WEBVTT 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:17.140 Good morning Tromaville, 00:00:17.380 --> 00:00:22.060 and welcome to another episode of Talkin' Troma with your host me, 00:00:23.100 --> 00:00:27.560 Zack Beins, the show where we have all the four-color news that's fit to print, 00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:32.380 especially if it's coming from our good friends at Troma. 00:00:33.060 --> 00:00:34.960 Today we have a very special guest. 00:00:35.140 --> 00:00:36.740 We bring you Matt Bors. 00:00:37.380 --> 00:00:40.380 He's the author of "The Toxic Avenger", "Toxic Crusaders," 00:00:40.380 --> 00:00:44.180 and the forthcoming "Toxic Avenger vs. The Noxious Offender" 00:00:44.760 --> 00:00:45.800 from Ahoy Comics. 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:48.800 Toxie vs. Noxie number one 00:00:49.080 --> 00:00:52.480 lands in stores October 7th, 2026. 00:00:53.040 --> 00:00:56.460 I'm personally a fan of this new run of Toxie Comics. 00:00:56.520 --> 00:01:00.420 They're super funny, and Matt totally gets the humor 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:03.640 of Troma and Toxy in these comics, 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:06.860 and it's nice seeing all the characters that we love, 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:09.340 but just in new stories, 'cause let's face it, 00:01:09.440 --> 00:01:12.720 it takes a long time for a Toxic Avenger movie to come out. 00:01:13.100 --> 00:01:16.580 Summer of 2000, but we don't have to wait that long 00:01:16.740 --> 00:01:19.520 for new Toxic Avenger stories from Ahoy Comics. 00:01:20.380 --> 00:01:24.540 Chris Lanphear, producer and co-host extraordinaire, 00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:29.940 brings us a new exclusive interview with Matt Bors, 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:32.780 and we're gonna find out more about 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:35.480 this new run of Toxie Comics. 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:39.520 So on that note, let's listen. 00:01:42.380 --> 00:01:44.620 Hello, friends, Chris here for Talkin' Troma. 00:01:44.860 --> 00:01:48.420 I am here once again with the man, the myth, the legend, 00:01:48.560 --> 00:01:52.240 Matt Bors, the writer of the recent 00:01:52.240 --> 00:01:58.360 Toxic Avenger, Toxic Crusaders, and coming soon to your local comic book store, the Toxic 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:05.040 Avenger vs. Noxious Offender series, all of which from Ohoi Comics and the latest of which 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:06.780 is available for pre-order now. 00:02:07.420 --> 00:02:11.660 Go to your local comic book shop and pre-order Toxic Avenger vs. Noxious Offender. 00:02:12.140 --> 00:02:12.960 Matt, how are you? 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:14.040 Hey, good. 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:15.460 Thanks for having me back on, man. 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:17.140 It's good to be here. 00:02:17.480 --> 00:02:18.340 Yeah, absolutely. 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:24.980 You're playing a lot in the Toxie sandbox recently with the new series coming out and 00:02:25.100 --> 00:02:27.460 the two previous series under your belt. 00:02:28.060 --> 00:02:33.600 Can you talk a little bit about the response and reception that you've gotten to Toxie 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:34.040 so far? 00:02:34.460 --> 00:02:35.440 Yeah, it's been good. 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:42.140 We're doing some different stuff and I wasn't sure exactly how it would be received, but 00:02:42.160 --> 00:02:44.960 I mean everybody seems to love it. 00:02:46.040 --> 00:02:49.140 We have the Toxic Crusaders series with Tristan Wright. 00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:55.680 That is sort of like - it takes place in the same universe as our Toxie run. 00:02:55.800 --> 00:03:01.560 So, it's different than the cartoon, you know, it's very adult violent, more in line with 00:03:01.600 --> 00:03:02.360 the movie. 00:03:02.700 --> 00:03:09.020 So, I like doing those versions of the character and then in the comic book, we know we're 00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:09.880 doing crazy stuff. 