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Episode 65: John Kovalic Dorks Out About Comics
20 Plays6 days ago
John Kovalic is an award-winning cartoonist, game designer and writer. His work’s appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Rolling Stone and Dragon Magazine. His world of geeky goodies includes Dork Tower – one of the very first webcomics, debuting online in 1996.
John was a co-founder of Out of the Box Games and helped in the creation of the revolutionary party game Apples to Apples. John’s also responsible for the look of the fan-favorite perennial best-seller Munchkin card game. He’s drawn more than 7,000 cards for the game and wouldn’t mind a spot of whiskey now, thanks. John was inducted into the Games Manufacturers Hall of Fame in 2004. In his spare time, John searches for spare time.
NOTE: John mentions some of Trump’s policies/actions from his first term. This was recorded in June 2024, after Trump’s first term but before his second.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guests
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome everyone to Contents May Vary. I'm Angie Fiedler Sutton talking to geeky people about geeky things. I'm a proud fangirl geek with pieces published in Stage Direction, The Den of Geek, The Mary Sue, and I'm a regular freelancer for the Geeky Area.
00:00:38
Speaker
Today's guest is John Kovalec. John is an award-winning cartoonist, game designer, and writer. His work appeared everywhere from the New York Times to Rolling Stone to and Dragon Magazine. His world of geeky goodies include Dork Tower, one of the very first webcomics, debuting online in 1996.
00:00:53
Speaker
John was co-founder of Out of the Box Games and helped in the creation of the revolutionary party game Apples to Apples. John's also responsible for the look of the fan favorite perennial bestseller Munchkin card game. He's drawn more than 7,000 cards for the game and wouldn't mind a spot of whiskey now, thanks.
00:01:08
Speaker
John was inducted into the Games Manufacturer Hall of Fame in 2004. In his spare time, John searches
John Kovalec's Cartooning Journey
00:01:14
Speaker
for spare time. Welcome to Contents May Ferry, John. How are you?
00:01:19
Speaker
I am peachy and or keen. How about you? I'm in Columbus, Ohio on the Hyatt's Wi-Fi oh five for the Origins Game Fair. yeah So if I drop off every now and then, please blame the Hyatt. We'll do the best we can. For those who are regular listeners to my podcast know they know I'm gonna, my first question is always speaking of origins, origin stories. So tell me that time when you realized cartooning was something that you wanted to do, quote unquote, for a living versus quote unquote, just a hobby. Well, I guess as a kid, when you're a kid, you don't really differentiate between a living or a hobby. My mom wrote a comic strip for a kid's publication here in the US called My Weekly Reader.
00:02:06
Speaker
It was a very straightforward, ah it was called the hops, the bunny. It was very simple, but I had original art. from the comic hanging up all over the house. My mom would work in sort of cartoonish shorthand, drawing these little bunnies, of very stylized rabbits. And I thought it was very cool.
00:02:29
Speaker
And I always remember just having a pen in my hand and and sketching and drawing. And nobody ever told me to stop, so I never did. in the The turning, the big turning point was probably in college.
00:02:45
Speaker
I had transferred to the University of Wisconsin. I did a comic strip for my high school newspaper, which featured Carson the Muskrat, who is still in Dark Tower. But it wasn't until I came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which had a daily student newspaper, well, five times a week, um that I started doing a daily comic strip.
00:03:08
Speaker
but Again, five times a week, not technically daily. And i got that eventually In the city at news, in Madison's Morning City newspaper. And from there, it became syndicated for a couple of years.
00:03:22
Speaker
My degree was in economics, which I loved, but it came very easily to me. So I could skip two out of three classes and hang out at the Daily Cardinal drawing cartoons. And that was a perfect college experience for me.
00:03:36
Speaker
So wildlife did not last long in syndication. It was a small syndicate. It was, i was not ready for the work required. I did not understand the work required to do a successful comic strip.
00:03:51
Speaker
And so the syndication was a little bit of a painful period for me. And eventually, as wildlife was ending, I started doing this month, a technically bi-monthly, I guess, comic in Shadis Magazine called Dork Tower.
Character Creation and Inspirations
00:04:10
Speaker
And everything just grew from there. Great. Well, speaking of your Carson the Muskrat, why a muskrat? I've always wondered. i have no idea. and i'd not When I came up with Carson,
00:04:23
Speaker
and some of the other characters in my old strip wildlife. I was in high school in England, and I'd never seen a muskrat. Muskrat just sounded funny. um It had a nice ring to it. It was named Carson after Johnny Carson, the talk show host. And that was really it. It was the eventually he started off on all four paws and eventually he had, it well, he had a tail. He lost the tail somewhere along the way and he started walking upright.
00:04:51
Speaker
this so this This was all a gradual progression. So by the time the strip was syndicated, he was walking upright and he has remained walking upright since then. ah But I did not see my first muskrat probably until I was about 25 or 26 in Wisconsin when I'd moved over to the States again.
