Getting Creatively Weird with Todd Purse
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. In the misty corridors of time, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures.
AP Strange:Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show. I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show and today's show is brought to you by Ambrosia brand Supernatural Donuts. If you want to share a donut with a supernatural entity, this is the brand for you because it's perfectly safe for all supernatural entities. It doesn't contain any ingredients that might harm them.
AP Strange:So whether you want to have a Boston Cream doughnut with a Dover demon or a strawberry frosted with the Mothman or maybe naan a Kriller with a Hopkinsville Goblin. All of the flavors are there and all of the supernatural entities that you might want to share it with will be safe. So check out Ambrosia brand Supernatural Donuts. And tonight on the show, I'm having a nice munch on a donut with a wonderful man, a creative person, a creative weirdo, the creative weirdo as a matter of fact. He's a cartoonist, a musician, a creative guy, zine maker, taste maker even, I would say.
AP Strange:He's a wonderful positive force out there in the paranormal world. Todd Peirce, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?
Todd Purse:I'm doing great, AP. That was too kind. Thank you for having me. So what's your current favorite doughnut?
AP Strange:My current favorite? Well, you know, I was I was on a I was on a stick bender for a while. Kept getting the sticks like jelly sticks.
Todd Purse:Maple log or okay, jelly. Yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:The jelly stick. Yeah. I I like the just glazed ones too,
Todd Purse:you know, absolutely. Absolutely.
AP Strange:I've been coming back to the round donut. There's just something great about the circular donut, you know, you
Todd Purse:can't go wrong. I mean, any kind of donut is gonna do it do it for me. I'll tell you. I've been really into this blueberry. So it's a blueberry fruit blueberry fruit doughnut that's glazed and has a blueberry icing on top from a local doughnut It's so good.
Todd Purse:Like, all the fruit, it's and sugar. My kids love it. There's a local donut shop called Sleeping Bird and their logo is like a donut with two bird feet sticking out of it. Like kind of like a dead bird. So my four year old just calls it dead bird donuts, and she's like, dad, can we go get those dead bird donuts again?
Todd Purse:I'm like, yes we can, you got it babe.
AP Strange:That's amazing. Yeah. Well, I don't know about the fruit, but the jelly stick has purple in it, and that's a fruit.
Todd Purse:That's fruit, 100%. Purple and pink are top two fruits in my book.
AP Strange:Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. And you do include a fair amount of donuts in your art, which is like I was following you before you did that, and then when I saw that, I'm like, oh man, this is this is my kind of guy. He's got donuts and flying saucers.
AP Strange:I remember seeing the donut and flying saucer cartoon at one point. Was like a donut as a UFO I think.
Todd Purse:Absolutely.
AP Strange:I was like man I need that as a tattoo I think.
Todd Purse:I love it. Those are two passions that were reignited by having kids and getting back into both sweet treats and fun weird things.
AP Strange:Right, right. Yeah.
Todd Purse:Totally. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. So for listeners that may not have encountered you before, you post like a lot of this stuff daily Instagram and it is fantastic but you also do prints and zines that get sent out and you do parts of the Illuminatus adaptation that I talked about with Bobby Campbell. If listeners remember that show, if you don't go back and listen to it because it was a lot of fun. But but yeah, I did kind of want to talk a little bit about the creative journey for you, like like how you got going with drawing and stuff like that what your influences were the comics world.
Todd Purse:Yeah. Absolutely dude. I've been thinking about that a lot recently having my eight year old getting more into reading drawing comics. And I'm like, I think that was the time for me. I think that was like, Simpsons hit real big around then.
Todd Purse:And that was like, I wasn't a big comic book kid. Like, I didn't really there wasn't a comic book shop around me and I missed the spinner act days. Like, I didn't have, like, kid I was a suburban kid. There wasn't like a I mean, I guess there was a Wawa in walking distance eventually, but they never sold comics at Wawa. I kinda my main exposure to cartooning and cartoons was like The Simpsons and Looney Tunes growing up.
Todd Purse:And then like Tiny Toon Adventures, Batman, the animated series was probably my first introduction to something like Batman and the superheroes. And I was always really into Calvin and Hobbs and probably the most bought comics for me growing up were Garfield collections from the Scholastic Book Fair. Like I was really into But Calvin and Hobbes and the Garfield collections, and then eventually there was oh man, it wasn't this classic book fair, but it was like a, you could order books and they would come to your room. Did you have this where you could fill out the sheet, they'd give you a little like magazine, you circle the books you want, you pay for them, and they got shipped to
AP Strange:your classroom.
Todd Purse:Right? There was a Matt Groening collection of his early cartoons that you could order from there. And I ordered that, and I can't remember what it was called. It wasn't from Hell, but it was one of the Okay. One of those.
Todd Purse:It was one of the from it was either like Akbar and what's that one? Man, I'm not gonna remember the name now.
AP Strange:I remember life is hell. Was like the one eared bunny.
Todd Purse:So he had a whole series of those, and they were in these like eight and a half by 11 white collections. And there was one of them that wasn't life as hell, but it was like the same style of cartoons from him. And I ordered that and that was the first time I made a connection where I was like, wait, this the dude that made The Simpsons, and his drawing style kinda looks, oh, that was a guy and his idea, and like kinda put it all together, like because when you're watching something like The Simpsons, you just figure like, how do you do that? You can't do that. So that's when I was like, oh, this is something people do, and that was like the first time I remember trying to like make my own comic strip and really trying to like draw my own comics.
Todd Purse:And at that point, I had my first, I guess, artistic success was like fire prevention poster contests. I won those like four years in a row, and felt like the hot shit in like second to fourth grade, because I could draw these like fire prevent honestly, that was like my earliest memory of like what encouraged me to think I could draw or like be that like the kid in the class like that. And that was it honestly. And so I was always into drawing and then I found those like are very early comic strips and stuff. And that was the first time I was like, this is something I could do and figure out.
Todd Purse:That's kinda like the and then I really didn't get into reading like floppy comics or underground comics or any of that until high school when I started hanging out with people that were very I got into comics like in a really cool time because one, there was this like melding of or meshing of the underground alternative comic scene and the mainstream comic scene. So you had people like Jim Mahfood and Peter Bagg and these like really weird artists doing like Spider Man one shots or doing these Marvel like big books because there were certain editors that were giving these guys chances. So like, one of the first Spider Man comics I ever bought was this one that's Peter bag varying. And the cover is Spider Man shooting himself in the face in this ridiculously cartoony ridiculously cartoony style. And it's a like Yeah.
Todd Purse:To this day, it's like one of the things that's ingrained in my brain more than ever. And I'm like, how is this a thing? And that's what got me into reading like Marvel and stuff because I they were like, there's a millions of things that you can like, if you wanna read Spider Man, you can do it in a million different ways depending on how you wanna do it at this point. So like, look at this stuff and see what you react to. And that was the stuff I reacted to.
Todd Purse:It was the really weird like underground stuff that was breaking through into the like bigger culture and whatnot. And that was in the like early two thousands. And then I found like Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes and those kind of traditional like really high. I don't wanna say high brow comic artists, but the the people that made comics fit in bookstores and, like, made the New York the the New Yorker write about comics and stuff like that. You know, those those things.
AP Strange:Yeah. When they became sort of elevated, That happened with a few of them, know, just like Maus and yeah, like you know, but that was a wild time like a little bit prior to that was I was in the comic book store and a lot of those alternative titles were just hitting the racks and it was like like spawn like all the image comics the max and sometimes you'd find something that was by some weird press that that doesn't you'd never heard of and it would go two or three issues and then fold, know? Yeah. You'd never get to know what happened.
Todd Purse:Yeah. Yeah. It's kinda cool. I lived through all of that, was that was the time that I was so like the from the eighties black and white boom that produce. I mean, it's so funny because I was brought up on the media that it produced.
Todd Purse:Right? Like, I never read a Ninja Turtles comic book in any kind of relevant time to when they came out in the eighties, but I was a 100% there for the movies and the cartoon show and the Pizza Hut promotion and the VHS's you got from Pizza Hut and like that was like and then one of my I just told my eight year old asked me what my first memory ever was, and I was like really trying. And I'm like, man, what is my first ever memory? And it finally came to me and it was my preschool graduation because so the preschool graduation, we sang a choreographed, you drive me crazy. Do you remember that song?
Todd Purse:The you drive me Crazy. And we did hand motions and everything. Right? I remember that so vividly as being like some like, my first time performing in front of people and feeling really weird about it. But then afterwards, my Nana gave me the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sword set.
Todd Purse:The sword, like, where I poured the ooze down in there. It was like the biggest boy I'd ever gotten. Like, so that's like my first So I was a Turtles kid, a 100%, but never read the comics. And like, and that was such a trend. So I didn't know that that was based on like underground comics until high school again.
Todd Purse:And that the comics are like kind of more adult and more violent. And like, they started this giant boom and made like, you know, 30 different publishers that all folded like, you know, five months after, which led Yeah. To that nineties like speculator boom. And again, like, this is another perfect example of it where I loved Spawn growing up, but mainly because of the HBO show and the movie, not the comic until much later. Like, knew it was a comic.
Todd Purse:I had seen the comic, but like, it just didn't it never I missed the the boom of it in the nineties. Like, I missed that whole image era, and them leaving Marvel and all that, the speculator boom, like I missed that. But I love the stuff that it produced in the over culture, but then it took me again until that like early two thousands to go back. So it's so funny how that works. Like I love those currents of culture that are produced by other things that people don't even know that that's where it came from.
Todd Purse:Then you're like, oh, that's where that thing came from? Weird.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well I mean, yeah, that's how I felt about the Max because the Max had that like MTV series that they made of it and if you watch it now I feel like it's really dated. It feels like a very 90s thing but it followed the comic book like really closely so me and my friends like went out and bought all those like I still have them somewhere. But, I mean, even then I was picking up on little references because you could tell Sam Keith was like a Frank Zappa fan. Because there'd be like little references to Zappa that you're like, oh, okay.
Todd Purse:And that's like the, that's like what got me and hooked me about comics, honestly, was like seeing people put like very personal touches in these stories and like seeing, like especially when you get into the underground comics where it's or or like not even just the underground comics or the alternative comics, but the comics where it's just one person. A lot of the times when it's like one artist writer and it's a singular voice, there's so few mediums that are as powerful and just take one person to produce the whole thing. Like, if it's music and even if it's solo artist, you're still usually having someone else record it and mix it and master it and someone else is getting their fingerprints in there. Right? With the comics, and especially if it's like a black and white writer artist, it's from the pen to the page, scanned and printed.