00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:14.879 We just wrapped up an arc where Toxie went - it's called Toxie Goes to Washington where 00:03:14.880 --> 00:03:22.280 We went to Washington, D.C. to pass environmental legislation to better our toxic waste-filled 00:03:22.380 --> 00:03:22.760 country. 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:29.940 And of course, some heads exploded and some people died, and the Senate got blown up in 00:03:29.940 --> 00:03:31.820 a nuclear explosion, amongst other things. 00:03:33.359 --> 00:03:36.200 And now we're going to do The Noxious Offender. 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:41.720 What made you want to take on The Noxious Offender as your next series? 00:03:42.480 --> 00:03:49.440 So to me, and I don't know what they were all influenced by while writing it, but I 00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:52.980 mean I have to imagine, it came out in 2000, the movie. 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:54.200 Right, Citizen Toxie. 00:03:54.620 --> 00:04:01.680 Yeah, so this idea of the dark universe counterpart, I mean it's a tried and true comic book trope, 00:04:01.880 --> 00:04:02.100 right? 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:06.340 We've seen it, if you read comic books, you've seen this a hundred times. 00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:11.200 So the temptation was to try to do something with it 00:04:11.740 --> 00:04:15.080 a little different and something that played into 00:04:15.940 --> 00:04:18.880 the storyline we're telling in the comic books. 00:04:19.640 --> 00:04:23.980 So to me, it was like what did I have to say 00:04:24.080 --> 00:04:27.060 about this toxic Avenger that him having an evil version 00:04:28.380 --> 00:04:30.020 would play well with? 00:04:30.180 --> 00:04:33.779 So what's going on in the story is that 00:04:33.780 --> 00:04:41.360 At the end of the Washington's arc, Toxie and Yvonne are going to have a kid. 00:04:41.500 --> 00:04:44.400 She's pregnant with a lovely mutant fetus. 00:04:46.040 --> 00:04:53.040 Now this new series is really about them becoming parents, which was present in the movie too. 00:04:54.090 --> 00:05:00.360 She was controversially pregnant in the movie, through controversial methods I guess. 00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:02.700 There's no Kabuki man here. 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:09.420 doing things differently but Noxie's there and so that plays into this. 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:17.760 It's like the Noxie, the different version of Toxie is not going to be a dad nor is he 00:05:17.780 --> 00:05:20.320 wear a tutu nor is he a nice guy. 00:05:20.780 --> 00:05:27.980 He basically reacted to his bullying a lot differently and became a school shooter before 00:05:28.540 --> 00:05:29.360 he became a mutant. 00:05:29.620 --> 00:05:33.940 So he becomes a school shooter and then he goes to lay down on the train tracks to die 00:05:34.500 --> 00:05:41.340 and that's when the toxic train derailment, the train full of toxic waste hits him, which 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:44.520 is the origin story in the comic book of R-Toxi. 00:05:45.300 --> 00:05:50.840 So they come from different universes and a lot of it has, their differences have to 00:05:50.840 --> 00:05:52.120 do with parenting. 00:05:52.500 --> 00:06:01.140 So this is like where the Washington arc was more political, this is more personal. 00:06:01.150 --> 00:06:03.180 It's about the characters on the character level. 00:06:03.420 --> 00:06:09.640 So like Miss Junko plays a big part in it and Toxy's long lost dad shows up kind of 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:10.320 mysteriously. 00:06:11.100 --> 00:06:17.579 So I'm doing a lot about like parenting and how those choices affect people and like Toxy 00:06:17.580 --> 00:06:23.760 wrestling with, you know, how can he be a dad? Can he be a good dad? That type of thing. 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:29.900 That's one of the things I love most about the comic series that you've done so far is 00:06:30.020 --> 00:06:36.820 that you take the seed thought that is in these stories that come from either the movies 00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:44.459 or the cartoon series and expand upon it to probably make it much more meaningful than 00:06:44.460 --> 00:06:48.660 ever thought it was given in those previous iterations of the character. 