Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (00:09):
Hey. Oh, you’ve got a guest.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:13):
Hey, we’ve got a guest. Alright, show.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (00:16):
Good. Alright. Hi everybody. So I was here as an emergency, but now I can leave. All right, we’re good

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (00:24):
As long as this thing doesn’t die when you leave. But thank you very much, SPIE, for coming in at the last minute. We have a little bit of a problem with no power for sizzle, so thank you sir. We do have Chris Gooch tonight that we’re going to talk to. We’re totally going to get this working and I’m going to drive. Yep, that’s what’s happening. Hey Eddie, he’s here. We’re not even going to bother with the intro thing because you’ve just been thrown in. Nice to meet you Chris. Sorry that we’ve just literally thrown you in without a bit of an intro. I tell you what, I’ll give you a couple of seconds just to get yourself composed and I’ll play this whizzbang intro and we’ll go from there. So I’ll talk to you in a tick.

(01:26)
All right, well welcome to this rather unorthodox, the Comics Show podcast. Great to meet you. Sorry we didn’t have a chance to catch up before this. So Chris and I are talking for the first time. It was a little bit rushed, a little bit last minute. So welcome. Thank you. Apologies that sizzle couldn’t be here, but yeah, he suddenly lost power just before we were about to go on, so it was a bit of a mad scramble to get everything working and big thanks to SPED for getting on for us. So welcome to the show. It’s a pretty easy format. I’ll just ask some questions, we’ll talk art, we’ll talk books, your creative process, all that sort of stuff. And as it so happens, because of the last time that you were on this show, I believe I went out and got myself these little boys there and I was thoroughly impressed. I got them purely because I saw you on the show and I thought, oh, that’s pretty cool. And I absolutely, absolutely love them. So let’s get right into it then. So talk to me about, you obviously do the art yourself and the writing and that whole thing. Talk to me about how you first got into either art or comics or the whole sort of creative enterprise prize.

Chris Gooch (02:53):
I suppose it is the common thing where it’s like I always drew, that was my favourite thing as a kid. I always loved books. It was superhero comic books around the time of the Tobe McGuire, I was in primary school and also the Simpson’s Comics were first comic book loves.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (03:13):
Oh really? Okay.

Chris Gooch (03:14):
I always drew, I went through art school after high school, so contemporary art, which was, yeah, I mean interesting. Not for me at the

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (03:27):
End, the decision,

Chris Gooch (03:31):
There’s that whole Ken Kong books exist in the gallery space and for me the answer is sure sometimes, but I’d rather spend my time making books. Things you sit in your living room and read. Yeah, I guess that’s kind of my origin story

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (03:47):
Started out

Chris Gooch (03:47):
A lot of short stuff.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (03:49):
What was the appeal? Did you immediately want to go to the longer form sort of graphic novel? What was the appeal of that as opposed to single issues and that sort of thing?

Chris Gooch (04:02):
I think I always wanted to do long form stuff because that’s what I always enjoyed reading and that sort of thing. I wanted to be able to do it myself. But every standard beginner advice thing is like start small, do small things. You can actually publish yourself magazine and you can wrap your head around as opposed to you start some thousand page comic and halfway through your drawing styles completely changed and you’ve improved so much that really the start is like there’s no comparison. There’s really consistent. So starting small was I haven’t gone back to doing small stuff in a long time and I’m finding it difficult. I think it’s a skill that I need to practise or I’ve become a bit rusty doing the shorter stuff.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (04:55):
Right. And did you start online or with the vertical format

Chris Gooch (05:05):
Comic? I mean I posted stuff on Tumblr and stuff like that, but for me it was mostly sort of making zines, making shorts and selling them at Melbourne zine fairs and I’d go to Sydney and stuff like that for their zine fairs as well.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (05:22):
Okay. So talk a little bit about, so I’m guessing the art came first rather than the writing or the stories or how has that worked with you? Was film a big influence? Were novels a big influence when you were growing up?

Chris Gooch (05:42):
Yeah, definitely film I would say. Right. I listen to a lot of audio books, but I don’t actually read very much. So novels probably not so much. But yeah, no film, absolutely, it was a huge influence in terms of what came first, I don’t know, I always wanted to tell stories and those stories generally ended up being comics, even when I was in high school and I never do more than two pages and I just fantasise about some great epic or whatever it was like some hack story compared with some rough, so they’re generally in tandem, but especially when I was younger, I was a much better drawer than I was a writer and you can kind of hide your beginning or the beginning stuff that’s in your drawing a lot easier or at least it’s a lot more charming. Like bad writing is bad writing and a great bad drawing.