Todd Purse:Like it is as direct as an experience as like you can get of a one voice. And so that makes it like a big gamble. Right? Like that makes it so like if you're gonna you kind of you're putting yourself out there and like you kind of are like, this is it. Like, this is what I what I got.
Todd Purse:And, I I think there's almost nothing more noble than someone who sits down and spends way too many hours at a drawing table to make a comic and put it out in the world. I I feel like everyone should do it just for the experience, and like, just because, not even to come away with something that you're like proud of. Just to do it and be like, man, this is hard, but kind of fun. Because that's the weird dichotomy. It's very hard, but it's also really fun.
AP Strange:Yeah, mean even just plotting out the page to make sure that the panels are gonna like work in some way like you really have to plan that ahead. You can't just go willy nilly with it. I mean I used to make my own little comics when I was when I was younger and it was really when I discovered the guitar or more specifically when I discovered that I wasn't shunned when I played guitar like I was when I was doodling cartoons in the corner. Is very true. Cartooning fell by the wayside.
AP Strange:Yes. But I've always kind of still done it. But that was always difficult for me was trying to like I wasn't great at like plotting out how to do the panels and how to tell the story in a linear way. I was better at just making up characters and drawing them, you know?
Todd Purse:Totally. I'm still it's the hard like, I have I have two ways I like to make comics. Alright. I guess there are actually three now that I think about it more. But but the two ways I usually like to do is I have one story that is very plotted and is, I'm trying to have it be linear and make sense and have payoffs.
Todd Purse:Like I feel like, you know, comics are one of those things where if each page, if each page turn doesn't have a payoff, then every other page turn has to have a payoff. Like, have to really give people something to keep them moving throughout it. And I try to have a comic that's good at that, and that's really hard. So what I do while I'm working on that comic is have several other comics where I'm like, this is just gonna I'm not penciling anything. I'm just dipping the pen into the ink and drawing whatever comes out.
Todd Purse:And then I'm gonna put words over top of it. And those comics are so much fun. And sometimes they come out awesome, and I print them and share them. And sometimes they're absolute garbage, and no one sees them, and they live in a in a stack next to my drawing table. Like I have this stack right here that is that.
Todd Purse:It's this these are all just like straight pen and ink, and these are kinda like my journal comics where like what's this one? This one's all about like how it's hard making money and being an artist. And that's like the most cliche shit in the world, but like something I feel a lot because I support a family off of a creative life, and sometimes there's some conflicting emotions and stuff that may be cliche, but they feel really good to get down, and that's the way I know to get them down. So whether anybody ever sees that or not, who knows, but I make them all the time because the other ones are really hard, and I might be able to produce like two of those a year, two of the big linear ones that, so my one that I'm working on now is Dreamscapes, and it's about like essentially when I had alopecia as a kid, before I knew I had alopecia, I still have alopecia. But when my alopecia first, started acting up and I started losing hair, I started having these weird sea monster dreams at the same time, and I never thought anything about it.
Todd Purse:Right? Like it was just something. The reason that I remember it so well, and I go into this in the comic, is because, part of getting treated for alopecia was going to a talk, going to talk therapy for the first time because it's an autoimmune disorder. Your, you know, immune system attacks your hair shit for some reason because it's broken and stress is supposed to be a big part of that. So the treatment was steroid injections and talk therapy.
Todd Purse:So I used to, every month I would get a giant needle right above my eye because I lost, like, all of this stuff here. And, like, I still am very hairless because of it. But so I would get this giant needle in above my eye in the back of my head, and I would go to talk therapy. And I remember talking to her about this, like, sea monster dream that I kept having. Like I was on my uncle's boat and it got flipped over by a giant sea monster, and I was laughing the whole time.
Todd Purse:And I just remember being like, I just remember she's like, draw it out. Like, can you draw it for me? And I did it, and that was all we ever talked about. I think the only reason I remember it so well is because I drew it. And I was like, okay, that's in my brain forever.
Todd Purse:Never thought about it until a little into, like, 2020, 2021. I lost all my hair again for the first time since that first issue where, like, my alopecia came back really strong, lost all of my hair like completely. It was really shocking because I have a lot of hair and people know me as somebody who has a lot of hair. So like everyone I met was like, Are you cancer? Are you okay?
Todd Purse:I'm like, No, it's cool. Alopecia. I went, I got the blood work done. It's just the alopecia again and whatnot. And I was like, thinking about, because I went to the dermatologist and essentially they're like, There's no progressed science on this.
Todd Purse:You can get steroid injections if you want your hair to grow back. They still think it's stress. Maybe you should talk to somebody again. And I was like, Oh yeah. So I was like, I'm gonna sign up and talk, you know, get therapy going again and do that whole thing.
Todd Purse:That's probably good regardless, right? I do that. And then that night that I signed up for therapy, fell asleep. Sea monster dream right then. And I was like, damn.
Todd Purse:Why does that feel so And like, why do I remember that? Right? And so 2020 was also the time that like, you know, very stressful for everybody. And I feel like everybody's dreams were probably a little fucked up and weird. Like, you know, lots of things going on in the dream world as well as the physical world, right?
Todd Purse:But I made a note of it and I was like, that's really weird. So I went to start, you know, doing the therapy thing and whatnot, and my hair came back and everything. I don't know, probably a year ago or so, I had another bout where it started falling out, and sea monster dream again. I'm like, what the fuck? Like really?
Todd Purse:Like this is how, so I was like, alright, I'm gonna start dream journaling and like going the Eric Wargo route and like, you know, really trying to do it, know, systematically and look back at it every week. I was like, damn, I have these sea monster dreams a lot, I think. And then like so like, okay, I'm gonna this is this seems like a comic. This seems like something that I can write about. And like, it allowed me to intertwine and be able to be like, okay, here's it starting with me having alopecia as a kid and work up through the modern day, tell stories about my dream experiences, and then mix in other precognitive dream experiences that other people have or weird dream discoveries and like kind of like like the first issue covers a lot of Salvador Dali's dream work.
Todd Purse:And the first time that Dali and Freud met, I cover I cover their whole interaction intermixed with my kind of auto bio, like weird dream shit. So that's like my big linear project that I'm working on right now, that I have like 98 pages of like 200 done or so. But that's gonna be a long So in between all of I'm working on these other small fun things that I can do really quick.
AP Strange:Well I mean that sounds awesome. So in these dreams, is it like scary in the dream? You said you were laughing when I
Todd Purse:No, never scary, never wake up in a panic, never remember them. Like that's the thing, except for those first ones. And like I smoke a lot of weed, so like my dream recall is not great in general, right? Just to put that one out there. But like it is like once I had that third occurrence where I remembered the sea monster dream, when like, about a year and a half ago or so, and I started dream journaling, now I recall them.
Todd Purse:I didn't change my weed consumption, but I recall my dreams a lot better. So like, dream journaling, I think, does battle that somehow, which is really interesting. But no, never scary, and never do I like wake up from them. Never are they like, it's one of those things that I have to like definitely recall, and without the like weird connection of the hair thing, I don't think I would have ever put, you know, I don't think I would have ever buzzed me or anything. So it's just weird that it pops up in that like, don't know if it's like my stress thing that comes up, like comfort stress dream or weirdness, that's just like sea monster flipping over my, I had a neighbor who had a speedboat that we used to go out on at the beach, and that's the boat I was on.
Todd Purse:And it's so funny because I do remember when I was young and had nightmares, my parents used to be like, if you have a bad dream, just close your eyes and think about something you really like, like when you're out on your Uncle Ray's boat. And it's so funny that that's like the thing that did it, you know? It's like, oh, you put that in there somehow. But yeah. Yeah.
AP Strange:But do you get to see the monster at all or you don't remember?
Todd Purse:No. No. No. It's always just like big, like hump out of the water type deal, and boat flips, and I laugh, and then like that's all I could ever really pull back, as of now. Wow.
Todd Purse:But I never even thought about it with, because we've talked a lot about sea monsters in our past conversations. Really not. I never even thought about it in that regard though. I should, yeah, I'll send you what I have of it so far, so you can give it a read through. I think you like Yeah,
AP Strange:because that might be a cool way to guide the plot is like, what is this monster even look like? It's just like what happened to your imagination, you know?
Todd Purse:Dude, I love that. That's great. Absolutely. Because I I
AP Strange:used to have like I was horribly scared of sea monsters as a kid. Like I had a copy of the edition I had of Journey to the Center of the Earth when I was little was like they're on a raft. It's a picture of these two dudes on a raft and there's like this big like ichthyosaur type fish looking monster and like a more of a serpentine one fighting around them and that just like inspired like dread in me. I'm like, oh man, because these two guys are tiny compared to these giant creatures battling right next to him, you know? And of course, that happens in the book.
AP Strange:It's like way into it. They're trying to cross this like ocean in the middle of the earth. But yeah, I had I had nightmares as a kid. Had one where like plesiosaur type dinosaur came out of the water and my dog ran up to it and started barking at it and I was like scared for my dog. I tried to go save my dog and this thing was just within its head around like its long neck and it was like really scary.
AP Strange:Like it was a scary dream for me.
Todd Purse:That's so freaky. Dude, that's absolutely anything where your dog's in danger. That's double scary.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Because dogs are stupid and they're gonna get themselves in trouble.
Todd Purse:Now that's a true statement. Was that before or did that lead to your fascination with the Loch Ness monster or kind of?
AP Strange:Yeah. See, it's weird because I don't really it's hard for me to place when that dream happened but I mean I guess I had a dog so I mean I was I didn't I didn't get a dog until I was older because I was allergic to dogs and we rationalized it as like my allergy wasn't so severe that I'd suffer unless he was like sleeping in my bed. He just wasn't allowed to be like in my room. But other than that, was pretty okay.
Todd Purse:And you're a dog over to this day, right?
AP Strange:Yeah. I have a dog now.
Todd Purse:I thought so.
AP Strange:I allergic to, like, everything they tested me for as a kid, but I have a dog. I have a cat. I kinda just grew out of my allergies. You know?
Todd Purse:So Yeah.
AP Strange:That's but yeah, I mean, I think I probably already loved the Loch Ness Monster at that point. I had a fascination with that because of weekly world news and watching like unsolved mysteries and all the weird, you know, looking into ghosts originally had led me to every weird thing. Know, the mysteries of the unexplained book, yeah.
Todd Purse:Yeah, Loch Ness is just a one corner away, one turn from finding those ghosts.
AP Strange:Well, because any book or collection of weird stories was gonna have that surgeon's photo somewhere in it, you know?