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:56.880 So for example, for Noxie, I know the, when Troma made Citizen Toxie in 1999, the main 00:06:57.040 --> 00:07:03.600 impetus for having Noxie at all, for having the multiverse at all, was simply because 00:07:03.960 --> 00:07:09.800 we would get fan mail at the office asking who would win in a fight, either Toxie or 00:07:09.840 --> 00:07:10.900 Sergeant Kabuki Man. 00:07:11.300 --> 00:07:15.760 And the response was always that can't actually happen because they're both good guys. 00:07:16.120 --> 00:07:17.940 How do we make a bad Kabuki man? 00:07:18.320 --> 00:07:19.820 We have an alternate universe. 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:22.000 And that's sort of where that came in. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:27.640 So, Noxie was kind of a byproduct of that and we just sort of take for granted in that 00:07:27.720 --> 00:07:29.400 film that Noxie exists. 00:07:29.520 --> 00:07:35.220 But here you give him a backstory, you give him some purpose, you explore a little bit 00:07:35.260 --> 00:07:40.380 of the nature versus nurture and how that creates people, especially during our like 00:07:40.280 --> 00:07:41.900 formative younger years. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:44.680 I find that really, really interesting. 00:07:45.760 --> 00:07:45.880 Yeah. 00:07:46.300 --> 00:07:53.340 And I think part of it is, and to be clear, there's a lot of silliness and humor and violence 00:07:53.380 --> 00:07:54.800 and gross stuff happening as well. 00:07:56.120 --> 00:08:02.880 But I try to introduce some serious themes to it in part because it's like, well, we're 00:08:02.900 --> 00:08:03.780 doing a fun comic book. 00:08:03.830 --> 00:08:05.080 I mean, we're not trying to make this tedious. 00:08:05.560 --> 00:08:11.980 But I think it's easy to sort of make a two-hour movie and you make it fun and it's two hours 00:08:12.020 --> 00:08:12.580 in with it. 00:08:12.680 --> 00:08:15.620 But you know, we're asking people to read a comic book series month after month. 00:08:15.700 --> 00:08:22.420 At this point, we're going to be close to 30 issues I think by the end of this series 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:26.280 and the idea is we have some more plans after that that we hopefully do. 00:08:27.120 --> 00:08:30.640 So you know, to me it's like well, if you're writing a character for that long, you're 00:08:30.640 --> 00:08:34.860 asking people to pay attention to these characters and their stories for that long, you have 00:08:34.760 --> 00:08:37.780 to sort of imbue it with a little more substance. 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:38.860 Absolutely. 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:44.219 And you talk about how this new series is, you know, part of what you're talking about 00:08:44.260 --> 00:08:48.660 is Toxie grappling with becoming a father and how that's going to affect him. 00:08:49.520 --> 00:08:50.600 You're a father as well. 00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:57.000 Is there anything you're saying about Toxie's grasp with fatherhood that you perhaps grappled 00:08:57.060 --> 00:08:58.060 with in your life? 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:05.000 Yeah, you know, I am definitely pulling from, you know, some of my own thoughts and experiences 00:09:05.090 --> 00:09:05.760 for this one. 00:09:05.940 --> 00:09:11.900 I mean, when we start out in the first issue of this new series, they're in a clinic, I 00:09:11.900 --> 00:09:19.060 think it's called the Trauma Baby Prego Clinic and the doctor looks very suspiciously like 00:09:19.100 --> 00:09:23.679 Lloyd Kaufman and he's telling them, you know, he's doing the ultrasound and he's telling 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:27.660 him, "Your baby's irradiated, mutated." 00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:30.140 Basically he's saying, "I wouldn't go for it." 00:09:30.460 --> 00:09:34.360 And Yvonne's position is kind of like she wants to do it. 00:09:34.520 --> 00:09:36.560 And they're young too. 00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:38.460 Like they're just out of high school. 00:09:38.640 --> 00:09:43.760 So like in the series, I'm treating it as if they're basically aging in real time. 00:09:43.920 --> 00:09:46.820 So I would say they're like 20 in this series. 00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:55.340 And I think Toxie's initial response is similar to a lot of young men when they find out their 00:09:55.380 --> 00:10:00.180 girlfriend's pregnant, which is maybe not so sure that we have to commit to this, right? 