[dramatic music] ♪ [dramatic music continues] ♪ [dramatic music continues] ♪ [dramatic music continues] ♪ - Hello, and welcome to "Comic Culture."

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer Jeff Messer.

Jeff, welcome to "Comic Culture."

- Well, thank you Terrence.

Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- Jeff, you are writing a new series called, if i get it correct, it is "Sex, Spies, & Rock 'n Roll."

And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about this series.

- Yes, you got it correct on the first try.

And you know, a lot of people kind of find it amusing.

And and they mix it up too, because of course it's a play on words from two things I think that are in kind of the cultural zeitgeist, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, sex, lies, and videotape, or like the two things people think of.

And I just sort of morphed those into one sort of catchall title.

Honestly, that series is something that I started producing seriously about three years ago.

The origins of it actually extend back to my childhood.

I grew up as a comic book nerd.

I read, you know, all kinds of comics that I shouldn't have been reading when the independence of the mid-1980s were the hot tickets.

And, you know, I was a teenager back then and I thought, "Oh, you know, I wanna, I wanna tell stories."

I wanna be a spy novelist was the first thing I wanted to be.

And so I started creating characters and writing these stories and coming up with these plots.

And, you know, somewhere along the way I grew, I didn't grow disinterested, but things, you know, life, life happens, life gets in the way.

And I got involved in theater and sort of became enamored with playwriting, because it meant that you just wrote the dialogue.

You didn't have to worry about writing a description of the birds and the trees and everything else, which it could be painstaking for an author trying to do prose.

And I really liked Robert B. Parker who writes the Spenser novels, "Spenser: For Hire," the TV show from the '80s.

And he has a real sense of economy of language, like, you know, real short sentences, really to the point.

I can't do that.

Mine were pages upon pages and descriptions.

And so theater became a lifeline to me as a writer.

Like I said, mostly dialogue comes from that.

So I spent, you know, the '90s and well into the 2000s being a playwright or trying to be a playwright, you know.

I think the only profession where you make less money and have less of a career than playwriting might be comics.

But I always wanted to do comics, you know.

Over the years I had had kind of gone back to this spy story thing over and over, like, "Oh, is it still good?

Should I update it?

Should I bring it out of the '80s into the modern context?

How should I handle this?"

And I took a couple of stabs at it, but it never really took off until the pandemic happened.

You know, part of the thing for me to not go completely stir crazy during the pandemic was to sit at home and try to be creative and try to write and do some projects.

I had been working with Mike Grell, the comic with Legend Mike Grell, just for a couple years prior to that, co-written a book about his career for TwoMorrows Publishing.

And I convinced Mike, it's like, "Hey, let me help you publish some of your stuff, bring back some of your characters, if you will."

And we were exploring Kickstarter, crowdfunding, and those sorts of things, which at that point were really starting to take off.

You know, that was kind of the zenith of everybody rushing to Kickstarter, for example.

And I had kind of said to Mike for a couple years, "Hey, you know, you should look at this, you should look at this."

And he finally said, "Yes, let's do it."

And so we started some projects for him, just in time for the pandemic to start.

Which is perfect timing to start a brand new comic publishing business, let me tell you, right before the world shuts down.

And there's paper shortages and people are afraid.

They're going to, you know, have no money and die in poverty and all of that stuff.

But hey, those were the early days, right?

But I was working with Mike on his things, and they were very successful.

We had a lot of success with it.

And it sort of emboldened me while I was bored in the pandemic, because it took a lot of time to get his projects, you know, we've done three so far.

And so between his projects, I thought, "I'm gonna do some of mine.

I wanna do some things as well."

And I started with a play adaptation of "Robin Hood" that I had co-written with a collaborator and a good friend of mine named Robert Akers many years ago.

And we adapted that, started adapting that into a graphic novel series.

And did a Kickstarter and it went very well.

Covered the cost.

It was all very good.

And I thought, "Oh, this is not bad."

You know, my wife is not gonna leave me because my new hobby is breaking even.

I am not losing money.

So I thought, "I wanna continue this a little bit more."

And so I went back to the spy stories.

So it was my son's senior year; he was gonna graduate high school.

And there was a real sense of: "Well, what are you gonna do?

What are you gonna be.

How do you wanna pursue different things in your life?"

And he said to me one day, he wanted to go into film and TV, and creative stuff, which he had never really shown to me was something that he was interested in.