Todd Purse:Oh, a 100%.
AP Strange:If not on the cover, was in there somewhere, so.
Todd Purse:To this day, my, so you can buy like weird, weird books like that, that are probably horribly AI written at like, Five and Below these days. Like when my kids, because my kids will go to Five and Below for their like, oh, I did something really good, I'm gonna get a little alright, we'll to five and below and pick out something from there because
AP Strange:it's nice and And
Todd Purse:like my eight year old is really into Loch Ness Monster, all the weird stuff. It's great. It's been really He's like really thriving in it right now. So he'll pick out those books sometimes, and I'm like, yeah, totally. And they'll look at it, I'm like, this is the same, like four pictures that's been around forever.
Todd Purse:But now it's like, I feel like it's way from, like not quite written as well. And like, I'm like, I'm pretty sure this is just AI writing these books at this point. This is not any kind of like National Geographic sponsored thing or like, you
AP Strange:know. Yeah. Yeah. Problem.
Todd Purse:It's a it's a problem for sure. But, yeah, it's it's interesting to see like that access point. Same, I took him to the Scholastic Book Fair for his school at the end of the year, and they still have a full shelf that's all just the unexplained and the mysteries. It's still a big thing for kids, which is so cool to see because you know, it's good for kids to get into it.
AP Strange:I feel like it's like ground zero for a lot of people is that those book fairs and they gravitate towards that and I think that's awesome. I mean for me, my mom just like bought Mysteries of the Unexplained from Reader's Digest when it was advertised on TV, like probably before I was born. Was just in my house, you know? So Yeah. So I had taken that off the shelf and that's that thus began my fascination after a few of my own experiences.
AP Strange:But of course, my early childhood was like dinosaurs all the way. I was obsessed with dinosaurs, so it was kind of natural that I would I would I would gravitate towards the Loch Ness monster because it's
Todd Purse:basically Funny how kids just love dinosaurs, dude. Like my four year old loves dinosaurs right now. Like she is so into them. And she doesn't want like the cute Barney. She wants like the big like, you know, lizard skin t rexes.
Todd Purse:Like she wants like the the real deal ones that are like gnarly looking. And now there's just like endless amounts of stuff for her to choose from. It's like it's one of those things that I'm gonna be like, I have to restrain her a little bit. But yeah, dinosaurs are still huge. And like, I mean, I think Jurassic Park was probably the most formative movie of my childhood.
Todd Purse:Like, I was, I was born in '85, that hit in those early nineties. I don't think I saw it in the movie theater, but the Jurassic World was definitely one of my first movie theater experiences. Yeah, man, the dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist growing up. I was like, fuck being an archaeologist.
Todd Purse:A paleontologist is way cooler. I remember, like, thinking I was cool because I knew the distinction between the two at a certain point when I was a kid. And like yeah. Yeah. That was that was the dream.
AP Strange:Yeah. I remember thinking I wanted to be like Richard T. Bacher. Do you remember that guy? Yeah.
AP Strange:He's basically like the guy that Grant in Jurassic Park is based on.
Todd Purse:But Exactly. The dude that like so yeah, man. The drawings of dinosaurs of my youth were, like, destroyed by that dude because he was like, none of these are accurate. This is all complete they complete volcanoes should not be in any of these paintings, but, like, look how cool that volcano looks erupting behind that T Rex. Are kidding me?
AP Strange:But he was a big bearded dude with like a cowboy hat.
Todd Purse:Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:On a necklace hanging around it. Like, yes.
Todd Purse:It was so perfect.
AP Strange:Cool guy. He was a cool guy. But yeah, I I read Jurassic Park when I was in fifth grade, so I'm just a couple years older than you. But the copy I had had those star on it that said soon to be a major motion picture.
Todd Purse:Before it was. Yes. Dude, that book I I just listened to a whole podcast about that movie because I'm I'm going to so my kid just asked to watch Star Wars for the first time. So we went through and watched the first three. And then I'm like, what can we go through next?
Todd Purse:What can we do? And like, I'm he's at eight. So he's at that level where there's like certain things. I'm like, Don't wanna deal with that. Like, even like, I was like Indiana Jones, maybe.
Todd Purse:No. There's a lot of stuff I don't wanna have those conversations about anytime soon. And like, you know, lots of things that we can skip there. But then I was like, oh, there's gotta be some good Spielberg besides that. Maybe ET, but then like, I watched them like, man, that ending is brutal when ET is dying and like Yeah.
Todd Purse:And then once my kid hears the word penis breath, he's just going to call everybody penis breath. And I'm like, I don't want. Yeah. I don't need I don't need to load that into his brain right now. But but I've so I've been going through watching and like listening to like histories.
Todd Purse:And Jurassic Park was one of those things that was written and sold as a movie like way before the book came out. Like and once the idea was there, they were like, oh, yeah. Dude that wrote those other really famous things is writing a dinosaur book? Give me. Like Yeah.
Todd Purse:Yeah.
AP Strange:It's Which is funny because it's essentially the same plot as Westworld. Yeah. Which she wrote like in the early seventies. But if they just put dinosaurs instead of robots.
Todd Purse:That's so funny. Absolutely right. I never thought about that, but you're absolutely right. That's hilarious. That's and the book's way more it's been so long.
Todd Purse:So I did read it, like, eventually, like, I I don't know. At some point, read it. But it's way more brutal. Right? It's way meaner, I remember, in general.
AP Strange:Yeah. So that was the thing. When it became a movie. My mom assumed that I would be all about it and like wanted to bring she was like excited to bring me to the movies because I shit, but I was terrified. I'm like, I know what happens in that book.
AP Strange:I don't want to see that. I was like on the edge of my seat. I'm like, this guy is gonna get ripped open by a velociraptor. This
Todd Purse:is gonna be too much.
AP Strange:I actually had to leave the theater. I got too scared and had to leave.
Todd Purse:I did that a few times.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's embarrassing now to think about, but I had to leave because I knew about the stuff that was coming, and then my mom walked me to the next theater over, and I saw the end of Free Willy. Yes. Very,
Todd Purse:very uplifting. Very uplifting. Jurassic Park gets there as far as the uplifting goes, but yeah, that was one of those ones that like, in my brain, I'm like, it's not that bad. And then I start thinking, I'm like, no, no, there's no way I can show him that for a while. That's a long way off.
Todd Purse:Well,
AP Strange:book was graphic, because it was like, the velociraptor's claw slid across his stomach and his intestines fell out and then
Todd Purse:just falling
AP Strange:away and you're like, I I don't get that. Yeah.
Todd Purse:No. No. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Todd Purse:There's some and there is something like, I still get this sometimes when I'm reading, even with comics and stuff, where the picture you paint is way scarier than what you're being shown. Like, letting your imagination fill in those blanks, and like, really sit in that stuff, man, that's tough. It's honestly turned me off of reading so much stuff, especially in the comics world. Because one of the big big strains of comics in like, that's been there since the sixties or seventies is like really graphic, gory horror comics and things that really push boundaries. There's a bunch of it on on eastern comics, western comics.
Todd Purse:It's all over. Right? There's images that you look at and you're like, what, like, if you've ever read a Junji Ito comic, you're kind of changed as a person afterwards. And I'm like, I don't know if I need this anymore. I don't know if I had I kind of steer clear of a lot of those books these days.
Todd Purse:Although I like, I get what they're doing. I love that they're there. And there's a lot of cartoonists that work right now that put out work that I would love to support, but then I'm like, I just don't want that in my house because it's so graphic, and that kind of next Especially with, I have kids and they don't really like if they see a comic, I have to remember that not all comics can just be left out anymore. Because all my kids can reach all the and it just looks like a fun little book, then they open it up and it's like full frontal nudity and horrible things happening. I'm like, yeah, okay, they don't need to see any of this yet.
Todd Purse:But no, it's definitely having that reading experience with the violence is way different than the theatrical experience.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, one thing about that movie too, people forget is that was one of the first Jurassic Park was pretty much the first major film that involved that much computer graphic imaging.
Todd Purse:Yeah.
AP Strange:Where it could be convincing like that, you know?
Todd Purse:Yeah. And like, they also forget the secret sauce is that it's that combination, they had like a CGI so much practical, like, there's that other, there's another type of not motion capture thing they use that's not CGI that like Yeah. So it's like this weird mesh of all three. Because if it was just CGI, I don't think it would be nearly. And I think that's why like, it not only holds up, but looks better than most things these days.
AP Strange:Know? Yeah, exactly. When I put
Todd Purse:it back on, I'm like, this feels and like, it's cool to see that, like, it's, you know, it's not like ET where they're like, we're gonna backlight everything and just hide things. Like, like, the dinosaurs look better in the day than they do at night in a lot of those scenes. Yeah. You know? It's really weird.
Todd Purse:But, like, I think you're right. It is that, like, early CGI that is like, not fully reliant on that, but it's mixed with these like artists that like have been doing this for since the seventies. Like, you know, they're they're they're working with these these people that really know how to make a puppet dance. And now how to like, you know
AP Strange:The animatronics and stuff.
Todd Purse:Totally. That shit that like, you know, when my and so I just said that we my kid wanted to watch Star Wars for the first time. So we watched the original trilogy, the first three. And like, when he sees Yoda hopping around that stupid little puppet, he's blown away still. Like when he sees those graphics and I'm like, Teddy, that's a painting.
Todd Purse:That is just a matte painting with stuff. He's like, what? How is that a painting? And I'm like, and I'll show him some of the behind the scenes stuff. And he's like blown away by like the special effects and like the the final result.
Todd Purse:And this is somebody that who if you ask him his favorite movies, the Minecraft movie that's like, you know, that they do use practical, but it's all CGI essentially and like, so he's exposed to nothing but this like, over the top, like, very modern storytelling, but that and like, graphics and whatnot. But those classics hold up. And like, even when, like, the the whole second movie, Luke, I am your father thing happens. He, like, freaked out. Like, seeing his little mind be like, wait.
Todd Purse:What? And, like, you realize, like, how important it is for Luke's hand to get cut off because that, like
AP Strange:Oh, yeah.
Todd Purse:That got him. He's like, oh, shit. He lost a hand. He's really and then, like, once Darth Vader says, like, I am your he's, like, way he like made me pause the movie, he's like throwing things and I'm like, it's so cool that that can still have that reaction and you know,
AP Strange:just years So were you showing him the special edition though?