(06:40)
There’s always some charm to it. I find someone’s trying their best or the perspective looks a bit wonky. It’s like, oh, you can kind see that person. I dunno, I really love Melinda Gabby who drew Lost Girls with Alan Moore, that’s sort of her most well-known thing and she always thought she said something I really love, which was that personality and drawing comes from what you fuck up. Thats what makes it sound distinctive as opposed to the perfect anatomy or the perfect perspective that you’re aiming for. It’s the fucked up way you draw eyes or hair and that her thing was you should lean into it, you should embrace it and make it distinctive

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (07:15):
And then that becomes the thing that people recognise about your style. And

Chris Gooch (07:21):
Guess in terms of writing, you can’t really, I dunno if it’s bad, it’s bad or if it’s rough, it’s rough. I don’t find it, I don’t find it charming at all if it’s shit as a reader at least.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (07:37):
And I’ve heard it said by, well-known writers that you want to write 10 or 11 novels before you write one that people see so that you can get all of that garbage out of the way and by the time you’ve read head you’ve got something with quality. Whereas particularly in the indie world, I think there is a certain charm you say to something that’s not quite perfect or it’s not quite there yet or there.

Chris Gooch (08:05):
Yeah, that was always the advice I got that I’m very grateful for was, which was make stuff and sell to zine fairs, put it out there. I never had much of a huge internet following, so I put it on Tumblr but I wouldn’t get much response. So it was more for go to the zine fairs and make the stuff. But now I’m older and I’ve been doing it for 10 years. And so one of the books you held up was a short story collection, which meant that when I was like, yes, this one. So when I came to putting that one together, perfect. There’s a lot of stuff that I left out because there was a lot of teething or I mean you’re always, some part of you whenever you look at you’ve done is just like, holy shit, I fucking hate this. I can’t stand looking at that. But the whole sort of make things, put them out there. The result is 10 years time you’re like, oh, I don’t want any of this in print anymore or at least I don’t want much of this available. Moved on, grown up.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (09:08):
So going back to this one, I think there’s, is it seven or eight? They’re not short stories. What do you call them? Little comic adventures?

Chris Gooch (09:22):
Yeah, short comics. I think they’re from four to 60 pages or something. Four to 50, 50 or 60. Yeah.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (09:29):
So compared to normal comics, some of ’em are quite large, some of ’em more. When you see your own stuff, like early stuff, do you cringe or do you feel nostalgic? Do you remember where you were at when you were originally penning stuff?

Chris Gooch (09:47):
I think my response changes based on seeing the writing versus seeing the drawing. I was always someone who could draw well enough, so I was praised for that and I never felt insecure about it, but with a lot of people in the writing, I wasn’t really showing people my writing where I’d showed people my drawings when I was younger and be like, what do you think of this? And like, oh it’s good at shit, I didn’t really matter, but if I chose some of my writing and they were like, it’s shit, I’d be heartbroken and humiliated.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (10:15):
Right, okay. That’s interesting. So

Chris Gooch (10:17):
Looking back through the artwork, I’m like, oh, that’s not good. But it’s more charming looking back through the writing and I’m like, that’s not good. I’ll just be like, shit, I don’t feel good about that.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (10:31):
So you’re more critical in a way of the writing side than the visual

Chris Gooch (10:36):
Side being more sensitive or more easily embarrassed?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (10:40):
Right. Okay. At

Chris Gooch (10:41):
Least with the earlier stuff.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (10:45):
And I suppose, so I’ll put the question to you. There’s this thing in a band where if you are not the outgoing sort of person, you don’t want to be the front man, you want to hide behind an instrument. There’s a certain amount of I can be out there as long as I’ve got a guitar or keyboard or whatever or drums is the ultimate sort of way at the back. Is there a sense with the art being the first thing that people see that you can put that out there as a bit of a, get that in people’s faces and then the writing it kind of takes a bit of a backseat or not really or

Chris Gooch (11:18):
Well, I think that probably was a little bit of a case beginning going to zine fairs, making my first comics. Now I don’t really care. I think it’s just the thing with when I was doing that, I was 19. So you’re very, I mean, not as insecure as you were when you’re in high school, but you’re like, yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (11:39):
You’re still figuring stuff

Chris Gooch (11:40):
In some respects now. I mean I don’t really care much about what other people think anymore at all. So unless I’m offending someone or something that’s a bit different. But mostly who gives a shit,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (11:54):
Which is a great attitude to have. But like you say, not something that naturally comes to you when you’re first starting out and when you are putting your stuff out there and maybe a bit fearful of getting beaten back by.

Chris Gooch (12:07):
Yeah, I think a big part of that too is that I’ve been doing it for a while, so I have a group of people whose opinions I really do value. So it’s like you have that Marco and you have that safer space where you can be like, what do you think of this? And they’ll be honest, but respectful and everything like that. It’s like, I dunno, I have those people whose opinion I care about. And then it’s just a lot easier to be like, well, I don’t give a shit about everybody else.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (12:36):
And so that side of things. Have you found being with a recognisable publisher, having maybe an editorial team or an editor or a couple of people to bounce things off, has that helped? Or is most of your group that you work with outside of that or is it part of that whole publishing side of things?

