I love podcasting and while I seem to never have time to do it, I recently dropped all 4 episodes of the “first season” of a new series I decided to make called “The Hyper Room” — skip ahead and go here to listen to them on your iPhone now.
To clarify: This podcast has nothing to do with startups, conferences, social media or anything you might know me for via my Medium posts.
So, a bit more insight:
I love comics, movies and pop culture in general, and wanted to use my interviewing “skills” to talk to people in the pop culture industry to learn more about how they create, produce and promote their work. While some of these go very deep inside their careers I hope you find them as interesting as I found speaking to some of my personal heroes who I’ve been following for over 20+ years.
The Hyper Room podcast: Erik Larsen — The Origin, the Art and the Image of Savage Dragon
This episode of The Hyper Room is with Image Comics co-founder and creator of The Savage Dragon: Erik Larsen.
In The Hyper Room, Erik and I talk about the origins of his comic book career and how he started working for Marvel Comics by walking up to legendary editor Jim Shooter, as well as how he works and creates Savage Dragon every month and where he comes up with all those wild ideas.
Erik is a fantastic creator great guy to talk to and will always be remembered as the comic creator that is doing comics his way — writing and drawing every single issue of Savage Dragon to this day with no end in sight. I’ve enjoyed his work since Spider-Man and enjoy it even more in the pages of his off-the-wall series that now features Malcolm Dragon, his wife and their 3 kids living in Canada. There is a sentence I never thought I’d type describing one of my favorite comic book series.
I just watched a great documentary on SyFy about the creation of Image Comics (you should watch it too) so I decided not to revisit that part of his career and focus more on the Dragon and his creative process.
The Hyper Room podcast: Matt Wagner — The Magician Unveils his Final Trick with Mage: The Hero Denied
This episode of The Hyper Room is with Matt Wagner creator of Mage and Grendel as well as working on characters like The Demon, Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman, The Shadow, Sandman Mystery Theater and so many more.
I’ve been in love with Mage ever since Matt Wagner walked into The Comicshop those many years ago. My first time meeting a real live comic book creator AND he was doing his very own comic book!
I talk to Matt about his career, how he first got published by Comico, how he comes up with his ideas, how he works and where the Mage series is headed, now halfway through the final part of its trilogy in Mage: the Hero Denied published by Image Comics.
This interview focuses on Mage and hopefully, Matt will come back to do a full episode on Grendel and also I’d love to sit down again with him when Mage is completed and go into a deep talk about the entire trilogy. In the meantime, start here with Mage: The Hero Discovered and discover why magic is green.
The Hyper Room podcast: Rian Hughes — The Man Who Designed Your Favorite Comic Book Logos
This episode of The Hyper Room is with graphic designer: Rian Hughes.
Next to the artwork, comics have a very distinct visual design language and the best interpreter of that is graphic designer Rian Hughes.
Rian has been in the industry for decades and you will know his work when you flip through his new book LOGO-A-GOGO that showcases all his logos and cover designs for comics, graphic novels and trade dress for every publisher in comics from Marvel to DC Comics to Valiant and beyond.
I talk to Rian about his career and his creative process, like all The Hyper Room podcasts I try to learn more about the creative process, tools of the trade and what inspires the subject the most with as much geeking out as possible.
You can order Logo-a-Gogo right now here if you are in the US or here in the UK. I also recommend picking up the Multiversity Deluxe Edition and I Am a Number also from Rian.
The Hyper Room podcast: Andy Oddie — The Retail Art of Pop Culture from Doctor Who to Star Wars to Funko Pop Vinyl
This episode of The Hyper Room is with Andy Oddie — if you’ve ever wondered who was behind the Star Wars Lightsaber barbeque tongs or immortalizing the current Doctor Who series in plastic — you’re going to find out here.
For this episode, I wanted to showcase the business side of pop culture and invited Andy Oddie of Funko into The Hyper Room.
Andy has been licensing, manufacturing and creating pop culture merchandise for his entire career — starting with Forbidden Planet then launching Underground Toys and now being absorbed into the Funko worldwide domination machine.
Andy and I talk about the pop culture market, the trends, making Doctor Who toys, where the retail market is going and what is coming next for Funko. We recorded this inside his showroom at Toy Fair so I got a chance to see some of the new products, which are amazing and also the crazy feeling seeing how big the pop culture merchandise world has become.
Season 2 is in the works now but please drop me a line to let me know what you think — good or bad. This is just a hobby for now.
