life, you have listened to the clubhouse podcast live every Sunday,
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But it also means you subscribe to this show on your favorite podcast thing app, because
it's time for another, ah, two, six clues.
287 is the number for those of you playing in the home game.
But another one is going to be a little bit different.
My name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the clubhouse podcast, and I'm kind
of flying a little solo tonight, because we're bringing you our second ever spotlight episode.
And this particular episode, we're going to be talking about James Vennhouse and a little
comic book called Night Owl Society that we're very excited to tell you all about.
We recently, along with some of our fellow members of the local Dallas press, had the opportunity
to have a media roundtable with him courtesy of our friend Kelly Kitchens, whom if you
listen to this show, you know, we're huge fans of, and what I'm able to do for you is
take that media roundtable, kind of get you the highlights of it, I've rearranged some
things, so it's more of a, if you will, narrative style.
And so I'm going to, we're going to talk a little bit, and we're going to play some of
the interviews, and then I'm going to talk a little bit and give you an intro to each section.
So what I thought we'd start with in this particular episode is to introduce
you to Mr. Vennhouse himself, and I'm going to let him talk about a little about who he is
and a little bit about his background, and it goes a little something like this.
Hit it!
Hi, small.
I went to the School of South Western University in Georgetown, and I moved to Dallas for
a girl, and the two of us decided to take the acting world by storm, and I appeared in a lot
of local theater.
When I tell people, it was a small theater, I had a big part, it was a big theater,
I had small part, and at the time, early 90s, it was really great time to be an actor in Dallas,
because there was Walker, Texas Ranger, and there was Wishboden, and there were a million
industrials, and so I actually made it living as an actor in Dallas for about eight years.
It was my primary source of income, but I did get addicted to paying rent and heat
food, so I looked at ways to sort of stay connected to the theater and actually have an income,
which is like an a teaching, and I always tell people I got into teaching because I love
the theater, but I stay in teaching as I like kids, and I went back and got a message
in my education, and my teaching careers got to meet a balance around different schools, and
it's been some time in San Antonio, and I moved to Fort Worth, which I thought was like moving
back to the Metroplex, but it's really nice, and we can forward the Dallas art to completely
different markets, which is really kind of a bit exciting, you know, even fast hauling,
and there are a lot of music called figured out that you can look things in two different markets
because it's not the same market, but it's been a lot of time in Dallas, acting and directing
working with the years, and when I started teaching, I started to write plays, because that's
something you can do in fits and starts, you know, when you're teaching, being in a play,
and being at rehearsal every night is not something that you can commit to as easily as,
writing a play where you can write in the summers and spring break, and things like that, so
I want a local playwriting contest for a company called Graus here on the New York
here in Dallas, and started to write plays, I've just explained it a little bit about James.
Now, as you can hear, he is a playwright, but how does that translate into wanting to write a
comic book? How did this whole thing happen? We're going to play you a couple of clips here,
you're going to find out how this story happened. You're also going to talk about the artist,
because he's the writer, but there's a really interesting story on how he met the artist on this
particular book, a young man by the name of Pius Bach, and then you're also going to find out
how long it actually took him to do this, because being a playwright is a little bit different
than being a comic book writer. And I have this idea file that every time I have an idea for a new
story, I write it down, the next part in the next part goes a little recipe, card box,
and in the summer or spring break, I get to file on the side where I want to go, and my students
inspired me to write this comic, because I work with really, really smart students who have a lot of
disposable income and a lot of free time, and a very overdeveloped sense of background.
And so I thought if you had, was that what a superhero is? Like a lot of money and cool gadgets,
and lots of time, and want to write wrongs, like that's what this is. So I put that the idea file,
and I remember what, one of my playwrights mentors told me a long time ago, if you write a play,
it has to be a reason that it's a play, and I'll move the ornamental, it has to be theatrical.
What is inherently theatrical about your idea? And I thought there is nothing inherently theatrical,
but this idea. This is a comic book. This is kids who put on masks and things like that,
that night you fight crime. So never have a written comic book before, but having read them since I was
four. I decided to figure out how is one write a comic. And literally every article you can find
about how to break into comics is the same thing. You break into comics by making comics.
