Human Fly Team

Voice Over (00:01):
This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. Welcome to Tuesday Chinwag with your host Lee Chalker, writer, artist, and creator of the Comic series Battle for Basel.

Leigh Chalker (00:25):
Good evening and welcome to another episode of Tuesday Chinwag. I am a battle scar, Lee Chalker, the host this evening and as always, and not Battle scar that is, but the host and that comic there B for B Battle for Bustle. Volume two. Issue one is out and available in the Comex Shop. Now the reason the Comex shop is so important is because it sponsors the live streams that are across the Comex network, bringing you content of all sorts of things, how to make a comic book and Friday night drink and draws Chinwag Buzz Comex show. There’s a whole heap of different varieties of stuff and basically the Comex shop stocks over 100 comic books by Australian creators and publishers. And you can get as many comics as you wish for a $9 flat rate. Now, the best thing that you can do to support XI buy comic books.

(01:20)
You don’t even have to buy mine, you can buy anyone else’s because it makes ’em feel good, it encourages them. And that’s what we’re all about here is making people feel good and wanting to pick up the art because creativity is the best sort of therapy you can do, I reckon and look like, subscribe, find it anywhere you can just do add to the numbers and share sharing is the most important thing because it builds the algorithms, it sends the message out, it shares with your mates, it does all those things, builds the community bigger, better, stronger, and invites more people. Here we can wash the content. So basically comments are welcome. Feel free to ask questions of these gentlemen that are on the screen. Hello, absent, how are you? There will be people popping in and out of the show as we go this evening because as always, it is a fluid show and that’s the way I like it. So for this evening, the show is the Human Fly and we have Christopher Peter and Yarn and I’m going to quickly duck around the room and allow them to introduce themselves to you so you know exactly who they’re Christopher. Hello sir.

Christopher Sequeira (02:31):
Hello, Mr. Good to see you again. And yeah, I’m Chris Sequeira, a comic book writer and editor of too many years Standing. I’ve worked on indie comics in Australia. I’ve been a self publisher, I’ve worked for other publishers and I’ve written stories for Marvel DC Boom Studios, dynamite, I dws done licenced stuff, star Trek. So you name it. I’m comics tragic and I’m lucky to be at Ground Zero when the Human Fly comic book series, which is a wonderful three nation connection, Australia, Canada, and the USA came into being. And the lovely gentleman here with me, crucial roles in that.

Leigh Chalker (03:26):
Very good. Excellent. We’re going to get into that, man. We’re going to get into that and spread the human fly word and how it’s all come together and brought this character back. Good day, Christopher, how are you mate? Thank you for watching. Now down the bottom we have Mr. Peter Lawson. How are you mate? Introduce yourself to the world.

Peter J Lawson (03:46):
To answer your question, how am I? I am good, thank you. Yes, I’m

Leigh Chalker (03:50):
Very good to hear Sir

Peter J Lawson (03:51):
Peter Lawson. I’m one of the artists, I’m the first issue of humanly. I’ve been in comics for probably about the last five years or so with, and Chris brought me on board for the Human Fly, which I was incredibly excited about doing because I used to read the old Marvel comic back in the day. So I was dead keen to get on board and had a really good time doing it. Awesome,

Leigh Chalker (04:20):
Awesome. No, well mate, don’t you let yourself stop there. I want plenty out of you tonight, mate, because I think it’s a beautiful thing, man, that you got the human fly. I’ve watched you improve out of sight as an artist and I think that you should be very proud man of the job you’ve done and the leaps you’ve taken. Man, it blows my mind. It’s actually made me really jealous Peter, and I want to be a better artist because you are a better artist, man. And it drives me on brother. So keep going, Jeffrey, beat all ready through Chinwag. Listen, good on you Jeffrey. Thanks for watching and listening, man. Now, Dr. Yarn, she hausen. How are you sir?

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (05:01):
I’m very well. I’m very well. I just retired. I’ve gone from being one of these people with the day job, which some people like having a day job

Leigh Chalker (05:17):
Never

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (05:17):
Was really my cup of tea. So I don’t think it’s before time. I actually thought when I was 18 that one day I would be a full-time comic book artist, but I didn’t think it would be 50 years later and my math isn’t very good. It’s actually probably more than that. That’s probably long enough. Yeah, so long time comic book addict, I like to write fiction as well. I do write fiction amongst my many adventures. I met this troublemaker up here on my right who has roped me into so many projects over the years, but I’m very lucky that he has, because I am not a mover and shaker, I am more just a shaker.

(06:24)
I would sit in my cave and tremble and hope that Stan Lee or some editor would come and knock on my door and say, oh, we’ve got work for you. Yeah, but probably 80% of the work that I’ve got has been through my long association with Chris. So we’ve created stuff together, I’ve created my own staff. But yeah, now I’m on board as the artist of the Human fly, which is pretty exciting. One time Marvel Property has some cachet still with certain people like Bill Sitz and Alex Ross there, people like Mark Wade, Jim Krueger, who Jim Krueger’s actually going to be involved. And as you know, bill Sitz has already done a cover for us, so is fantastic. We’ve had Peter come on board, so who’s sort of really made the whole thing shine. Dan Lynch done a great job on the colours working with Chris, always a joy. So yeah, you find me a happy man tonight.

Leigh Chalker (07:50):
Very good. I’m glad, mate, I think we’ve got four happy men on screen and look, I appreciate the fact that you are here, Jan, it’s really nice to meet you, man, because

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (08:02):
Good to me. It’s nice to talk to minded people.

Leigh Chalker (08:06):
Yes, mate. Yes, I agree. From being in far north Queensland when I was younger, it was very difficult to find like-minded people. And that’s one of the things that I’m most humble and blessed about with comics and chinwag, is the fact that I get to meet people that I’ve admired from afar and people that I can newly admire and appreciate for their efforts and all the work they’ve done. Because comics aren’t an easy thing to make people pick ’em up from the shelf and read ’em and put ’em back down, but there’s an awful lot of heart and dreams and soul and communication that goes into it, like everything. So the creation of a comic book is essentially a relationship between people. We’re very happy that Yarn and Chris, who are obviously great mates and got a bit of spark between them are here tonight. So I’m excited about that. And Peter, you’re still making me jealous, man with that artwork. So there we go. So I had to get that out of my system.

(09:04)
Ooh, a one on one time to settle in for the evening. Now gentlemen, before we start Chiche, because you are such a regular on the show, would you allow me to call you Shawney? If that’s okay? I don’t want to seem too familiar with you, but let me know because you’re part of the Chinwag family now and I’d just like to make you feel comfortable if that’s okay. Alright gentlemen. So where would we like to start on our journey from the human fly to IPI to the Human Fly International when it was at Marvel? Where would we like to go back to the beginning of what the human fly is for those out there that dunno?

Christopher Sequeira (09:49):
Well, Peter had his hand up there for a second. Pete, did you have something you wanted to lead with?

Leigh Chalker (09:56):
You were pointing up

Peter J Lawson (10:01):
Back when Marvel ran it and basically it was like, okay, it’s a new Marvel comic. Good, I’ll just get it. Knew nothing about the human fly at that point because his real tag intrigued me. But yeah, I read anything that came out back then. But that comic, I really did enjoy it. It wasn’t anything great or groundbreaking or anything, but it was a fun comic and essentially that’s what you’d read them for. And while I was reading that, I caught some things on late night TV of the human fly, like the aeroplane stunt that he wrote on the top of the whatever model plane it was, things like that and thought, oh, okay, cool, that added a different dimension to it and I’ve got every issue that Marvel ran of that out in my boxes there somewhere. So yeah, it was definitely a buzz to be able to be involved in something that had a little bit of history back when I was a young whipper stuff over eating comics. It was almost as exciting as getting a phone call from Marvel saying to draw something.

Leigh Chalker (11:14):
That’s awesome, man.

Christopher Sequeira (11:16):
Look, I can relate to what Peter said because I saw, I got the comic when it came out when I was a little kid and I can, this is no word of a lie. I can remember watching the news in the lounge room in Ledge Hill in Sydney after school one night, and the story came on about when he tried to jump the 26 buses in the stadium in Montreal and crashed was on the news. And it was like, that’s the guy from the comic I read and it was freakish. So Tony Bobinski, who may join us later, who’s half of the company, human Fly International Inc. Who owns the human flow, all the assets these days and the fact we’re doing the comic and the fact there’s a movie coming up, et cetera, it all goes down to Tony and Tony’s investigative journalism of all things. But Tony makes the point. There’s Batman, there’s Spiderman, there’s il, there’s all these great characters. This is the only one that’s based on someone who was real.

(12:41)
And that’s a kind of magic element that we’ve got that no one else has got. And what we’re trying to do with that in the stories we’re going to have take full advantage of that. But also certainly we will blend in plenty of classic sort of superhero tropes. The kind you get with any Batman esque superhero without superhuman powers will go all that way. But the fact that yeah, there’s a baseline that’s a real guy or is it guys? Who knows? You never know. That’s incredible fun. So I guess we’re doing that and I’m giving it a good mix with all the things that I wanted to see in the old Marvel Human Fly series, but they never did or never got around to do because it went for 19 issues. So if it had gone longer, some of the things I would’ve liked to have seen, would’ve liked to have done, have a cool costumed, super adversary or two and maybe yarn can put some light on that later on. But yeah, so it’s got that unique baseline. It’s a real guy. It was absolutely a real guy.

Leigh Chalker (14:10):
Yeah, that’s cool. I guess that’s probably, yeah, yeah, that is cool. I don’t know much about him. Chy, absolutely feel free, call me Shawnee. Honoured to be considered part of such an awesome family. Honour is ours. Shawnee, thank you very much mate. Ray Williams missed the show last week. Glad to see it this week. Well Ray, I had the week off, mate, I just once in a blue moon, I just needed a week off mate just to recharge the energy and the batteries and stuff and get ready to come back crack and made a hundred percent. So we’re here and we’re back for the rest of the year, so good to go. Thank you for being here. Now again, the human fly, to me, I like the concept that’s based on someone real, not a made up type of individual. I mean I’m sort of sitting here Chris and guys, and thinking back then it would’ve been a total trip out to be reading this comic book and see the dude jumping buses and cars and crashing.

(15:21)
Hopefully he made that out and hopefully that wasn’t the reason why the comic book series finished. But with this new resurgence, it’s good to get human characters. And I know Chris, you’re a hell of a writer man, so you’d be throwing everything at it and you board along yarn. You’re old mate. So he was the man, he was the man and he’s here with us now. So yarn, what was it like mate, drawing the human fly, getting that phone call from Chris to say, bud, mate, hang on, let’s have a chat about the human fly. Take me back to that moment, man, did you think you were getting invited to lunch that day or something?

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (16:15):
What you’re going to be expecting, but you’ve got to realise that I’ve had 20 years of calls from Chris,

Leigh Chalker (16:23):
Now let’s delete all of that 20 years and let’s go. I’ve got

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (16:29):
This editor from dc I’ve been talking to him, he’s interested, Mitch, do you want to draw me this many pages or a cover or some character sketches? And so I’m like, when it comes off the presses and I hold it into my hands and look, obviously this is no disrespect to Chris whatsoever. Like I said, 90% of what I’ve got as gigs and things like this is through Chris and Chris is the word infatiguable in the dictionary, his picture. And it’s so hard, as you were saying before, not just doing the work, getting the work. There’s so much competition out there. So yeah, you’ve got to have the chops for sure, but you’ve also got to have the ability to get in front of people, come up with ideas, take rejection. And so the number of pictures that Chris and I put together and this close stories, I came this close and this was one without Chris’s help to working for 2000 ad, but change of editors.

(17:47)
I moved back to Australia, I got busy doing my first postgraduate study. It didn’t happen. So look, what was it like? Honestly, the idea of working with Chris is what excites me. To be honest with you, I’m a bit of the opinion of Alan Moy. Alan Moore once said, there’s no such thing as great characters, only great treatments. And I’ve always said, I am not going to work with some schmuck. I write my own stories. I think I’m a good writer and if I’m going to write somebody else’s story, they better be a damn good writer. And as you said, Chris is a fricking awesome writer, is one of the few people I will take the direction from. And we don’t agree on everything, but generally our relationship works fairly seamlessly because we both know good when we see it. And if he comes to me with an idea and says, maybe this panel just change this or that and it doesn’t happen.