And, you know, in retrospect it's because I dragged him to theaters during his young life to watch rehearsals of plays I had written.

And so I thought, "Well, maybe he's just intimidated and he doesn't wanna show me his stuff."

And I said, "All right, you know, where's this coming from?

And send me one of your scripts.

I wanna see what you're writing."

And he sent me the screenplay he was working on.

And it was ridiculous, over the top, action, spy, intrigue.

I was reading the first, you know, 10 pages of it going, "Oh my God, this is like the crap I was writing when I was his age."

And this light went off.

And I'd been thinking about trying to bring my stories back from when I was his age.

And I dug some of the stuff out, did a quick script of the first issue, sent it to an artist that I was interested in that I thought would be a good artist.

And I said, "Hey, you know, can you read this?

You know, show me some character designs, and let me sort of see if I think this is something I want to do."

And a few weeks later he sent me back these character designs, and it was as if he was, you know, copying it right out of my imagination.

It was perfect.

And I thought, "You know, now's the time.

Let's do this."

And I kept it in the '80s because it has a nice retro feel to it, you know.

Spies in the '80s were a lot more fun than spies now where everything is being watched on, you know, cameras from satellites and whatnot.

You know, a little more boots on the ground kind of spy stuff in the '80s.

And I took my son's first scene of his screenplay and had another artist illustrate it, and I was gonna include it in the book.

I thought, "Oh yeah, his is a backup to mine."

And did a Kickstarter in 2021, two years ago.

And it took off.

Like, I don't know what was appealing.

The title perhaps.

Some of the key art perhaps, you know.

It got people's attention and really created some intrigue.

And I wound up, for stretch goals, I wound up adding short six-page backup stories 'cause there were a bunch of artists who I'd wanted to work with.

And I thought, "Oh, I'll just reach out to them and have them do a six-page backup."

And by the end of it, it went from what would've been a 40-page comic to 112 pages.

Because the Kickstarter just kinda kept going, going and going.

And I thought, "Wow, okay.

There's clearly some interest in this retro '80s spy stuff."

And, you know, what I was doing was kind of fun.

And the idea became an anthology book.

And now I'm, you know, the third volume of that, kind of, you know, creating as much new material as I can.

It's great now.

I'm getting friends of mine who read all that stuff when I was a kid.

Like, "Oh, here read my spy novel."

Friends of mine who were writers who are now writing stories for the anthology book.

You know, who are saying, "Hey, I want to take a shot at one of these stories.

I wanna do this."

And so it's the more the merrier.

I'm kind of inviting people in.

My cousin that I grew up with who I used to bounce ideas off of, he's writing some pieces, and my son has a feature in it.

So it's just turned into this really, this really kind of cool renaissance, you know.

I turned 50 during the pandemic, and so, you know, there's all kinds of crisises of conscience that can hit you at those points in time.

But as I was turning 50 and I had just been successful with all these Kickstarters and with this project, and I felt like it was keeping me young.

So I kept going.

So there's a long answer.

I know, I gave you like, let's go all the way around the furthest point.

Let's tack around the poles to get there.

But there we are.

- Well, I thought that was a great answer.

And you know, it's interesting, I've heard from a lot of people who say during the pandemic they rediscovered something that made them want to create.

And I guess it's the fact that we were home or the fact that we were able to think of the frailty of life just in general.

But the other thing that you said that really strikes a chord with me is technology in contemporary stories.

It's sort of a, back in the '60s or '70s, you know, if Kirk and Spock had their tricorder or their communicator, it was like, "Oh yeah, that's believable."

- Flip phones from 2003.

Yes.

- And then, you know, here we are, we have all this technology.

It's kind of fun as a writer to go back and not have that as sort of a crutch, because now the characters have to think a little more.

And I was wondering if that's something that you find, is that it's fun to come up with a solution that technology now solves on the every day.

- Oh, absolutely.

I think, you know, when I was looking at my original stories, they wouldn't work if I tried to bring them up to a modern sensibility, because, you know, as the plot unfolds, the characters would be seen or found or discoveries would be made almost instantaneously because of the current technology.

But, you know, if you go back to 1985 when the main story is set, it becomes kind of a cat and mouse global chase with these characters.

And, you know, the Jason Bourne of it all would be like, "Oh, well, you know, their cellphone got pinged in Edinburgh, Scotland, so let's call in a attack force to, you know, whatever."