Chris Gooch (13:00):
Well, everything that I’ve done has been published through Top Shelf. That’s a book format, so I definitely work with them. I would probably describe them as mostly, so the projects I do with them were, for example, I’ll just talk specifically about them, the short story collection, I think I was like, hello, here’s the master list, here’s a PF of everything. I think these ones, this would be my short list. I think they were just sort of like, yeah, great. I think they often are like, oh, it would be interesting to present these in a good way. Some title pages or thinking about how it goes into a book. With my other one, you held up the prison one under

(13:47)
Earth. So I sent them a pdf f of that sort. After they published my first book, they were pretty much just like, yeah, yeah, we’ll publish this. And I, I work with Chris Starro, the publisher, and I would talk to him and he would give me feedback, but it would sort of be feedback and then I’d work for six months or a year and then I’d send ’em a new draught. So it was feedback at Key points. And then when you’re at the end, I guess it’s sort of more like you need to plug these holes, but I think mostly they want to put out work that idiosyncratic and not necessarily

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (14:33):
Heavily edit

Chris Gooch (14:34):
Pilot bait or something like that.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (14:40):
Yeah, it’s interesting because there’s definitely, it’s not quite at the novel level, but yeah, there’s definitely a bit more of a, I suppose a blend of hands-on at certain points through the process to steer sort of things. But like you say, they want your vision and they want you to do the thing that you do and that’s what they’re interested in,

Chris Gooch (15:07):
Which I really appreciate. I find that the easiest way I’ve been working with some other people over the past year, which is different, which is working to a brief or working with an actual goal in mind, which is I don’t like it as much, it’s not as nice, but it challenging in a different way.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (15:34):
And have you worked as an artist on other people’s projects or as a writer on, and if so, how did you find that process?

Chris Gooch (15:45):
I’ve done freelance work in terms of illustration for people, which ranges from councils or libraries or I don’t think I’ve done work for small businesses, but a lot of people do work for small businesses. I’ve done some freelance comic illustration, but that’s not particularly like my wheelhouse. I guess I generally have the philosophy that I have a day job and I work my day job, and that means I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. So I spend most of my time, let’s say I do six pages for somebody else’s thing and they pay me a fair wage, that’s still a week and a half or two weeks that I’m giving up, working on my own stuff. And then you go to your day job and you’re like, why the fuck am I here if I’m not doing my own thing? So it’s sort of that balance.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (16:42):
That’s a really interesting one because there’s a bit of a story out there, particularly if you are coming up and you’re not giving it all. If you’re not throwing away a day job and throwing everything at your art and all of this sort of stuff, I think it’s really, really good to hear. No, no, no, there is another way to do this. And like you say there is if you have a day job that’s stable, it then means you can pick and choose whatever you want. I don’t want to do that or I don’t want to do or I’m not excited about that or it’s a really interesting perspective.

Chris Gooch (17:15):
I don’t really know anybody that doesn’t have a day job of sorts. Even the people who make the money off drawing, they do illustration work.

(17:27)
Look, unless you’re selling tonnes of money, there’s not a lot of selling tonnes of copies, there’s not a lot of money. At least I know people build sort of Patreon following and things like that that I have no idea about, but they seem to do well with that. But I don’t know, even when you’re doing that Patreon stuff or Kickstarters, it’s like you’re signing up to do a lot of stuff that isn’t just the book or the art. You have to do the admin and the emails and you have to do the posters and the stickers and stuff like that. It becomes a job in of itself.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (18:01):
Yeah, definitely. And a lot of promotion and marketing and all that sort of stuff,

Chris Gooch (18:08):
Which you have to do anyway regardless of what you’re doing, but there’s no escaping it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (18:15):
No, no, that’s right. And that’s an interesting one because I know most creative types aren’t big on that and don’t, not the thing we all look forward to. It’s the thing you kind of need to do to get it in front of readers. But yeah, it’s not the thing we most enjoy. So tell us a bit about, you can pick whichever one you want now. I’ve only got the two so far, but under Earth was my favourite. A massive fan of semi dystopian sort of stuff and just the longer form and yeah, I just thought it was really, really clever the way that some of the characters were brought in and just a great story. You can talk about that. You can talk about another one. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about a piece that you’ve worked on or it could be something new that we haven’t seen yet and where the idea came from, how you move through it. Yeah,

Chris Gooch (19:06):
For sure. I think I did under oath last time, so I’ll do the one I’m working on now. I slowly start to forget. I don’t think I can do field on the other ones. The one I’m working on now is called In Utero. So it is like monster horror in the guise of not so much like Freddie v Jason or Alien, more like King Kong punching Godzilla kind of a thing. Not quite, it’s not that size, but I wanted to do that kind of story. So it’s set in abandoned and shopping mall, sort of a really fun tro of horror that I love. And it’s a young girl who goes to a holiday programme and sort of what I went to, this is something I had with the American publisher, they’re like, what’s this? And I was like, oh, I had two working parents. So school holidays during the day, they don’t meet the holiday programme and you’d watch a movie or you play with other kids or whatever. So she’s at that, but she’s too old for it and she’s sick of being surrounded by all these children. So she goes exploring and meets one of the monsters as sort of the other monster starts to evolve and hatch and everything goes to shit on that side. She’s sort of befriending the other one and she gets caught up in the eventual fight between the two of ’em. Okay.

(20:35)
Probably, I think it started with a, oh, Godzilla is cool. What would I do if I was allowed to have Godzilla? And then I was like, oh, I really love Godzilla. I really love Digimon the movie. Have you ever seen that? No,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (20:51):
I haven’t. No. But I will be after this.