(18:52)
And I guess that’s the thing too. If somebody’s always got a problem and always wants to change things, then after a while it’s like, well, I don’t know what I’m doing or this person doesn’t know good. So we tend to stay in our own lanes, but if one of us is, I’ll comment on the writing, he’ll comment on the arts and there’s a lot of refining we help each other with. I mean, to give you an example, we just did four tribute covers for the forthcoming issues. The first one was the Gano cover and Chris said, the one I’m talking about, I said, yes, I know the one.

Christopher Sequeira (19:35):
Infantino,

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (19:36):
Infantino, sorry, Infantino, yes. And went straight ahead. And then I came up with an idea for a Captain America one. He loved it straight ahead and he said, green Hornet. And I’m saying, what are you talking about? That’s never going to work. And we went away from it and then I thought about it and then I worked out a way to make it work and it looks brilliant. And then the same with this, we did a Spiderman one again. I’m like, I don’t know, I don’t like this pose and I don’t think it, so generally I’ll go that extra yard when Chris says something to me, even though I might, I’m not convinced Chris is right a lot of the time. He knows his stuff. He knows his stuff.

Leigh Chalker (20:29):
That’s now recorded yarn. You may never live that down. Made admitting that may be on a playback

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (20:39):
Record. A guy who knows good when he sees it.

Christopher Sequeira (20:42):
Well, in all fairness, Jannis a hundred percent correct in that he can bring things up with me about, look, you’ve got five panels on that page. I think it should be six or I should think it should be four or I think there’s enough space in there. This is a really good one, this is a relevant one. He goes, I think you’ve got a particular sequence of actions happening on that page or on those two pages. And I think there’s breathing room for me to put in a little extra bit and I won’t give it away because something we’re doing soon, but it might be a guy’s falling out of a plane and he’s got to grab a parachute or a sky hook or something to save him. And I’ve got it mapped out how many panels I think we need to do. But yarn goes, I figured out a way that there can be an extra moment of tension where I can fit in another two panels without squashing it where he tries to grab the thing that’s going to save his life and something pulls it away from him and he’s got to make another desperate, clever, extra lunge of energy to get it.

(22:05)
And he talked it through with me and I’m going, freak man, that’s great. Just you go for it, do it. Yeah, you are right. That’s wonderful. Let me get out of the way and if I’ve got a dialogue around it or add up all for it or or whatever in the captions and the dialogue, we’ll do it because it’s just too good not to do. And that’s from working with yarn for years and years and years. And I know that he’s not doing that because he wants to get out of work and do something that’s going to be quicker. He’s doing it. It’ll actually make it a more gripping scene or actually convey what I wanted to get across in the first place. He doesn’t do it for reasons of shortcuts, he does it for this as like he’s in the comic reader’s seat. This will make this a cooler, more tense scene. Hey Tony,

Tony Babinski (23:06):
Good morning. Good evening in Australia everybody. Good morning from Canada. I’m sorry.

Leigh Chalker (23:12):
That’s okay, mate. My name’s Lee. I’m your host this evening, mate. We’ve been chatting a little bit this week, so welcome to Chinwag and it’s nice to have you and nice to meet you man. So I know it’s a little bit early over there, but I hope you’ve had a couple of coffees and everything because the other three fellas here are super pumped and energised talking about the human fly man, and I think they’ve got a few coffees in them as well to match where you are at energetically and things. Now just Tony, just a little breakdown of yourself for the people that are watching at Home Mate and all over the world that haven’t met you until this point. So what is your role, Tony, in the Human Fly, sir?

Tony Babinski (24:02):
Well, I would call myself the creative director of the Human Fly intellectual property. I am a screenwriter from Montreal. I acquired the rights to the Human fly several years ago while developing documentary slash fiction script based on the real life story of what happened to the human fly. And I’m also a fan. I was about 12 years old when the Human Fly first appeared, and he was a montrealer. I found out yesterday on another podcast that he, Rick Rojat, who was the Human Fly, the man in the suit is from the same neighbourhood that I live in now. So even Closer ties. In fact, I spoke to somebody yesterday and it’ll be on another podcast coming out soon. Not as great as this one of course. Oh,

Leigh Chalker (24:55):
Thank you. Maybe you’ve won my heart. You’re welcome back anytime now. Tony, look at you. Go mate. Hey, it’s

Tony Babinski (25:01):
Lovely. Yeah, this podcaster met Rick when he was six years old, right after the stunt. His father worked for the Montreal Gazette and had this guy over for a meal and said, and it was a larger fellow who was limping around and he said, that’s the human fly. I’m here for historical and for reasons of history and imagination, it’s much earlier than I thought it was going to be in Montreal right now, so you’ll forgive me. I thought there’s a 12 hour difference, but it’s a 14 hour difference. That’s why I’m late. So I’ve been developing the character for many years. I was very fortunate to meet Chris who’s been very dogged in his determination to make a new comic, and I’m really pleased to have worked with Peter on the second story in the comic. He did a great job. The art is fantastic and I love what Jan’s doing and this is a real passion project I can see for everybody working on it. So it’s just really a thrill to be involved and of course to be with you all in Australia today is great,

Leigh Chalker (26:13):
Man. I’m going to speak for the audience right now and we are thrilled to have you, man. So thank you for your time and thank you for getting up so early to be on and talk about this passion project because from what you’ve just introduced just there, it sounds like, mate, you never really had a choice. This character has been following you around since you were a young fellow mate. So it would seem that it is only fitting that you’re in there behind him, man, and given it all you got. So yeah. Yeah. The guys like Chris was just mentioning before, which I thought was lovely, is this whole production of this character at the moment is a very international, I guess, commitment between people and you’ve got Canada, you’ve got America, you’ve got Australia all working for the love of this character. Now guys, who else is working on the projects and stuff for anyone else that doesn’t know Who are the other creators that couldn’t

Christopher Sequeira (27:24):
Join? Yeah, I’ll do a quick rundown of the comic side because there are quite a few other people, really cool people involved. But Tony, after that, I mean there’s the other media side of it, films and other things that are actually in development now, but on the comic side, so we had the issue zero, which had Lead Story by me and Drawn by Yarn, coloured by Dan Lynch and everything was Letter by Stephen K. And then the second story was by Tony and Drawn by Peter and the covers were by Yarn and the variant cover was by Chewy Chan. So that’s the comic side of things for Issue zero. Volume one, which is going to be four issues, is going to be me and Yarn with probably the, oh, sorry. And I left out there was a one page What If the Human Fly that was drawn by, we were talking about him before we came on Air, Paul Mason.

Leigh Chalker (28:28):
Wow.

Christopher Sequeira (28:30):
So that’s a comic side. These and in volume two, Jim Krueger’s going to write it, the Jim Krueger is going to write the comic and volume three, a young woman named Dana Brow, B-R-A-W-E-R, who’s written comics for Impact theory comics where Jim was working and also she’s written for tv. I think she did some episodes of the Georgia RR Martin inspired night flyer science fiction series. Got a great talented person. So she’s going to write volume three. I’ve got Peter Lawson here in my gun sites to draw one of those storylines, do four issues, haven’t quite nailed it down. And we do have, we’re planning something that at the moment I’ll just call giant size human fly number one and like the old giant sized Marvel comics from back in the flyers original days, they would beat about 64 pages and had multiple stories in it.

(29:41)
What I’ve got in mind is there’s an actor who lives in Australia now who’s also a screenwriter and international actor, and all I’ll say is in the seventies he was on TV wearing his skin type costume, going up the sides of buildings and he’s interested in writing maybe something reflective of some of those kind of things. But no, I haven’t sealed the deal yet. But he could be a guest writer in giant size humanly number one. But they story being a story by Jim, a story by Tony and a story by Dana, and probably all our artist guys and all our artist guys, but that’s what’s happening with the comics.

Leigh Chalker (30:31):
Unreal. Hey, you guys are busy, mate. That’s fantastic.

Christopher Sequeira (30:34):
We’re trying to be, so Tony can tell you about the rest of the creative world of the fly.

Leigh Chalker (30:39):
Yeah,

Tony Babinski (30:40):
We’ve,

Leigh Chalker (30:40):
Well, we just got a comment here from Shay and it’s like, oh wow. Super early over there. Tony, thanks for making the time from Shay. Shay’s a regular viewer of the show, mate. So just saying good day to you. And also appreciating the fact that you got here. So while Tony lead the way, what have you got planned with the human fly mate? Now that we’ve got a little bit of the map laid out of the comics with Chris there. So

Tony Babinski (31:12):
We have a feature film and development. I wrote a script some time ago. We’ve attached a director by the name of Steven Campanelli. Steven is a Montreal born director who has made a living in Los Angeles. He worked as Clin East Woods camera assistant for 30 plus years and has begun to direct on his own in the last four or five. He directed an award-winning film called Indian Horse, which is worth seeing and a comedy called Drink Water, which is on Amazon. He’s a really good guy. He happened to be at my house last night in Montreal. We just met, I gave him an issue of the comic and a T-shirt. We have a merch programme going on. You can buy humanly t-shirts at a website called de d com. It’ss French Canadian, D-E-G-U-E-D-I-N e.com. We started selling merch a couple of weeks ago and there’s a podcast that has started, we’ve recorded one episode in French, they’re in Montreal, but another one in English.

(32:29)
And there’s going to be more coming and the podcast will be at the intersection of the story of the human fly comics, pop culture, seventies music, seventies nostalgia. And we’re really looking forward to doing it. We hope to speak to different comic creators, including the guys here actually at some point. So you’ll be getting a call from me and people in the film business, et cetera. I should also say that Steven just finished shooting, he rap shooting a few weeks ago on Clin Eastwood’s latest film. Steven does a lot of the directing for Clint because of Clint’s age now. So he’ll say, well Captain, you do this, so great guy. And he shot some parts of Stars born and free billboards and everything. So we’re really excited about the film. It’s circulating among some of the top producers here, so hopefully we’ll have some news on that.

(33:25)
And the podcast, we’ll release the interview I did yesterday in about a week or so. And then when I’m going on vacation, after I have a sleep after this phone call, and when I get back at the end of August, we’ll start. Lastly, there’s been a documentary in development with a company called Astronaut Films uk, and they were, part of their mandate was to find Rick Rojat the fellow in the suit. And they have found him, we can’t say anything about it yet, but there was a lot of press about this in Canada at the beginning of the year. So if you put the human flying to Google, you’ll see you can read about the search and they do a great job. And in fact, as Peter knows, we incorporated Lucy, the producer into the second story and astronaut films figure in She was a real person. Yeah, well she looks great in the comic and real life too. Oh, I had no clue. Told me that she kind of looks like the person you drew in the story. Oh, okay. Yeah. So they’re highly amused by the depiction. Yeah, in fact, and part of that thing is that, what I want to stress is that, and maybe I miss this while you were talking, said, what makes the human fly unique is that he was real. He really existed. And there’s no other superhero like that.

(34:56)
I insisted in every iteration of the human fly, there’s something real in the story that there’s some real historical element because the premise is that he really existed and still exists in some way, and that makes him really unique.

Leigh Chalker (35:12):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, he’s obviously still existing in the hearts and minds of you guys, man. Do you know what I mean? Who are all gotten together to champion this character to a new audience in a new generation of readers and viewers? It seems up and coming and things like that. Man, you’ve been busy. I admire all the work and the getting together. As I was saying to the guys before you popped in, Tony, man, it’s difficult to get a comic book together in a neighbourhood, let alone a country, let alone across countries. You know what I mean? So the coordination in the logistics of all of that man is very impressive and it’s really, really cool. Did you make any, have you ever, I shouldn’t say cruise because obviously there’s a lot of work that goes into it, but even just your thought processes when you’re a young fellow, Tony, and you saw the human fly and you initially felt a love for this character and you felt that connection to, you’re obviously strong with writing, being like you’ve written the screen, the screenwriter of the film project, et cetera. What sort of research and stuff went into it, man, like behind it? Was it an original story or you wanted to keep it real? What was your initial processes, man, in the early days? Well,

Tony Babinski (36:48):
We did a lot of research. I have a brother, Bob Bobinski, who is a journalist. And the reason we were able to find who owned the property in the first place was that we did extensive research and we also researched, I did some research into the comic. I spoke to Stan Lee at the time. So this has been many, many, many, many years. And it’s partly passion, but also the reality is if you want to do something that’s worth doing, you’ve got to do the work. So there’s times when I’ve said, man, this is taking too long and it’s not worth it, but we’ve come this far so you don’t stop. And it’s really paid off, I have to say. I mean, what Chris has done and the guys, it’s really great. And I have to say, usually when you’re working on something, you keep your head down and you try not to let your emotions figure into it.