00:05:11
Speaker
Tell me a little bit more about the origins of Dork Tower. how did I mean, i'm I'm usually not a fan of asking writers how they came up with ideas, but that's a very specific, you know, what what decided that group of people and and those topics.
00:05:24
Speaker
Sure. Essentially, while i was working for the morning newspaper in Madison, the Wisconsin State Journal, I'd been a gamer um pretty much.
00:05:38
Speaker
since I was 14 in England. I bought the little white box of Dungeons and Dragons at the very first Games Workshop in London, out in Hammersmith, a suburb of London.
00:05:51
Speaker
So I'd been a gamer for quite some time. And Gen Con was in Milwaukee. I'd been working as a feature writer at the Wisconsin State Journal.
00:06:04
Speaker
And I convinced my editors to let me go cover Gen Con because this was a pretty big story for the state. You know, Dungeons and Dragons had been ah created in Lake Geneva.
00:06:16
Speaker
um And the editors agreed to this. So for a couple of years, I was covering Gen Con as a news story, you know, talking about new releases.
00:06:28
Speaker
This was before the huge explosion of the popular explosion of into the mainstream.
Art and Design Process
00:06:36
Speaker
It was all still considered a little bit odd then. mean, it was all new, but in the early nineties, you started seeing newspapers covering gaming more because the kids who had grown up on hobby gaming were now becoming professionals. And so, you know, ah several news, the San Francisco Chronicle, I remember had a big ah game section every Christmas, but
00:07:02
Speaker
you know I just really enjoyed going to Gen Con. I loved talking with folks. I got to know some of the folks there. And I started doing panel single panel cartoons for Shadis magazine. Shadis was an independent a gaming magazine back in the early 90s. It was a terrific, terrific magazine published by Kinzer and company.
00:07:27
Speaker
And one year, the editor, Trindle, I was talking with him at Gen Con, and he told me that Knights of the Dinner Table was leaving Shadis, and they were looking for a replacement.
00:07:37
Speaker
Could I come up with something? And I said, yes, absolutely. I would love to do something like that. And I had two choices, one of which was just to bring the old wildlife characters fully formed into this new strip.
00:07:53
Speaker
The other was to come up with a completely new comic strip entirely. And that appealed to me greatly. And by the time i had walked back to the car, the name popped into my head, Dork Tower.
00:08:10
Speaker
It was actually based on some old Judges Guild adventure supplements, adventures, the Dark Tower, ah for D&D and then Duck Tower for RuneQuest.
00:08:24
Speaker
um So it had nothing to do with the board game, with the Stephen King novels at all. And once I was home, i just started sketching. And one of the first things when I talked to, I talked to a lot of schools, I talked to a lot of kids about cartooning and art.
00:08:40
Speaker
And one of the first things I will tell them is just to start with basic shapes. So not having created any new comic strip characters in, at this point, yeah, we're talking 15, 20 years. um Yeah. ah Would have been 20 years since I came up with wildlife in high school.
00:09:04
Speaker
I sat down, i drew a triangle, a circle and a square. And if you're familiar with the Dork Tower characters, the triangle is Matt's head.
00:09:15
Speaker
The circle is Ken's head and the square is Igor's head. And that was pretty much it. The first couple of strips when it ran in Shadis were just very straightforward gags.
00:09:29
Speaker
But I think it was the third strip where Igor was talking about playing a female character, which about again, these days, that's absolutely nothing revolutionary at all.
00:09:43
Speaker
But back in the mid nineties, that wasn't quite, you know, such a done thing then. ah But anyway, that was the first point where Igor's character started to emerge.
00:09:58
Speaker
And from then on, the strip really became everybody else just dealing with Igor. Great. Speaking of gaming, how did that how did you transition then into also game designing? i mean how did I mean, obviously you play games, but what made you go, I want to create one?
00:10:15
Speaker
It was a fairly straightforward process. I had been working with Out of the Box for a few years. And yeah we would do a lot, working with the gaming company,
00:10:29
Speaker
There's a lot of game design that goes on anyway, which you don't really get credited for. You'll make little tweaks to things. You'll a little change in the rules here and there. And we had a submission come in for a game about texting.
00:10:45
Speaker
And this light bulb went off in my head. And I suddenly, i remember very clearly saying, that's not how you do a game about texting. This is how you do a game about texting. And that inkling of an idea became the game Roffle, which was a game I'm still very proud of. And I'm i'm hoping it gets a second shot at publication because there are things would definitely change about it. um But you know, you just you're around game so long. I think most gamers could easily become game designers. I'm not saying they would become good game designers, but some of them would. But you know, you just you're familiar with rules and how rules work and how different mechanics in the game might work.
Maintaining Creativity and Productivity
00:11:28
Speaker
And you take bits and pieces from things that have come before.