Chris Gooch (20:54):
Have you seen Summer Wars

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (20:57):
Film?

Chris Gooch (20:59):
I think it’s Memorial Ada and he did several of the original Digimon films and they’re like, he’s an anime, so they’re not necessarily buy the toys. They’re kind of interesting. And the first Dig one film that I’ve seen at least is kind of like et, but this huge Tyra source wreck such these kids just wandering on the city as it just torches things and breaks into vending machines to get them candy and stuff, which I really love. And I think was the other reference point, which is the guy did Akira Automo, it’s his other graphic novel that’s widely available in English or was when I was a kid. I’m not sure. It’s so easy now. Yeah, so I started off, I wanted to do 20 page digital movie. It was awesome. Yes. And there’s that weird Fox dub version that’s horrible and I just love so much I can’t recommend it to anybody. They took the original three films or three OVAs and crammed together and put all these terrible jokes and I don’t know, you can’t recommend it to anybody, but I love it saying, yeah. So my aim was to have four chapters that were going to be 20 pages each because I wanted to practise condensed storytelling.

(22:17)
And then I did that and it’s now two 50 pages, so it’s more than double in size in terms of the just expanding everything and making sure everything’s clear. So part of it was like I wanted, the fight seems to be better, I wanted the relationships to be more in depth. And other parts were from the publisher who was like, we think you need to have more of an explanation of how and why in terms of the setup for why the monsters are at the abandoned shopping mall and how they got there and things like that. So yeah, all that stuff over two years got to draught.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (23:01):
Does that stress you or if you get that sort of feedback and okay, now I need to think of this and add this, or does it add to the excitement or when you get that, oh, now I’ve got to do another 50 odd pages to cover this area?

Chris Gooch (23:19):
No, that doesn’t really bother me so much. It stresses me or it would stress me if I didn’t like the feedback or if I didn’t

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (23:29):
Trust

Chris Gooch (23:29):
The publisher’s feedback or trust the feedback I was getting from somebody else if I was nervous about it. But I think it’s solid feedback. So I don’t know. The way I’ve done this one is I’ve done detailed thumbnails.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (23:43):
Oh, okay.

Chris Gooch (23:44):
Right. So yeah, it’s almost like I started with 120 or a hundred thumbnails and then I’ve just slowly been adding the thumbnails in. So at that point it’s quite easy. And then you get to the end of the thumbnail draught and you’re like, oh fuck, I have to spend two years drawing all of it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:02):
Which again, it sounds, I mean everyone’s different, but it sounds to me like how a lot of people put a novel together. You start with an outline and you work that outline until you’re happy with it and then you start writing and then you do first draught, which I’m not sure if that’s the same as other comic creators or everyone’s different, but it does sound like a novel sort of process.

Chris Gooch (24:28):
Personally, I feel like I can’t wrap my head around a draught until it’s gone all the way to the end and then you get all the way to the end and then you change parts in the middle and that changes parts of the end. And then, so I really need to personally have at least a very detailed draught before I actually start doing any finished drawing.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:47):
Right.

Chris Gooch (24:48):
And I tend to end up having these very, there’s no writing left to do basically.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (24:55):
Wow, that’s really interesting. Yeah, that’s really cool. So we have a question from the gallery from Young Isaac, something that you would like to take on.

Chris Gooch (25:15):
Yeah, I’d love to do work for higher writing. Maybe not drawing, but

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (25:21):
Okay.

Chris Gooch (25:22):
I dunno mean, yeah, Godzilla, I’d love to do that. Something fun and schlocky that has a genre trope and a history that you can dive back into. I’ve been reading Swamp Thing by a Moore for the first time.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (25:37):
Oh, it’s good, isn’t it?

Chris Gooch (25:38):
Yeah, it was the only one of his that I, that was like, it’s on the top five or top 10 lists every time that I haven’t properly read. And it’s not as tight as the rest of his stuff, but it’s still really good, really clever. And I mean maybe I don’t really know what Wes Swamp thing was like before he got it, but it doesn’t seem like there was a lot there. It seems like he kind of transformed it and did most of everything that’s interesting about Swamp Thing himself.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (26:10):
And it’s one of those things, well I found anyway when I was reading it, there’s no reason why someone like me would be interested in a swamp thing. There’s just nothing in there for me at all. But you are, you’re just sucked into this all good at least. I mean, you’ve got something to do something with. So good luck to you.

Chris Gooch (26:29):
I’ll go eventually anyway.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (26:32):
It all goes eventually.

Chris Gooch (26:35):
I think probably a lot of people that grew up reading a mix of fan graphics in DC you have that fantasy of like, oh man, I’d love to take some shit character that nobody ever thinks of and do the Ellen Moore swamp thing with it, which really means you want a budget and creative freedom. That seems what Ellen Moore got,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (26:56):
Which I mean that’s not an easy thing to snag for something that big,

Chris Gooch (27:01):
That’s for sure. No, I don’t really know if that happens anymore or at least

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (27:06):
Well, I mean Alan Moore famously is against every film that’s ever been done from his IP and he’s adamant that it needs to stay in comic form and all this other sort of stuff. So even with his work, it’s interesting.