(37:46)
But I actually went to pick up the printed comic at the printers because comics are printed mostly in Montreal now at Transcontinental. So I drove out to get the comic, and when I took it out, it was a very emotional experience because to see it take form like that at home was very special. And see how much passion everybody’s put into it is very moving. Like the artists, Chris, the other writers, when we were at San Diego Comic-Con last week or two weeks ago, and you see there’s fans who love the character and there’s been a huge emotional payoff for me. So I really, I’m very grateful to Chris in particular for having gone this far. Because you

Christopher Sequeira (38:29):
Are most welcome, sir. You are most welcome. I mean, I’ll share a little bit of this is definitely at the risk of oversharing, which I do far too frequently, my friends and family tell me. But we were chatting about via email on how pleased we were with that first issue issue zero a few months back. And Tony was very nice. He paid me the compliment of, I’m aware you’ve had some health issues this year, and I have, that’s why I’ve got this thing over my face. And he said, I really appreciate you persevering around your various stays in hospital, et cetera. And I said to him, honestly, and I’ll say it in public, is this, as tricky as it was, keeping that and the IPI comic ship afloat this year with multiple stays in hospital and recovery, this bloody comic was a godsend. To have the pressure on us to get that issue zero done was a glue that kept my mind together because it was work and thought and thought and work and lots of closely liaison with yarn in particular, but then also Dan Lynch and Steve Kay, the letterer, and my boss Jerry Hunt at IPI comics and IFWG publishing and Alan Brewer, Tony’s partner there for Human Fly International.

(40:05)
So there’s work and focus and work and focus, but there’s a hell of a lot of just genuinely excited collaboration. People would throw an idea out and it was never, nobody was ever acting like, oh, what you’ve done is shit. Everyone was going, oh, what about this? And what about that angle? And would this make that better? And Tony in particular, as we developed the thing, he had some strong ideas for some of the superstructure for the backstory of the human fly. It’s probably the best way to say it. And even like the history of the human fly and tapping into the grand traditions of fictional adventure characters without superpowers. The classic extraordinary people like your Doc Savages and your Tarzans and your Sherlock Holmes and all that, and the Philip Jose Farmer conceit of maybe they’re all of an exceptional standard for particular reason or reasons, and it was just an absolute joy to be part of this machine, Mr. Choco. It was just a thrill that we’re doing something and we’re building. So you’re working on a page or a scene and the whole comic, but also part of a whole vision, and that’s damn fun.

Leigh Chalker (41:37):
Yeah, yeah. Oh man, look, Chris, just to, I obviously, I’m picking up what you’re putting down. I’m seeing the energy between you guys as well and respect between each other and being comfortable to talk about stuff. But one thing is, man, is, I’ve had a lot of thoughts for you since I met you this year and stuff, and I’ve known what you’re going through and to hear you speak that this creative process was something that aided you man through what you’ve had to go through and stuff like that. That’s a really beautiful thing, man. And I’ve always, anyone that knows Chin Waggon has watched it enough, knows that I’m a huge advocate of creativity, having wonderful healing properties both mentally and physically, and it’s good for whoever’s doing it, mate. Whether you’re creating comic books or you’re a gardener or you’re a sportsman or whatever it is, creativity man is a beautiful thing. And you can create every day. And I’m just so happy you’re here, man. So it’s great that you’re feeling like,

Christopher Sequeira (42:51):
Now can I throw a line out on that, on the collaboration theme? He’s been very quiet, but Peter Lawson was like, and he paired up with Tony for Tony’s backup story, which laid down some of these big clues about the human fly history. And that was another case of serendipity and just pure talent. I only knew about Peter’s stuff because he’s in those sometimes Thursday night comic book online meetings that Tad Petrowski and Dave Debre hold. And I met him through that, and someone would say, what you drawing this week, Pete? And he’d stick a drawing up on the screen and I’d go, holy heck, why have I not heard of this guy before? So when it was like, we did another artist issue zero, it was like, he’s more than ready. Will he do it? Will he do it? And he’s in there like a shot. So yeah,

Peter J Lawson (43:55):
Bizarre.

Christopher Sequeira (43:56):
Tony and Peter are our Trans Atlantic dreads equatorial combo, and yeah. Peter, what was it like for you, mate?

Peter J Lawson (44:09):
I was really excited when you asked me to do it. What you didn’t tell me when you asked me to do it was it would be an issue one, so no pressure or issues, zero always turned out, and that Tony would be, why did it? Who owns the whole thing? No pressure there, all of a, it was really quite daunting, but okay, it’s alright. I had the time to do it. I’m not doing anything else at the moment so I could concentrate on that. So that’s good. Then I got Tony’s script and I, I’ve never met Tony, dunno him for awesome

Tony Babinski (44:52):
To meet you,

Peter J Lawson (44:54):
Me at all. It was completely, nothing in that eight pages is anything that I expected to see there, which really excited me. The little sort of backstory, intrigue, stuff that’s cleverly put into those eight pages, planting the seeds for the future issues. It’s brilliant. And it was just a really fun little sandbox to play in and

Leigh Chalker (45:26):
We lost

Peter J Lawson (45:27):
Him there.

Leigh Chalker (45:28):
There

Peter J Lawson (45:28):
He is. And I’ve worked with a couple, a writer in the past who wasn’t the easiest scripts to interpret to get one that was just so clean and easy to go, okay, this is what he wants, and it works. I didn’t have to suggest a change. There wasn’t any I wanted to make. It was just there and it was a breeze. It was just so much fun to do and such an honour to be part of it. I can’t wait to do it all. I just enjoyed that so much.

Tony Babinski (46:01):
What’s really fun is that you mentioned the international aspect of it.

Peter J Lawson (46:06):
I actually,

Tony Babinski (46:12):
I’m sorry, Peter, I interrupted you.

Peter J Lawson (46:14):
It’s all I’m done

Tony Babinski (46:16):
What I want to say, you mentioned the international aspect. What’s really fun is that I got around to writing the script while I was in Saudi Arabia in December. I was working on the FIFA Club World Cup in Jetta. And so I said, well, I’ve got time now to do it. And so given the wide scope of the character, I just thought, this is crazy. I’m writing it in a tent basically in Jetta to send to somebody to Australia to tell a story about a character in Montreal. And I got to say, as a Montreal, I love what Jan and Chris did setting the story in Montreal at the Olympic stadium with the Canadian Prime Minister. It’s just so, so fun, so freewheeling and fun.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (47:01):
Well, you can imagine how delighted I was when Chris showed me the structure that I was going to have to draw page after page. And I’m like, oh my God, he’s done it to me again because Chris, I want you to draw this thing and there’s 20 people and one looks sad and another one, but they’re all being filmed from behind and it’s like, oh yeah, I think I can make this work

Peter J Lawson (47:34):
Stadium beautiful.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (47:36):
It’s a fantastic stroke. I mean, it was a stroke of genius. I mean, it just lent itself to a stunt. It was like, what could we possibly use for a stunt? And it’s like, oh, here’s a building designed for one. So it was it fantastic. It was

Peter J Lawson (48:01):
For the viewers, a structure like that stadium, that’s pretty amazing structure. How did someone who has to basically draw that on a thousand different angles, how do you go about that? For a comment

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (48:15):
That comes from having drawn a lot, and this is one thing that Chris knows about me is I’m fairly good with perspective and if I know the structure of something, I can turn it around in my head. And there was a lot of good reference, and it may be obvious that sometimes I’ve just taken the same shot, photoshopped it and turned it on an angle to make it look like it’s a new shot or taken a detail. So I didn’t have to, I mean, drawing at the number of times that I did the amount of work that went into that comic, and because of all the things that were happening, my schedule was very tight and I had to go back to work. I was working full time and coming home and drawing that issue at night.

(49:19)
And when Peter came on book, so Chris said, I think we’re going to have somebody else draw an issue and then maybe we can cut a couple of pages from our story. And I’m like, yeah, well that’s not bad. And I said, well, and it’s funny because this always happens with these stories in the comic book business. Oh, this was my idea. It was my idea. But I know I was thinking about Peter, I’ve been following his stuff on Facebook and I thought, wow, this guy’s really good. He should be doing something. And maybe Chris did mention to me, oh, I’m thinking of getting Peter Lawson. But to me it was like, yeah, that’s the guy you should get. I mean, we all know who’s on the Australian scene, but a lot of guys who are great as semi-retired or whatever. And I just thought Peter was the perfect choice. Of course, straight away I thought, oh, well, I’m going to have to bring my A game because it’s going to be fantastic. And I mean, when I saw those pages starting to appear, it was like, wow. Somebody once said to me, you always want to work with someone better than you if you can because they will make you look good. They’re better at the people that you’ve got working with. They will lift your project for you. So sorry,

Christopher Sequeira (50:55):
The fluidity, there’s a secret about yard that I had going in that really helped, which is I’ve always known that if he has his druthers, he would love to do a comic book set in the jungle. No fricking buildings. But the truth is, the truth is he is excellent at architecture. I remember years ago he did just for his own amusement, he did a daredevil poster of Danville sort of swinging and the skyscrapers of New York sort of around him and below him. And every time I’ve ever worked on a comic, whether it’s been somebody scrolling down a city street at ground level, and you can see the buildings yarn draws really good buildings and architecture, he tells me he doesn’t like it, but then it’ll show me pages of stuff. And there it is again and again. And he never takes the lazy way out and makes some generic boxes. He really gets into, oh, well this will have a nice sandstone facade here and this will have some Doric columns or something like that.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (52:21):
I’ll tell you why that is though. There’s a reason for that, and that is because when I was growing up, the comics that I read, the stuff that really impressed me were these guys who would do these beautiful backgrounds and didn’t skim. And generally they were a lot cleverer than I were though, because they would cheat it, not in a bad way, but Colin will draw everything really big and lots in shadow and stuff like that. Kirby just doesn’t look like any actual architecture, but it looks convincing. Whereas I’m sort of like, yeah, I have to be careful not to put in every brick and window, but yet, particularly

Christopher Sequeira (53:09):
If you look at

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (53:10):
These backgrounds, they’re amazing and they really helped make it.

Christopher Sequeira (53:20):
I knew I was on solid ground because like Tony said, it needed to be real and it’s got to feel real. And that means you’ll see lots of places in the story where you go, that’s a real place that’s going to help it. And if we find a place, and I can tell you that we have, I’ve got a list of real locations where the landscape or the architecture just goes, that’s a stunt. We’re going to do it. Then we’ve got to make the stunt really cool. But that combines those couple of things together, real, the thriller environment of doing a stunt. It’s probably could end up with you splashed all over the landscape, but that’s part of the genre.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (54:15):
While we’re on the subject of architecture though, props to Peter again because obviously I’m very passionate. I notice architecture and the way people draw architecture and how it adds to the whole field. And again, amongst the many things that impressed me when Peter’s pages were coming in, I thought that the architecture was really spot on, which I think Tony probably that

Peter J Lawson (54:42):
Is a new area with me. I’ve not had a lot of reason to even worry about that sort of thing in the past.

Tony Babinski (54:49):
I got to tell you, I was so

Peter J Lawson (54:52):
On a beach, so it was all like locks in the sand and waves. And so this time I had to do a lot of research and make sure that the building in London that we wanted to use was that building and that anything you saw around it was what you would see around it. I didn’t want to put a generic city background there when the girl’s supposed to be in her tower. It’s got to be what would see out that window.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (55:21):
But that’s what impressed me, and I recognise that those buildings, I said, that’s in London. That’s a London,

Peter J Lawson (55:28):
That was the goal. Yeah, I wanted to work London Bridge in there some way, but my frames weren’t letting you do it.

Christopher Sequeira (55:36):
Next time, Pete, next time.