00:10:00.820 --> 00:10:07.440 And one of the things I am trying to get across I think is obviously it's less common for 00:10:07.520 --> 00:10:10.640 people to have kids young these days or even have kids at all. 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:15.320 that I know some of my friends from high school 00:10:15.500 --> 00:10:19.060 did have kids right out of high school. 00:10:19.700 --> 00:10:22.440 Funny enough, they're now my age, 00:10:22.880 --> 00:10:24.080 I'm about to be 43, 00:10:24.400 --> 00:10:26.300 and they don't have any kids at home anymore, 00:10:26.520 --> 00:10:27.480 so they're getting the, 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:29.840 they're on the other end of it now. 00:10:30.540 --> 00:10:32.060 But I'm just trying to pull from that, 00:10:32.460 --> 00:10:33.780 from their experiences, I guess, 00:10:33.780 --> 00:10:36.960 to be like a young parent who chooses 00:10:37.100 --> 00:10:38.740 to be a parent at a young age, 00:10:39.080 --> 00:10:42.240 which is I think increasingly rare. 00:10:42.600 --> 00:10:48.520 But Toxie and Yvonne are also like, they're not of the professional class. 00:10:48.660 --> 00:10:53.920 They're not necessarily, like Toxie is a famous superhero in this world, but they're also 00:10:54.040 --> 00:10:55.120 not wealthy people. 00:10:55.240 --> 00:10:58.000 They're not really on some kind of like professional track. 00:10:58.140 --> 00:11:04.479 And I think that there also is an idea I'm going for in this book where there's like 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:07.580 sort of an environmental apocalypse, alien invasion, 00:11:08.040 --> 00:11:10.160 hanging over everything, is like, 00:11:10.240 --> 00:11:11.280 why have a kid in this world? 00:11:11.400 --> 00:11:14.520 Which is what a lot of people think about and talk about, 00:11:14.640 --> 00:11:17.460 and a lot of my friends and people who have kids 00:11:17.500 --> 00:11:18.200 and don't have kids. 00:11:18.500 --> 00:11:20.100 And so that's kind of one of the things 00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:21.520 that I want to bring out, is like, 00:11:22.160 --> 00:11:23.960 yeah, why would you have a kid 00:11:23.960 --> 00:11:25.500 if things are getting worse all the time, 00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:26.740 or seemingly getting worse? 00:11:27.100 --> 00:11:31.420 That harkens back to the previous Toxic Crusaders series 00:11:31.620 --> 00:11:33.500 that you just wrapped the first volume up of, 00:11:34.100 --> 00:11:36.060 which is available now in trade paperback 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:37.460 at your local comic book stores. 00:11:37.660 --> 00:11:38.900 And if you haven't read that, 00:11:39.340 --> 00:11:41.200 I don't understand what you're doing with your life 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:42.520 or why you're listening to this, 00:11:43.100 --> 00:11:47.080 because if you're digging what Matt has done with Toxie, 00:11:47.500 --> 00:11:49.880 you have to go back and look at 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:51.600 what he's done with the Crusaders, 00:11:51.780 --> 00:11:54.260 giving them all backstories, giving them all purpose, 00:11:55.080 --> 00:11:56.980 expanding on the world of Smogula 00:11:57.200 --> 00:11:59.800 and the alien invasion that takes place in that series 00:12:00.340 --> 00:12:01.900 is wonderful, wonderful stuff. 00:12:02.020 --> 00:12:07.740 And really, you know, the previous Toxic Avenger, 00:12:07.780 --> 00:12:10.380 Toxic Crusader series that were done by Marvel 00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:15.060 30 years ago were little more than tie-in opportunities. 00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:18.520 I don't think that the writers who were working on that, 00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:20.280 which, you know, who did good work, 00:12:20.720 --> 00:12:22.380 I don't think they were plotting out 00:12:22.700 --> 00:12:24.540 long-term storylines for these things. 00:12:24.820 --> 00:12:29.220 It was a mandate of, hey, we have this licensing tie-in, 00:12:29.540 --> 00:12:32.400 I need eight issues by next week kind of a thing. 