Chris Gooch (27:20):
Yeah, I couldn’t personally disagree more with that. I like that there are tonnes of shit Alan Moore movies. It doesn’t ruin the books for me at all. It’s just more publicity.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (27:31):
Yeah. One of my dreams is for one of my projects to get picked up and absolutely destroyed by Netflix or whoever just get taken and then to have a party and celebrate just how badly they’ve screwed it. Because odds are that’s what’s going to happen. But hey, like I say, it’s out there and that’s great anyway. Alan, a different sort of chap.

Chris Gooch (27:59):
I mean he also has enough money to stay up at his high horse and be like, I have integrity and I won’t take this money or whatever. I would personally really love a film deal. I just wouldn’t work for, I give up the day job or whatever,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:14):
Screw the integrity, I’m fine with the deal, just give me the deal and that’s

Chris Gooch (28:17):
Fine. Yeah, fuck you.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:20):
So talk to me a little bit about either villains or heroes. What aspects of either of those, which do you prefer drawing and writing most? And then what are the elements that you like in each or in either?

Chris Gooch (28:38):
I don’t know. I guess I wouldn’t describe it in the characters I have as heroes. I guess villains are fun. I don’t know, they’re always fun to draw and design and I don’t know. But most of the characters that I want to draw are,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:55):
Sorry, Zach’s just

Chris Gooch (28:58):
Taking

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (28:58):
A dig at me. Sorry. You’re saying most of the characters you’re drawing?

Chris Gooch (29:03):
Yeah, I think I prefer the grey areas in terms of people who think they’re doing well, who are actually doing awful or people who have a level of complicity in the things going around with them, which was, that’s the main theme of the Prism one is just like we’re all a bit all very complicit in all the fuck stuff that’s happening in the world. That’s it. Probably villains

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (29:29):
I found that with under earth, I dunno if it’s human nature or just with too used to Hollywood or whatever the case might be. I find when I’m reading something, I’m searching for the good guy I’m searching for the hero to root for, and you latch onto one character and then you’re kind of like, but is he the hero? He’s just done some pretty bad stuff and then another one, and this one’s showing weakness. And so I love that the depth with the characters and that you couldn’t just pick, there’s no black or white, you’re all in this kind of cess pit together, doing the best that you can and failing, which is really cool. But you prefer villains?

Chris Gooch (30:11):
I guess if I had to choose between the hero or the villain? Definitely villain or a, if it’s sort like superheroes, someone like Batman who’s like a psychopath, but he’s like, hi Andy Hero, but actually horrible person. Yeah, a relatable villain. Is one more interesting? Yeah, I’m sick of, I don’t know really Bland Hollywood protagonist.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (30:37):
Yeah, we’ve had too many of them. Oh, sorry, you were

Chris Gooch (30:42):
No, no, I was just going to agree.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (30:47):
So a bit of a weird question from maybe the new project that you’re working on now. Is it a young girl or a teenager or

Chris Gooch (31:02):
End of 12. So primary school, beginning of high school, end of primary, beginning of high school,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:08):
The tweens. So if you had a chance to sit down with her, you have five minutes with her, what advice are you going to give her? And it can be at any stage throughout the journey of the story.

Chris Gooch (31:22):
Oh, I don’t know. Call your mom and get her to pick you up. Don’t get involved with monsters.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:27):
Don’t get involved with huge, horrible monsters.

Chris Gooch (31:31):
Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (31:34):
I mean that’s fair enough I suppose. Yeah, that’s what we get. Alright, so on the same vein but a little bit different in the same vein but a little bit different, you can pick any character, any protagonist or villain that you’ve written or drawn or both. You’re going through the McDonald’s, they’re in the backseat and they’re ordering through you. Who are they? What are they ordering?

Chris Gooch (32:12):
Shit.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:15):
Well, McDonald’s kind of everything McDonald’s sells, but more

Chris Gooch (32:18):
Specific I love. So awful. Okay. I did a comic in the short comic in the short collection called OSI Skull Face, which has a space boundy hunter and a little alien. I love the little alien character a lot. Her name is Glee. She would pick everything curious and full of energy and we probably need too much and throw up.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:43):
I have to just, do you mind if I show?

Chris Gooch (32:47):
No, that’s not page

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (32:50):
Now. Which one? I also love, one of the things I wanted to talk about now I I’m too, hang on. So I loved ah, Edy’s doing the thing. I love the way you subtly use colour throughout, so mostly grey tones and then you’ll add some colour, but then occasionally as well you’ll just flood the page in this kind of beautiful dark rich sort of tone. It just adds so much depth. And sorry, I’m supposed to be showing the artwork off, but yeah, I just love the way you did that or do that. It’s obviously a choice. Does it lean on something that you’ve seen that you just think I really love that approach, or is it just experimentation?