Leigh Chalker (55:40):
That’s cool. Now, Tony, you had something to add there. I see you’re chewing down the bottom, you want it, you want to jump in and add something? Well,

Tony Babinski (55:51):
I was just so thrilled by what Peter and Jan did. It’s incredible. I mean, it’s one thing to write a story when you see it rendered so beautifully, and again, in every detail from the architecture to the flies suit in both issues to the action sequences are amazing. Chris wrote a great fight scene. Jan drew it beautifully. My story filled with action. Peter did it amazingly. I mean, again, you asked me earlier what it was like to see it take form. That was great, Jen, I’m stunned that, have you been to Montreal? No, no. You nailed it. I mean, you got it so well. So yeah, you guys did it. It’s just astounding job. I mean, people really got to have to read these stories and these comics because I think, and I told Chris this, and I mean, I think that it’s much better than what the original Marvel run story and Artwise much better, a much better addition of the character and the art. I mean, you guys are great. Thank you.

Christopher Sequeira (56:57):
Yeah, a hundred percent agree. Look, you know one of the interesting things about this, and there’s only just as a realisation, I’m just having now because there was just 19 comics back in 76 to 78, so there’s a small body of literature in the old humanly universe, and it’s based on a real guy who had just one silky sat kind of costume. Then we jump forward all these years later, it’s almost a gift because it’s like we’re getting to tweak the costume to tweak the things that he does to modernise and make more interesting the fight scenes, the motivation, the level of mystery, all that. It’s almost a gift, Tony, because it’s like he’s frozen in amber between 76 and 78, and then he just completely disappears off the pages of history and bam, it’s like you and Alan have come along to us and said, boys, the toy box is yours.

(58:20)
Do whatever creatively you think you can do with this to make it as of now. And whereas if we were taking a character with 40 years of continuous comics or something, I don’t think we’d be as confident. I don’t think we’d be going, oh, can we even dare change the costume even a bit? Can we do this? Can we do that? But we’ve got a lot of latitude, and that also means that we’re not locked into hard story decisions about him, about his partner, mercury, who is based on a real person that Tony can tell you about that that’s an insane thing in itself. I’ll let you talk about that, but we can go places with the story that aren’t predictable because of that gap in the history. But Tony, you got to tell ’em about Mercury, man.

Tony Babinski (59:16):
Well, yeah. Some of the real life story of the fly is pretty dark compared to the lightness we seen in the comics, but there was, when they were first out there doing the stunts, people were trying to reveal the identity of the man behind the mask. And sometimes photographers are getting too close. And the guys, the Ries and company who owned the copyright and were managing the whole thing, were Italian montrealers. They’re kind of rough. And they knew this guy called Joe Mercury, who was a criminal basically, who was about three feet wide and five feet tall with a huge Afro, a big seventies afro, and they decided to make him a sidekick slash slash security person, and he was actually ripping cameras out of reporter’s hands. But the thing is, he looks so ridiculous in his, he looks like a lecture woman and diner girl in his costume. If you look at the pictures, there’s a seventies reference for you. So it was absurd. Unfortunately, he later died of a drug overdose with his son, so terribly tragic, but, and his last name was Mercury with an I at the end, and again, with these guys, and they’re creating the character. He’s called the human fly because he flies, he has a rocket on his belt, not because he’s like a fly. And so Mercury, the Mercury rocket, the whole story is so absurd. I still laugh about it all these years into it.

Christopher Sequeira (01:00:53):
So Lee, we couldn’t resist having that tradition continue with a new Mercury, but we made her far more realistic and suitable A sidekick, she’s a kick ass stunt person in training on the Fly, has a decent cool costume. She’s also masked like he is, but sometimes we’ll see her without the mask in the comic, whereas we never do that with the fly. And there, it was like part of a real tradition. There was an actual costume sidekick to the seventies, real life flight. It’s insane. So it was like, we can do something with this.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:40):
Yeah, yeah. Oh man. I just like how hearing is all talk, how organic it is. When things are hard, it can be difficult and everyone’s pulling apart from each other, but the way you’re all talking about the chemistry that’s working. One thing I do want to just ask Tony is Tony, before this story in this comic book, had you ever written a comic book story before

Tony Babinski (01:02:11):
Or I wrote a human fly comic for a precursor to this comic with the Paul Mason Drew, which that was a wonderful collaboration. He’s great. But that’s it. That’s it for my comic work, aside from things I used to draw and write myself as a kid using my first,

Leigh Chalker (01:02:32):
Can I briefly, so with you being just to touch base with you and get a little bit of your history, man, obviously the human flyer has been something for you, but you just mentioned there comic books when you’re a kid and drawing and stuff like that. So you’ve always had a love for comic books, even just not just necessarily the human fly, but all things, comic books, et cetera. So

Tony Babinski (01:03:01):
Yeah, I can remember always being fascinated by comics, and I can remember being very young and seeing an issue of the X-Men drawn by Neil Adams and going, who’s that? My father might’ve read an issue of the John Besima Silver Surfer run to me with the inhuman in it. And I remember saying, who’s an inhuman? I was always fascinated. I always love to draw. So I started to, it’s funny, Neil Adams is very formative because I remember going out to buy Hawk 180 1 with the first appearance of Wolverine and then one of the Rael Goul Batman stories at the same time when I was seven or eight and just being totally into it. So from the ages of seven until young adulthood as a very big fan of all comics, I knew the artists backwards and forwards. I’m fascinated by art. I think that Peter and Jen represent this tremendous tradition of the very distinctive line that every artist has.

(01:04:09)
So I could look at a panel of a comic and go, oh, that’s drawn by John Bassima and Inc. By Tom Palmer. I was completely into it, and so drew my own, wrote my own, created my own characters from a very young age, wanted to be an artist, and then realised that I’m not as good as these guys, but certainly understood panel breakdowns and story breakdown. So when I came to work as a screenwriter, and I don’t know how Peter feels about it, he got my pages, but you’re basically breaking down a storyboard page by panel by panel. So it’s kind of the same skill.

(01:04:51)
I think you have to just think of the flow of the action without words. So if somebody’s looking at the story without any dialogue you’ve written, it should make sense, especially under the hands of a great artist. And what it got me in writing this eight page stories, it’s very condensed. So there’s a setting, but three different settings within the story, and I just kind of hope it made sense. Chris does it much more often. I got to tell you, having worked on this and then been to Comic-Con a few times, I’m so chaffed by all of the amount of creative people who are into in this business doing stuff, I mean filled with imagination. And that’s not answering your question, but Comic said me amazing.

Leigh Chalker (01:05:34):
We are fluid, Tony, you answer it any way you wish and feel comfortable, sir,

Tony Babinski (01:05:42):
I love the whole medium. I read the Scott McLeod books about making understanding comics. I am a big fan of Daniel Close and all the Fanta graphic stuff and independent comics. It’s one of the few media left where you really see the individual hand of the creators on it. And I am happy that the industry’s healthy because you get a real person to person connection to the work. I don’t know how you guys feel about it, but that’s why I’ve always loved the medium and also the storytelling possibilities are endless.

Leigh Chalker (01:06:24):
Well, the only limits to a comic book really are the theatres of your mind and your imagination, I guess, mate.

Christopher Sequeira (01:06:30):
Very true, very true. Unlimited budget. Yeah. I’ll name drop him. My buddy Mark Wade has said that he feels that there’s more imagination on display in the new releases in a comic shop every Wednesday than there is in Hollywood in a year, which I think is pretty true.

Leigh Chalker (01:07:01):
Well, I mean, just from me looking inward, say, let’s say, I’ll just focus on Australian comics at the moment, just for the present and for this example, it’s amazing just how many people are out there. It’s amazing how many talented people are writing and drawing, creating such a diverse and vast range of comics in Australia. So I mean, if that’s just Australia, then, whether it’s in Europe or America, New Zealand, anywhere in the world, I mean, man, I’m just a big believer in people telling stories. You know what I mean? It’s such an important thing for people to be able to articulate their feelings, man, whether it’s science fiction or whether it’s slice of life, or whether it’s just cartoon comedy. Anything at all, man. Do you know what I mean? To me, it’s my favourite medium. I love comic books.

Christopher Sequeira (01:08:07):
I think because of the relative low production costs, for want of a better word, I don’t even know if production costs is the right term. In some ways, there’s so few barriers to telling your story with Cox and with the internet and putting yourself up on the web if you want to. You don’t even have to worry about the cost of printing and distribution if you want to connect with people in a storytelling format and because it’s visual as well as literary, there’s a very quick level of engagement.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:49):
Yeah, yeah. And you were right Tony too. Earlier I found through creating my own comic books, man, that when I do a process, I have varying processes I guess much like the show, I’m quite fluid with things. Each issue is different depending on my motivations and just work processes and things. And when I’m finished my pages, I like to lay them out one through whatever and through my eyes watch the flow of the story as well. And I found with comic books that that’s a really cool way and you notice what am I being clear with that? Is that working there? Could I do it better? Think I found once you get that and it makes sense, it’s beautiful. And then you come in and you add all those lovely pieces, beautiful. It depends on if you colour, you love colours and the writer comes in and the letters are so important and then this thing’s all coming together man. And then you get to the point where Tony’s bubbling and he goes to the printing place and he picks it up in his car and he gets it home and suddenly he’s like, man, this thing is real. Like what I’ve been cooking.

Christopher Sequeira (01:10:09):
Look, that really is a bit of just magic. The fact that Tony lives with Montreal. We didn’t pick that printer because of the fly. We had already been using that printer for super Australians and for Hayden, Fry’s Bristle Mouth, a Cove Horror, they are probably the best international comics printer there is. They do DC stuff and we’d had a fabulous relationship and still do with him since the beginning of the year setting everything up. So it was like, okay, well they’ll do the fly. Everything else they’re doing for us. It turns out they’re in Tony’s city and it was just like what could be cooler? So he gets to see it. First of all, team Fly international. There was something very fitting about Mr. Babinski being the first one of us to lay physical eyes on a coffee. That was kind of cool. That’s one of those nice quirks of faith, Mr. Chalker, you just don’t plan.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:21):
Oh man, that’s the best gift is when the universe over such a long period of time, you’re wondering, is it all coming together? You’re not sure and you don’t actually get to, while you’re in the process of it, you just don’t know. You’re backwards and forwards. You’re questioning, you’re doubting, you’re persevering, you’re wondering if this is what I’m here to do. But then when you get to the end and you look back, you go, wow, man, everything just slowly like slipped in. It’s like, man, that great.

Christopher Sequeira (01:11:54):
I’m going to press you Tony on this one. So Tony did a TV spot for a Canadian news organisation and they actually talked to him outside the Montreal Stadium. That yarn drew in issue zero.

Tony Babinski (01:12:11):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny. I did a television news report from there and we shot it on the Esplan ad of the stadium and I hadn’t been there, I can’t remember having been there since 1976. I was there at the Olympics as a kid to go see, sorry, football games and yeah, that was wild. I mean, I’m 60. So the other thing that gets you is the number of decades that have passed by. You go, okay, that was a long time ago, but here I am again and you get to feel like a kid again. It was very special. And by the way, the Olympic stadium is not super beloved in Montreal anymore. John, you did a great job, but it’s very controversial building. So yeah,

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:13:09):
Was I became aware of that when I was researching it, I was looking at some of the articles, I’m like, oh, okay, it’s an

Leigh Chalker (01:13:16):
Interesting, makes it so controversial.

Tony Babinski (01:13:20):
Well, boy, it goes back decades. I think that a lot of people thought that the choice of architect in the first place wasn’t optimal. They felt it looked like a big toilet seat, which it does. And it’s poorly built, so you can’t really have big concerts in there. The acoustics are terrible. So it’s an interesting looking building. It’s seldom used anymore. I think the last time I saw something going on there, there was a motocross maybe, and there for a while, our baseball team, the Montreal Expos played in there, but they were sold. So yeah, it’s weirdly though, it’s the third most highly rated tourist spot in Montreal tourist. I’ve seen a lot.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:14:10):
It’s a striking looking structure that is for sure.