And it would be over.

But instead it's like, this is a little tougher, you know.

Nobody has cellphones.

Nobody has, you know, the ability to really track people in the same way.

It's a lot more about clues and sort of figuring things out and trying to leave clues for other characters to follow the trail.

I think it's just a better time to tell spy stories.

That period of 1960s to the '80s is like prime espionage storytelling, you know, that first 20 years of the Cold War where it was, you know, you needed people who could act, you know, go across the enemy lines and act as if they were, you know, a Russian agent or something like that.

You know, there was a lot more skill involved, a lot less computers, a lot more skills.

So it just seemed to me more intrinsically fun.

The irony is of course I'm able to produce this now.

The thing is that I would've killed to have had it done when I was 19, as a comic book, but it would've been a horrible failure I think.

Only now is it possible, only now is it possible because of crowdfunding, because of social media, because of the ability to reach an audience.

You know, the gatekeepers of the publishing and music and a lot of other fields that aren't there anymore because there's a direct feed to an audience that we have now that we didn't have until 15 years ago.

And so speaking, I'm telling stories in an antiquated technology by today's standards, but I wouldn't be able to tell them if it weren't for today's technology.

- And that's interesting too, because crowdfunding is sort of that equalizer where you can reach out to people most times using the internet to let them know that you've got a project and like-minded people can come and support it.

And it gives you that seed money to cover your expenses, I guess, not only to produce the book, but to cover bills and stuff while you are creating it.

Now, I know as somebody who backed the "Jon Sable Omnibus" that you worked on with Mike Grell, that was a very difficult time from when it was first put on Kickstarter until it finally ended up in my hands about a month ago.

So I'm just wondering, you know, as you are going through, obviously the pandemic put a lot of pressure on that timeline for you, but what sort of lessons do you learn going into crowdfunding that now going, because you had that rather unique and somewhat difficult journey, that makes it easier for you going forward?

- I complained mightily throughout the pandemic.

I had moments of such severe doubt and anxiety during the pandemic.

You know, in 2019, I was really ready to kind of embark on this second half of my life working in the comics field.

And I was a little bit bitter.

I felt like the carpet got yanked in 2020.

But instead I threw myself into creating more.

And it's like I wanted to be poised so that when things were over, I would be able to kind of bounce quickly into the projects that I was doing.

And the same with working with Mike on his.

You know, and we ran the Kickstarter in December 2020 thinking, "Oh, you know, 2021, aces."

The world is gonna be A-okay again.

People are feeling good about stuff again.

It was a hugely successful Kickstarter, as you know.

And what we ran into was this domino effect of the pandemic.

You know, it wasn't toilet paper and it wasn't any of that stuff that was being hoarded in 2020.

Suddenly there were shipping issues.

There were shortages of things like paper, finding a place that could print a deluxe hardcover collection became very problematic.

There were all sorts of, you know, supply chain issues and just weird stuff that rippled and created problems for people who were doing comics projects, especially something deluxe like that, you know, that was a very special hardcover, a big book kind of thing.

And we wanted to print in the US.

We wanted to keep the printing as local as possible.

Because a lot of stuff is done overseas, but it was taking six months for it to ship.

And then it was stuck in a port because of the supply chain issues.

So we really went through a lot.

And I feel like it was a test of some sort, you know.

We can do anything now.

This is gonna be so much easier moving forward.

And we decided at a certain point along the way, just to tell the people who were supporting it, it's like, "Look, you know, we don't want to find ways to cut corners.

We want to do this right, not fast.

And trust us."

You know, we were being very picky, because the Jon Sable thing for Mike Grell, you know, I pitched it to him as an idea saying, "Let's do the end-all be-all.

Let's do the definitive.

This is the last word on this classic series of yours, and let's do it in an oversized hardcover edition.

Let's remaster the colors: not recolor, but just sort of remaster and touch things up, make it look as good as it can possibly look."

And, you know, those things just took more time than we thought.

And then it took even more time than that because of the pandemic.

So, you know, we got there.

And I think people now, they've gotten, you've gotten yours and I know you've sent some messages saying how happy you are with it.

I think people see it and they go, "You know what?

It was worth it.

It was worth the wait.

They did it right."

You know, we did what we set out to do.

And what happens now is that we can move faster on completing the series, on doing the rest.

And hopefully all the pandemic stuff is behind us now.