Chris Gooch (33:44):
I think when it comes to colour, I often feel out of my depth. So having sort of a set of rules works really well. So for that, that’s pretty much what I do every time. So it’s a spot colour, so a blue or whatever, a red half tonnes, which you can then layer on the spot colour and that’ll give you darker or you just put it on the white of the page and that gives you darker white, like a grey and then gradient. So those are the three tools that I’ll use or three elements that I can combine in different ways within a colouring long form comic that sort of lets me relax and get the most out of those three elements that I can. And then also I just can’t spend two years doing four colour on a book. It just never come out.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (34:35):
There’s a practical element too then to Yeah,

Chris Gooch (34:38):
For sure. Cages I think is my favourite example of a spot colour like the Dave McKean book, but Ghost World has as well. I think it was a standard sort of indie comic thing of that maybe decade or two decades of those are in.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (34:54):
Right, okay. And what would you say either in the creative process or working with a publisher or anything, what’s the grind? What’s the thing that you don’t like? What do you detest most about the whole process

Chris Gooch (35:15):
Of publishing mean

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (35:18):
Or of creating comics? Selling comics, working with a publisher the whole bit.

Chris Gooch (35:23):
I mean, probably social media, having to maintain some sort of internet presence. I have the day job, so it’s not like I really have to put very much effort into it to pay rent. But that weird balance, my social media is I just put up progress, work in progress stuff, sort of what I like sharing and what I like showing to people. But it’s very far from eye-catching and I don’t think it draws, gets people to click on it as much as a big, colourful, nice image that maybe I put more thought into would. And then there’s the whole, do you put your face on your Instagram? Are you doing stories being like, Hey guys, I’m just drawing and if I could do a good job with that, maybe I would, but I can’t. And I’ve really resented so much. I’ve done a lot of customer service day job stuff and I sort of fucking love that. So definitely I like social media. I like that I can message people and I’ll meet people across the world, talk to people from across the world and stuff like that. But having to format myself in a way that is appealing on social media, I just can’t be fucked at all. Also, I’m bad at it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (36:42):
Yeah. And it’s not a thing that you do once and you do a really good job and then you think, well great, that’s done. It’s just if constant, constant, constant. And unless you’re a sociopath or someone that really likes that and is good at it, not many people are. Yeah, I dunno that many creators that are,

Chris Gooch (37:05):
I reckon there’s a lot of people that have that talent for it but don’t enjoy it. Or at least this is somebody who’s totally on the outside, I can’t do it well. So it’s not like a choice I have to make. But if you’re really good at that, I’m sure there’s a balance of like, oh, do I make content TikTok videos about my drawings or do I do drawings? And that would be tough, especially on top of a day job trying to balance that. But yeah, I just don’t really do it that much. That’s sort of my policy is got the day job, got the comic books that I like and I work hard on them. I just bother with the other stuff so much.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (37:43):
But that’s great though because you’ve made the decision that, all right, I’m going to work a day job so I don’t have to do that. Yeah,

Chris Gooch (37:54):
Thank you. Yeah. Although maybe if I was better at it, I wouldn’t have to work a day job anyway. Whatever

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (38:03):
One day. That’s the dream. One day get people will pay you to do your own stuff and that’s it.

Chris Gooch (38:10):
But how we make a minimum wage off of comics, that’s the dream, right?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (38:14):
Yeah. Or even slightly lower, as long as it’s close to that. I was going to ask, is there an idea or a story or a concept that you’ve had or you’ve been toying around with that either because it’s too big or too out there, whatever the case may be, you’re intimidated by it or it’s there, you’re not ready to take a go, have a go at it yet, or it’s just too wild?

Chris Gooch (38:47):
I have a lot of stuff just because I have a policy of, I was saying before, I’ll write the whole big thing and then spend two years drawing it or whatever, which leaves a lot of time to think and write. So I do a lot of writing on the side, or at least I try to. So I have a folder that’s ideas and stuff. But I had one recently that I started in Covid. So when I was 20 or 21, I had this idea about a self-help cult that I wanted to do. And I wrote a first draught and I took it to a workshop and everyone was like, this is not very good, or at least that’s what I thought they were saying between all the nice things or the politically what stuff they were saying. And then so I wrote another draught and I took it back and they were like, there’s a little bit better. So I was like, fuck it, put it in a drawer. And then at the start of Covid I was like, oh, maybe I’ll go back to that. And I started from scratch, maybe looked at the first draught once and yeah, I’ve been working on that now and it’s like it’s way too big. It would be like 60,000 words or something. It’d be like 800 pages if I was going to draw it. It’s just a lot and I’m going to have to, I’m halfway through a finished second draught or whatever and it’s still super rough.

(40:11)
So yeah. Wow.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (40:13):
Yeah, that’s the opposite problem to what I face most of the time, which is I need to get to a higher word count, so I need to, I’ve finished too soon, but that’s different to comic stuff. That’s a lot though. That’s a lot.

Chris Gooch (40:28):
Yeah. I’m going to have to make it as good as I can and then take that and make it into something that is practically possible to make

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (40:38):
Doable.