Tony Babinski (01:14:13):
Right. So I temper my toilet pole comments on it. The tower, the human fly rides up, has an elevator in it so people actually ride up the elevator all the time for review of the city. And it’s right across the street from the botanical gardens, which you didn’t draw, which I visit with my wife all the time. So I’m actually in front of that. I must be in front of that stadium six times a year at least.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:46):
Yeah, that’s cool. I didn’t know that it had such controversy, but now that you mentioned it, I mean anything. What’s really weird, Tony, is we have a stadium in my small city that I live in in far north Queensland, and it houses our rugby league team, the North Queensland Cowboys, and when it was first built, it was also compared to that being a toilet. So maybe there’s some things happening here too. So it’s straight from me to you. We both share something in our method, so good on our stadiums, but I’m sure ours isn’t quite as beautiful as yours. Ours definitely isn’t near a botanical. Gardens and gardens are lovely mate, so very lucky to get to go to those. Man. I got to ask you, I’ve been watching Peter Jay Lawson for a while because Peter and I pretty close, I guess I suppose, came onto the scene relatively close I guess within a couple of months of each other.

(01:16:00)
And my first coming across with Pete was torn issue one for Rie and came out at a similar time as Battle for Bustle issue one. And I have to say with respect, Peter’s work has man, and I said it earlier in the show, but it’s just gone through the roof, man, quality, the action, what’s the motion? That sort of stuff, Pete. No, man, it’s great storytelling dude. And credit is where due where credit is due, mate, Ben, I do watch this stuff. I love artwork, man. You know that and I partake in it and I think you’re well deserved of your style, how you draw things, your anatomy man and stuff like that. It’s beautiful stuff. I mean Tony, you are pretty damn lucky man. One story, you get the great Paul Mason and then the next story you get this bloke Peter Lawson, who’s just starting a hum man.

(01:16:57)
So that’s exciting. You’re on a run, mate. So I don’t think you’re going to get Pete or whoever’s coming next to whatever story you do partake in, man, you should be excited, man, because there’s some fire burning down here. And on another note with the storytelling sort of stuff, yarn, I myself haven’t seen any of your interiors mate, but what I have seen as a lot of your cover artwork and the one, it’s not the human flight at the moment, but I just want to compliment you, sir, on the other title that you do with IPI, the name escapes me super, super

Christopher Sequeira (01:17:44):
Humanity

Leigh Chalker (01:17:46):
And make the ability to take so many characters on that wraparound cover and actually make a story of it to make all of them in motion doing things, action, man equality and everything to make sense and the sheer diversity of the characters that are on that cover. Man, that’s a brilliant art form in itself, man. There’s nothing harder than telling a story in one two pages, man and man, that was a great cover. Brilliant. So commencements to you man. And

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:18:19):
That was another Christopher Que Brain Wave. How many years did we work on that, Chris? From the initial?

Christopher Sequeira (01:18:30):
Yeah, that one was in the garage for a long time because in the end that was a jam series that had 28 Australian creators at the end of it because it was 13 different characters if you include the master villain. And they were each created by one artist and one writer. We actually went to some people who traditionally work with each other. We said, you write and that guy or gal draws, how do you like to create your own intellectual property, a superhero, but chuck it in this big Justice league slash Avengers melting pot, A crazy jam story. And they all said, oh mate, I’m there, I’ll have it done in a week. Well, unfortunately reality craft in it and a week was not quite that quick, but oh man, the results were great. And then you had Yarn and Dan Lynch who came in and coloured the final chapter and that’s how he got the gig for he replied because he did just an astonishingly good colouring job on super Australians number, the final chapter and a couple of other people tidied up the final chapter. Bruce Mutar, the brilliant Bruce Mutar contributed four pages. Paul Mason did some key little bits of writing for the conclusion, but it was just a blast and it was Jan and I really scratching our Justice League itch as well, I guess, and EAFs of fun and look, not an inappropriate dress rehearsal for a comic like the human play. There’s probably quite a few aspects of it that worked out. Mr

Leigh Chalker (01:20:28):
I see the link, man, I see the link out, it’s all flowing together. I do want to talk to you. I feel remiss because I haven’t spoken about it. One of my favourite artists when I grew up was Bill Sanko and I was head over heels to be honest with as a young fellow with the New Mutants and particularly his earlier run on moon night when he was in his Neil Adams sort of style and finding himself. And then the dude just blew out of the blocks and started creating magic and has done ever since, man. So he’s someone that is one of the great comic book artists just in general for 40 odd years. What transpired to have this beautiful Bill Kovic cover the Human Fly come about, how did that come to live?

Christopher Sequeira (01:21:20):
Look, it was a desire of ours that where possible if we could do variant covers by fan favourite artists and our favourite artists that we would try. And so we’ve approached a few, and in the case of Mr. Senkovich, I’d actually read him once when I was a fellow guest at an Aussie convention some years ago. So I approached his agent and I said, hi, look, I met Mr. Senkovich once, blah, blah, blah, but what I’m writing about now is would he be interested in anyway? I was thrilled when his agent came back and she said yes he would straight away. So then we just worked out terms and stuff like that and he just turned in a marvellous piece of work and yeah, it was just perfect. I mean, we would like to try more variant covers if the economics of it work out and the sales returns on it work out because someone like Bill, you’ve got to compensate him for it.

(01:22:39)
He’s being taken away from getting paid quite a lot of money to do, draw some various skids, so he’s got to be reasonably compensated totally. But that will definitely attract attention to the series and we sort of got a plan if we can, to have at least two covers for every issue of the series. I say we got one surprise, one that’s popped up this week, somebody who works in the gaming industry who something has come before us that is just breathtaking as far as humanly goes. And so we have to sort that out the next couple of days. There’s a very, very big name and I’ll say name all, we’ve been circling each other for some time. He’d be great as well. And if we can keep that formula and do it well because look, I guess at heart he’s an iconically designed character that red and white, nice and simple, a bit different to a lot of other characters, just different enough, but yet still classic superhero lines and probably, I don’t know how the rubber cherry brothers came up with the costume, Tony, you won’t know, but I think they sort of fluked it and just there’s enough classic superhero and yet a bit odd and quirky different that people still remember it.

(01:24:11)
People don’t forget it.

Tony Babinski (01:24:13):
I think it’s pure luck. It’s a fluke. Like you said, they around this series, I’m sure knew nothing about comics, the human fly as not a fly, but a guy who flies is an example of what they didn’t know. But yeah, the look of the character is incredible and I think where credits due in the original Marvel run, they simplified the look of the comic and it’s an absolutely iconic design. I can remember as a kid drawing that mask with the plus sign in front over and over again because a circle that’s divided into four sections with the eyes, it’s really fun to draw and yeah, I’ve had some designers create stuff, you can see that dig it in point com, but they did kind of a simplified version of the mask that we were selling on. It looks just so cool. It’s a great iconic character, so absolutely. Yeah, they completely flu into it, no question.

Christopher Sequeira (01:25:18):
Yeah, so look, that’s a sink of its story, Lee. It was just straightforward approach, obviously it rung a bell with him. He asked, he did ask he through his agent, he said, can you tell me what the series is about? And so I sent him a short email I might have attached, I’d written a one pager for Tony and Alan, which was the roadmap for the four issues that make up volume one. And look, I’ll do the hype down mate, besides all you comics fans. Get out there and get online and order here in fly number one from Diamond and Luna, right now the storyline for the first four issues is the west coast of Northern America from Vancouver down to Mexico. What if the human fly is engaged in a massive tour of key cities down the west coast of Northern America, three countries, that theme of uniting, et cetera.

(01:26:27)
I’ve chucked it into the storyline, but Mexico instead of Australia and he’s on a tour and the entire tour is fraught with danger and suspicion and all kinds of stuff from all different directions. And he’s where you get plugged, Mr. She Hosen and we introduce the fly’s first nasty mast and costume villain, all his own, a guy called Fire Sword and Yarn did a couple of designs of that and Tony and Alan Brewer reviewed that and Jerry reviewed that, gave us some feedback on that. I dunno if you want to talk about that design process Yarn or Tony?

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:27:18):
Yeah, well look, Chris always has a big hand in everything. So he had a lot of ideas about how the character should look, which is, as I said, this is before you came on Tony. Chris and I have been working together for over 20 years, so we have a fairly seamless process of just bouncing ideas off each other, whoever has the core idea, but certainly with the fly, I think Mercury that just came out of my head, the design for her, but with Fire Sword, Chris had a lot of ideas and I added a couple of things just as I went in and Chris said, what’s this and what’s that? And I explained, oh, he’s got, because I think, did I even open finger gloves at the time? You said it looks cool, but it wouldn’t be leaving fingerprints everywhere. So I covered up the gloves, but and then we shot it over to Tony and sorry, my Alan, Alan, Tony and Alan and yeah, they came back with some ideas which are great.

(01:28:50)
So it is all about the product. So if somebody has a reason for doing something or want something, it just makes sense to go ahead and usually people, if you’re working with the right people, the right people will not fix something that’s not broke. They don’t need to put their mark on it. And you find out over time who is making suggestions for what reason and the ones that are making the suggestions for the right reason, those are the people you keep on working with. The fact that Chris and I have worked together for 20 years, that says a lot. That says a lot.

Leigh Chalker (01:29:38):
Yeah. Well I think, man, from what I’m seeing here, Jan, is there’s a distinct lack of ego man between in any of you. It is like all passion talking. I mean talking to Tony now, seeing his passion for this human fly, man, I’ve spoken to Chris numerous times, I know how passionate he is and I’m seeing again that your vibe and often, I know Peter is super passionate about his comic books as well. He loves his drawing and things, and I think it was Roky once said to me, believe it or not, the best collaborations, the ones that lack ego, they’re the ones that do bring something to the character and you can put yourself aside to give to the story. And I always kept that in the back of my mind. It’s one of those good pieces of advice, man that I’ve received over doing Chin Wags and things like that. So I think it’s, yeah, I’m with you, man. It’s like I get really excited about these shows. I do apologise if I get a little bit fast paced and up and down and just enjoy listening to people like

Peter J Lawson (01:30:50):
You’re dead right there. I actually got in the early stages of collaboration with Tad that I can’t go into much detail.

(01:31:01)
It’s a dark ne story. It involves a character that EE is used in another comic, and we’ve been able to mesh them together really seamlessly with something TA already had in his head. So I’ve got his basic story run down now of what he wants to do with it and I’m like, dude, this sequence you’ve got here that you reckon it’d be two pages, no, it’s got to be six, we’ve got to make that scene. It needs to be this. And Chad’s like, yeah, that makes sense, let’s do it. It’s just back and forth and yeah, I’m keen to see where this one will go as we work through it. It’d be fun

Christopher Sequeira (01:31:48):
Just to finish off that fire sword story again, going back to Tony’s brief with the whole thing. So we had to design a costume super villain for the fly. He really needed one, but like Tony said, this is the real world, the fly’s in the real world. So I made it, my starting position was let’s make it grounded. So he thought of what you would expect for the super villain equivalent of somebody may be in charge of a rogue militia. So it’s sort of grounded in that kind of stuff, which of course iss a perfect contemporary villain for any sort of thriller storyline. So we were able to get reason for a strange name like Fire Sword reason for keeping his facial features hidden most of the time and reason to be one badass, scary, dangerous person if it comes to physical combat.

(01:32:53)
But he’s not so crazy that okay, he’s dressed like the Joker or the Penguin, which wouldn’t make a lot of sense. It’s sort of grounded in a particular thing that we’re all familiar with. We about militia groups with their own code and their own brands and their own tattoos and all that stuff. So it sort of makes sense when he was designing it. And then the comments back from Tony Allen and even Jerry Hunt and Jerry actually, I had some comments about the ease of movement in version one of the costume because Jerry does karate and he said, well, if this guy’s a fighter, he’s got to have a little bit more ease of movement than the top that Yarn did on the first pass. So yeah, it was a good melting pot of ideas.

Leigh Chalker (01:33:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s cool man. I just like the fact that you’re all involved across the whole platform man internationally with Tony and the other gentlemen and stuff involved as well, it really does show a love for the character and great collaboration men now issue Zero is out now, it has that

Christopher Sequeira (01:34:19):
Issue zero. Yeah, issue zero would probably still be available in comic shops. I don’t think it would’ve come off sale everywhere. And if your comic shop has run out, you’ve probably got a chance of asking them if Diamond or Luna have got any extra coffees to ship, because we did do a slight Overprint as they call it, which is about a 10% extra in case Eco get spoiled or there’s a late rent surge. So even if your shops sold out, ask them, they can look it up online with Diamond and Lunar immediately and see if they can get one shift the next week. That’s easier to do. Issue one goes on sale third week of October. That’s the one with either the yarn she in tribute to Batman and Robin Carmine Infantino cover or the Bill Kovich cover.