And it seems to be smoother sailing.

But, you know, I was naive, and in late 2020 to think, "Oh, you know, nine months and we're skating right out of this thing."

Only within the past six months or so have I felt confident that the publishing side of of things is getting back to somewhat normal for people who use Kickstarter primarily.

And a lot of independent folks are doing that now.

Not just Mike, but a lot of his contemporaries are moving their way to Kickstarter.

A lot of 'em were there before he was even.

And making a pretty good go of it because fans are not getting what they want from the standard comic book industry.

But, you know, they're following certain creators.

And as long as those creators are stepping up to the plate, I think they'll have an audience that'll support them.

- Now, you have a relationship with Mike Grell.

Mike of course is a great writer and artist, and "Jon Sable Freelance" is one of my favorite series of all times.

And you had the chance to write his biography for TwoMorrows Publishing.

So how did that come about?

- You know, and it's funny, and I will say, "Jon Sable Freelance," when I was 12, 13 years old and I started reading "Jon Sable Freelance," it was a direct influence on me as a writer and a storyteller.

So a lot of the spy stuff I was writing within a couple of years of that was influenced by "Jon Sable."

So there's a very kind of, you know, completing the circle, if you will, that's going on with the things I'm doing now by myself and with Mike.

I'd worked in radio for five years with iHeartRadio doing talk radio.

And when that came to the end, I thought, "You know, I wanna find ways to do creative projects and get back, you know, back on the horse as it were."

I had dropped out of theater, and so I hadn't done that in a few years.

And I reached out to TwoMorrows because they're in North Carolina and such a great company, and they produce such great work: "Back Issue!"

magazine primarily.

I was thinking, "Hey, I would like to freelance and write some articles for you."

I had gotten to know some people who had written things for "Back Issue!"

And I thought, "I can contribute in a positive way doing this."

And they kinda reached back out to me and said, "Well, you know, we don't have anything right now, but we have Dewey Cassell who's writing a Mike Grell book, and he's kind of stumped."

He needs some help is the way they sort of phrased it.

He's like, "He needs somebody to come on the book and help him.

And you know Mike."

And at that point I had known Mike fairly well for a few years.

And they go, "You have a personal relationship with Mike.

We think you could help make this book better.

And would you do it?"

And I thought, "Well, you know, of course I'll do it."

Why would I say no to something like that?

And so Dewey and I worked on the book for about a year, where they put it out in 2018.

So I didn't really think much of it.

I was like, "Oh, this is great."

This is kind of getting me in into this, around the same time as when I was talking to Mike about the Kickstarter.

So there was all these sort of trains moving ahead at the same speed.

And, you know, yeah, it was a breeze.

It was super, super easy to write about someone that you love and consider to be a creative hero of yours.

But honestly, I have to say, the people who did the design work on the book and the interior art and all of the things putting the book together, they made Dewey and I look so much better than maybe we were.

I mean, we thought we were writing kind of the standard interview biography type of book.

And at the end of the day it got nominated for an Eisner Award, which to me was the sign, you know, light shining down going, "Hey, listen.

You're not very bright when it comes to catching the drift about a lot of things in your life, but here's the sign."

And so I thought, "I must be doing the right thing.

I must be in the right place."

- So as someone who decides to get back into comics again, you know, a little bit later on in life, not somebody who, you know, tries it right after college, when you're younger of course you can stay up till 3:00, 4:00 in the morning to get that page done, to hit the deadline.

But you have I guess the benefit that a lot of 20-year-olds don't have, is, you know, Mike Grell.

So what sort of, you know, mentoring does he do to help you with your writing and help how to write a script or how to talk to an artist a certain way?

- You know, it was funny.

I was such a big fan of his.

And when I was 16, 17 years old, I almost met him at a comic book store.

Heroes had two stores in Charlotte at that time.

And I was just there on with my family on a day trip.

And I saw one of their stores and I was like, "Oh."

Where I was living, there were no comic shops, you know.

So I was like, "There's a real comic book store.

I need to go in there."

Well, it was not the store he was at.

He was in the other store.

And it was like 4:45 in the afternoon, and there was no way I could make it across town to the other store in time to see him.

And I was crestfallen.

But I bought a copy of "Jon Sable," #1, and I gave it to the clerk and I gave him five bucks.

And I'm like, "Tomorrow when he's here in your store, can you get him to sign this?