Chris Gooch (40:39):
Yeah, I dunno.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (40:43):
Yeah, that’s an interesting thing because I have myself a pathological, I find it really hard to look at something and ditch it and it’s like if I’ve put X amount of effort in, I need to make something of it and get it out there. I find it hard and I really admire people that can look at the whole thing and go, you know what? No, not ready or it’s not the right standard off it goes to me, that would really hurt. I mean, having said that, of course we’ve all got things that we’ll never see the light of day, but

Chris Gooch (41:18):
I think as long as I have it, as long as I can finish the draught and I think it’s a good script, then I’ll be okay with, I’m not going to touch this for a few years and then maybe that’ll just become forever, but we’ll have to see.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (41:38):
Part of me really envys that ability to let it stew for a while and develop and then come back to it and then, yeah, anyway, that’s my own issue. We won’t get into that one. So we’re rapidly approaching the gifting portion of the night where you will be receiving a gift from myself and Shane Sizzle, even though he’s not here, he’s with us in spirit. Before we get to that though, the question that everyone is anticipating for some reason, so at the moment in time where you are now your favourite film eating your favourite food, what would that combination look like?

Chris Gooch (42:25):
I like what would I eat while I watch my favourite current, favourite movie

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:29):
And what would the movie be?

Chris Gooch (42:34):
Probably the Batman at least. Probably maybe the first half of it and then I’d probably leave, but I don’t know, maybe just ice cream. I’ve been trying to eat less sweets. It just makes me want to eat them more. So probably Ice cream and the

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:51):
Batman, just a tub of ice cream and Batman.

Chris Gooch (42:54):
Yeah, the first hour and a half,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (42:57):
Right. There we go. Well thank you sir. Was there anything else that you would like to make people aware of in terms of where can they go? This is your opportunity to do that thing that you hate to sell yourself to the people? Where can people go to find your stuff?

Chris Gooch (43:14):
Instagram is probably the one that I actually use the most, which is Chris Gooch four. Four. And I use Twitter mostly. Twitter, I just sort of repost the Instagram stuff for people that don’t have Instagram. It feels a little bit like a dying app anyway, which is a bummer. The only one that I like. It feels a bit more gated. I can go on Instagram without seeing neo Nazis, but if I go on Twitter and I go in to the news section and I click on an article, there’ll always be 12 Neo. He’s being like, fuck you, Dan Andrews or something. Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (43:54):
Twitter is evil.

Chris Gooch (43:56):
Yeah, horrifying. Instagram. Follow me on Instagram. I haven’t been using it a lot recently, but I’ll probably get into the habit again in a while.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (44:05):
Or just get on the Google and search for Chris on the Google. Just Google and hunt you down any way that we can. All right, here we go. So thank you very much, sir. It’s been great chatting with you and really interesting and I have a few movies I have to find now, so I’ll show you sizzle’s image first. I haven’t seen it yet. So basically we just, the rule is, is it five minutes or 10 minutes? I think it’s 10 minutes. Usually it ends up being five. We’re not allowed to sketch anything out in pencil. It’s got to be right in just straight in and just eyeballing it. So this is sizzles effort or

Chris Gooch (44:51):
Perfect for a second. I thought it was going to be me and I was like, oh God,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (44:55):
Yeah, no, no, no, we don’t do portraits. That would be really nasty of us to try and do that. So that is one of the guards I’d say from Oh

Chris Gooch (45:04):
Yeah, for

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (45:04):
Sure. Under Earth. Yeah. Yeah. Well on sizzle, you probably can’t hear this, but anyway, we definitely can’t hear this. And then here’s my little effort and apologies for the misshapen head. I mean you probably know who the dude is

Chris Gooch (45:19):
Head. Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (45:21):
I started doing it and then I realised he has no forehead. Everything’s out of proportion. It’s too late to go back five minutes.

Chris Gooch (45:28):
No, fuck it. Yeah, that looks great. Thank you.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (45:31):
So you will get your copy of those and we’ll send that to you shortly. I dunno, sizzle does it. I don’t know how he does it. You’ll probably get an e version of it that you can print out, put under your pillow at night and just remember the good times, whatever it may be. Thank you very much. Again, thanks for joining us. Everybody get in. Look up Chris on the Instagram or on the Google. I cannot recommend these enough. They’re a great read and one of my pet peeves about comics is when you back a comic or you get a comic and it’s great and it’s over in two seconds. So I love having something a bit meatier that it feels like you’re reading a mini novel, which is just such a nice experience. Cool. Well thank you very much sir. We’re going to move to the next section, which I dunno what that’s going to look like, but we’re going to give it a go. So I’m going to press this thing. You’re welcome to stay on and we can have a chat after the show or if you need to go, that’s fine as well.

Chris Gooch (46:36):
I’ve got to eat.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (46:37):
All right, well you go and eat, sir. It’s been a pleasure and we’ll catch you around and we’ll see if this thing works. Hey, hey everyone. It’s me, it’s Morgan. Am I bringing anyone in? I don’t know. Yay.

Chris Gooch (47:01):
Do you want me? I’m here. Yeah,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (47:03):
Why not? Why not? Well, I was going to do, that was really cool. That was really cool. Yeah,

Chris Gooch (47:08):
You did great. Chris is awesome. It’s good show. You nailed it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (47:12):
I kept forgetting to click things, but I did want to, I mean, it’s shameless promotion time. You are here, so we might as well both have a crack at it. Oh yeah. So I’ll just remind everyone. Shadow’s daughter, the campaign Kickstarter campaign is one week, it’s in the last week. So this is my last plug on this show for the campaign. It’s now up to eight issues that you get if you support. So the six normal issues, two free issues, it’s a whole bunch of stuff. Some free artwork everybody gets, every Aussie gets also a copy, a digital copy of this one here. I’m going to show you the trailer. It’s totally going to work. Here we go.