Leigh Chalker (01:35:21):
Very good. Okay.

Christopher Sequeira (01:35:24):
And that’ll be issue one and then it’s bimonthly October, December, February the first four issues go there.

Leigh Chalker (01:35:36):
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s cool. Alright, so we’re starting to hum along with the human fly now. So Tony over in Montreal and stuff, man, you obviously would’ve taken her around to some of the comic book conventions and things like that to see what people are thinking about the comic book. You’ve got a good vibe happening in the hometown there.

Tony Babinski (01:35:58):
Well, I didn’t do much in Montreal. I did a lot of press here because I was having problems getting in touch with the Comic Con here, but we did go to San Diego two weeks ago, so we gave a couple of panels at San Diego. They were very well received, people were quite excited to see the variant covers and we’ll be going to New York in September, October as well. We’re trying to line things up for New York, so we’ll be there when issue number one comes out. There’s a lot of interest. People are intrigued by the character, the comic, by the art, by the story, so I think we’ll do what we can. There’s some talk of me going to Winnipeg again. I found out yesterday that the person I did a podcast with yesterday is a rep for Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and Winnipeg. So we will do as much as we can to get this thing out there and known and

Christopher Sequeira (01:37:06):
Winnipeg would be good. What about 30, 40,000 people?

Tony Babinski (01:37:11):
Yeah, they said about 40,000 people actually. Yeah, Winnipeg is pretty far flung, I have to say it’s pretty remote and it’s the knife capital of Canada I’ve heard, so I’ll have to, I heard yesterday, but yeah, I think it’d be interesting to go there and they have good guess, so I’ll be pushing it where I can. I’m only a six hour drive away from New York City and New York has got the critical mass of people. It’s a number two convention, so I’d rather push devote my time to bigger Comic-Con and bigger markets. But this is an ongoing project so by next year when Montreal rolls around, there’s an opportunity to do a panel. He’s still a homegrown character, so I’ll be where I can when I can.

Christopher Sequeira (01:38:09):
Awesome. That’s fantastic. Tony, are you allowed to say anything much about the animation idea for the Inflow?

Tony Babinski (01:38:21):
Well, we’ve been again the producer and I’m running out of battery parts, so I may cut off. I hope I don’t, the producer of one of the people who’s involved in the feature film scripts has got a connection to an animation company in the UK and they’re looking for ideas. And I want to mean, again, this is so preliminary, but to me the fly, I really would like the opportunity in an animated film to tell more of the Flies backstory, which is more of the World Newton thing that could go back a couple of centuries where he could meet some famous characters from fiction or their equivalents like Sherlock Holmes or Dracula. I know Piton is a big fan. I’m playing with the idea that there’s some kind of relationship between the two characters over time. And to me for the fly in the Marvel origin story, he had a car crash in which his family died. And to me he’s the character who’s trying to reestablish his own family all the time. So I think that over, what I’d like to show is that over his long history he had a somewhat troubled relationship with his family. He may have been a court gesture actually at some point. Oh

Christopher Sequeira (01:39:42):
Tony, that is just, you’re getting read something from me later on this week that you’re going to love that you just said that.

Tony Babinski (01:39:53):
Okay, great. I love it. So I’d really like to be able to explore that and in an animated film for all ages, see him trying to rebuild a family and maybe a relationship with a kid. And so again, our canvas is so wide, we do so much that again, the feature film based on the real life story and there are fourth wall elements where we bring in the actual superhero and the potential of the property. What’s really been fun with working with Chris is developing a whole mythos outside the real life story that’s so meaningful. I would, that’s an opportunity. I have to write it and I have to write a treatment. It’s been a crazy summer, so I’m hopefully maybe in a tent somewhere in the desert somewhere I’ll have time or on a plane or in a hotel room or something. I have a pretty nomadic lifestyle with my work these days. But yeah, I want to get to it for sure.

Leigh Chalker (01:41:08):
That’s awesome, mate. I’m just going to jump in Tony, and if your battery does run out, I would like to just think before it does. So I’m so very grateful that you found time to come on this little programme and visited the little community here, COMEX, that’s been set up by my friends Shane and Kerry, and very grateful man for your time and for you sharing your stories and your love of the character and comic books and things like that. Man, by no means do I want you to leave, but I just felt like I should pass on my gratitude just in case your battery does go dead, man, and that I don’t get another opportunity to thank you.

Tony Babinski (01:41:59):
Well you’re very welcome. I think it is a pleasure to meet you. It’s so great to meet you and Peter too online like this and to see Chris and to be with you in Australia in a farflung part of the Commonwealth, we all have the queen on our money.

Leigh Chalker (01:42:19):
Indeed. Indeed.

Tony Babinski (01:42:20):
Might be the king soon. So yeah, really great to meet you guys. I will take this opportunity to beg off, I’ve got to get my day started, but we’ll be in touch and hopefully we’ll speak.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:42:30):
It’s great being able to put a face to the Canadian side of the operation. So yeah, it’s been lovely hearing you talk and getting to know the rest of the team a bit more. So

Tony Babinski (01:42:46):
Thanks. Thanks so much.

Christopher Sequeira (01:42:48):
Alright, take care Tony.

Tony Babinski (01:42:50):
Okay, take care.

Christopher Sequeira (01:42:54):
An absolute gentleman.

Leigh Chalker (01:42:56):
Indeed, indeed. And full of passion and full of passion for the human fly. So gentlemen, while we’ve covered the human fly with the boss and we’ve seen his passion and what’s happening in the works, would you like to talk about some other projects that you’re working on at the moment and have a little gas bag for a while to promote yourselves while we have the opportunity to do so?

Christopher Sequeira (01:43:27):
Peter, maybe you go first mate, because you haven’t had a chance to try in a bit, and I know you’ve got lots of things going with Rie comics

Peter J Lawson (01:43:38):
Absolutely heaps right now where issue three of torn has just come out and we are very happy with the way that one’s come up. I’m trying to remember who was involved. Hang on a second, I’ll pick it up because my brain’s gone. Just a second.

Leigh Chalker (01:44:02):
Go to your portal, Pete. Everyone’s got a comic book portal. I do. It’s just out of reach.

Peter J Lawson (01:44:08):
Yeah, just

Leigh Chalker (01:44:09):
There we go.

Peter J Lawson (01:44:11):
So yeah, that’s

Leigh Chalker (01:44:12):
A Tony Menzie cover.

Peter J Lawson (01:44:14):
Tony Menzie cover, which was was, yeah, there we go. Which is a lovely Tony Menzie cover. Yeah, Eli, how do you pronounce it? I can’t remember. No Glasses. Aine he wrote. It’s a great guy actually, I met him after he had done this. Graham Jackson did the colours, which

Christopher Sequeira (01:44:48):
Amazing. Yep, he’s fantastic. Graham Jackson,

Peter J Lawson (01:44:53):
Just an amazing job on the covers on this one. And so this one is out now and that’ll pick that out on referee’s website. I believe Issue four is almost finished script and Artwise,

Leigh Chalker (01:45:11):
Which

Peter J Lawson (01:45:11):
Is my debut at writing as well.

Leigh Chalker (01:45:14):
Well

Christopher Sequeira (01:45:14):
Done.

Peter J Lawson (01:45:16):
And I’m just about finished the final script, which will go off to Tad Petro for an edit. So I’ve do in his hands that he could do what he needs to fix it because I’ve never written before, so we’ll see how that goes. Issue five has also been started. I’ve got the first five pages laid out for that one. And as I said earlier, in the early stages of working on a dark ular one with Tad, which should be very exciting as well. Painful

Leigh Chalker (01:45:54):
Man. You’re busy.

Peter J Lawson (01:45:56):
Very busy. Yes, it’s

Leigh Chalker (01:45:58):
Good. It’s good.

Peter J Lawson (01:46:01):
It’s almost finished. A poster slash cover for Skies Cabin Library and for Hans Lisa Ray Comic as well. So plenty on and very keen to get into some more human fly stuff as soon as that becomes available

Christopher Sequeira (01:46:21):
Too. I was talking to Jim Krueger today actually, so he thinks he’s got his story worked out the broad strokes of these issues, 5, 6, 7 and eight. So that’ll develop I guess. And yeah, we’ve got you in the cross airs feet for that one

Peter J Lawson (01:46:45):
Actually, every time I think of that, that blows me away to work with a writer like that.

Christopher Sequeira (01:46:51):
Well mate, look much as I love you as a human being, that’s not why you are under consideration for doing it any anymore than yarn is because he’s a nice player. It’s because you can do the work and you can do it. Well,

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:47:13):
I’m not drawing a Chris Sequeira comic because I like him. We can go and have a beer if I like him, but I’m not.

Christopher Sequeira (01:47:24):
Exactly. And look, and Lee, that’s the interesting thing because with IVI colleagues, Jerry Hunton owns a company in his financing thing. I can’t just give work to my mates because I like ’em. Now I’m making choices about people skills and whether I think they’re reliable and dependable, et cetera. I’ve got to make that Now, if there’s a little bit of personal knowledge, et cetera, that can take away some of my stresses of whether I can rely on them, whether they would be an easy person to work with. But when I say easy, you just mean professional. And Jan I know, and even Peter I know have got stories about working with people they wouldn’t actually call professional and how painful and how it just ruins a job. Forget about the money. You just don’t want to do it if people aren’t professional. And professional means you don’t have to piss in someone’s pocket, but you just need to be pleasant and well managed. You don’t have to grovel, but some people are difficult and rude for no reason and you just go, oh God, making something that should be joyful into something I’m dreading.

Leigh Chalker (01:49:08):
Yeah, you don’t want to work with men, you don’t want to work with those people or hang around with them in life anyway. Well,

Christopher Sequeira (01:49:14):
No, no, they can turn that fundamental act of creativity that we’ve been talking about all evening. They poison it and you just got to walk away.

Peter J Lawson (01:49:28):
Personally, if you’re in that environment, you can’t put your best foot work on paper. No, it’s not going to come out of you. You’ve got to have a bit of love for what’s there. I’ve just expressed my complete thanks to Gary Della who got me into this whole comic thing and he has been so supportive and given me so much rope when I needed it to do things. So much encouragement. I wouldn’t be doing this without him.

Christopher Sequeira (01:50:01):
That bloke, he always seems so calm. He just seems like the guy that would be the placid centre of the cyclone, it could go on around him and he always gives me the impression that he would just stand on his two feet and he’d be the calm place with chaos is going on. He doesn’t seem to get ruffled.

Peter J Lawson (01:50:29):
Yeah, he is a steering ship. There’s so many people putting stuff into, he’s dragging this person from here and this person here and putting them together and

Christopher Sequeira (01:50:41):
Yeah, he’s a very nice gentleman. I can see why you’d want to keep going back and working for him mate.

Peter J Lawson (01:50:51):
He handed me Torn, which has been his love child for a lot longer than a lot of people realised from way back when he did before he did the original referee comics and he handed me that to do on the strength of a not very good Wonder Woman drawing and okay, I’m going to redo it because compared to Earth looks dodgy now. But that was a real leap of faith to throw that to someone who hasn’t done it before and to, oh yeah, not only that, but to design the look of these characters to design gum torn the league of the Persecuted, Billabong, all that, and to come up with designs of that little that’ll work and that he’s happy with. And he told me what he wanted, what his idea was.

(01:51:44)
I honestly don’t think I did a lot of redesigns for one. I think most of them just I did them. They goes yes, which was kind surprising I think. And then Cole in this issue three there, she went through a few changes before we nailed down on her, but that was as much around how we wanted to present her as a character. Said that the way she looked had something to do with what she was standing for as well. She’s bit more than just a chicken, a fancy costume. She’s the spirit of the Barrier Reef and she needed to portray that goddess mobility in some without and to be aquatic without being something that’s been done a thousand times before. That was a tricky part. We got her worked out and I’ve twi through a bit since as well. But yeah, he is just so supportive. He just send him stuff and he’d never nagged you. He’s like, oh, how are you going with that? On you go,

Christopher Sequeira (01:52:59):
Good.