Here's my address.

Will you mail it to me?"

And he did.

And like, you know, five days later I get this package in the mail, and there it is.

Really kind of cool.

I was doing a theater thing, I was running a small theater company in 2002, 3, 4, and I had this weird kind of idea.

I was like, Oh, you know, the "Jon Sable" novel had come out.

And I thought, "I bet I can take the origin story of Jon Sable and adapt it into a stage play."

Like, you know, the wheels are turning.

So I reached out to Mike's website at that point, sent an email and said, "Hey, I've got this idea."

Months maybe, a couple of months went by, I get an email from Mike who's just kind of, you know, hey, you know, "Jon Sable" on stage, he said, "That sounds crazy.

I can't imagine it.

But hey, they landed a helicopter in "Miss Saigon," so who knows.

I never responded.

I was petrified.

I was like, "I got an email from Mike," who was not saying no, but he wasn't saying yes, you know?

And I finally met him in 2011 and just had a brief conversation.

I showed him, I had taken two flyers from that comic store signing in 1987.

And I took one outta the bag and I gave it to him.

And I said, "I almost met you here, you know.

But I missed you," you know, whatever, circumstances.

And so I had his, and I was like, "Is that still the same email?

Is that still the same email that you have?"

'Cause I told him about the email too.

And he said it was.

And I thought, "Okay, I may reach out to you then if I decide to try to write a play and do this."

And eventually, in 2014, I did.

And I went to a Con to see him at a show.

And I took him this thing.

And I said, "Hey, I just spent a couple of months adapting 'Jon Sable' into a stage play."

And he looked at it and he was just like, "I don't even know what to say."

And he goes, "This will make great bathroom reading."

Which I was like, "Okay, that'll be fantastic."

I don't know if that was a compliment or not, but I'll take it.

And we had a good laugh out of that.

And by that point, he kind of knew me a little bit, well enough, you know.

As a fan he had seen a couple of times and, you know, made an impression, I guess, trying to write a play.

And around then I was getting into my radio broadcast career.

So I said, "Hey, I, I'm doing a radio show.

I'd love to interview you.

I'm gonna do like a podcast that's more comic and geek pop culture thing."

And so I set it up and I did an interview with him.

And you know, there was all these things where I was like, "Oh, I get to spend a little bit of time with my hero.

This is really kinda awesome."

And in 2015, there was a local Con that was happening.

And the comic shop that was running it asked me, "Who should I get as a guest?

Who would you recommend?"

And I said, "I can get you Mike Grell."

I was totally BS-ing, right.

You know, I was like, "I can get you Mike Grell for this.

I have his contact information."

And lo and behold, he came to the convention, and he was one of the key guests.

He and Steve Rude were the guests of that Con.

And it was around that time that he and I got to hang out a little bit together.

And a real genuine friendship kind of formed between us.

And, you know, from that point forward, I mean, I'm just living the luckiest kind of life.

You know, the first comic I ever got when I was a kid, my grandfather just randomly picked something up at the corner store and brought it home to me.

And it was "Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes" #219 drawn by Mike Grell.

And so to now, you know, all these years later to go, "Yeah, he's a good friend of mine now," which is it's just super, super weird.

But the Kickstarter's working out.

It sort of have proven something to him I think.

You know, it's like," This guy's not just a fanboy.

He was just BS-ing me.

But he's legit."

And, you know, as a result, he's become a huge supporter of my projects.

He's done some pin-up art for me, and has some variant cover stuff for me that's yet to come out.

And, you know, it's just one of those weird things.

Like I go to Cons and I help him out at his conventions now.

And, you know, his MasterStroke Studios publishing brand is continuing to plan and move forward and do things.

So I don't know, I sound like a babbling fanboy, probably because I am.

And I can't believe, you know, pinch me.

I can't believe that this is what all of this has led to.

- Well, Jeff, they are telling me that we are out of time.

If the folks at home wanted to find you on the web, where can they find you?

- I'm on Facebook.

Jeff Messer is easy enough to find.

But also for "Robin Hood Comic Book Adventures" and "Sex, Spies, & Rock 'n Roll."

I have pages dedicated to just those projects if people wanna check those out.

Instagram as well.

- Well, Jeff, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

Thanks everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

[dramatic music] ♪ [dramatic music continues] ♪ [dramatic music continues] - [Announcer] "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

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