00:11:32
Speaker
and then you add your own spin on them. And all of a sudden, you've got a game. Great. um Now, aside from origins, another big question I like to ask is process and how do you do things? ah do you strict Do you use pen and paper or do you strictly stay to computer when you do your comics?
00:11:50
Speaker
Oh, God, no. um Now that I'm on the road, I've got to use my iPad Pro to come up with the next strip. But I prefer it's taken me this long to find the right pen and paper. I don't want to abandon them now. There's something...
00:12:03
Speaker
very satisfying about putting ink onto paper. And it's something that links you to a tradition that's gone back thousands of years. And I just cannot get away from this tremendous feel of a pen applying pressure on a piece of paper and coming out with a piece of art at the end of the morning.
00:12:25
Speaker
I use relatively inexpensive Bristol board, ah which is a thicker ah paper, but not the really, really, really great stuff. I find it's not necessary for my work.
00:12:38
Speaker
And I've got this pen. It's Faber-Castell. It's called the Artist's Pen. And I'm actually, now that I just say that, I think i got the name wrong. I've been using these pens for like the last 10 years. I'm just going to have to, at some point, I'll i'll find, i'll I'll grab a pen and give you the correct name.
00:12:59
Speaker
ah But yeah, I just, I love, it's got a great ink flow to it. I will wake up at five o'clock in the morning and my best days are just going straight to the table, ah straight to the drawing table.
00:13:12
Speaker
And I've got two hours before my wife and kid get up. which I just draw in complete silence. In the winter, you'll see the sun come up. In the summer, it's already a little bit light at five where I live, but I won't even turn on a radio, no music. It'll just be me drawing.
00:13:32
Speaker
Those are just two fantastic hours. And if I can get those done, I've got enough momentum to take me through the rest of the day. Now, the hardest part is stopping. Like theoretically, if I'm starting work at five o'clock in the morning,
00:13:46
Speaker
I should be done by two or three at the latest. But sometimes, you know, in this, in this, in the creative life, if you're on a roll, it's hard to stop. You know, it's like, it's just, hey, it's fun.
00:13:59
Speaker
My work is hugely fun. I don't feel... like it's work. Some of the business aspects is definitely work, but the drawing aspect, I joke that I'm never gonna retire.
00:14:12
Speaker
People are just gonna stop paying me for what I do. It's because I'm just gonna keep doing it. But then once I've got the art on the paper, I will scan it in to my desktop computer and then onto the cloud and I'll touch it up on my iPad Pro.
00:14:31
Speaker
So I'll clean up some of the line work, i'll get the colors in. The shading, I definitely do. I've started shading it. Boy, I guess it's been a couple of years now. And so that has to be done on the iPad Pro. i'm trying to I'm trying to break from Photoshop.
Evolving Storylines and Character Development
00:14:44
Speaker
I don't think i need Photoshop anymore. i think everything on Clip Studio,
00:14:49
Speaker
is just wonderful. And also it's not a subscription service, but it's like using Photoshop for Dork Tower is like using a Ferrari to go pick up groceries. It's, you know, um a little bit unnecessary.
00:15:05
Speaker
um I don't need all of Photoshop. Well, you kind of already touched on this, but ah you said it's a writer's block adjacent question. What do you do to kind of keep it? I mean, yes, it's a job, but it's also, you know, there are plenty of other easier jobs. What do you do to kind of keep it fresh and keep it fun and keep from being burnt out?
00:15:26
Speaker
Well, I love shaking things up on the strip. I've got a real solid cast of characters in Dork Tower now. Like over the years, the cast of characters has really built up.
00:15:38
Speaker
And I love switching between the characters. I love shaking up the relationships between the characters. Originally, Dork Tower, because Schultz, Charles Schultz, was always my greatest influence.
00:15:54
Speaker
So in my mind's eye, I always saw matt and Jilly, at two of the characters in the strip, who people always wanted to get together. I always saw that as being this ongoing thing, like the redheaded girl in Peanuts and Charlie Brown. Like they would never get together. I'd almost get them together. Then I would you know just make them miss somehow.
00:16:15
Speaker
But then... Honestly, one of I never read other webcomics, especially gaming webcomics, because I never wanted to accidentally use other people's ideas. Like, there have been times when I've repeated an idea in Dark Tower. Like, I'll come up with a cartoon and...
00:16:31
Speaker
three years later, I'll run almost the exact same cartoon because I've just totally forgotten that I had written that strip in the first place. And I never want to do that with somebody else's work. So I would just not read other strips.
00:16:47
Speaker
ah Then I came across this comic called Dumbing of Age. They made a brief reference to Apples to Apples. It was hilarious in this strip. It's made by David Willis. It's just a ah masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. it's It's brilliant comic writing and the art is just tremendous.