Peter J Lawson (01:53:03):
That’s what I found with doing the flyer as well, that there was a lot tighter deadline than I’ve had before, which was fine, but Chris was great. Everyone on the chat was great, Tony was great, and if I had any issue that I wanted to bring up, it was just brought up, dealt with and move on. And there weren’t any day because the communication lines were just so open.

Christopher Sequeira (01:53:36):
The other thing, and here’s a little peek inside the tent, Lee, at one stage we had a little Facebook group just like a chat window opened up and as Dan Lynch was doing the colouring, he was posting up both the pages finished, but also the pages with the flats or the colours first and Yarn was able to chime in and say, I was thinking that that would be a bit like this or a bit like that or whatever, or that’s freaking perfect, Dan, et cetera. And we’re actually, we could all see it. We could all see it in real time and you didn’t have to go looking for, sorry everyone, I’m going to give Mark Zuck a thumbs up because Facebook, we could just see it and you get a ping and if you’re busy you don’t look at it. But if you’re not busy you go, oh shit, there’s another page of dance. Oh nice. And then ya would come in if there was a correction, he could make it. And the same with Steve Kay on lettering on both this project and another book he’s doing. Dark Detective Sherlock Holmes for us, the lecturing for that pages has come through. What do you think guys? Ding, dinging, ticking, ding, very live and engaging and everybody’s eyes are on it. It’s fully transparent and of course we’re all getting excited. We’re actually getting the fricking thing done

Leigh Chalker (01:55:24):
Too. It adds to that enthusiasm and then everyone’s seeing things come in and you get that fire burning and in its own way, those little chats with creatives and stuff like that do create bonds and friendships and little communities within themselves, man. So you become tired of working together and stuff too. I’ve had a few of those with friends of mine that have done work with each other, but man, I’d like to just second that Gary Della comment about what a calm and very genuinely nice fellow he is because he’s the guy that gave me my shot battle for bustle. And when I was becoming more engrossed on a community aspect with Calm X and the shows like Drink and Draw and I guess doing more live streams and things like that, one of a conversation that I had to have with him at the time, which I was quite nervous about, he was most gracious and understanding in the fact that for me as a creator and what was happening at that timeline, that it was okay for me to take battle for bustle from RIE and go to Comex and put it into this part of the community.

(01:57:03)
And I thought it was going to be a very difficult conversation. It was a long conversation, but it was one of understanding once we communicated and he’s been a constant supporter of the comic book and things like that. So yeah, I second that man. I think very highly of Gary Della and the opportunities he provided me in the early days and that as well man, and how he’s handled himself and stuff too, just between him and I. So yeah, I get behind Rie and Gary LER for anyone out there in Australia as well. Absolutely. Yeah, very nice fella. So Dr. Jan, what do you have coming up mate, other than the human flight and your constant, your architectural illustrative skills that have been so heavily discussed this evening and are you keen to get back into drawing some jungles or perhaps snow and blizzards just for a bit of a holiday and a break?

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:58:15):
Well, drawing the figures, that’s all the fun. I would just draw one big long fight scene comment, it’s like two mutt and speak the shit out of each other. That’s my jam. But I would love to draw a Caza comic. That’s the sort of thing that dinosaurs jungles, I like lash organic stuff, but yeah, I’m not thinking too much about anything other than the human fly. But Chris and I are always talking about five different projects anyway and the projects, I mean we’re loving working on the human fly. It’s a great project, but

Christopher Sequeira (01:59:03):
Oh, you can tell him about our alliance with h HP Lovecraft.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:59:09):
I was thinking about well why don’t you tell him

Christopher Sequeira (01:59:13):
From

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (01:59:14):
Tell what? I can’t wait to see that in print.

Christopher Sequeira (01:59:23):
Yeah, so the first bit is we’ve done an eight page black and white comic in that’s going to be in a book coming out in March next year. All the rest of the book is short stories by big name writers like Joe Lansdale, Jack Dan, big international names, and some big local names as well. It’s called, and I can talk about it because they put a slide up at San Diego Comic Con for us. It’s called Into the Kaul verse Love Crafty and Tales in other literary realities. And so basically we’ve said to some of the best writers in fantasy do HP Lovecraft meets whatever and people have done so. It’s nearly all original, although there’s about two three reprints. One reprint is, I’ll mention it because it’s a great story, big name writer and I’ll make you laugh and it’s a perfect thing. It’s Joe r Lansdale, that really hard world horror writer from Texas.

(02:00:39)
Joe r Landale has written basically h HP Lovecraft meets Huckleberry Finn. Right, okay. It’s this amazing story called Dread Island, but we’ve got Ramsey Campbell doing sword and sorcery like a cones barbarian of his creation meets Lovecraft. We’ve got American Peter Rollick and who’s a famous lovecraftian writer over there and Vibrator Sano have done Lovecraft’s re animator meets a dainty old English lady detective in an English country village. I wonder who that could possibly be. So yeah, it’s just crazy stuff like that. So yarn and I have done the only comic in the thing, a black and white comic, HP Lovecraft, if he maybe stumbled into the universe of four cosmic powered astronaut superheroes from the 1960s, a family of four.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:02:00):
It’s a fantastic story, Chris.

Christopher Sequeira (02:02:03):
Its a fantastic Yeah, it’s fantastic.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:02:06):
Yeah, it sounds fantastic. It’s fantastic comic book fans.

Christopher Sequeira (02:02:14):
That’s right. It’s fantastic for a lot of reasons.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:02:19):
A wonderful thing.

Christopher Sequeira (02:02:21):
That’s right. And like Kirby your enthusiasm.

(02:02:27)
That’s right. But we’ve done that and there is another project with a love crafty invent that is a comics project and all we’ve done so far is discuss it ya and I, but it could be our next long form collaboration. It’ll be a hundred percent creator own, but it picks up on some of the themes and some of the tone of the lovecraft slash ou with us while still being it’s completely own thing and still being embracing some of the aspects of probably the last 50 years of superhero comics that the things that we both like and we might do that next after the Human Flyers as a Ya Me thing. There’s probably eight really strong issues in there and it would be a meaty sort of a read yarns really good too with, and we riff on this stuff, that whole sort of world of intellectualism and critical thinking and reflecting on at the risk of sounding like an utter wanker, existential type of issues and philosophical issues.

(02:04:13)
Is there an afterlife and all that kind of stuff and just even the way humans try to grapple with that and argue with each other about that and try to kill each other. Just even discussing those things. And it strikes me as really interesting to try and inject even on one layer, it was just one skinny layer in the story sandwiches or cake or whatever, some of that into something that’s got tropes of horror and action and a bunch of other stuff. So it’s early days yet, but it’s got aspects that yarn could design his heart out. He could go, right, we could kick around, okay, that’s going to be character A VCD and E and okay, we draw from horror and lovecraft and fantasy, but what’s our original spin? We’re going to put her and young could go berserk doing that stuff.

Leigh Chalker (02:05:16):
I love your enthusiasm. I’m looking at yarn down here and I’m watching you all Enthusiastic man and dropping bombs and stuff like that, and I’m looking at yarn just out of one eye, two down here and he hasn’t moved and I’m not sure whether it’s internal excitement or he is actually sitting there like, oh my God, lucky I’m retired. Chris is just inundate me with all this imagination, man, that’s awesome man.

Christopher Sequeira (02:05:44):
But again, because we’ve got that free flowing relationship, the feel of this one is we own the intellectual property a hundred percent ourselves. No one’s going to tell us what to do with this one. It’s a story that we’re going to push each other to make it a good solid and not self-indulgent story, but no one can say, are you going too far in that territory or that territory that’s not populous enough or whatever. We can actually push ourselves a little bit, go into not the same old story tropes and ideas that you might have to pull back to if it was for a commercial work for hire kind of thing. So yeah, it just gives us a few other opportunities. So that’s a juicy one. Not sure if we’re going to bite that one off next and Jan Yarn hasn’t said that. Yeah, that’s the one I think I want to do next, but we both like it. We both know that we’ll have a lot of interesting cups of coffee over it.

Leigh Chalker (02:06:56):
Yeah, yeah.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:07:00):
We’ve got

Leigh Chalker (02:07:01):
Lot yarn

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:07:01):
Projects up in the air, so we need to live well into the next a hundred years in order to get everything done.

Leigh Chalker (02:07:16):
Yeah, yeah. No mate, but that’s the beauty of the imagination, isn’t it? It’s like I reckon, I reckon I have ideas all the time that I’m always taking notes man and pinning on the wall and notepads and stuff, and I think at the moment that’s the one I’m doing next and then I forget about it and I’m onto something else and it’s just the beautiful fluidity of a fertile mind mate, you know what I mean? And just having stories that you want to come out. Actually, I like where you go and Chris with the thoughts and stories of existentialism and stuff like that, man, because it’s like, I think those sorts of ideas and that are important to think of whether in a deep sense or just a light sense, you know what I mean? When I think they add a lot of depth to stories and things like that. Some of the best stories,

Christopher Sequeira (02:08:17):
The interesting thing about Lovecraft Deana as one particular territory to play in is a lot of writers who followed in Lovecraft’s footsteps in the succeeding decades right up until now, and it’s a hundred years of this stuff, a lot of riders particularly who are influenced by a guy called August who sort of claim he took control of the Lovecraft estate more or less, but he certainly did publish Lovecraft stuff after Lovecraft died quite a bit. August wrote quite a few follow on pieces and they were well-meaning pieces and DLI wasn’t a bad writer, but he used to boil ’em down into almost a Christian template. There is a hoard of supernatural beings that are heavenly and good and there’s a hoard of supernatural beings that are dark and evil.

(02:09:22)
There’s the, what is it? The old ones and the old ones and the something or others. Anyway, so he would do it that way and a lot of rider have gone that route, whereas for me, I sort of loved craft himself was an abject materialist who didn’t believe in any kind of religious system or cosmology, and in some ways he sort of snuck science fiction in as the explanation for all this weird supernatural stuff. Instead of demons from the eternal flames, there was evil creatures climbing through strange alien geometry to get into our universe. And that I think is for me, a really interesting idea to play with. Is it science or is it not science? Can you have cosmic horror? Can you have spiritual horror if there’s no spirits, if they’re just beings from another? And how do you deal with that and what happens if the protagonists disagree with that and who say who’s right? And it’s almost, I’m attracted because it’s such a large playing field.

Leigh Chalker (02:10:52):
Oh man, it is. It’s fully open. There’s so much space you can work with in that

Christopher Sequeira (02:10:58):
And you can do all that. You can do all that and you can still have a shaath come and riff somebody’s head off.

Leigh Chalker (02:11:06):
Yeah, yeah. You can ask those questions and have just that good little bit of action. I mean, man, well dude, you’ve got a track record of a fertile mind. I mean you’ve delved into many universes, man, star Trek and all the stuff you’re doing now that

Christopher Sequeira (02:11:22):
Look Star too. Great. That was pure indulge. That was another gift from the Gods. I got to thank editor named Heather Antos who took a chance on me on that. She was the most professional editor I’ve ever worked with. She was fantastic, but it was like I pitched it, it was like two sentences and she said I could picture some ideas. I pitched the three ideas and there were no more than two sentences each effect, and I thought, I wonder if she’ll like any of them. Anyway, she came back about a week or two later and she said, okay, yeah, paramount said we’re doing number two. What? You’ve already taken it to Paramount. And they said, we’re doing that. Okay, yes, I’m doing it. Yeah. So that was a delight in every part. It was nerve wracking, nerve wracking as hell because big licence, right? I’m not going to pretend big licence and I have story idea, but it had a couple of s sciencey type of complexities I had to pull off to make it make sense and to get away with it. And I knew I could, but I was still scared about doing it.

Leigh Chalker (02:12:43):
Oh man, I’d be terrified of doing something like that, but that’s half of the battle, isn’t it, man? Overcoming the fear and having a go at things and like you were saying was mentioned before. Sometimes you get, I guess rejected, other times you get surprisingly accepted and things like that. That’s every facet of life, isn’t it? You know what I mean?

Christopher Sequeira (02:13:04):
Indeed, indeed.

Leigh Chalker (02:13:06):
Yeah. It’s not just stories, but I just like the dynamic between you and Yarn man because Yarns just sitting there chilling and it’s like, I reckon yarns definitely the, I’m the listening type. I’m just going to relax and I can see Chris’s dynamic being the definite chatty one and yarn just taking it all in.