You don't go to a publisher with a script or an idea, because everyone has done a hit for a comic book.
You go to a comic book, a comic book, and a comic book. So I met an artist on lines,
they just pies back, he lives in Lithuania, and we started working together on this project.
I did a Kickstarter in 2014, which funded the content for the first issue,
and I was able to go to publishers with a finished book, and say this is what my book would look like
if you were to publish it. And IEDW, which is the fourth largest comic book published
in the country, took a look at it and liked it. And so here we are in 2017 with the three
issue limited series from IEDW, and a press tour. So that's where I got from knowing
Kelly Kitchens and drama class, too. That's the three-minute version of that story.
I found you online. There's a website called DNR, where it's a website that has a different
portfolio available for you, and they're marked that portfolio is either accepting or not accepting
work, and he was accepting work, and I liked the style, and I resout to him, and pitched my idea to him,
he said he'd love to do that. We did some character sketches, and I loved the character sketches.
And I said, let's write a book together. We discussed the boring stuff like how much I would pay him,
and who would own life, and all that kind of stuff, and it was not until he asked,
what does a letter jacket look like? What is that thing? Letter jacket? That was in my
secret when I realized you're not from around here. So it was living in London at the time,
but he's from Lithuania, because we're back to Lithuania now. And every single thing we did was
be a email. He's never met. In fact, we're the idea of doing comic comics together, came up.
He told me recently that his lifelong dream was to one day visit the United States.
So, hopefully, we're going to make that happen.
It's not like to books together at Comic Con. But yeah, there were some cultural things that
in American media, Western media is pretty ubiquitous, so he got American high schools,
you know, the tone, but there were specific things like, can you please send me pictures of a letter
jacket, or can you please send me pictures of lockers, whatever, or what a lockers themselves,
or what would they look like in American high school? So we had some great, and that's the great thing
with the internet, as I can go around and take right into pictures. The character of AJ,
the big football player, the first character designed to weren't big enough. And I said no,
no, the kids here are big. So he drew a little bit bigger, so he drew a little bit bigger, so he drew
the big. And so I went in the halls, and I got to a few of my students, Alex Way, who was, you know,
five foot one at the time, and he got into me, drew some of the knocks, who's currently
starting offensive line for Ohio State. That is six, five, and three hundred and ten pounds.
And I said, when you guys stand next to you, don't you think it's going to be great?
I'm like, this is the side-sized differential in an average American high school. You can get
this small and you can get this big and still be, you know, normal. And at that point, then you can say,
we're dry AJ. The way I did it was that. I think writing a script, you know, was probably
two or three weeks, you know, just getting something I felt like I could show to an artist.
Carol also that several weeks of finding the right artist. And then, you know, I tried timing with
the school year, so that's all a summer. And then the school year starts, the artist is working on things
that all I have to do on teaching is, you know, when he's done with the page, I can say,
thumbs up, thumbs down, or change this or change that, I can do that for him. But probably a year,
to put this issue together, 60 days to get the money raised via Kickstarter. And if you know anything
about Kickstarter, you know, it's this much about the art and, you know, this much about
shipping and printing and, you know, the spreadsheet. I think I spent more time on the spreadsheet
than on the script, to issue number one, just figuring out how much reward levels were
be worth and how much money would I raise if I charge this much for this reward. And if I print
something else, then the price goes down, so I can't, you know, the math level, it was just mind-boggling.
But the submission process was interesting because IDW was the first one to look at.
Only about four months of, you know, being in someone's inbox and being here for IDW,
parallel to that, I was so many get to several other companies. I heard a yes for IDW,
and then I heard a no from several other publishers, much smaller publishers. I'm really glad
they came to that order. It was in four or five knows, and then the yes would have been really good.
But the first, yes, so I was like, all those knows, like, whatever.
I got IDW, but from, for the time they said, yes, we'll do three issues. Then we had
it back in the create two more issues, and I had a plot outline, but I had to script those,
I had to draw those, because I never went all free into cans, so it's people who would
start production, because, you know, it's complex and retailers, especially do not like delays.