00:17:09
Speaker
And he made some joke about Apples to Apples being the Christian version of Cards Against Humanity. And I think that was my introduction to the strip. i I was familiar with some of his work prior to this strip. He had done a strip called Short Pact before this.
00:17:24
Speaker
And it's really wonderful because Short Pact used all the same characters. And a strip prior to that he had created, used all the same characters. But he just mixed up all of their...
00:17:35
Speaker
Jobs, all their relationships, everything about them when he would do a new strip. So the same characters from Short Pack during the strip, Dumbing of Age. And I was hooked. I loved David's writing style. I loved his storytelling.
00:17:53
Speaker
I loved his art. And it never influenced me as far as the basic jokes or joke construction goes. But as far as what you could do with a cast of characters, that shook my entire world.
00:18:09
Speaker
It was just ah this wonderful revelation. OK, the characters don't have to always be in a little redheaded girl relationship. the The football doesn't always have to be pulled out from Charlie Brown. I mean, there's great things about running gag like that.
00:18:29
Speaker
But all of a sudden, i put Jilly into a relationship with another character people love called Stell. I got Matt back together with his ex-girlfriend. you know This is all huge fun. like you know There's things I haven't even started touching on yet um since the last... and this This shakeup came a couple of years ago,
00:18:52
Speaker
and It helps keep things fresh for me. it It opens up new story possibilities like you wouldn't believe. And I'm currently working on another, like right now, there's another big shakeup in the strip.
00:19:06
Speaker
And it's really funny because the readers aren't sure if this is going to be permanent or not. You know, if if the rug is going to be pulled out from under them or if this is going to be an actual paradigm shift in the characters' relationships and and what they do and how they move forward. So apart from...
00:19:26
Speaker
just drawing a little better and always wanting to draw a little bit better and make the strip, you know, the the nicest looking strip I can. um Just throwing bombs into the characters lives is a lot of fun.
00:19:42
Speaker
Now, um I'm, you know, as as you probably know, I'm a big fan. I've been a a reader for quite a some time. I'm even ah a um on your Patreon. So I kind of already know the answer. Thank you so much.
00:19:54
Speaker
I kind of already know the answer to this. But for the audience, um how far in advance do you typically work? I mean, are you? Okay, typically, i like to be four weeks in advance.
00:20:05
Speaker
um Again, David Willis is like, Boy, i think he's almost maybe over a year in advance at this point. um But for the type of strips I do, ah four weeks is very comfortable. Six weeks is great. Eight weeks is too long.
00:20:20
Speaker
I like inserting current events into the strip at times. And yeah, so like ford is four to six weeks is great. Right now I'm working on a strip by strip basis. I've got about...
00:20:34
Speaker
One, two, three, four. I've got like four weeks of strips I could be running instead as the backlog. But I just really wanted to start this current series, which began running when I was in London about a month ago. And it's continuing.
00:20:48
Speaker
And I've been very busy. I've been hugely busy these last two months. So it's basically been a case of just keeping my head above water with the strip and at least getting two up a week instead of the normal three.
00:21:02
Speaker
Now next week I'm back home for two whole months and so I should be back to my normal four week backlog relatively soon after that. The whole wake up at five o'clock in the morning routine makes me very productive and I love it. So I'm not desperately worried but I don't, I'm not particularly fond of creating the next strip right after the previous one has run. Well, I mean, as a writer myself, um I know that there are sometimes characters kind of take off and do their own thing. Have you had that happen to yourself as well? Do you have your characters kind of surprise you?
00:21:38
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Like the whole Jilly and Stella relationship. ah That came out of nowhere. It was just this these two characters readers loved, and it just made sense. But i certainly had not planned that.
00:21:52
Speaker
I was planning on there being some, again, little redhead girl tension because Stel is a lesbian and Jilly at that point, you know, was just assumed to be hetero.
00:22:06
Speaker
Um, turns out she's bi and I did not know that, but it's wonderful because she's this very loving, open, affirming character and she is all about love and that that whole thing just really
Social Changes and Gaming Culture Evolution
00:22:22
Speaker
surprised me. And it it came around very naturally. it it came, the relationship built very organically.
00:22:28
Speaker
and um yeah, i i there was like back in,
00:22:35
Speaker
2021, was not planning on all of a sudden having a ah bisexual, biracial relationship in the comics. But again, I blame that on David Willis and dumbing of age.
00:22:47
Speaker
And it's and you for me, it's just all it is, is writing about love. You know, it's like, okay, I'm i'm not pretending to be a voice for any non-binary characters. It's just writing about two people in love. And for me, that's easy.
00:23:04
Speaker
So, you know, it's, it's, uh, yeah, ah it just came. It just very naturally evolved. And like anytime Igor opens his mouth,
00:23:16
Speaker
you know, something surprising him is gonna come out of that. um I think a lot of people, I had Igor meet up with his future self. and I don't know where that came out of. I just did this very silly idea that future Igor would be just as essentially shallow as current Igor, and I wanted them to meet. um And some of the readers were disappointed that that didn't lead to a larger series, but you know, who knows? It's time travel, it could come back.