Christopher Sequeira (02:13:33):
Look, I think it’s a case of when we get to topics that grab us, but look, I have got a bigger blood mouth than most people was to chalk, I guarantee. I guarantee you. But look, yarn will speak up and speak up well and most articulately when, okay, we’re wrestling with a story problem or a design problem or whatever, and he’ll argue the case in really clear and convincing language. So yeah, don’t worry mate, he, he’s not Mr. Shy when he’s more a case of when it’s necessary for words, the man has got those words.

Leigh Chalker (02:14:19):
Well, that’s fair too, man. I think that’s fair. You just say what you mean, man, add that little bit of polish when necessary or don’t just take it away. It’s a good quality, but you make a good team. The Perrier, oh

Christopher Sequeira (02:14:39):
Thanks like

Leigh Chalker (02:14:40):
Band Man. It’s like you can tell biochemistry people, mate, you know what I mean? And it’s amazing even in art and comic book creations and stuff like chemistry works and how you communicate again for me and what I’m learning through is it’s insane how much all of the simple, most basic, just everything across all planes, a connected man, the communication, the chemistry between people, whether it’s art, just relationships or between people and nature and all that sort of stuff. It’s like you got to have that vibe thing going there.

Christopher Sequeira (02:15:22):
Look, a maid of yarns of mine is Chewy Chan. He does storyboards for Hollywood and design work for Hollywood and lots of other stuff, and he’s done comics, et cetera, and good. He did the variant cover for here and fly issue zero one with the green background with the fly. Anyway, fantastic guy and fantastic artist. Been a buddy of ours for decades. Anyway, Chewy’s worked for George Meow on Happy feat, mad Max Fury Road, and he worked on the Ill Faded Justice League movie that they worked on for 10 months that didn’t get made. And Chewy’s old boss, George Miller is obviously the Australian big shot international director. I’ve seen interviews with him where he talks about what he would wishes somebody asked him something like what he wishes he saw more of, and this applies so much to movies now and to comics and books.

(02:16:30)
He said he’d like to see more of situations where people take the job on because of the story, not because of themselves or their ego or this, but because they want to be in service to the story. So I’m paraphrasing here, I don’t remember the exact quote, but that was pretty close to it. And when you see these big budget movies, whether they’re Marvel movies, DC movies, big franchises restarted or particularly failing to be Restarted, the ones that go badly wrong, you can just smell, there’s five executives, producers in there that have pulled the thing in different directions and that’s why it doesn’t make any flip of sense. And that’s why it’s not a good story and that’s why it comes off the rails in Act three and just goes into a ditch. Same for comics, et cetera. The same for any collaboration between writers and or writers and artists or whatever. If people keep the egos out of the room or say, okay, I’ve got an ego, but I’ll just put it one step behind while we work on the collective good of the story being the best it is, that’s when the thing works. And the minute those priorities get swapped around, you are on a one way trip to disaster. Yeah, yeah,

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:18:10):
A hundred percent. If I just bring that back, this is something I mentioned before, that when you work with the right people, the people that really know their stuff, you want to be involved in something that’s going to be good. It’s going to have your name on it so you’re an idiot to shoot yourself in the foot by fighting an idea which is the right idea. And if you are good, the right idea, somebody says to you, we should do this. What happened? Chris comes to me and says, I’ve got a story. I go, I quite story. And I say to him that I think if we do this, that would be an improvement. He’ll say, great, if I give him some pages, love all of this. But that bit there, I dunno what I’m doing. If when he tells me this, I can’t see it.

(02:19:22)
And this is where it’s art and science are very similar, that it is in the equation. There is actually, there’s six or one and a half a dozen the other, or there’s definitely better than not. And if it’s six or one and a half a dozen the other, then it’s like, do what you like, but this is the good way to do it or the better way to do it. And that’s who you want to be working with, somebody who understands story dynamics, art perspective, all of these things, what the reader needs to see. Then together you build a really strong product.

(02:20:10)
And that’s why it works with, when Chris and I work together and a few other people that I’ve been able to work with, where it’s just like, and working with someone who you are that in tune with, and we both have, we have egos, we have good, healthy, sizable egos, put us in the room with someone we don’t respect. It’s not going to be pretty, it’s not going to be pretty, which is why I don’t want to work with someone I don’t respect because it’s going to get ugly. And I think Chris, it’s the same. We don’t suffer fools gladly. So we work together,

Christopher Sequeira (02:20:59):
Suffer

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:21:00):
These fools gladly. These are the two.

Christopher Sequeira (02:21:06):
I’ll suffer fools very politely unless I get to the situation where the fool is mistaking my politeness for weakness. But that’s my rule of life anyway. I’m happy to be civil and polite even when I think a person’s being difficult to a point, but if they start to actually take the out of the gloves, come off. But if they just want to be silly and wrong and stubborn, then I don’t care. And I’ll just smile and go, that’s nice. But if they think that that means I’m going to be a punching bag, that’s when things get a bit interesting. Go and see one or two of those moments. So not anybody says, I can think of one time we were in an office works and somebody there, somebody who worked there, tried to have a lender. But anyway, that was fun. But anyway, but look, it’s a fascinating thing. They’re just stories, but God, they make our hearts pump. They

Leigh Chalker (02:22:28):
Do, man. They do. They

Christopher Sequeira (02:22:29):
Do. But look, the difference between caring and not caring is the difference between being a professional and not being a professional. Regardless whether you’re getting paid 10 cents a page or a million bucks for a screenplay, I very much am a huge fan of the American writer Jay Michael Stravinski. And if you ever want to read a book that will blow your mind and bring a tear to your eye as well. It’s his biographical book, becoming Superman, what that guy had to go through to become the writer that he’s become and a master of screenplays, comic books, novels, radio plays, tv. He’s done it all. Journalism, he’s done it all.

(02:23:39)
But he so fiercely protective of the story. There’s a story in that book about a fight he undertook for a particular story for a science fiction TV series. I won’t spoil it or anything, but it’s just like this guy was prepared to lay down and die metaphorically for the story. And it’s just like, yeah, wasn’t about him. Wasn’t about him. And he could be quite reasonable. And this guy has done some amazing pieces of work. We did that movie, the one with Angelina Jolie about she has the child that gets kidnapped. It was based on a true story, the chains link, and it was swapped around with another kid and the cops brought this other kid back to her and said, there’s your kid. True story said in the twenties or the thirties, won an Oscar or got nominated for an Oscar clin director.

Leigh Chalker (02:24:47):
I was going to say Clin Eastwood movie. I seem to remember that. Yeah. Yeah. I love Babylon five.

Christopher Sequeira (02:24:56):
Yeah, he did all the baby marvellous, marvellous writer. And what he, sorry Pete, I’m actually just rewatching Babylon five at the moment. Yeah, amazing story. And there’s some great Bab five stories in that book, but that guy would take a bullet metaphorically for story and not about him. And I guess the more you care, the better your work will be. The more you’ll stretch yourself, the more you’ll push yourself. And it’s not about you being right, it’s about that’s being right for the story. So yeah, it’s a fascinating sort of two-way gate because you’ve got to have a strong enough ego to stand up for something that suits the integrity of the work. But you’ve also got to be open-minded enough so when that one person from anywhere sticks their hand up and goes, sir, you’re about to make a mistake. That’s a really bad scene or a really bad bit of dialogue, or I’m not under, I don’t get it.

(02:26:15)
That’s got nothing to do with the story. And whether that comes from the artist, whether that comes from the writer, whether that comes from the editor, whether it comes from one of your beta readers or whatever, you’ve got to have enough humble to go, okay, they’re not saying that just to piss me off, I don’t think, can I at least check interesting stuff? And not all of us will get it right every time, but it’s part of the process. Of course, once it’s out of your hands and in print or on screen, it’s too late.

Leigh Chalker (02:27:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I guess man, that’s sort of touching on using your intuition and stuff to help you decipher decisions and break things down too. It’s of just understanding your own self and in a voice to get the point across. But man, you should always listen to people. Hey, you take their advice, you take what’s good that works for you, you just sort of separate it, like sve it out, you know what I mean? To create your own unique voice and everything like that. But definitely always listen to people. Yeah. I found early on coming from my echo chamber of North Queensland, I thought, I was like, I know what I’m doing. And you very quickly, you no Matt bud, you got no idea. You know what I mean? Just sit down, keep those ears open and listen and learn, man. But also creative determination and vision. It’s something that can’t be taken from some people and determination and persistence and I guess it stems down to what their boundaries and their integrity ensue in the story as well. I suppose there’s a whole heap of different things in the whole creative process. Man, I love hearing your side of things, man. It’s because of your experience and I like hearing yarn working with you and jiving and Pete, I like tonight because he’s vibing and got all this stuff happening and it’s awesome to see all this sort of stuff. So

Christopher Sequeira (02:28:49):
I think it’s probably time to say goodnight for me. Mate, thank you so much for being a host to this, giving us so much time to plug what we’re doing with this project and others.

Leigh Chalker (02:29:05):
It’s always a pleasure, Chris, man, it’s always a pleasure and thank you very much. And I was just going to say myself, we should wind this up a bit so I can get to our ending, but yarn. So it’s been a pleasure to meet you this evening. Absolutely.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:29:22):
As I said at the start, it’s always great to spend time with like-minded individuals and talk about mutual passions. So it’s been a fantastic pleasure.

Leigh Chalker (02:29:32):
Yeah, I hope we can catch up again, mate, so there’ll be plenty more chin wags coming, so hopefully you can come on one of these days, mate, now that you retired and you’ve got a few Tuesday nights free mate somewhere in the future and have a good and every success man for you and the human fly coming out and I look forward to reading it. Peter J. Lawson, mate, proud of you buddy. So it’s keep up that good work, work hard and keep on hustling, brother. It’s like you’re doing good

Christopher Sequeira (02:30:05):
PSBs boy.

Doctor Jan Scherpenhulzen (02:30:06):
Need more.

Leigh Chalker (02:30:08):
Yeah, yeah, just yeah man. Just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s very inspiring and thank you mate. Now, Pete, you can be found at RY publications. You can be found at IPI comic books and Christopher can be found as well

Christopher Sequeira (02:30:26):
And people can regularly see me on public transport.

Leigh Chalker (02:30:33):
Okay, that’s good to know, mate. You might get some taps on the shoulders tomorrow. Now, Christopher Sequeira, one thing I would like to say to you, sir, and I said it earlier in the show, mate, I’m so happy that you are happy and you’re feeling a lot better now and the battle that you’ve gone through, mate, I’m glad that you are here with us this evening.

Christopher Sequeira (02:30:52):
Oh, thank you brother. Thank you. Yeah, look, yeah, maybe one small procedure to come, but we’re just about at the over all of those dramas, so that’s all good.

Leigh Chalker (02:31:04):
That’s good, man. And send an energy to you brother. So I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Jeffrey Honours more serious note. Everyone knows as I bring to the show, the end of the show, I always like to talk about, well, mental health, it’s an important thing. So a very important friend of mine today had a birthday and I’d like to wish her a happy birthday and hope it was a special day for her. That person is very special to me because my darkest moment, that was an individual when I thought that I was alone and no one else was around to give me a hand through some pretty hard stuff out of nowhere. This person was there and I don’t really understand whether that was a synchronicity or a divine intervention or what happened, but that person was there. So I wish her a very happy birthday and I hope you had a lovely day.

(02:31:57)
My point being is that not all people are lucky in moments like I was and don’t have friends or family or people that can help them out of their dark moments and times. It is important for you to check on your brothers and sisters. It’s important for you just to be nice and kind and love people. Put the hat aside, man. There’s too much of that stuff going on. Walk past someone tomorrow and smile. You never know. It might make their day. Give a mate a ring tomorrow and see how they’re going. Who knows, you may be that person at that exact moment that just pulls ’em out of something that they may regret and you may regret from not contacting them. Look after your people and it doesn’t cost anything to be kind. Gentlemen, thank you very much for tonight. Community is unity and always Chinwag is and will always be made with love. Take care and see you all next week. Thank you. Goodnight. Thank

Voice Over (02:32:51):
You sir. See you guys. This show is sponsored by the Comics Shop. Check out. Come to comics shop to pick up a variety of Australian comics from multiple creators and publishers, all for one flat postage rate. We hope you enjoyed the show. I.