We want them to come out every month, that's a thing we want. So, yeah,
this Kickstarter was 2014. The first time I probably sat down at the computer,
and said, I think I'd like to write it down in 2012. Our next section is going to be talking
about James and who inspires him to be a storyteller, as well as the differences between playwriting
and comic book writing. Gosh, so many people. Arthur Miller had intensity Williams and some of
the great American storytellers are right about the American experience, but also Sarah Rool,
or C. Martin, or Leonard Nottage, or any of the contemporary playwrights that are doing
really, really amazing writing about what it is like to be a American. That's what I'm
with you. You know, for the wildering C. Martin, our brothers and wife, and then there's a
three-line name, you get to it. It's a lot of fun. Well, it's really interesting, because I've
tried to draw on some writers as much as possible. When I decided to explore writing comics,
I had no idea how it's done, and so the first thing I did was one on the internet,
and said, you know, what are some comic book scripts? And downloaded those, and then bought the
comics that they were scripts of, and saw how they managed it. And I found that there was almost
every conceivable from how you could think of, from what's called the Marvel method, or someone
just doesn't outline, and the artist does it, and then the writer goes back and asks dialogue
to more like what Alan Moore does, which is very cinematic, and every panel is incredibly descriptive.
So he really sees himself as the storyteller with someone with a following instruction. And I think
being a playwright led me to be more open to collaboration, that everybody in the rehearsal room
is an artist with something to contribute, the director, and the actors, and all the designers
are there. So why is a writer when I dictate exactly how everything's going to work? That's
part of what I want the artist to do. So my scripts are very much like play scripts, they're
very dialogue centered, and the stage directions tell you what happened, and then I'm not the artist,
so I would say, Pious, I think this scene takes about two to few pages. What do you think? And he would say,
I think I need to visit this interview today. But some things, because I have a very dramatic
feel for how I want the rhythm of writing. So there were things I didn't want you to see until you
turn the page, because when I turn the page, I see both pages, and then I go and read, but I've seen
everything that's on that two page, so I would say to him, this can take either two pages or four
pages or six pages, but it can take three or five pages, because the next scene has to start on a page
turn. So that was how I sort of, that's different than playwrighty, but it's also the same
because I want to make sure that I reveal in things to the audience at a time where I feel like
it's appropriate, and build a pace, which I think a lot of comic book writers don't think of,
how quickly does this read or how does it flow, and I think I think theater has now a lot of
it. So now let's talk about, he's a playwright, and he's going to write this comic book, but
did he read comic books, so we'll see even a fan as a kid. When I was in junior high school,
DC Comics was putting out a series called The New Team Titans, and it was all the side kicks
was Robin, the kid flash, and Wonder Girl, and they were relatable to kids, because they were
you, and they were, you know, didn't want to be thought of like their parents, and he was great,
and it was this classic run about 15-15-5 issues by the same creative team, where the diet they
argued, who didn't, and they got long and relationships changed, and involved at the time,
Marvel had similar one, the X-Men, that was written by Chris Kyrman, John Gray at the time,
and that was sort of teams in a team learning how to get along, and the crime fighting in the
adventure was there, but it sometimes wasn't even the main focus, and that got me up, but that's
what I really wanted to say, I wanted this to be, the classic 80s team team comic book, like the ones I
used to read. I certainly did a lot of research, and my banking angle tells you I did a lot of
truth through research. So, what's interesting, when I first got back into that, I went to a
comic book store and I said, I had a collection of comics since the 80s, what should I read?