00:23:46
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jennifer Scheiman, cartoonist, animator, and creator of 30 Second Bunnies Theatre. And you're geeking out with Angie Fiedler Sutton.
00:23:58
Speaker
Now, you've been doing this since 1996. Obviously, a lot has changed since then. What would you say is the biggest change that you've had to kind of get over? Honestly...
00:24:09
Speaker
I mean, so much has changed since 96, both societally and in our hobby, in our very geeky little hobbies. I think I never would have expected to see gaming become so accepted, not just accepted, embraced.
00:24:29
Speaker
I was taking a pizza cooking class two days ago before I came to this convention. And it was me and, i love another person, people, all ages, all all sexes at this ah at a restaurant in Madison.
00:24:46
Speaker
And somebody asked me what I did. I said, I'm a cartoonist. And that always raises eyebrows. ah nobody Nobody ever takes being a cartoonist casually.
00:24:58
Speaker
um It's like spotting a rare bird in the wild. But all of a sudden, everybody, mean i know told them i you know for further a mainstream audience, I'll go with apples to apples. For a geeky audience, I'll go with munchkin.
00:25:12
Speaker
But you know I'll drop in that I was one of the creators of those games. And in this case, pretty much everybody in this pizza class started talking about their favorite game. And, you know, you've got your Catans, your Ticket to Rides, your Carcassones. But you also had people who played Mindwave and Camel Up and Codenames and Wingspan and Forbidden Island. And it was just like incredible. I mean, it was like one of these
00:25:47
Speaker
times when it hits you just how far gaming has come because you know i was in i was in a college during the whole satanic panic with dungeons and dragons so just seeing gaming in all of its forms tabletop
From Editorial Cartooning to Game Design
00:26:04
Speaker
gaming as this giant cultural phenomenon now is amazing and and on the other hand societally again just It's very, like I had, during the pandemic, I had a, i came to a very important point in my career, I believe.
00:26:25
Speaker
um In fact, even before the pandemic, it was during during the Trump years, when Trump was president. I sat down and I thought to myself, do I address issues societally I mean, do I make this, do I use this as a valve for my own emotions about the state the world, my own feelings, my own perceptions, or do I just make Dorktower escapism for people who want to change from all of this darkness that had suddenly hit our worlds?
00:27:05
Speaker
And I made the decision, the very conscious decision, that I was going to address stuff as it happened. And it started relatively slowly, again, during the Trump years, but definitely by the pandemic.
00:27:21
Speaker
It had really ramped up. And I was joking to myself, I made a joke with somebody that, yeah, it's going to wind up with a couple of the characters arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest. And I said that as a joke.
00:27:34
Speaker
But then it did. Matt and Ken were at a black light, because Madison um had was one of a number of cities with the a huge protest. And so it's like, yeah, yeah, they're going to be arrested at this. Of course they are. This is um so a couple of strips, they're in jail.
00:27:52
Speaker
It's like, it's just what the strip has become anymore. And I'm so glad other people follow it because really I'm just doing these comics for me, you know to get stuff off of my chest, to, um, to vent, to, um, to celebrate whatever.
00:28:14
Speaker
Um, and the fact that other people dig it just, just Amazing. Well, I mean, that leads into kind of, you're also an editorial cartoonist. How did that come about? And, you know, talk a little bit about that.
00:28:29
Speaker
gar was Well, I was, I actually gave it up. Yes, I was. I gave it up back in 2000 because I basically hate politics and and I didn't enjoy it as much as I used to when I first got out of college.
00:28:44
Speaker
I kept at it. I briefly, did some editorial cartoons for a local weekly newspaper back in 2010 when we had these huge protests at ah Governor Walker's attacks on the teachers union.
00:28:59
Speaker
And these were happening right outside my studio, which at the time was on Capitol Square in Madison. But really, Dork Tower lets me say everything I need to say. um I became an editorial cartoonist by accident when I was working at the Daily Cardinal.
00:29:16
Speaker
A good friend of mine was the editorial cartoonist there. And I just sort of thought, oh, that looks fun. I'll give that a try. And that eventually got me a staff job at the Wisconsin State Journal.
00:29:28
Speaker
And that's also what eventually got me into the New York Times and the Washington Post. But it didn't. didn't pay very much, and especially once I quit as a staff member.
00:29:38
Speaker
ah Back in 1996, my wife and i were getting married and I was getting fairly miserable as a features writer at the State Journal.