00:12:33.300 --> 00:12:40.360 Um, but having talked with you, you have been ruminating on these ideas for years now. 00:12:40.860 --> 00:12:41.040 Yeah. 00:12:41.760 --> 00:12:46.600 You know, I always sort of had it in my head that I would love to do something with 00:12:47.320 --> 00:12:48.760 Toxic Avenger and the Toxic Crusaders. 00:12:49.390 --> 00:12:55.939 And then, you know, in 2023, I think it was, I approached Lloyd at San Diego 00:12:56.020 --> 00:13:01.019 Comic-con and sort of pitched this concept and it's all worked out and I mean I've I 00:13:01.680 --> 00:13:06.500 Didn't have everything figured out at that time. But like like you said, I'm giving backstories to the characters 00:13:06.990 --> 00:13:13.780 So the train spill that I mentioned is sort of like the origin for all the mutants in this world. So like no zone 00:13:14.700 --> 00:13:20.019 Instead of being a pilot. He is the he is the train conductor. He was the guy running the train 00:13:20.740 --> 00:13:26.520 Junkyard is a homeless woman with her dog that gets merged together. That's near the train tracks 00:13:26.920 --> 00:13:33.620 Bonehead is his bully that was chasing him, but then this would be a spoiler for the verse first volume 00:13:33.620 --> 00:13:37.520 But he kills bonehead and then his mom actually becomes 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:44.060 Obsessed then and vengeful and she mutates herself and becomes like a new bonehead 00:13:44.510 --> 00:13:46.319 And so we have this female bonehead 00:13:46.320 --> 00:13:51.580 that's like the mom of the bully that bullied Toxie who Toxie killed and 00:13:52.220 --> 00:13:59.920 she she's like his like Red Skull to Captain America or you know, like his arch-nemesis and 00:14:00.580 --> 00:14:03.180 She is even in this new series with the noxious offender 00:14:03.380 --> 00:14:09.120 She'll play a decent role like so and then I'm pulling the these themes of parenting are 00:14:10.390 --> 00:14:12.119 you know present here because 00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:16.640 she hates toxic Avenger because he killed her son and 00:14:18.140 --> 00:14:25.360 Then Noxie, you know also dealt with her son in the other dimension. So I love playing with this stuff 00:14:27.380 --> 00:14:32.880 It's so cool, yeah having having bone mom emerge as as a new threat 00:14:33.300 --> 00:14:37.200 I'm gonna call her bone mom. I like that the way that sounds you can have that for free 00:14:37.230 --> 00:14:39.559 All right. Well have somebody call her bone mom in the comment 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:49.060 Awesome, you know just talks about the the world in which they inhabit and the ways in which our decisions kind of like 00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:54.160 Follow us down the line. I think there's there's an interesting through line through that 00:14:55.020 --> 00:14:58.760 and you talked about I saw in another interview where 00:14:59.460 --> 00:15:04.300 Whereas toxic crusaders because of the background of the toxic waste spill 00:15:05.060 --> 00:15:08.680 Had a lot of political allegory going on and you know, sadly 00:15:08.400 --> 00:15:14.540 we're still dealing with much of that climate right now as you write this new series, but you also talked about how this is becoming 00:15:15.320 --> 00:15:18.060 This series would focus on more personal issues 00:15:18.600 --> 00:15:24.640 You make Noxie a school shooter now in citizen Toxie. There is a school shooting that takes place 00:15:25.070 --> 00:15:29.940 But it's not related to how Toxie or Noxie become who they are 00:15:30.600 --> 00:15:32.920 What made you want to go the route of the school shooter? 00:15:33.480 --> 00:15:39.960 Well, you know obvious you say, you know, I say this and it doesn't sound like super appealing or funny 00:15:40.840 --> 00:15:47.240 Stuff and we're not treating as such but we're also not it's it's not meant to be extremely 00:15:48.060 --> 00:15:51.660 dour or nihilistic either, but I did want Toxie to be sort of like 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:59.799 Really nihilistic and not like like almost the exact opposite of toxic Avenger 00:15:59.800 --> 00:16:07.480 So like his dress is even sort of modeled after the Columbine shooters. So which is you know as a 00:16:08.160 --> 00:16:13.100 Elder millennial sort of that's like a touchstone for me. So they have he has like white shirt 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:14.280 suspenders 00:16:15.380 --> 00:16:20.840 He's got a ball cap on, you know, he looks a lot different than Toxie who's wearing a tutu 00:16:21.420 --> 00:16:23.720 so I guess I guess I wanted to 00:16:24.540 --> 00:16:28.320 pursue that because first of all, there's the the origin in the bullying and 00:16:29.320 --> 00:16:35.280 that a fact of our modern age is like the mass shooter 00:16:35.340 --> 00:16:37.140 and the school shooter, and a lot of these 00:16:37.300 --> 00:16:43.080 very despondent, angry young men becoming shooters. 