And he's like, you know, the stories of the same the art's better, and in some cases that is true,
the DC and Marvel, like, and that's okay, like DC just relaunched a lot of your comics in a
mission called rebirth, kind of back to basic things, like, yes, that man seems like that man,
to me, yeah, Wonder Woman seems like Wonder Woman to me, this is great, but beyond the big two,
there's some really, really cool stuff going on in the comics, that's nothing like super
gross at all. And when I go around the comic book stores and sign comics, what do you guys
excited about? Oh, yeah, this is doing really good, Marvel, what's going on with Marvel, but all
that he read, grass canes, it's so cool, or God country, or Paper Gross is great, and four kids,
you know, walking to a bank, and sex criminals, and this is a bizarre series, and there's a new
and out called a plastic, which I think is probably the premise of, but yeah, there's some
really, really inventive things going on, which a large story telling that is very different than
the 80s, so there's a large chunk of it that hasn't changed one bit, and there's a full new areas,
this book would not have been popular, but possible news, no costumes, no superpowers,
and no fame is created, like this is, two guys have never written a comic book before in their life,
but the industry is out of point out where any ideas are required. So we're, we're
alert about James, we've learned a little bit about Pious, we're here to talk about Night Owl's
Society, and so right now he's going to tell you all about who the characters are, and if the
big bad was cast in a film, who would he put in it? So this is David, he's our protagonist, he's
best friend at school, this is how a few friends he has, it's best friend at school,
this is Chris Chaplin, and this will have Chaplin was killed by local mob boss, and no one
would do anything about it. So David, in the first part of this issue he attempts to try to take
matters into his own hands and fails miserably, and he realizes he needs a team, you know,
like, reads, everybody needs a team, so he recruits AJ, the football player, who has the distinction
of being the only person on campus and not to shove David into a locker, so he reads that to
that first, but what they discover really quickly as David being the new kid, David not having any
friends, David, sort of not really feeling like he gets in, and African-American football player
at a predominantly white private high school also feels like this is not right,
but these are not right people, he knows he's here at play football, he knows that that's
he's making a great, but nobody thinks he does, and so what I tried to do with a lot of these
characters is you think they're the stereotype that they're not. AJ's got the highest GPA,
but no one believes him because he's a football player. We've got Sarah, who's capital of
all of all team, and AJ's girlfriend, who invites herself onto one of the missions, because AJ's
horrible human secrets, and just her father was killed in Afghanistan fighting local warlords,
and she's like, this is the stuff he can use to get on his guy out here, and nobody will take care
of him, so she is absolutely the toughest person on the team in a minute, not someone who can
ask, but Darcy is the computer hacker, he seriously believes that there is no such thing as
ethical hacking as that computer should not be hacked until he gets invited to join a team
because he's never been invited to do anything ever. He joins instantly, and Laura, who's the trouble
maker, she's always got the little, and I've always got the dark makeup, I've always, you know,
got her head down, it's always used to be in trouble. David just got a feeling that she might be able
to help out, so when stuff needs to be acquired, stuff just sort of magically appears, and we need
to get out of someplace that flock, she seems to know how to do that, so I call out the breakfast
couple, he's a friend of us, because these five kids are out there taking on the mom. These are
sophomores and juniors, I decided they needed to be able to drive, but not ready to graduate,
because I want them, I want you to read the further adventures, they have, it'll be like believe
whether all seniors every year, you know, for like 10 years, and then they're just happy to go to
the local college, so it's easy to look at S&U, so it's easy for them to sell out your adventures
and dowels, so we're diverse to a point, you know, we're a person of color is a market diversity,
not a person, you know, so and I found that among my students that we're a fairly diverse campus,
but we're still fairly separate sometimes, and to me, I mean I could have said, okay we need one
of this and one of this and that'll be a great team, but that's not storytelling, I thought we'll
who would David go to? David isn't strong enough to do this, he would go to the strongest guy
to be going to the nicest guy, and that guy's on the football team, and at a private school,
at least in some of the private schools that I've looked at, those kids sometimes will be brought
in on scholarship and chances are they will be African-American and chances are they will be
of a different income bracket, so to me this just felt like, in some ways it's hysteria,
I'll try to put it in some ways this is what I've experienced in, but when you know those kids,
then you get to tell their stories or sort of help represent those stories and how long
some of these kids feel because they're on scholarship or they're their place boards,
really sense the perception, you know, is the computer science club at my school and every school
I've been to primarily in community and students, yes, so rather than avoid that by, you know,
why washing the care for or making something else, how does that care your feel about being
hysteria? You know, one of the things that the character of Dars talks about allies,
I can't believe you assume that because I'm Indian, I'm the computer guy, you know, like,
you run the computer science club. So, you know, I think that's part of what we have to,
we have to be with, especially as a white guy, writing in the first class,
is that we have to look at what, or set what who they really are and what are the
perceptions they have, because each of these characters is different than their time.