Todd Purse:Did you have the No, so we got the original I, well, so the first two we had the original right the third one was Disney plus special edition with CGI weird and he caught it like he was like dad why does that look so weird in like the job of the hut like that scene and everything where it's just like obvious like CG stuff added over top. And he's just and it's so funny that like he can catch it. He can be like, why does that look weird? And like yeah, the first two, it was definitely one of those so with the last time I watched Star Wars was right, like, must have been, like, right before he was born. And we were it was when I used to stay up late all the time.
Todd Purse:And it was before Disney Plus had them. So I downloaded all of the original ones, like, I don't even remember from where. But I still had those too. The and then, we watched the third one on Disney plus But the other thing that's really cool that I think from watching those with him and seeing the way that he has been that he reacted to not only the storytelling and the special effects, but he also like, he's making his own stories now. Like, you know that, like Yeah.
Todd Purse:How Star Wars just went away for like ten years or longer after that, and everybody just like made fan fiction or read the comics or read the like, there was this whole world and I'm like, I kinda don't wanna show him the other ones for a while. I kinda wanna just like, let him like hang out in this world because he's already like writing his own little like comics about it and like building Lego sets and like doing stop animation with like his own story lines. I'm like, I kinda like this better. I don't need to show him like how Darth Vader became Darth Vader yet or like any of that stuff, it's fine.
AP Strange:Yeah. Mean those movies aren't that great anyway, but no. And
Todd Purse:I think there's something that we miss as a culture of having properties that can rest for ten years. Know what I mean? Like there's something, that's why Star Wars was so special, is because it went away for so long. It's kind of why, like it was not, yeah, I don't know, I think there's something to that that we can learn a little bit from that, things don't have to go away for a decade maybe, but like, you know, give it a year or two sometimes.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. No. I hear you. And, yeah.
AP Strange:Because then you you can debate for eternity about little points and stuff like that. And I mean, I think the blessing and the curse of the modern Internet age and fandom is that producers are looking at what the fans say and making decisions based on that. And after a certain point, it's like maybe just ignore the fans and just do something creative and cool because people will like it either way. They're really gonna like it, you know? Just do something and innovate Don't try to please everybody.
Todd Purse:Yeah, no. A 100%. And that's, again, like that's one of those things that I think is so cool about comics versus so many other things is that they're one of the reasons that the movies have it's like anything else in capitalism. Like, they have to grow and make more money. So they do the fan edits because they think that's the way that they can make sure they make more money and cut the butts in the seats.
Todd Purse:And like, it's just the antithesis of creativity almost. It's like the opposite. It's not that like fans don't ever have good ideas or whatever. Like, I'm sure there's some things that are fine. Like great, right?
Todd Purse:But yeah, like that whole art tour, or however you say that word, but that whole idea that this is one person's vision has really started to go away in a lot of things. Like even just talking about someone like Spielberg or so like, there's not as many of those type of creatives or people that have, like, not only like his, like, you know, ubiquitous or whatever, but just like, this is a body of work. That's all one body of work. You can see a cohesiveness in that body. Like, know, we could talk about David Lynch in the same or like a million other people.
Todd Purse:Right. But like, there's not I don't see as much of that anymore, and I definitely am not as tapped into cinema. Or, you know, my latest movie going experiences have been the Minecraft movie and Stitch. So the new Lilo and Stitch movie. Both fine.
Todd Purse:Like, you know, like as far as the movies go, man, great. Like, the Minecraft movie is a thing that exists. And at least, I'll say the best thing is that the whole message of the movie is that it's harder to make things than it is to destroy things. And even though it sucks to be like creative and it's really hard to do that, we should. And I'm like, that's cool.
Todd Purse:I like that idea.
AP Strange:Yeah, that's a good message.
Todd Purse:It's good message, you know. It's Jack Black kind of forcing it down the kid's throat. So it's kind of good. But man, there's a lot of weird stuff about that movie.
AP Strange:Well, haven't seen it.
Todd Purse:We can, you don't ever need to.
AP Strange:Yeah. Mean, my son my son thinks it's weird and he was like brought up with Minecraft. He's like, I don't understand why they made a movie like that. I'm like, well, you know, you got good taste, guess. I don't know
Todd Purse:what tell Yes. I think that means you did something right, AP. Yeah.
AP Strange:I mean, he's 16, so I was taking him to see, like, the new Final Destination movie.
Todd Purse:That's so cool. I'm looking forward to that time. That's awesome.
AP Strange:Yeah. When you can watch horror movies again.
Todd Purse:Yes. Exactly.
AP Strange:I think I've heard you mention before that, like, becoming a parent makes horror movies a lot less fun, and I I had that experience when he was little. Yeah. It was like, I'm I'm like, did I lose my nerve? Can I not watch these movies anymore? But it's just like, it means more when you're responsible for a life.
AP Strange:You know? Totally. Totally. The stakes are higher. You're watching a movie and all of a sudden you feel bad for everybody.
AP Strange:You're like, oh, no.
Todd Purse:But there's gotta be a good car or there's gotta be a good there's gotta be a good feeling to be able to share that experience with them eventually, and be able to get, you know, that's the way to do it. I can see that being the way to get over that hump.
AP Strange:Yeah. Oh yeah. A couple years ago, he was like, he was mentioning horror movies and wanting to watch some, and I'm like, alright, here we go.
Todd Purse:We got this. We got this. It is funny, like, letting them come to you for stuff and seeing, like, what they like, because I I had never really tried. Like, I'm not the type of parent that's like, I love this thing. You will watch it.
Todd Purse:Or, you know, like, just never
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Todd Purse:Put excuse me. I kinda let the kids lead and try and get into what they're into. So like, if he's super into Minecraft, let's go, man. Minecraft, let's do it. Like, and I also sit there.
Todd Purse:I still we play Minecraft a good amount. But he's the one that came to me and was like, I want Star Wars now, dad. And I'm like, I don't know. It was probably a Lego set, honestly. It was probably something like that where it's just like completely and I was like, okay, cool.
Todd Purse:What's Star Wars? Then I was like, I think this is a good age for that. Let's do it. And the same thing with like right now, like for my for my birthday last year, he got me and I didn't ask for this. I no clue what.
Todd Purse:But he got me Zelda, one of the new Zelda games, the tears of the ages, which is like, I haven't played a Zelda game since the Nintendo, like the first Zelda, the one that was at the gold cartridge and everything. And I don't know anything about modern day video games, but I'm like, we can do this. Yeah. Let's do it. And it's a blast.
Todd Purse:It's been so much fun. We've been playing it for almost a year now together, and I have no clue how far I am or anything. But like, it's so much fun to to play with him. And it is like it's reminiscent and it's cool because like Yeah. He it's sword and sorcery.
Todd Purse:It's getting him into all like, he loves the monsters. He loves the storytelling of it all. He likes the the whole lore of the game. And and I think I mentioned to you before we started, now his favorite thing to read are these manga, Zelda these Zelda manga series that like, I think he's like six books into, and like they're so cool. Like I'm reading them with him, and I'm like, he finishes one and then I read it, and they're great.
Todd Purse:So it's really, it's nice. I'm like, okay, this is cool. We're starting to get on the same level here with some things.
AP Strange:Yeah. I was never a huge con video game guy, so that's that's always been tough for me because my son loves it. You know? Gamer. And I'm just like, it's hard for me to relate, but it's nice when we can, meet up on that level.
Todd Purse:Totally.
AP Strange:But that was something I was thinking earlier when you were talking, especially about like the Minecraft movie and our conversation about CGI is that I think like we do need to bring those bat paintings back, like give us some like cool backgrounds and stuff. Like it's like if you watch a play or if you watch like Shakespeare in the park, like, of course, you're imagining all this stuff and it's the performance that conveys it, you know? And in a movie, it's like we know it's a painting in the background. That's fine. It doesn't matter, you know?
AP Strange:I'd rather know that than, you know, feel like I'm supposed to be dazzled by the computer graphics because I, you know, I was trying to get this across recently that my wife was watching Wicked and I'm like, I don't know. It just feels like it's all a computerized world. It's like it I just feel like I'm watching somebody play a video game Yes. When you watch something like that. And I have no interest in watching anybody play a video game.
Todd Purse:Dude, and the thing is, man, what bums me out I completely agree a 100%. And what bums me out is people will be like, oh, well, you can't do that because it's not flashy enough for kids. It's not, like, holding people's attention and blah blah blah. And not only does that Star Wars anecdote at least prove to me that that's because obviously it worked on my very overstimulated like media technology saturated eight year old like well, not luckily. He doesn't have social media or anything breaking his brain yet, but that he plays tons of tablet stuff, plays tons of, you like he's a he's a digital dude, right?
Todd Purse:But he again, he was blown away. Not only that, but the other day, I guess this is a little bit ago. Came to me and he was like, dad, I saw this cat bus thing and I don't know what it's from, but there's a cat bus and I want to know about it. I'm like, pretty sure that's from my neighbor Totoro and like he had never seen anything like that. And I don't know if you've ever seen my neighbor Totoro.
Todd Purse:Yeah. So like I put that on and I'm like, this may last like five minutes. Because the first forty minutes is just like kids traveling to the countryside of Japan and moving into some Yeah. Like, you don't see any like Totoro or weird stuff or any action for like almost an hour into that movie. They were hooked.
Todd Purse:It's their favorite movie. Like we've watched Spirited Away since and a few others and like but they're hooked. And like it's so slow paced. It's the exact opposite of the Minecraft movie. Like the Minecraft movie starts in the first ten move ten minutes.
Todd Purse:They give you enough information that could fill three other movies. Right? Like it's just fast cut, like info dumps. Right? My Neighbor Totoro is just this beautiful, slow moving, like really kind of, know, turtle paced artwork, piece of art.
Todd Purse:And like
AP Strange:Yeah. It's cinematic and it's artful.
Todd Purse:And we're watching it.
AP Strange:I forgot the guy's name that makes those.
Todd Purse:Mirzak, or wait. Man, Studio Ghibli. Man, I should
AP Strange:not That's video Ghibli.
Todd Purse:Yeah, I should not be blanking on these things, but I'm really bad at
AP Strange:Is it Miyazaki?
Todd Purse:I'm pretty sure that's right.
AP Strange:No I'm a big anime guy, but I kind of appreciate the art in those. I'm like, this is very artful. It's very cinematic. It's the guy knows how to tell a story, you know? Yeah.
AP Strange:He's gonna do it his way, you know? It's that kind of
Todd Purse:fun tour Yeah. What's what's, like, really amazing to emphasize is we're sitting there watching it and I'm like, Teddy, this is all hand drawn. This is all drawn by It doesn't touch a computer. And he's like, no, you're lying. Like, there's no way this is not done on I'm like, no.