00:16:43.400 --> 00:16:47.080 And that's sort of what I imagine would be 00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:53.720 the darker origin of Toxie where he didn't have his mom 00:16:53.820 --> 00:16:55.880 or he didn't have Yvonne or he didn't have 00:16:55.820 --> 00:17:00.680 like these guideposts in his upbringing to make him into a good person. 00:17:01.130 --> 00:17:06.280 You can clearly see the influence in one of the promotional images of Noxie that you shared 00:17:06.540 --> 00:17:06.660 online. 00:17:07.350 --> 00:17:11.880 You see the backwards baseball cap and you see the white shirt, the black pants and the 00:17:11.900 --> 00:17:18.860 suspenders and as someone who grew up an hour away from where Columbine took place and was 00:17:18.920 --> 00:17:24.900 in high school on that day, it definitely rings true to the kind of character that can 00:17:24.819 --> 00:17:30.400 And if I'm not mistaken, is there also an evil version of Blobby that he's got with him? 00:17:30.980 --> 00:17:34.380 No, what you might be seeing is a head in a backpack. 00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:41.480 Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I I thought that might have been a an evil Blobby or a Nobby if you will. 00:17:41.840 --> 00:17:47.240 No, that's a good idea. The Blobby is in this book because Blobby is sort of like 00:17:54.320 --> 00:17:54.800 Toxie's sidekick. 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:57.020 There isn't a dark version of Blobby. 00:17:57.700 --> 00:17:59.580 There's too many different characters 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:00.700 being thrown around now. 00:18:00.760 --> 00:18:02.680 I couldn't throw another one in. 00:18:02.740 --> 00:18:03.560 That's a good idea though. 00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:05.640 We know this one's gonna be a smash 00:18:05.740 --> 00:18:07.160 just like the first two were a smash. 00:18:07.260 --> 00:18:10.460 So for series two, you can have that for free as well. 00:18:10.660 --> 00:18:11.060 That's good. 00:18:11.620 --> 00:18:13.540 And now the artists that you've worked with, 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:16.400 within each series you worked with a different artist. 00:18:16.580 --> 00:18:17.860 Obviously you've had a lot of artists 00:18:18.060 --> 00:18:20.080 contributing different variant covers 00:18:20.280 --> 00:18:21.580 that have been super fun to see. 00:18:22.040 --> 00:18:24.800 but on the main series you worked with Fred Harper. 00:18:25.820 --> 00:18:29.520 On the Toxic Crusaders series you worked with, 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:30.620 remind me of the name? 00:18:31.080 --> 00:18:31.420 Tristan Wright. 00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:32.960 Tristan Wright, thank you. 00:18:33.080 --> 00:18:34.640 And then this new series you're working with 00:18:35.140 --> 00:18:37.840 Felipe Sobrero, hopefully I'm saying that correctly. 00:18:38.120 --> 00:18:38.440 Yeah. 00:18:38.820 --> 00:18:42.060 So each series is kind of getting its own look. 00:18:42.380 --> 00:18:43.660 Can you talk a little bit about that? 00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:47.520 Yeah, so I would say like Fred Harper is the main artist. 00:18:47.820 --> 00:18:49.960 He's been on a couple volumes 00:18:49.960 --> 00:18:53.900 And we were producing a couple different ones concurrently. 00:18:54.080 --> 00:18:57.840 So he is working on something else 00:18:57.960 --> 00:18:59.240 that we can't talk about right now, 00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:01.140 but could be Toxic Avenger related. 00:19:01.899 --> 00:19:05.480 And we had to tap in a new artist for this. 00:19:05.560 --> 00:19:08.100 So Felipe has worked with Ahoy and myself before. 00:19:08.180 --> 00:19:12.320 He's the colorist on my creator on series, Justice Warriors, 00:19:12.740 --> 00:19:15.160 which I'll plug briefly, 00:19:15.460 --> 00:19:17.660 people who like my Toxic Avenger stuff 00:19:17.660 --> 00:19:18.620 and Troma should like it. 00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:22.060 It's like a dystopian cop satire and future. 