Yeah, and that was really important to me, because the concept of secret activities
has more to do than what just in that class. The concept of secret activities,
to be able to walk the halls and have someone think you're one thing where you're really
sitting down, which might kids go through the hall of time. The Viceroy, he's our, he's our big
bad, he's the, he's the mom boss that I'm going to have to pick and sell him.
I guess you know, one starts to develop his story a little bit more, and there's a good twist
at the end, I guess you know, one we're going to get to that. So, I, I wanted to be someone that
doesn't appear on the surface to be tough, so it's a bit of a surprise when he won't hurt you.
So, Gary Olman, you know, somebody that he like, yeah, after he'll jump off of it,
so like somebody will jump off him, which is inherently missing, but somebody who's not
an heirly missing, maybe a Gary Olman, but that's a great question. Well, they know that
that I also saw he's an interesting person. I know that it's going to their sides, but yeah,
you'll, you'll see an issue too, how that plays out for you. So, this does take place in Dallas
because the writer is from Dallas, and there's a couple of interesting little tidbits
who are about to play for you as not only Dallas as a character, one of the local restaurants
here as a character, but how Pious actually was able to work Dallas itself, especially when it
comes to issue three. It's in Dallas, Dallas, this, this book is a set in Dallas, Texas.
It's the kind of, that the fictitious, um, uh, St. Cofford's Episcopal School in Dallas because St.
St. Cofford is a real saint, that nothing has ever been named after. So, I love that.
We love getting confused with the real schoolery. Oh, yeah. One of the covers is four covers for
each number one, and one of the covers was done by the local artist, and has the Dallas guy
lying in the background. And this is a very important cover that is only available at the FW College
so it's limited prep run of comics, and you can only get these at Christmas and FW College.
His name is Tobias Maro, um, it's from Ford, so it's great working with the local artist
because they actually have to sit across the table and talk about things, but also we need to do
books on things together, so it's been a lot of fun. I was like, hey, that's, that looks like downtown Dallas.
He said, yeah, I got on Google Earth and decided the car chase needed to happen, and so there's
like a point of view street seems like there are a downtown, like, and you can see the streets on it.
And it's like drawn into the panel as the exact perspective of what it would be like to be on that street
at that angle, which I would do by going down there with a sketchpad, but he did on Google Earth.
Can't be easy, but you guys know this is really scheduled to be at the campus.
It is the mob guys hang out, um, because campus has a reputation back in the day of getting
where the mobsters hang out, so I decided to make it the mob guys hang out.
And campus has been 100% on board with that, which is great.
Your tellers say, oh, they kind of don't want us to do their thing, because media, they don't really like it,
they don't like this is great. Maybe they could sue us, like that's freaking fun.
So as we continue on with this particular spotlight edition, you heard earlier James talk about
how he is a teacher. So did he get the inspiration from his students? Was it more of him
watching his students and did he draw on some of his own experiences as a teacher?
I found that anyone, especially kids, but anyone when they talk about themselves,
there's an affectation, or there's a public cell for some private self.
And I found like if I did that kind of served, I'd get the private self a little bit more.
I don't know what it is about kids, but they think we're not listening.
It's listening. So, um, you know, I listened to sort of what they're going through,
and then we were talking about this earlier, you know, they're alone.
They're privileged kids. She's a painter-physi.
She's a non-supervised and in some ways abandoned a lot of the time.
On a free time. We have a fun stand on it here, but a lot of my kids, you know,
need that sense of community that it would for their friends, because they're not just,
and you could sneak out of night, be gone for hours at a time, and you know, I did get some advice
from some of my students. Originally, AJ's character was an Allen,
because my brother-in-law's named Allen, he's a football player, and I wanted to name the character after him,
and I was showing the first issue around, especially to Neatria's who was started,
often to alignment, and several other kids in the football team.
And Neatria, I don't know how to say this. There's no black eyes in an Allen.
You're right. I don't like this that.
So, because you're white, that'll wait. Oh, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, so we do initials, we did AJ.
So, but yeah, so sometimes I get things that, you know, and I've done that with my plays as well,
I run a play in which teenagers were getting ready for a party, and one of them said,
oh, I'll go pick up decorations, and my kids will be like, don't disturb any of those things.
We don't decorate for parties.
Oh, okay, that's a real thing. Sorry.
Yeah, they keep me off.