Todd Purse:This is all like, the creator of this, Miyazaki. You're right. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly. But yeah. He, like, doesn't believe in those type of things.
Todd Purse:He believes that, like, you know, he like, it's funny because this was all right around that time with the AI controversy with his artwork and everything, and that famous quote going around how he believes that it's, like, soulless and the end of the human soul is using these I'm like I'm like, no, Teddy, you don't understand. This is like, he would never, like, this is all, like, the point is that it takes forever and that it's done by hand. And that's why it's part of why it's so beautiful and then why it works. And like, if that same exact movie was made taking shortcuts, I don't know if it would work, honestly. If they did the exact same story, and it wasn't hand painted, and it was all done digitally, and what like, I don't know if that works, know?
Todd Purse:So same thing
AP Strange:It probably doesn't. Yeah. I mean, think I think he probably I could be wrong about this, but I get the sense that a lot of the stuff that happens on those movies comes from kind of like a Shinto animistic
Todd Purse:perspective. And
AP Strange:if there's no human agency, like, you know, there's no human hand holding the pen that makes that image on the paper, then there's no soul. There's no animating principle, A
Todd Purse:100%, dude. That's 100%. Think you just nailed it.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Todd Purse:Yeah, yeah, no, that's so, and that's one of those things that like, I think we do do ourselves a disservice to not just try and show stuff like that to our kids. And so you know what I mean? Like I could have just been like in my dad brain, be like, I want this to last two hours. So like we're entertained and not, you know, I wanna put on a guaranteed hit. Let's go back to the Mario movie.
Todd Purse:Let's go. But I'm like, no. Let's and I think the other thing is that, like, not just putting it on and walking away. Like putting it on and sitting it down and watching it them and being like, you know, engaged with it as well because a lot of the stuff is like, you know, it can be hard with kids media to be engaged with it because it's kind of it hurts your brain sometimes.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, mean, people don't give kids enough credit either.
Todd Purse:That's it.
AP Strange:I've been surprised many times in parenting where some things are just timeless and they're never really gonna go away, most people would never think to try it.
Todd Purse:Exactly.
AP Strange:And it started with me with YouTube clips of like 1930s comedies that I liked or earlier like silent movies. So I mean, I got my son like hooked on Laurel and Hardy by accident. He just responded to Laurel and Hardy like crazy when he was little and he still to this day will just like reference them. That's amazing.
Todd Purse:I love it.
AP Strange:And I'm like what kid his age like knows who Laurel and Hardy are? It's just like
Todd Purse:That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh, he's gonna get so many reference because like stuff like Laurel and Hardy is like in the base of so much of our culture without us knowing it like they're like, you know, like from Simpsons down all the way through like adventure time I was watching. And there's still like physical humor that is from that, you know, time period and Laurel and Hardy and these and it's so a part of what we do. Right?
Todd Purse:So it's super Yeah. He's gonna understand that better than most people that are consuming the same media that he is, which is really it gives him a leg up in certain ways.
AP Strange:Yeah. And I mean, I would have thought like Three Stooges because that's like way more low brow, that's way more violent. It's Exactly. Stuff. And he's never really responded to the Stooges so much.
AP Strange:He likes the Marks Brothers and Laurel and Hardy. You never know. Good taste right there. Good
Todd Purse:taste. That's you never know what's gonna hit, you know? Yeah.
AP Strange:But I still love the Stooges. I don't care.
Todd Purse:No. I'm I'm with you. It's probably my favorite out of all the ones you just named there. Yeah. That's awesome.
AP Strange:But, yeah. I mean, like, yeah. I mean, that it's it's funny. Like, there's a realness and an authenticity that's in a lot of lot of things that are know older and stand the test of time for a reason you know. So we do need to give people enough room to really explore that.
AP Strange:But on the topic of like the CGI and using your imagination, I wonder what you think about this because this is something I felt with specifically the Doctor Strange appearances in Marvel movies because this touches on Jack Kirby, who I know that you're a big fan of.
Todd Purse:Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:Because seeing a comic panel of of Doctor Strange with all like the psychedelic crazy stuff going on around him, but then watching it in a movie, like I get disoriented and lost like immediately in the movies when stuff starts happening. I'm like, man, they could have been they could have done something way cooler with that based on, like, the old Kirby designs and psychedelic stuff. So I didn't know if you agree with her.
Todd Purse:A 100%. No. I think you nailed it, dude. And, like, I like things that had that make make decisions, make visual choices, and say, I wanna look like this. And, like, I don't know, like, the whole trying to bring the comic language into the real world just misses the And it's not like and it's one of those things that like, it's not that I think it all needs to be like an animated cartoon or anything like that, but it just needs to be less, I don't know, realistic if that is a weird, I don't know.
Todd Purse:Like it just needs to be like, like if if those Doctor Strange powers that we're talking about were just like the oversaturated colors that Ditko used to use, those pinks and yellows that are flat, and like if that stuff starts swirling around, it would probably look amazing. Right? And like, I think those are the instead of asking if we should, they are just like, we can, so let's do it. You know? Not like, should we do it?
Todd Purse:It's like that whole Jurassic Park thing. Right? Right. It's like, is it going back there? Like, they're like, oh, we have the technology to do this now.
Todd Purse:Let's just do it as realistic as possible instead of stepping back and being like, oh, maybe it's not better to be as realistic as possible. Maybe it's better. And I feel like, you know, even comic artwork in comic books suffered and they're still struggling. Like, when you pick up a comic off the rack these days in the top two, the Marvel and DCs, most of the artwork is, like, modeled to look like the closest thing to the CGI that you're seeing on movies these days. Like, it's very brown and muddled and like, very much just like lost the fun vibrant thing that I think of with comics.
Todd Purse:Like, it lost the like punchy primary colors and the like
AP Strange:Yeah. The four color thing. Yeah.
Todd Purse:And the clean lines and the fact that like Yeah. Superman's not supposed to look like a man. Like, you know, like, the you know, like, these things are supposed be cartooned and they're supposed to be, like, exaggerated. And when your whole thing is to try and just draw the most realistic background with the most windows and the most, like, all that, I'm like Yeah. You're kinda losing the the the magic here.
Todd Purse:Like, when one of the things that's magic about comics is that you can draw a skyscraper with 500 windows with like eight lines. Like, don't need to draw every little window. You can just like hint at things and give people the suggestion of stuff. And like, I think that those kind of classic cartooning techniques have gotten lost with the tools of the trade in the current times. And I think that's the same thing with CGI and practical effects is there's these like this history of techniques and art forms that were created just to tell these stories, whether it was comics or whether it's movies and like, you're kind of disregarding that whole history.
Todd Purse:I like go. So I draw on a tablet a lot, right? Like I'm not completely analog. Like I do a lot on the tablet and I go back and forth because it does feel better to like dip a nib into a jar of ink and drag it across a piece of paper. That feels really good.
Todd Purse:But it is way more time consuming. You have to clean up a bunch of stuff. It I can't do that easily like while watching the kids like it's easier to be on the tablet and like all those things for sure. But one of the things that I think about a lot now because a different cartoonist said it, his name is Josh Pettinger. He writes some of the funniest comics out there these days.
Todd Purse:And he said, the reason that he went back to drawing traditionally is because he feels like he's part of a lineage when he picks up a brush or a nib and dips it in the ink, he's doing the exact same thing that Jack Kirby did, that Charles Schultz did, that Bill Waterson did. All of these amazing artists, he's performing the exact same act that they did, and he feels connected to that history via that. Where if he's drawing on a piece of glass with a piece of plastic, he doesn't feel that connection anymore. And I'm like, dude, that's alright. Valid.
Todd Purse:Got it. Like, I love that. Like, that's something that I think is real and can be applied outside of the just, art two d art realm. Like if people started making movies with those old tried and true analog techniques, I bet there'd be some really cool results from it.
AP Strange:Yeah, and I mean it proves itself. The proof is in the pudding often enough. And like you mentioned at the top of this, the Batman animated series from the nineties, which was a throwback to the old, like, Fleischer cartoons. Like, Fleischer Superman. And and that was a groundbreaking, innovative animation for its time.
AP Strange:And it holds up. Like you watch those old Superman cartoons from what, like the thirties? And they're doing all that rotoscoping stuff. Looks gorgeous. Such a cool look.
Todd Purse:Those Fleischer cartoons, like, blew my mind when I first saw them. Like, yeah, I didn't see those until college. One of my college professors did backgrounds for the Batman, the animated series and Batman Beyond. I think both of those. And he was the first person to be like, you need to go watch these Superman.
Todd Purse:I was like Yeah. My mind was just blown. Like, was like, oh, this is where it all came from. Okay. Cool.
Todd Purse:But even the even the way they designed all of the buildings to be that Art Deco style, and like the the whole thing was just like a period piece, but more modern than Batman ever felt at the same time, which was just really weird dynamic that I loved.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, he's the man of tomorrow and, you know, get Batman's Gothic. So it's
Todd Purse:it's that is so true. And like, dude, that's the other thing that so like, well, man, why am I Bruce Timm, right? Like the guy that designed all of that and everything like his influence that went from that back into comics. Like it completely, it made Batman fun again in certain ways that he was not in a lot for a long time. Like, it kept some of the darkness that Batman always had, but it kind of like lightened up some of that Dark Knight Returns vibe that was going on and was so thick Batman, which I love.
Todd Purse:Like, I love Frank Miller's work and everything, but like
AP Strange:And the killing joke and
Todd Purse:Totally. The killing joke is fucking brutal, dude. That one is just so dark. And so, I know, love it. Right?
Todd Purse:That is from artwork to story, one of my favorites. But, yeah, like it was nice to have like Bruce Timm bring this kind of poppy Batman back and like Yeah. People like Darwin Cook kinda grab hold of that and run with it. Mike Allred, these dudes that the Batman 66. I don't know if you ever read those, but it was essentially they got the rights to man, why am I playing my brain's going AP.
Todd Purse:My very Adam West yeah. He they got the rights to Adam West's likes and likely likeness and had Michael R. Withdrawal it all. And it's like the most batshit Batman comics ever in the best way. Like, tons of Bat two c, tons of over the top awesomeness.
AP Strange:They made a few animated things with that though, and had Adam West do the voice. Did you notice No.
Todd Purse:There was
AP Strange:one There was an unused script. They were gonna do a Two Face episode in the original series, but they decided it would be too scary for the kids.
Todd Purse:Amazing.
AP Strange:And so they never did it, but they did it as a cartoon like maybe twenty years ago. Maybe not that long ago. I think it popped up on streaming at some point so maybe not twenty years but ten years ago maybe. And Adam West is in it, Bert Ward's in it, Julie Newmar's in it and and they bring in William Shatner to be Two Face. Oh.