00:19:22.440 --> 00:19:27.080 It's kind of like if you take Judge Dredd and Robocop 00:19:27.180 --> 00:19:30.720 and cranked him up on acid, that's what it would be. 00:19:31.820 --> 00:19:34.240 So he's done, he's an artist in his own right. 00:19:34.320 --> 00:19:37.340 And he, him and Tristan and Fred, 00:19:37.420 --> 00:19:38.340 they all have different, 00:19:38.410 --> 00:19:40.140 they definitely have different styles. 00:19:40.860 --> 00:19:44.200 But they're all really good at gore and goop 00:19:44.320 --> 00:19:45.540 and mutants and stuff. 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:50.460 And so I really like the work that Felipe is doing on this book. 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:56.660 Just seeing the handful of pieces I've seen from this series, it's going to be really 00:19:56.740 --> 00:20:01.520 interesting because yeah, we're getting deep and talking about heady stuff, but it's a 00:20:01.600 --> 00:20:03.500 Toxic Avenger story. 00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:07.820 You've got to have heads exploding and you've got to have body parts getting smashed and 00:20:07.860 --> 00:20:10.440 you've got to have the gore. 00:20:10.460 --> 00:20:14.880 And that's one of the things that's always been great just about the Toxic Avenger in 00:20:14.760 --> 00:20:22.060 general is that you get to talk about serious things without making it too serious by including 00:20:22.140 --> 00:20:29.160 all of these kind of wacky elements, the multiverse, the gore, the slapstick. 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:33.180 The only way to be able to talk about some of this stuff is to make it fun, right? 00:20:33.820 --> 00:20:33.940 Yeah. 00:20:34.130 --> 00:20:40.860 I mean, and that's what I love about comic books is I sometimes do wish, not that comics 00:20:40.860 --> 00:20:43.400 were more serious in the literary sense, 00:20:43.520 --> 00:20:46.020 but like, you know, that I wish some of them 00:20:46.140 --> 00:20:47.740 would tackle serious issues. 00:20:47.940 --> 00:20:51.380 But I also really like the comic book-y myths, 00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:53.620 if that's a term, of things. 00:20:53.740 --> 00:20:57.120 I love playing with genre, I love gore and violence. 00:20:57.220 --> 00:21:00.860 I mean, Justice Warriors is also a pretty ultra-violent book. 00:21:01.400 --> 00:21:03.240 So, there's plenty of that. 00:21:03.900 --> 00:21:05.100 I mean, I would say in a lot of ways, 00:21:05.180 --> 00:21:07.320 this series is more violent 00:21:08.900 --> 00:21:10.480 than some others that we've done, 00:21:12.060 --> 00:21:13.540 especially because we do have, 00:21:14.820 --> 00:21:17.540 I mean, we're not showing school shootings 00:21:17.740 --> 00:21:20.320 and innocent people being gunned down 00:21:20.460 --> 00:21:21.960 in a horrifically realistic way. 00:21:22.740 --> 00:21:25.500 But we do have a lot of action 00:21:25.930 --> 00:21:28.700 and there's a lot of different elements happening. 00:21:29.300 --> 00:21:32.580 The Smogulan aliens are around still. 00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:34.380 Noxie is killing people. 00:21:34.540 --> 00:21:36.600 So Toxic Avenger, our Toxic Avenger, 00:21:37.260 --> 00:21:41.480 He doesn't kill as liberally as he does in the movies. 00:21:42.450 --> 00:21:49.740 He does kill people in self-defense, and he kills smogulans, and he's killed people before. 00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:53.540 But he doesn't kill as wantonly as he does in the movies. 00:21:53.660 --> 00:22:01.320 So Nazi has sort of allowed us to have a lot more violence where Nazi is the opposite, 00:22:01.520 --> 00:22:04.380 and he just goes around kind of wrecking people. 00:22:04.600 --> 00:22:06.560 So it's plenty violent. 00:22:07.220 --> 00:22:12.480 So what you're saying is that your comic, while being bloody and violent, is not going 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:18.660 to open with a school full of developmentally disabled children getting mowed down by a 00:22:18.680 --> 00:22:19.000 machine gun. 00:22:21.660 --> 00:22:22.240 You're correct. 00:22:23.060 --> 00:22:30.340 Although, don't be surprised if you one day see the Diaper Mafia pop up in the comic book. 00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:37.720 You know, that's always been something in the back of my mind going way back to when 00:22:37.720 --> 00:22:43.100 I saw the first like kind of fine cut of the movie thinking to myself, you know, there's 00:22:43.180 --> 00:22:47.260 got to be some kind of backstory as to why these people are the diaper mafia. 