00:29:50
Speaker
And I wasn't getting along well with my editor and I just did not enjoy the job anymore, especially when it came to interviewing other cartoonists. Like if the State Journal picked up a new comic strip,
00:30:01
Speaker
I would talk with Bill Amand about Foxtrot and great, great guy, um a terrific strip. But it also, i was dying a little bit inside talking with these cartoonists who are more successful, like who had their careers, you know, who it's like, so what's it like being a successful cartoonist? And the pain in my voice had to have been palpable.
00:30:28
Speaker
And in 1996, my wife saw that I was miserable at the paper anymore. And she said, honey, just quit. you know I'll support you until you know something else comes along. And within six months, I'd begun Dork Tower.
00:30:43
Speaker
And it was it was quite a while before gaming work and Dork Tower work supported, my ah were real gave me a full-time income. But in the meantime, I was doing web design, which back then was very easy, very, very easy, the 1996 web. And so i was, I eventually, know, I actually quite soon it was making more than I was making at the state journal.
00:31:08
Speaker
And as the comic work kept coming in and as the gaming work kept coming in, I was able to drop the web work and just go full-time game design, game illustration, comic strip.
00:31:22
Speaker
And that was thanks to Apples to Apples in a large part, but also Munchkin. You Munchkin is in 19...
00:31:29
Speaker
languages now, I think. You know, I'll go all over the world to conventions and I'll draw the Duck of Doom for someone and it'll make their day. And that's absolutely a privilege on my part. It's like, oh my goodness, this is the most, like seeing that you can make somebody happy with a drawing is an amazing feeling.
00:31:47
Speaker
And of course, Apples Apples became a monster. And eventually yeah we sold it to Mattel, which I still was against. It's like, no, guys, this is going to be so much bigger. We sold 4 million copies of it. And I think the last thing I looked at was Mattel sold close to 20.
00:32:06
Speaker
um But, you know, it did, these two once in a lifetime games are the reason that I was able to drop everything else and just cartoon or yeah with a little game design thrown in here and there.
00:32:22
Speaker
And I'm very grateful for that. you know I was very, very fortunate.
Gaming Career Highlights
00:32:27
Speaker
A lot of luck was involved. I sent Steve Jackson an editorial cartoon I drew back in 1993, think, maybe 1992, about the O. Simpson.
00:32:36
Speaker
ah about the o jake simpson a trial And this was out of the blue because I'd been a Steve Jackson fanboy for you know a good deal of my gaming life, um Ogre and and Rivets and the fantasy trip.
00:32:50
Speaker
And i drew a cartoon about one of OJ Simpson's lawyers had said that there was a conspiracy out to get him. So I did this very typical editorial cartoon with a circle and all these things, one thing leading to another and it eventually goes in on itself. But it was like the conspiracy to get OJ.
00:33:09
Speaker
And i took all these bits and pieces from other conspiracy theories, ah the the magic bullet, the lone gunman, the Bavarian Illuminati. So when I drew the Bavarian Illuminati, I drew the Steve Jackson game pyramid as a dancing pyramid with a top hat. And I faxed this to Steve and Steve's marketing manager got back to me almost immediately and said, yes, Steve saw this. He loved it. He's got two comments.
00:33:40
Speaker
One, there's a spelling mistake. And this was a ah theme ah from Steve and my relationship over the past 30 years.
00:33:53
Speaker
ah But secondly, he wants to know if you'd be interested in drawing Murphy's Rules for Pyramid Magazine. and all of a sudden, I'm working with one of the game designers who's had the most ah influence on my life, on my gaming life.
00:34:11
Speaker
And Murphy's Rules led to me getting a few cards for the Illuminati New World Order game. um And Illuminati led to me getting to know the apples to apples folks, but it also led to Shea Geek, which was the first game I'd illustrated totally on my own.
00:34:33
Speaker
And it ah this then led to Munchkin. So this one silly little fax back in 1993 that I sent Steve is kind of responsible for everything at this point in my life. Do you have a favorite game outside of your own or is that like choosing a favorite child?
00:34:50
Speaker
Oh, outside of my own, i will never stop pushing Camel Up. I love Camel Up. It's this wonderful camel racing game, but you don't race the camels. You're betting on the camels.
00:35:04
Speaker
And the mechanics for moving the camels is incredibly clever and fun. And it's this rare game which plays well with two players or eight players.
00:35:18
Speaker
It plays differently for two players and eight players, but it still plays. And it's got this really silly fun factor, which ah the game Cash and Guns, which is one of the ones I illustrated, also has.
00:35:31
Speaker
So it's just it's it's a light game, but it's just a huge fun. And right now, I'm really pumping. My friend Brett has got a game called Thunder Road. and And it's just, it's ah essentially a redo, a total overhaul of this game from, i think the nineteen seventy s and 80s.
00:35:50
Speaker
It's kind of Mad Max like game, but the new version is just brilliant and fun. And if you cross the finish line, you'll probably be stumbling over it rather than roaring past it.