Voice Over (47:51):
Nothing unusual about a 4:00 AM call to a back alley in downtown Kenton. A young woman lying, pristine and unmarked on the cold hard ground. I get to work quickly, but there’s not much to go on here. No marks of any kind, no signs of struggle. Just a dead vic in the middle of an alley. And then there’s that dead body in a dumpster that looks like a grizzly bear has crawled its way out of his stomach,

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (48:50):
Like a hair has crawled out of his stomach. That’s right.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:54):
Good

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (48:54):
Voiceover. Nice.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (48:56):
Thanks man. I have to drop it two semitones to make it sound like a man’s voice and not mine. That’s alright. So shadow’s daughter, get in and back. It looks like that and there are many different versions and it is great fun. Please get involved or share it with a friend or an enemy or a colleague. While you’re on, sir, is there something that you would like to plug? Perhaps something coming up shortly?

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (49:26):
Watch Whoop, whoop, things are changing. Just so I can click something. I can show this. So just earlier today I finished all three of these books. They have been sent to the people that they need to be sent to and the Kickstarter I think will launch on Monday. If you go to sped z.com X studio, you can click the notify me now. Devil’s Toilet number three, sluggish number one, and Ver Moose three. So if you like toilets, depression, slugs, robots, rowboats, it’s all there. I

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (50:07):
Like all those things. Oh, sweet. All of them.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (50:10):
How good’s, depression and rowboats. Just two great things.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (50:14):
And you stick a slug in there. Yep. I mean, you’re pretty well set to go. I did also want to, I haven’t had a chance to read anything yet. They just arrived today, but I got the amazing tails.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (50:31):
Well, I can tell you I have read them and they’re delightful.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (50:35):
I’m looking forward to tucking into these puppies.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (50:40):
Nice.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (50:41):
There we go. So looking forward to that.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (50:45):
I’ve got a sneak peek of Southern Quadrant. Ooh yes,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (50:50):
I’ve read that too.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (50:52):
Delightful. Wow, you stocked up.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (50:54):
Oh and yes. So more coming. Anyway, sorry, that was me.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (50:58):
Great. No, I wish I had something to show, but I got to read A PDF Advanced copy of Sudden Squadron Dark by Bo Jardine features cameos from Hair, but Hippo Bug and Stump the Dark Nebula. It’s got all the iconic characters in it. All twisted versions as you can expect from Bo Jardine. It’s coming soon to publications. Bo Jardine’s Art is amazing and his storytelling is on point and it’s got song lyrics all the way through it and it kind of reads like if you imagine Bo Jardine in his vampire self reading the Bible backwards, it reads like devilish tations. It’s awesome. So keep an eye out. I wish I had something to show, but this was last minute.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (51:58):
Pretend. Oh, that was not a thing that I meant to, no, sorry.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (52:02):
Sorry. There we go.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:03):
There we go. We’ll just pretend and we’ll all acknowledge that you have foresight into the things that are coming because of your connections and such and your status in the Australian comics industry.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (52:15):
Let tell you, there’s the Shadow Sun coming soon. Only I’ve seen it.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:23):
Damn it. You beat me to it. That was going to be the next Kickstarter and then Shadow’s Cousin and Brother-in-Law and there was a whole thing. Anyway,

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (52:32):
Shadow Cat,

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:36):
Shadow Cat Shadow Kitty Bin Kitty.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (52:39):
Oh nice. We’re just Oh nice. Brought it all back.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:42):
Yeah. Yeah. Alright, well I think that’s pretty well it. I run a tight ship. None of this going overtime because I’ve got nothing else to say.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (52:53):
I’ve finished early. You can get home, you can beat the traffic.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (52:57):
Absolutely. Yep. All of the traffic and such. I could play you a tune, but I’m not going to. So thank you very much. Veggie thanks to Chris Gie spread. Yep, it spread

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (53:12):
The veggies.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:13):
It’s eight o’clock, so I’m starting to get tired and I’m starting to slow my speech. That’s what happens. Sweet.

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (53:21):
Now I’m new here. So what buttons do you press to get out of here?

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:26):
That’s a good question. Do you have an

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (53:27):
Outro? Oh yeah, now

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:29):
I know it. We have an outro. It’s called Outro. Sweet. Thank you Betsy for your help. My pleasure. Tonight. And go. Well go shell. Is that a thing I was going to

Rob ‘Spedsy’ Lisle (53:40):
Say, don’t you say a catchphrase at the end.

Morgan ‘The’ Quaid (53:44):
Normally Sizzle tries to say Same Oz Comics time, same Oz Comics place. But he usually says Same Oz comics show time, same place. So we’ll just pretend that we stuffed it up all So nailed it. Same bat time, same bat channel. Yeah.