00:22:49.860 --> 00:22:57.020 Well, all I'll say is that if Toxie, with Toxie having the baby, you know, the diaper 00:22:57.080 --> 00:23:00.000 mafia contending with the diaper mafia can't be far behind. 00:23:00.560 --> 00:23:04.300 Speaking of contention, you have so much going on. 00:23:04.400 --> 00:23:06.840 You're working on these series. 00:23:07.460 --> 00:23:09.020 You've got other stuff in the works 00:23:09.120 --> 00:23:10.840 that has not been announced yet. 00:23:11.320 --> 00:23:12.460 You're writing a piece for the 00:23:12.580 --> 00:23:14.760 Attack of the Killer Tomatoes anthology. 00:23:15.140 --> 00:23:15.420 Oh yeah. 00:23:15.780 --> 00:23:17.580 That's coming out, which is really exciting. 00:23:18.460 --> 00:23:21.380 You just had a very successful Kickstarter 00:23:22.180 --> 00:23:23.960 for That One Matt Bors comic. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:27.880 Can you talk about that for a moment 00:23:27.930 --> 00:23:29.560 and just kind of what brought that on? 00:23:29.740 --> 00:23:30.960 'cause I just think that's fascinating. 00:23:31.120 --> 00:23:35.600 Yeah, so for anyone who is not familiar with me, 00:23:35.630 --> 00:23:37.500 which I suspect is plenty of people, 00:23:38.220 --> 00:23:42.180 I used to be a political cartoonist for a long time 00:23:42.800 --> 00:23:44.960 and I did a comic 10 years ago 00:23:45.780 --> 00:23:49.480 that is known as Mr. Gotcha 00:23:49.820 --> 00:23:52.180 or a lot of times the Matt Bors comic now. 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:56.360 So it's like you may have seen the peasant saying 00:23:56.360 --> 00:23:58.059 we should improve society somewhat 00:23:58.060 --> 00:23:59.360 and the guy pops out of the well, 00:23:59.820 --> 00:24:01.280 yet you participate in society. 00:24:01.800 --> 00:24:03.520 If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fine. 00:24:03.800 --> 00:24:05.160 It's used a lot online. 00:24:05.300 --> 00:24:07.200 It's a very ubiquitous kind of meme. 00:24:07.780 --> 00:24:11.080 And so this editor and publisher, Glenn Fleischman, 00:24:11.780 --> 00:24:13.980 he got in touch about doing a book about it. 00:24:14.740 --> 00:24:16.780 So in some ways, I'm kind of hesitant 00:24:17.180 --> 00:24:20.160 to constantly be known by this comic. 00:24:20.300 --> 00:24:22.720 You know, I wanna go on, write Justice Warriors 00:24:22.800 --> 00:24:24.020 and Toxic Avenger and stuff. 00:24:24.180 --> 00:24:26.800 But nevertheless, it's a very popular comic. 00:24:27.380 --> 00:24:31.880 He wanted to do a whole book examining it, so there's like essays and comics by different 00:24:32.100 --> 00:24:33.760 people about it. 00:24:35.040 --> 00:24:39.540 And it's actually I think it's quite fascinating so that I agreed to be a part of it. 00:24:40.100 --> 00:24:46.220 And so, that is coming out in the fall or the late fall. 00:24:46.230 --> 00:24:51.760 I actually just today turned in my introduction where I sort of wrote about what it's like 00:24:51.840 --> 00:24:55.340 have your work become a meme and have everybody be arguing about it for a decade. 00:24:56.540 --> 00:24:58.680 And then you mentioned Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. 00:24:58.760 --> 00:24:59.240 I loved that. 00:24:59.240 --> 00:25:08.460 I just got in touch, I was introduced to them, Panic Entertainment at Comic-Con and you know, 00:25:08.870 --> 00:25:09.300 why not? 00:25:09.360 --> 00:25:15.020 I mean, it's just a short story, but I think it's fun doing these properties sometimes. 00:25:15.150 --> 00:25:20.300 I have friends that are in like indie comics and art comics and they'd never lower themselves 00:25:21.600 --> 00:25:25.540 to be doing Toxic Avenger and Killer Tomatoes comics, but I kind of love it. 00:25:25.580 --> 00:25:28.560 I don't care. I love doing this type of stuff. 00:25:29.350 --> 00:25:33.500 If the toxic Avenger was good enough for Stan Lee, it should be good enough for anyone. 00:25:33.700 --> 00:25:34.900 Yeah. Right. Yeah. 00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:39.720 That's just phenomenal to see, because, you know, I'll admit, like before we met 00:25:39.820 --> 00:25:43.460 and before you were announced as the writer for Toxic Avenger initially, 00:25:44.500 --> 00:25:48.360