AP Strange:Now, I mean, obviously they're all older, but it's a cartoon, so it doesn't matter, you know. It's perfect.
Todd Purse:It's perfect. Their voices are dead on.
AP Strange:Yeah. The voices still sound the same. So it's
Todd Purse:amazing. Dude, I gotta look that up. That'll be a weekend watch for sure. Yeah. That's awesome, dude.
AP Strange:Because I love that stuff when I was a kid. The the 60s Batman series was
Todd Purse:always on
AP Strange:reruns, and I loved it.
Todd Purse:Nick at night for me was like, love Lucy and and the original Batman's here. Like, that was my first job. I saved up a $100 roughing soccer games to buy, like, a little TV I could have in my room. And that was like the that was pretty much what I remember watching. Mainly was Nick at night, Dragnet.
Todd Purse:No, I love Lucy. Like, yeah, all the yeah, so good. So good on a little black and white TV.
AP Strange:But, yeah, I mean, yeah, you're right. Like, that gave it an opportunity to make Batman fun again with that stuff and a little less dark.
Todd Purse:Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. The the voice acting in that was great too with the animated series. Mark Hamill doing the Joker was
Todd Purse:So good.
AP Strange:You know, I never knew for years that that was Mark Hamill. No. Some reason. I just
Todd Purse:Me either. Nope. Until I was like yeah. Definitely into adult well into adulthood for sure. I yeah.
Todd Purse:That was one of my those shows are in my brain forever and the type of thing that I'll just put on sometimes just an episode and just have it on in the background. It just makes you feel good. I'm like, oh, yeah. That's right. This I feel like I'm getting home from school and turning on the TV and like, it's really nice.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah, and much the same way, I got like a warm feeling just hearing about it and we kind of blew past it, but Bill Waterson and Calvin and Hobbs was like huge for me. I must have had I still have them actually the all the collections of the comic strips.
Todd Purse:The big floppy ones? Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah they're the best. They're the best.
AP Strange:Like Attack of the Homicidal Jungle Cat and, like, yeah.
Todd Purse:Yes. No, dude. I those I still have a couple of those that I've gifted to my kids at this point. Like, there's some of the books I try and just leave comics out, and there's just some the that I leave out forever. And then I have, like, I don't know, while ago now, they put out, like, two editions of the full series, and these nice hard book, hard cover books that go in a slip case.
Todd Purse:So I have that that I keep out here. And then they just, not too long ago, is it still right here? They put out these really nice little additions that I usually nope. I usually keep one next to my desk, but there's these really nice they're only like this big, and it's like the same thing as the big floppy ones. They're all put in like, here's the winter collection, or here's the, you know Yeah.
Todd Purse:Yeah. So I look look at those all the time, but those books were the first thing that I read and was like completely enamored by the magic of comics. Like that marriage of pictures and words and just the way that it moved from panel to panel. And just the like it was so perfect with the nineties Nickelodeon kid that I was, where like parents are the enemy, this is from the kid's perspective, like like there's this like mischievousness to the whole thing that I was really, you know, always really loved and like, I don't know. It was the perfect compliment to like Pete and Pete and that type of thing that I was watching on Nickelodeon at the time.
Todd Purse:Was like, this is this is what I want in everything. And I really, honestly, I don't know if I ever saw one in a paper. I think, I don't think I ever like, I don't even remember my parents getting a Yeah. I don't think I ever think they were all through the collections. Like I was just trying to think if I ever know.
Todd Purse:Think everything was run read through the collections again.
AP Strange:Well, Sunday spreads were always the best. That's like with like the T Rex and the fighter jet. Dude.
Todd Purse:Yes, those giant space alien monsters with Commander Ziff, and like, dude, yeah, that was my fav-, and like, the imagination that I couldn't recognize at the time, but like looking back, because they're one of the few things that like I've read and reread consistently throughout my, you know, whole life. And man, I think, I don't think I've ever been disappointed. Like I don't think I've ever picked up and just been like, no, like I always put it down. And this is one of the things that is really hard to explain to people who don't draw, but there's the certain thing when you look at someone else's artwork and you want to put it down because you want to go draw. And that's like my favorite type of artwork and Bill Waterson just has that.
Todd Purse:Like, he look at it and it's this perfect combination of like energetic, and bouncy, and complex, but kind of simple, and you're kind of like, I could do that, and it's really exciting, like, those are my favorite things to see. And he was like one of my first experiences of that, of being like, okay, I gotta get, like I'll read like four strips and be like, okay, I gotta go draw something now. And then that was like, still to the same. That's how I felt
AP Strange:too. That's how I felt already. Mean, it's like, it perfectly balanced. Was very tasteful in the way that you could balance everything just four panels.
Todd Purse:Yes.
AP Strange:And that's why I love the Sunday ones too, because you would just let it fly like you had that bigger spread to work with. But but also just smarter than almost any media that we have now. Just
Todd Purse:Oh, 100%. Like, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about some of those some of those strips because the amount of, like, emotional intelligence that is portrayed by, you know, a kid and his stuffed cat is just mind blowing to me, honestly. And, like, just makes me wanna cry a little bit sometimes. But knowing, like, one, it's one of the saddest stories As far as like why he stopped doing Calvin and Hobbs and how much like the newspapers because the those Sundays were the thing. That's what broke him is.
Todd Purse:They wouldn't give him those Sunday spaces anymore. He kept shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking to the point where he felt like he couldn't even tell the story like properly anymore. And then he I don't know if you ever watched the documentary on him, but it's like one of my favorite documentaries on an artist ever.
AP Strange:Dear, mr. Waters.
Todd Purse:Yeah, exactly. And like just his morals at his ethics and one of those dudes that actually stuck to everything that he said and like, I know it obviously it's a lot easier when you make that type of money off of a property, but man, he could have made so much more like he could have been one of the, you know, Charles Schultz level of like, you know,
AP Strange:or like Jim Davis, like, yeah, Garfield stuff blew up and that guy just never had to work again.
Todd Purse:He could have. Yeah. No, I think I'm sure he's still, you know, is he's painting Arizona landscapes or whatever. Hey, just put that book out. Did you read it?
Todd Purse:It's really weird and awesome. It's like, hey
AP Strange:No, didn't know you were, no, I didn't hear about it.
Todd Purse:It's inside. It's a, so he's working with a photographer, right? And the photographer, it's a kid's book essentially, but it's not really a kid's book. But it's in the format of a children's book. And it's a photographer that takes pictures of like still lives and weird statues and stuff, and then he goes in and paints over top of them.
Todd Purse:So it doesn't look like Calvin and Hobbs at all. Like don't buy it thinking that this is going to be any kind of thing. But it's fun and weird and it's cool just to buy a Bill Waterson book in 2025.
AP Strange:Oh, we're talking about okay. I got confused. I thought you were talking about Jim Davis. I was like
Todd Purse:Oh, dude. No. I'm sorry. I jumped back. No.
Todd Purse:No. No. Jump back to Bill Watterson. No. Now that would be even that would be even more next level because Watterson, like, he is a, like, a painter and, like, you know, he was famous.
Todd Purse:He retired to paint landscapes in the desert and all that stuff and like but yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah, man. That's what I was getting at is like, he was being pressured like, oh, we could license this as a Saturday morning cartoon, make all this merchandise, Calvin and Hobbs action figures, and all of a sudden. He's like, no, that's not what this is. You know, like,
Todd Purse:and like you listen to him talk about how like you can't have a Hobbs stuffy. It breaks the whole thing. Like, there's a Hobbs stuffy that exists in the world. The whole thing's broken. We can't break the illusion.
Todd Purse:I'm like, that's what I'm talking about buddy. That's what I'm talking Like that, like the dedication to go back to one of my favorite things that, that Lynch talks about, but like the dedication to the idea and sticking to the idea more than anything else and letting that be the guy. Like that is that a 100%. Like you can't break kayfabe. Like the the whole gimmick is that Hobbs is a stuffed tiger that is you know brought to light when interacted with by by Calvin and like.
AP Strange:But and it only works in that medium. Exactly. Like that comic strip is the world. Know? And and I mean that's kind of what Alan Moore is always saying about movie adaptations.
AP Strange:He's like it's it's not a movie. Yeah. The story the story exists in a comic book because the comic book is the way to tell that story. Like there's no other way to do it, you know?
Todd Purse:Yes, no, 100%. I think that's something that people forget is to like, look at the medium that you're working in and lean into the inherent strengths and weaknesses of that medium. I can't remember who made this rule now in the Simpsons writing room, but there was someone early on in those first like, you know, hailed ten seasons of the Simpsons where one of the rules in the writing room was that if you can make this joke and it doesn't work as a cartoon, or wait, let me think of how it went. Like if you could make this joke in a regular sitcom, that's not a cartoon, it's not for us. Like we have to use the cartooniness of the Simpsons to make these jokes.
Todd Purse:Like, the cartoon has to be And that's something that, like, you never think of because some of The Simpsons jokes are pretty straight. But some of the best jokes are, like, dudes just jumping out of windows in the background. Or, like, things like that. Where, like, you know, it's just completely over the top, you can only do this because it's a cartoon. And I'm like Right.
Todd Purse:That is using the medium to its, know, inherent. And it's, they took that medium and they're like, we're gonna tell adult stories and don't, but they still use it as a cartoon. They still do like the weird exaggeration Yeah,
AP Strange:because you almost are better able to express something by having guardrails and strict rules. Know, get it's a you mentioned Looney Tunes earlier too. Chuck Jones had a strict set of rules for Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons. As long as you followed that, like if you didn't do from these core precepts of what that cartoon is, it was gonna be successful.
Todd Purse:Absolutely dude. And that's the thing, people, like when you're starting out, you look at that as a young artist, you're like, well no, you can't have rules, there's always an exception to the rule. All that's true, but when you really start looking at people who make things consistently, and like make things, like not every Chuck Jones animation is, like, amazing. Right? But, like, the things that people remember about Looney Tunes, it's from Chuck Jones.
Todd Purse:Like, it's almost 100% from Chuck Jones. I mean, like, the reason that the Grinch is a thing in any of our brains is because of Chuck Jones. Like, you know, like Yeah. Like, he took what Doctor. Seuss did and made it, a, you know, cultural phenomenon.
Todd Purse:Like, it's like Yeah. And it was his decision to make him green. It was his decision to, like, do all this weird shit that, like, we don't picture without the Grinch, you know. And I think that people that have those rule sets and work within them, they stumble upon these things without even knowing it. And it's not like, you know, they're trying to limit people's creativity.