Kelly and I went to a very large high school, and so I graduated in the senior class of 686 kids.
And I can remember sitting at my own class in church with me.
It's absolutely there. So, three hours after the principal starts handing out the clothes,
they get to my name, and I just saw a person after a person after a person, but I've never met.
You know, we go into this school district, you know, 8th grade. I never met these kids.
It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. It kids, like, you never seen it.
But we've been in the same building for four years. And so I really want to play with that idea.
In fact, David, we start from creating these people and all, okay, nice to meet you.
Oh, my, I sit next to you in those classes.
We sit next to you in the classroom for four years, you know, so that that idea that we are together a lot
of, you know, we don't know, we're not ready. Again, that helps me play this game.
That in order to have meetings on campus, they have to be a club.
So, it's the night off society, and so they have flyers all over campus, but like,
who would know, who would know that that's what they're doing. So, hiding in plain sight,
and letting people assume one day to swim about here, so that you can have a senior life.
That's why they bring you to a camp when they're invited like that. We are surrounded by it.
So, this is a story against a three-issue series.
We don't want to give away too much, because we want you to go. We're talking about night owl society
from IDW Publishing, and it's author James eventhouse. Right now, he's going to talk about how the story
arc happens, and does he leave it open ended?
Yes, the three-issue is like a full story arc. That was really hard because I feel like it's over over,
then if you do another series, people are like, well, why is there a lot of series? It's over.
If you leave it too open ended, then it's not satisfying when you get to the end of that third-issue.
So, the ending is something I wrote many times, trying to get right, but I feel like this chapter
of their lives is over recreation, number three, but there's definitely an indication that
this group has more than they can accomplish. So, next series would be logical, but this series,
hopefully, doesn't feel incomplete, but yeah, that was it. So, now, when you're a comic book writer,
everybody thinks about comic books and they think about the visual, but not a lot of people think about
the writing of it. So, here he's going to take a little while, not only to talk about being a writer
versus being the artist, but the question that comes up is, have your kids, your students read this yet?
You can do it in my playwriting class, respect is story. I didn't do the art, I know,
my teacher wrote comic book, but really they do the art and he's just the writer, okay?
They like it, but a lot of my students are comic book hints at a couple,
that are sort of like closet comic book hints,
I should ask my comic book, I don't check it out, so I'm like, no, I have one right here, like, you know,
it was for it, it's not a legal, like, you know, like they open, they talk openly about pop,
but they whisper about comic book, I don't know, we're getting the fourth warning on my side of
comic book, I don't know, I don't know if you're gonna share with your friends, so,
but yeah, the comic book is that coming, like, hey, ready comics, ready cool,
thanks, you know, like sugar, thanks, like this, oh yeah, no, very quietly telling me that it's cool.
I do W is a very big comic book company, maybe everybody knows DC and they know,
but if you know anything about comic books, IDW also has some very, very big titles as well,
and in this next section, he's gonna talk about not only what it's like to work with IDW,
but what's gonna measure success for him?
