Jim Starlin – Dreadstar Returns! Thanos! Captain Marvel!

Today is a lucky day because we are talking with the creator of Dreadstar, Thanos, the Infinity Gauntlet and so

Today is a lucky day because we are talking with the creator of Dreadstar, Thanos, the Infinity Gauntlet and so much more, Mr. Jim Starlin himself! Be sure to check out the new Dreadstar Returns form Ominous Press!

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Jim Starlin Interview

[00:00:00] Kenric: [00:00:00] All right, guys, we are back. Today is super, super, super special. Uh, he kind of wrote the storyline of my childhood, grew up reading all the comic books as I was growing up, and I believe for, for John as well, he’s got a brand new Kickstarter out for dread star. Jim Starlin, thank you so much for coming on.

[00:00:18] Jim: [00:00:18] My pleasure being here, and I apologize for warping your young lives like that.

[00:00:24] Kenric: [00:00:24] You know, you gotta have a tinge of chaos to have to see what’s going on in the world. So you kind of

[00:00:30] Jim: [00:00:30] have been accused of being kicked outta here on more than one occasion.

[00:00:35] Kenric: [00:00:35] So you got a brand new Kickstarter out. It’s doing really, really well.

[00:00:39] Uh, you only had a $28,000 goal. And you blew that out of the water.

[00:00:43] Jim: [00:00:43] Yeah, we got that in 14 hours. Uh, I guess the Corona virus slowed things up a bit. When we did the, we did it 12 hours.

[00:00:53] Kenric: [00:00:53] That’s incredible.

[00:00:54] Jim: [00:00:54] It’s still good. It’s still good. I’m not complaining.

[00:00:58] Kenric: [00:00:58] How can you write? You get everything going [00:01:00] on there, and this is back kind of almost, I don’t want to say to your roots.

[00:01:04] But 30 years of dread star is a long time to be writing a character. Well, 30 years in between the last two stories. That’s a long time.

[00:01:12] Jim: [00:01:12] Well, we had some other come out in between. Peter. David did a couple of runs. May, uh, yeah, I, I started it, threw him into an issue of breed at one point. But it’s been a long time since I’ve visited this character and that made it kind of interesting to work on.

[00:01:27] I decided I. What has he been doing the last 25 years? And, uh, the beginning of the story is catching up on all the characters and where they have been and where they are now. And dread stars got an interesting little job he’s been doing for the last few decades.

[00:01:43] Kenric: [00:01:43] How’s it doing the Kickstarter for you?

[00:01:45] Is it. It’s something different, something unique. Since you’ve obviously been in the business a long time, people who don’t know, you’ve been instrumental in Marvel’s creation of their whole galaxy and the space and time continuum of what they have going [00:02:00] on even today and now you’re doing independence.

[00:02:03] What’s that like?

[00:02:04] Jim: [00:02:04] Well, uh, it makes me look like Nostradamus is this, uh, uh, Corona virus going around. Every old comic book shops are closed up and, uh. Who knows what’s going to happen with the two big publishers once the thing’s over. So, uh, working on the Kickstarter is a maybe a, the wave of the future.

[00:02:26] It’s hard to say at this point cause we don’t know what’s going to come down. I am not Nostradamus I just got lucky, you know, my friend Ryan Marsh was involved with this and, uh, talked me into doing, uh, I’m the best with him and, uh, this seemed like a great place to do a return and it’s all been working out quite well so far.

[00:02:45] Kenric: [00:02:45] That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Now, before you actually got into comics, you’re in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. He was a sub. He was a submariner for 20 years.

[00:02:55] Jim: [00:02:55] I never got on the ship.

[00:02:56] Kenric: [00:02:56] You never got on a ship what you do for the Navy?

[00:02:58] Jim: [00:02:58] I was a [00:03:00] photographer. Oh, fun. That’s, um, uh, aerial photography, uh, chasing Russian submarines around with a P two squadron insistently, and then later on, uh, the Pacific and, uh, there’s more photography then, you know, just taking pictures.