Todd Purse:They know what works and you can be even more creative if you work within those guidelines or boundaries. And I think a lot about it from like a a lot of the times people's best thing that they make is when they are a little bit like stifled in a skill level. Like they're not quite where they're gonna be as far as like as skilled at their craft, but there's something really special about it. It's like when you listen to the first couple of Ramones records. Like the reason they are so good is because none of them can play their instruments and none of them really know how to they're just trying to write Shangri La's and Beach Boys songs and it just came out like that.
Todd Purse:Like, and that's what's so special about it. Right? Like, it like Yeah. And then they and then that became the rule set. And then that became the like, okay.
Todd Purse:It's verse, chorus, verse, go ahead. Like, you know, we have our song structure. We have our uniforms. We are the fucking Ramones. And like, they made a bajillion really awesome song, like, you know, albums and songs and all that and started a whole genre essentially.
AP Strange:Yeah. Then they have later albums and everybody still just wants to hear blitz blitzkrieg bop.
Todd Purse:Totally. And like, poor Joey. All she ever wanted was a hit. My guy, all's he ever wanted to do was be in like a famous girl group. But yeah.
Todd Purse:No, I think there's something, I recommend that to anybody who's like feeling overwhelmed by something. Because a lot of people, I work with a few artists that are they're in college still and they're kind of like hit me up with questions and stuff. And a lot of the times it's just they get hung up so much, excuse me, on like how they're gonna execute something. Like I have 9,000,000 different options to make this piece of art. How do I even choose what medium to use?
Todd Purse:And I'm like, just start simple. Like what feels the best in your A pencil. Okay, well this is gonna be an, whole thing's in pencil. Like just take it out. Like if it feels good, then go with that and be like, alright, this is the decision.
Todd Purse:And impose some rules. Be like, okay, like I'm going to do this and it's only gonna be, one of my favorite things to do is shrink like the space that I'm working on. So like the smaller you draw, the more drawings you can do. So like when you're first learning about comics, you see everybody draw these giant comic pages and like 11 by 17 or 18 by 24 takes fucking forever. Right?
Todd Purse:If you just draw to the size of the concept, if you're printing your comic at like, you know, this size, draw the page at this size, and then you can not have to like, you know, spend all that extra time filling in blacks and everything. So little things like that, like just give yourself these little cheats and these little rules and like, kind of be an asshole to yourself about it. Kind of be like, no. Yeah. Do it.
Todd Purse:Like be a little rigid, you know? And like, it doesn't mean you have to stay like that forever, but try it.
AP Strange:Well, it's it's discipline. You're learning a discipline. Also, I mean, you're you're playing too. Yes. And if you're gonna play a game, all games have rules, you know?
AP Strange:So, like
Todd Purse:Dude, I that's a really great point and something that, like, it's really hard for kids to get. My four year old, the whole rules and games thing, she does not like, and she's really struggling with. And I get it. But yeah, no, the rules make the game more fun. And that's something that's like hard to learn.
Todd Purse:And like, it is really important, especially when you have this like endless potential, especially if you're working digitally. You literally, you have an oil brush at your hands, you have watercolor, you could do a million different things. And if you don't have like kind of a defined rule set before you enter that like possibility sphere, then you're gonna be overwhelmed and may get some analysis paralysis type style, type stuff, right? Like, I always have been grateful that I had a kind of defined style before I started working digitally. Like I had years of working traditionally before I had the ability, but there is something that undo thing on the tablet, on the digital, Like that is a magic thing that builds confidence.
Todd Purse:So like, working digitally has made me a better artist overall because of some of the confidence that like being able to hit undo a million times has given me. So it is, it's not all one way or the other. But yeah, I definitely think that there's a lot to be said to just giving yourself two or three rules in any creative project.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, mean, and you know, I had a writing teacher at one point that said you have to learn all the rules before you could break them.
Todd Purse:Yeah, that's very true.
AP Strange:So I learned how to work through the rules, but then once you know them, you're like, all right, well, could pick and choose at this point, you know? But the self imposed restrictions help a lot. But I mean, in that sense too, how many times have you as an artist like made a whoopsie while you're drawing and then that ended up being like helpful to you? A 100 Because he didn't have an undo button, you know?
Todd Purse:No, that has been huge. There's an artist I love, a comic artist named Josh Baer, and like when you watch the way he draws, it's so inspiring because it's just layers, he, no pencils, it's all straight inks. If he messes up, it's just tons of white out. He dries it with a blow dryer and then right on top of that. And like, you look at his art and it's gorgeous and you just see layers of layers of mistakes and corrections.
Todd Purse:And I'm like, that's what it's about. That's it right Like, so yeah, I'm like, essentially everything I draw these days, I've gone back to drawing traditionally and then I'd go and like, I'll take a picture of it and draw it, like do finish digitally depending on how I want to finish the piece. But there's a lot of stuff like recently I've been see if I can pick this thing up. I've been trying to do drawings that are like this size that I can't even scan because this is like ridiculously so no one will ever probably see this, like I'll never be able to post that online or anything, but I've been trying to do things like that and do it in just ink, not start with pencils, not plan it out. And then if it, like, if the nib just explodes, and there's a big ink blop there, and I'm like, all right, that's there, we're gonna make that into a birdie now.
Todd Purse:Like try and just like, pull out, do some pareidolia magic in there, and try and just pull some stuff out of what I see, and like, just kind of go with it. Because there is some of the best stuff that I've made has come from that. Some of the best stuff that I've like stumbled across. And not only like the thing that I like the best where I'm like, oh, I like that one. The thing that people have responded to the best has been happy accidents and things that like, I'm like, I didn't think that little ink blob that turned into a UFO was going to get so many interactions on the internet, that's cool.
Todd Purse:Right.
AP Strange:Well it was meant to be, you know?
Todd Purse:Exactly, exactly.
AP Strange:Responded really to the work that you do because when I first came across it, I'm like, this this is like a dream come true. These are like fun drawings and they're inspirational and whimsical and they have all these great elements, but they're paranormal subjects, you know. So I mean, that that was like a choice for you going into it, guess, right? It's just that because I think most people's inclination is to go for scary when they wanna draw any of this stuff. But did did you just skip over that entirely and and
Todd Purse:I've never been good at scary, right? Like, so I I talk about this a a good amount. And like like we were talking about horror movies earlier and getting back to watching them. And I do enjoy a good horror movie, and I do like enjoy some good scares and stuff. But honestly, I am the Halloween kid that's just like, give me the Disney specials.
Todd Purse:Give me the Garfield Halloween special. Give me the Yeah. Like, give me the the office Halloween. Like, I love just, like, funny, weird Halloween and, like, that side of things. And I think that I've always been fascinated by I've always been fascinated by things like so when you learn about the story of ET, right, and you learn that, like, that was supposed to be this script called was it Watch the Skies or some shit like that or something like that where essentially Steven Spielberg heard about the Kelly Hopkins field goblins, and he wanted to make a big scary, like alien invasion movie.
Todd Purse:And then he realized, no, like, this needs to be, like, a soft, cuddly, like, front fun, like, best friend movie. And I'm like, I love that that started as something like horrifying and went to something like soft and cuddly. And then you read about the actual, you learn about the actual account and it's kind of like right in the middle. Right? Like, it's like, you know, like you read the account of what actually happened and like, there's a lot of absurd absurd humor and weird like rainbow exhaust UFO flying and like bullets bouncing off of aerobatic little goblin men and like the whole idea that they were actually gray and not green, but Kelly Green and the newspaper went with green because it's Kelly Hopkinsville.
Todd Purse:I love that shit, right? So like there's always been like that that's the the hook that's always gotten me is that like kind of mix of like weird humor and kind of silliness but mixed with people being absolutely scared and weirded out and like, you know, like something that's genuinely people. Right? So, I really have always kind of bounced in between the two but honestly, it's just my like, when I sit down, I said, it's, I thought about this the other day. I got the chance to do a big pop up in Delaware earlier this year for about two months where I got to do these giant murals and I got to fill three rooms of this old violin shop in Wilmington.
Todd Purse:It's one of the most famous violin shops in the area and the dude retired and moved to New York. So, the people that bought the building let me have the whole thing to do this little art show. And people would walk in and they'd be like, Oh, this is weird. It's like walking into your brain. And I'm like, No, this is what I want my brain to look like.
Todd Purse:That's what I think about my drawings that I post on the internet. Those are my messages to myself. That's what I want my inner dialogue to be, is like a little moth man being like, yo, did you have a donut today? That's not really what's in there all the time, know? The cuteness and the nice, like it's all just this like, you are what you make, right?
Todd Purse:Like be careful what you So like to me, if I'm making like scary, dark stuff all the time, I'm a little scared that I'm going to be a little too into the scary, dark stuff. Like I kind of like my world in the light bubbly, but like slightly weird and a little like what the fuck is that? But in a good way.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well see, it's great too because Kelly hops, the Kelly Hopkinsville case was always one of my favorites. Like I remember seeing some drawing of it in a book as a kid and being like, wow, because, you know, the goblins are almost like gremlins, but they're not as scary. They're they're kind of weird, you know? And then so the the goblin, it seems, is like kind of a central character that I think it pops up probably more frequently than than anything else with with your cartoons.
Todd Purse:A 100%. And it's so in there, like the the long eared goblin. So I'm rewatching the Star Wars. I'm like, oh, Yoda's just a fucking goblin. Like, I'm like, I'm looking at like, oh, this has been in my Bugs Bunny.
Todd Purse:Also, just long eared goblin. So many just like the things that transfer in my brain as Goblin.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, it's great. I mean, it's an awesome thing for to be the centerpiece, you know, because it's kinda like that trickster energy, you know, like
Todd Purse:Yes. Yes. Yes. No, absolutely. And that's what I was trying to explain.
Todd Purse:It's funny because my my kid's really into ancient Egypt right now and he's been talking to me about a lot of it. I'm trying to explain to him like the idea of a trickster god because it came up in one of the books that we're reading together. Yeah. And he loves it because it's exactly what is, right? Like an eight year old is a little trickster god.
Todd Purse:Like they wanna be mischievous, they wanna like push their badness, but they know they're kinda, you know, like he knows he's a good guy, but he really wants to test it. And like, so like, it's just the perfect motif for what he's into right now. He's like Yeah. He's neutral. He's not good or bad, but he's definitely something and trying to make some waves.
AP Strange:He's kind of a little Calvin.