Yeah, because IDW publishes teenage, we've been mentioned to her,
they publish my little pony, they publish a lot of licensed, and they do a lot of licensed work,
and so they're corporate homes, he has what they're really promoting, and then it's kind of
we promote this, you know, together, I think that panel at WonderCon in Hanuman,
where they ran, they spent an hour running down, you know, all the things that are coming out,
and there was like, oh yeah, there's a couple of creators who used to be able to,
they weren't gonna say, oh, what's it think of? I know it's a sighting, oh, like, okay, yeah,
this is like, I'm kind of, I'm with IDW, it's a great company, but I'm not there focused right now,
so, like, it's greater, like, it's me, I'm sighting books, I'm doing this, like, I'm promoting,
I don't know, you know, the publisher is not that's, I'm a friend of mine in New York that he
knows me today, I don't want him to, to comic book story that I'm at, and I said,
do you have any night outside of this, and no IDW, it's all that really bad, like, so people are,
they notice publisher, and they know, like you said, give me something new, give me something
that I ever heard of. Yeah, I was, yeah, I did a lot of research on that, the numbers are
different depending on what you're shooting for, you know, that man's gonna sell mine, thank you,
this man, I'm gonna sell 5,000 or 8,000 would be huge for an independent publisher,
4,000 would get me on the charts, I'd be in the top 300, depending, but the initial prep run was close to 5,000,
so I can sell out, and that'll be at 4 IDW before I pick number one for a free turnaround series,
so as we continue on talking about night owl society, we were at a media round table,
courtesy of our friend Kelly Kitchens, right now we're going to talk about why it's important
for creators to get that fan interaction. It's tremendously important, this is a creator-out series
of things I own, the content, and the intellectual property, and IDW, it's more of a nice agreement,
that they have licensed this comic to you, friends, and distribute, I did do some PR, but I don't
dry a paycheck from for IDW, we'll split profits 50-50 after their expenses, and I don't know
what their expenses are going to be, but I know my editor's on salary, and I'm not, so that's why
it's quite an intro risk, you know, the idea that I could pay an artist out front for all of
the artwork and maybe not make that money back is because it's definitely a possibility, so it's
in my best interest to go to as many comic books and shops like that, they're all on friend
like Kelly and say, and you get me in front of people and give yourself books, because the
work looks I sell with more chances I may, chances I have to break even on this, and if we sell
it in more books, I might make enough money to do another series, but I will be paid to do another series,
I'll fund another series, and hopefully I'll be able to do another series, yeah, the other thing
that you made I realized about the comic book industry is that with the publishers, the customers
are not the reader, the customers are retail, because the retailer is buying these in advance,
sometimes two months in advance, and you can't return them, so if they can't sell it,
if they don't think they can sell it, they're not going to buy it, so in February when the
viewers came out, I was talking to every comic book store, I think get a hold of them, I've got a
complex coming out, I UW, it's on page 282 of the previous catalog, I'll send you a free PDF,
I think your customers should really like it, and most of the time you're a local creator,
they're like, yeah, I would love to do it, and I talked to one store owner who said, yeah,
without knowing you, we probably would order two or three, if I heard that the creator was from Dallas,
I probably would order four or five, I heard that it was said in Dallas, I would order 10,
oh, if you're going to talk to my store, I knew signs of the order, I'm like, okay,
well, how many of these can I pay to the store? The book came out on Wednesday,
and I did a store sign at Wednesday, and one of the Thursday, one on Friday, Houston,
two on Saturday, and two on Sunday, and I've got three coming up this weekend,
forward, wake up, and awesome, anybody will have a lot of sharpness.
So if the comic sells out, a lot of times they'll actually be multiple printings of a comic book,
and this is where James actually talks about just a little bit about how that works.
The way I understand that it works is, if enough stores are sold out, they'll call to distributor
and say we want more, and if the distributor comes with their hands on more, they'll get those to the stores,
but the distributor feels like there's enough demand for more copies. They'll recommend
90W a second printing, and a second printing is like the best PR ever. It's almost as good as being
soon by camping as you'd like. This book was so fun, so now they must go to a second printing,
just as well as if the feeds on itself is that I've never heard of a series,
and someone said it's good, I might check it out. But I've never heard of a series,
and then I read online, and it's going to the second printing, and I'm like, oh, it must be good.
So as we know, comic books are a hot commodity, they have been now for almost 10 years.
So could this go to a screen near you, whether it's a big screen or a small screen,
and if it does, where would he think it would land to be most effective?
Well, interestingly, we spent that. IDW is structured similarly to Marvel. They are a publisher,
and they are a movie studio. They don't license their products out to different movie studios.
They make their own stuff. So IDW has a comic book called Winone Herb, which is,
they have produced the TV series, which is just starting season two on the sci-fi network.
They publish dirt, gentlies, holistic, detective agency, and then they produce the TV show that's on BBC
America. They have a comic book called Lock and Key, which they are now producing as a series
for movies. So my two contracts with IDW are one for publishing and one for a TV and film developer.
So people ask me, and I want to be incredibly honest about this, because I don't honestly lead to
one of them. Is your own book in development? I'm like, well, everything's really in development.
I'd like for this to be a TV series is technically in development, but they do have the license
to develop this as a team year film property. With the same revenues split up 50, 50 as the publishing,
and some of the things that I asked to be included in that contract was that I would be able to
write the screenplay for the pilot of a team in the series, and they can ignore that.