00:36:04
Speaker
But think at the moment, those are probably like, as far as board games go, the two I'm just recommending to anybody
Convention Challenges and Closing Thoughts
00:36:10
Speaker
who will listen to. We are getting close to the end, so one final question before we get into how people can get a hold of you. Is there anything that you thought I was going to ask but didn't or that you wanted to talk about but we haven't?
00:36:23
Speaker
No, not really. um i think I think right now, you know, it's just, it's it's been, you know, being on the road again for these big conventions, I've got to rethink this because I don't think it's getting older. I think I simply forgot during the pandemic how much work big conventions can be, you know, how much they take out of you once you're done with them.
00:36:45
Speaker
um So, yeah, I'm really looking forward. This is, this is again, the last a convention for me for a while, ah probably until the autumn. And I'm so looking forward to two months at home just working and being with the family. And then for those who are interested, ah how can people find you if they want more info?
00:37:04
Speaker
Sure. ah the The main place I send people to is dorktower, one word, d-o-r-k tower.com. And that's where the strip runs. And that'll also be where I blog occasionally. And I'll throw updates up on there. Worldofmunchkin.com is the big Munchkin portal these days.
00:37:28
Speaker
And obviously we just had this... massive crowdfunding campaign for the Munchkin Big Box, which ended up making 1.3 million, um which is just crazy pants.
00:37:42
Speaker
I think that took everybody at Steve Jackson Games by surprise, Steve and myself not least. Totally blew away. The Ogre Kickstarter from several years ago, which I thought had made a million, but actually didn't quite.
00:37:56
Speaker
But yeah, so anyway, dorktower.com. There'll be a contact form there if you anybody wants to write to me for whatever reason. But yeah, that's that's pretty much, you know, John Central these days. Now, as regular listeners know, at the end of every podcast, I have a series of questions that are silly or unimportant in nature, but I still feel it gives the audience some insight into your personality. The goal is to answer without really thinking about it as quickly as you can. i call it the lightning round. Are you ready? I am ready.
00:38:23
Speaker
I have randomized the questions. First one, would you rather see Captain Kirk become a Jedi or see Luke Skywalker become Captain of the Enterprise?
00:38:32
Speaker
I'd rather see Captain Kirk become a Jedi. Okay. Favorite drink? Do have to explain this? Oh, you can. If you want to explain it, I would. Yeah, no, no, no. I just, um I think, you know, he would have the correct facial expressions for it. he would Favorite drink?
00:38:54
Speaker
Oh, okay. um It can be alcoholic or non. Okay, probably these days it's Diet Squirt, which is a keeps me going throughout the day. I'm a big fan of anything sour or bitter.
00:39:12
Speaker
um So the ah pineapple ah sorry a grapefruit soft drink is right up my alley. So that is probably what I drink more of than anything else. After that, a really nice Spanish gazpacho. Favorite smell?
00:39:27
Speaker
um Christmas, Christmas tree. That moment when you get the pine tree up, you know, it's been gone for eight months. ah You put the pine tree up for Christmas and all of a sudden it's like, this is the best smell ever. Why don't we have this every day?
00:39:43
Speaker
ah Close second, I've got an orange tree and we've never actually, sorry, a lemon tree. And we've never actually gotten any lemons off of it, but it blooms twice a year. And the smell of a lemon bloom is absolutely phenomenal.
00:39:57
Speaker
What's your go-to song to sing in the shower? Oh, it's whatever I'm practicing on guitar. that you know There's no go-to. Thank goodness it's not come on Eileen.
00:40:08
Speaker
But I'm a bad guitar player. I'm hoping at best become a mediocre rhythm guitarist sometimes. I'm always tootling on the guitar. And if it's a song that's in my range, whatever I'm playing on guitar will be what I sing in the shower.
00:40:24
Speaker
What's your favorite time of day? 5 a.m.
00:40:28
Speaker
Uh, they start of the work day. Um, okay. I'm going to, I'm going to change that. I'm going I'm going to change that to 7am because that'll be after I've had a good morning's work and when the family gets up.
00:40:41
Speaker
So then we've got a family hour between seven and eight as Judith gets ready for work and the kid gets ready for school. Um, so I'm, I'm going to go with that one in all honesty.
00:40:53
Speaker
Who would you want to play you in the movie about your life? Boy, um I'm going to have to go with Jermaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, if only because we're apparently doppelgangers. I can see that, yeah. And ah I think Jermaine needs to see a photo of me so we can see what he will look like in five years' time.
00:41:19
Speaker
When getting dressed, you button then zip or zip then button? um Button then zip. Thoughts on pineapple on pizza? ah You know, i can see it. um I don't think I would ever order it necessarily, but I'm at that stage in my life where it's like, let people like what they like.
00:41:40
Speaker
It's not going to kill anyone. i mean, as long as it doesn't hurt someone else. so nerd Dork. yeah Well, the running joke is dork is the person who knows the difference. Dork.