Todd Purse:Yes, exactly, exactly.
AP Strange:Yeah. And in that sense, it's like Calvin creates his whole world. He has this whole imaginal world that he spends way too much time in. Yeah. Be practical.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Todd Purse:Dude, so true. So true. I'm right there. I'm I'm a grown up Calvin.
AP Strange:Well, it's awesome that you get to be that. You know? It's a it's a real blessing.
Todd Purse:Very grateful, dude.
AP Strange:For all of us, really, because we get to enjoy it with you. You know? So
Todd Purse:That's too kind. No, I'm I say all the time that I've won some weird cosmic lottery that I get to draw weird pictures for coffee bags to support a family and do all this other like, that's my main like job for those who don't know that are listening. I draw pictures for coffee bags. That's how I like pay the bills and everything. Everything online is just kind of fun or on like my Instagram and stuff.
Todd Purse:That's my like my morning drawings that I do to kind of get the day going and just kind of have fun. And then how I actually pay the bills is just drawing weird stuff on coffee bags, which is weird, right? Like it's weird that that's a job that I somehow stumbled into or created with my brain.
AP Strange:It manifested.
Todd Purse:Yeah, definitely. Definitely think there was some manifesting in there.
AP Strange:Yeah, but I mean aside from that too, I failed to mention it earlier, but I meant to, was the Welcome UFO People comic that you do with Rob Kristofferson.
Todd Purse:We're in the middle of issue two right now. That's gonna be completely different. I actually just talked to Rob this morning or this afternoon.
AP Strange:Cool. Cool. Yeah. I mean, now so is that like a different kettle of fish for you with it's a more realism, you know? Yeah.
AP Strange:So
Todd Purse:Yeah. It's definitely a very different kettle. Like, one, well, Rob's amazing. Like, he working with Rob is super super fun because one, he's just like a wealth of knowledge, knows so much about the UFO topic, and like knows exactly the cases that I'm gonna love. Like he knows exactly what to pick to be like, oh, Todd's gonna have a blast drawing this.
Todd Purse:And like, I mean, he definitely has the, we probably could do, I don't know, 50 more issues of the style that we did with the first one. And he could write those all day long. But what I love about Rob is he likes to challenge himself. So the next issue we're putting out is going to be completely different. It's going to be a completely fictional story that he's writing about a alien.
Todd Purse:We haven't really talked about how much, well I'm just going talk about it, it doesn't matter. He'll be fine with it. But it's an alien named Gumbus. And Gumbus is one of a crew that comes to earth to do abductions. And he's about to retire.
Todd Purse:And it's covering him like kind of going through his last abduction and his retiring and like what an alien does after they retire from a long life of abducting people. And he's using all of his knowledge of, you know, the cases that he's been studying forever and like interjecting it all. But like, his humor is amazing. Like, the script he sent me is so funny and so I it's I didn't expect it, honestly. I I was blown away.
Todd Purse:And I'm so I'm slowly I'm like four pages into it. I'm a so I'm finishing the second Illuminatus stuff right now and working on the new Welcome UFO people kind of in the background of that. But as soon as the Illuminatus pages are done, then it's full time Welcome UFO people on the side. And that should be done hopefully by the end of the summer. We'll have this first issue out.
Todd Purse:But we'll start posting pages probably end of this month. This is June, Yeah, end of this month. We'll have some pages of the new stuff up on the Instagram for people to check out.
AP Strange:Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So yeah, that has its own Instagram account. Welcome. Is it just welcomeUFOpeople?
Todd Purse:Believe so. That is, yeah, totally. And I highly recommend, Rob also has a couple sub stacks that he started recently and he's doing some personal writing. That's so good. Highly recommend people check-in.
Todd Purse:Oh, And I know people miss his podcast a lot and I don't think that's gonna be coming back anytime soon but his writing, it definitely hits the spot. So definitely check that out.
AP Strange:All right, beautiful. So I feel like we already just did the wrap ups here like really organically. Usually I have to prompt.
Todd Purse:Didn't even mean that.
AP Strange:It just had to happen, you know?
Todd Purse:Know, it's funny AP. I, so when I was talking to Rob earlier, I was like, man, I haven't been on a podcast or done like a podcast or anything in so long because honestly, I was I was doing mine forever and then this Luminatus thing popped up and the Dreamscapes, the book that I was talking to you about earlier, it just kind of took over of all of my time I had for the podcast. And I was like, I think my time's better spent making this than the podcast right now. So it might come back eventually. Like it might be something I start up in, you know, when I stop having ideas for comics and stuff.
Todd Purse:Having these story, I forgot how time consuming ics are and I'm like, this is.
AP Strange:But your show is, your show is still up, right? The episode.
Todd Purse:Oh, can go listen to it and check it out. There's tons of great conversations with folks like yourself and there's, I think, with the daily episodes, there's like 400 episodes, which is, I forgot that I even did that part of the podcast, to be honest. So I was like, oh yeah. Like, I forgot that I rambled into a microphone for five minutes a day about the drawings I made for over a year, which is weird to think that I did that.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, all the interviews were great. I always enjoyed hearing that show.
Todd Purse:Hope can check
AP Strange:that out too.
Todd Purse:Those are the reasons that I would go back, having conversations with folks. There's definitely a long. What's funny is in the weirdo sphere, like people are putting out books that were like made for my podcast, right? Like the new Joshua Cutchen book, the new. Yeah.
Todd Purse:Oh, who was it that just put out a book about the imagination? Too long? Oh, the new Jeffrey Kripal book that just came out a little bit And then the new Eric Wargo book From Nowhere, that's all about precognitive creative experiences. Have you dove into that one at all? It's great.
Todd Purse:I really, yeah.
AP Strange:I heard him talk about it a little bit, but I haven't got it yet.
Todd Purse:It's super, super fun. It's easier read than the time stuff, honestly. But it might just be my proclivity to liking artists, so. But yeah, so all these books are coming out, I'm like, oh, would be perfect to talk about on the show I don't do anymore. Yeah.
Todd Purse:So maybe eventually I'll do it, and then have all those people on and talk to them about these amazing books that they're writing.
AP Strange:Well, I mean, that's the great thing is like you can do it whenever you want. Know, you can always hop back in if you want to, you know.
Todd Purse:Dude, before we wrap up completely, that's something that's really important to me, talking about making stuff is like, that's why what I do has always worked for me is because I don't have expectations about it doing anything or being experienced by anybody. So like, think that's crucial. Yeah. Yeah. Like make stuff just because you enjoy making it.
Todd Purse:Don't worry about it. Because it's funny. Like there's been a lot of people that, not a lot of people, but a few people that have asked me about the podcast. And they're like, well, is it because like you have to do a video now and like you can't do a podcast unless it's on you? I'm like, no.
Todd Purse:None of that stuff matters to me like at all. Like, I don't care about any of that. Like, I will only do audio because I can barely edit that. There's no way I'm going to like come back with a video format or anything like that. I do not have the means, sir.
Todd Purse:If I bring it back, it'll just, that had nothing to do. It's just so funny that like when you put something out there and you forget that people do interact with it even on a small scale, that like sometimes you get opinions back and you're like, oh yeah, people thought about that. That's cool. Right.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it's that's the way I look at it too. And it's like, you make it because you enjoy doing it. No. Like, the this show is almost entirely selfish for me, I think.
AP Strange:Because I'm like, you know, it's just a hell of a lot of cool people out there that I would feel real weird about being like, hey. Do you wanna just talk for no reason at some point?
Todd Purse:Yes. Yes.
AP Strange:So it's like having a show is just like, would you like to come on my show? That's like a lot
Todd Purse:Totally. It's so, I mean that was 100% the reason that I started. It wasn't like I was listening to other people do podcasts and being like, I could have that conversation better, any of that. Was just like, I wanna talk to that person. Like I just think that I could have a fun conversation with that person.
Todd Purse:Yeah. And I
AP Strange:feel weird
Todd Purse:just being like, do you wanna just talk to me about comics for no reason?
AP Strange:Yeah. Well I think you hit the nail on the head there too. It's like, the competitive aspect. I feel like people have a natural inclination to be competitive. And it's like you're not when you're really creating and you're doing it from the heart because it's something you love, you're not in competition with anybody.
AP Strange:I mean, can compete with yourself. Like, can I do this better than I did last time? But like, I mean, if you it's a waste of time looking around being like, why is that guy more popular than me? Like understand.
Todd Purse:I understand. The amount of people that complain about algorithms and all that stuff these days, that is all valid bullshit, right?
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah.
Todd Purse:It just doesn't help. It just doesn't help. And I think about it a lot, like I love Mitch Horowitz and I love a lot of what he has to say about not shit talking. And I think not complaining goes in that same thing. Just don't complain about it, just make something instead of complaining about it.
AP Strange:Yeah, both are true because really what it does is it trains your mind to be in that negative cycle, I think.
Todd Purse:Yes, totally, 100%.
AP Strange:You spend all your time training your mind to be like the gallery of your art, you know?
Todd Purse:That's the goal, that's the goal, 100%. And that's like, Jeff Krapel says this a lot too. People ask him like why he's an optimist. He's like, because I have to be. If I actually believe in what I say that thoughts and ideas are more than just thoughts and ideas, then it would be very irresponsible for me to be pessimistic about stuff.
Todd Purse:I'm like, it's a very true statement, sir. That's a very
AP Strange:good point. Yeah and depression begets depression and I mean as much as the world makes me really want to say like fuck it all, let it all burn, like I can never ever get there. Yes. I I refer to it as my own kihotic faith in people.
Todd Purse:Like I love it.
AP Strange:I'm just tilting out these windmills all
Todd Purse:the windmills. That's right.
AP Strange:Yeah. I'm never gonna stop till they get the weight mills. I'm just gonna keep doing it because I have to believe,
Todd Purse:AP you gave me goosebumps there. That was great. You just gave me a nice little inspirational ending there. Love that.
AP Strange:Nice. Nice.
Groucho:Well,
AP Strange:yeah. Well, we inspire each other and it's like I'm really glad we set this up because it's it has been way too long since
Todd Purse:too long, dude. Too long. Way too long.
AP Strange:We've both been doing stuff and it's
Todd Purse:honestly the only reason I think about bringing the podcast back is to have more excuses to talk to people like you and Saxon and these folks that I've, you know, don't get to talk to as much anymore. I'm glad we can still connect. Anytime, let me know. I'm always down for a conversation.
AP Strange:Alright, man. Well, stay weird, and I know you will.
Todd Purse:It's all we can do, man.
AP Strange:Yep. Alright.
Todd Purse:Take care.