But I get to write it, I get to submit it to them and I get created by credit. So always be
not all society created by James Fass no matter what happens. AMC, I really want this to be
like a breaking bad, you know, sort of comedic, but also intense. Like the danger should
me real. And I love my CW super hero shows, but you know, I've got to spend, you know,
eight and a half minutes every episode, you know, winding up our relationships, like I just can't
watch the shows, but oh, she's going to be cool. Like, I'm always going to talk to
my guys for five minutes, okay. So now that, you know, we're getting ready to have issue two,
which you want, it should be available to you now. Issue two drops, five, 17 may 17th. There's
a week that this particular episode releases. Issue three will be available on June the 10th.
So what's next? I had an idea for a second series, a second mini series for an I also
society, which I'd love to continue. And if stores can sell me out, there's a good chance that I
do that, you know, I can do this again. I also had an idea for an all-ages comic book called
the Rainbow Power Girls, for sure, based on my daughters. They love super hero stories. And so
as a bedtime story, I made up super hero stories, starring them. And I'm working with an artist
and for an interior car on that project, that hopefully will be the next comic project after
this. So five issues series, I hope. And what I'd like to do is tell the same story from each
character's point of view, so that each issue would be from a different character's point of view.
Yeah. So that when at the end of number one, we get David or Laura or Sarah's point of view
on the particular mission, and then we go, they should two, we go back. And the artist
run up to that mission and then go in with farther. And then an issue free, we have a third character
and go back and see how it's started for them, and then when we get up to caught up with the story,
go in with farther. And so each issue will all farther with the story. I thought about what I'd
like to do is because use the characters and have a really good stance story as have a different
artist for each issue. Until they get to the point where they come together, and then we go back to
tell the story. It is night owl society. You can go to night owl society.com, find out
everything you want to know. Music's a little loud there, so we'll turn that down.
James Vennhaus is the creator and the writer. Piceback is the illustrator. Again,
issue one in stores now. Issue two will drop on May 17th. Issue three on June 10th.
Make sure you use hashtag night owl society everywhere on social media. We want to spread the word,
help James out. It's an IDW production. So you know, it's at comic stores everywhere.
A really great guy and we're hoping to have him in the studio soon to talk more about night owl
society. I've read issue one. It's really, really cool. And he said it earlier. You may have
heard me agree in the background. There's a really cool twist at the end of issue one that sets up
the whole rest of the story. It's a different kind of storytelling. And that's what we want right now.
We want different. We want something gives us a little bit of a refresher. Refreshes our brain a
little bit. So go check out night owl society. There's four different covers for number one. I have
two of them because it's awesome. And you know, I'm going to be picking up issue two when it
comes out this week. And I will be picking up issue three. And then there'll be a trade coming out
if you want all three together. That'll be out in August as well. That being said,
let's do the plugs. They make sure you follow James on social media and follow no
society on social media. Visit our website. If you would while you're on the web,
you know, www dot the clubhouse podcast.com. Find out everything you need to know in some
stuff you don't follow us on social media. Twitter is at clubhouse show. Everything else is the
clubhouse podcast all three words in that order. Or you will wind up somewhere else. You can follow
me on social media if you'd like. Everything is yes. That Rob Irvin that is felt ERVIM. My normal
co-host for the clubhouse podcast is Chad Womick. You can follow him at Chad N. P. G. 69. The official
fact checker of this show is Don Ford. You can follow him at fundon goo. And also email him for
information on how we can come do a live show because we love doing live shows and hanging out
with the empire. You can email him at Don at the clubhouse podcast.com. You can email me if you'd like
questions, comments, concerns, tell me to go pound sand. I am Rob at the clubhouse podcast.com
and Chad is Chad at the clubhouse podcast.com. Charlotte Parker's on Pinterest because we're more
obligated to say that. And Joe's Wormick is Chad's wife so she's probably wherever he is currently.
Unless he's working if you're listening to this during the day there's a distinct possibly
only if that happened to. Our normal show every Sunday night, seven Eastern, four Pacific is your
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Clubhouse is close and you can drop Britney Palmer into this anywhere and be pretty awesome. I'm
just there.