00:41:55
Speaker
What is your, there's the... um i would say I would say, of the two, would go with geek. There's the ongoing meme that you know you're an adult when you have a favorite stovetop burner. So what is your favorite stovetop burner? Upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right?
00:42:09
Speaker
Okay, we're fancy. When we redesigned the kitchen, we got six burners, and the favorite burner is the middle four. I lost him. Sorry, disconnected there. Did you hear the answer? we i got When we redesigned the kitchen...
00:42:23
Speaker
Okay, we got a a ah six burners. So my favorite is middle front. i was see once Once cartooning and gaming became my jobs, I needed new hobbies and cooking became the hobby. So I take you know cooking for a family relatively seriously. And the middle front burner.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yep, if it's just something going on, an egg for breakfast, some soup for lunch, nothing else is needed, it's the middle front. What's your comfort movie? Okay, I've got five. Seriously, um um um I might not remember them all off the my head. Henry the fifth the Kenneth Branagh version.
00:43:02
Speaker
Topsy-turvy, the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic. Star Wars, the original, you know which I'm not going to call A New Hope. 24-hour party people.
00:43:13
Speaker
um I love movies about the creative process. so Although when my when my kid and I have had a rough day and we just need to reset, we will together watch the final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
00:43:26
Speaker
which I still think is one of my favorite Star Wars of all time. When it's like the the big fight everybody was waiting for, Obi-Wan versus Vader. and They nailed it. I mean, i I don't get the hate from some quarters of everything Star Wars because there's been some brilliant Star Wars going on.
00:43:45
Speaker
And you might not like everything, but oh my God, that last episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi is like, it is right up there with my very favorite Star Wars. Pirates or ninjas?
00:43:57
Speaker
ah um Ninjas. And I've got to say ninjas because I'm a black belt in Taekwondo. What's your favorite superstition or conspiracy theory? You don't have to believe in it. The one i will always fall back on is picking up a penny if you see it.
00:44:15
Speaker
You know, I'm six foot four so I'm always looking at the ground when I'm walking because I don't wish to trip or, you know, I've got ah the number of times I've i've misstepped and fallen in twisted ankles.
00:44:26
Speaker
ah But I'm naturally looking down. I talk to people, I'm looking down because most of them are shorter than I am. um But yeah, picking up a penny. And then... you know You're not supposed to pick up a penny if it's tails.
00:44:39
Speaker
Apparently, that's bad luck. But they don't tell you what happens if you just flip it. So all of a sudden, it's good luck again. It's just like, OK, I'm rules lawyering this. But that's the one I will always do.
00:44:52
Speaker
And yeah, I don't believe in superstitions at all. But that one will get me every time. What's your favorite curse word? Frack. Who's your favorite either or Bond, Doctor, or Batman, or all three?
00:45:07
Speaker
a Bond, Sean Connery, ah Batman, ah Michael Keaton, and Doctor Who has got to be um number four. the fourth Doctor was my Doctor when I was growing up in London.
00:45:25
Speaker
Sorry, in in in in England, in Somerset, not in London, until college. ah Tom Baker just defined the Doctor for me. i mean, I love John Pertree. We moved back to England when I was 10, and I got the tail end of John Pertree, and I loved his style.
00:45:41
Speaker
um And I was brokenhearted when he went from Doctor Who to Wurzel Gummidge. But... but Wow, Tom Baker it was great. And i got I ran into him in London. I got his autograph um when I was in college. I have no idea where that is. It was just on a scrap of paper. he was just walking by. It's like, oh, my God, it's Tom Baker.
00:46:02
Speaker
um But i do love i i um I do love the new series and the new Doctors have been pretty fantastic start to finish. um David Tennant is probably the family's favorite Doctor at this point. So we just had great fun with the specials ah from over Christmas.
00:46:28
Speaker
I don't think I have one. um Probably whatever age my kid is at the moment is what I default to. So right now it's 15.
00:46:37
Speaker
No, I could not possibly. um yes i just like so many different foods from all over the world. I mean, probably if you pin me down, I'd have to go with my mom's lasagna.
00:46:57
Speaker
Red. And I don't know why. I've said that ever since I was a kid when you have to choose a favorite color. But obviously, you know, being a a cartoonist, every color has to work with every other color. um So i've I've actually started thinking why I chose red. And it's, you know, basic kindergarten tribalism.
00:47:14
Speaker
Everybody who chooses red, go over this side. um But i've no I don't know. I mean, green is actually a much more pleasant color when you think about it. It's it's very calming or like a nice a nice a Mediterranean blue is exceptional. um So in my heart of hearts, it's probably not really red, but I've said that ever since kindergarten.
00:47:41
Speaker
What i want, ah time travel. um Or you know just just maybe speed force powers just so I could finish cartoons a little quicker.