[00:03:19] Kenric: [00:03:19] How did, how did you get into wanting to know, I’m going to write and draw comic books. How did this start? How did that love affair even begin

[00:03:27] Jim: [00:03:27] where my dad was a draftsman at Chrysler and dashboards and seats and steering wheels, uh, got him out of the service during world war two. He was one of those essential, uh, jobs that had to be kept.

[00:03:40] He worked on tanks at that point, but he figured his. One big side benefit that the company didn’t have to know about was that he, uh, every night he stacked it, he packed his briefcase full of tracing paper, number two pencils and all the masking tape he could steal. And he [00:04:00] was going to use this in his woodworking hobby.

[00:04:01] But he soon found out that I was taking more of this stuff then he was using, because I found I could trace off the characters in the

[00:04:10] Kenric: [00:04:10] comic books.

[00:04:11] Jim: [00:04:11] And, uh. That Blair that turned into a sort of an obsession. I had my wall covered with Tracy paper and my joint bedroom of my brother or my, my wall was uncovered with JC paper and this was bear.

[00:04:23] Uh, and, uh, eventually stopped using the tracing paper and the obsession became a hobby, which became, uh, a passion and then eventually a profession. And that’s more or less how I started it off.

[00:04:38] Kenric: [00:04:38] That’s pretty, that’s pretty incredible. I used to trace. All the time. Transformer comic books was what I always traced way back in the day though, back in 81 83 84.

[00:04:47] Jim: [00:04:47] Yeah, he was comic books and then later on was Archie and we had to take the clothes off. Betty and Veronica.

[00:04:56] Oh, those drawings are hidden in the loft in the garage

[00:05:00] [00:04:59] Kenric: [00:04:59] as any young man. I used to take my buddies, my, his dad had like every, had just a ton of Playboys and we used to take those. I had them in the woods.

[00:05:09] Jim: [00:05:09] Well, I played boys up in the loft also,

[00:05:13] Kenric: [00:05:13] so we had Jerry Conway on back in December. And w. W he was, he was a great guy to talk to.

[00:05:18] He had, you know, and he started really, really young in the comic industry, but he had some really interesting stories about who took him under his wing when he started. And I’m wondering, do you have any interesting, you know, who took you under their wing when you started off with DC and con and Marvel?

[00:05:33] Jim: [00:05:33] Yeah, I say Frank, JIA Korea to a certain extent, but you know, there was kind of limited, I sort sorta got there and they put me to work. Marvel didn’t have an art director. At the time. Yeah, no, I mean it was, it was a Roy Thomas and Stan was there sometimes, and then John from Barton was the production manager.

[00:05:52] And uh, so they sort used Frank at first and then Frank wanted to go back to inking. And so I sort of became [00:06:00] their de facto, their first real defacto art director up there. Uh, designing up covers with Stan and, uh, you know, for other artists to draw and, uh, you know, occasional corrections and things like that.

[00:06:14] And, uh, I did that for a couple of months and finally got some jobs in my own because this constant drawing and doing things, uh, I got good enough. Finally. And so I started getting some, you know, horror stories, love stories, and eventually I got a beast cover to do. And, uh, that led into iron man 55. That was my first full book.

[00:06:36] Kenric: [00:06:36] Oh, wow.

[00:06:37] Jim: [00:06:37] And then I did 56 with Steve Gerber and Stan fired both of us. He hated it so much

[00:06:43] Kenric: [00:06:43] was it the iron man knows.

[00:06:47] Jim: [00:06:47] No, that came later. This was a, this was a funny iron man story and he was outraged and we did a funny iron man story and we both got canned. Fortunately, really needed somebody to draw captain Marvel.

[00:06:59] Linda, [00:07:00] Steve. Steve worked out okay too. That’s

[00:07:02] Kenric: [00:07:02] funny. That’s how long were you fired for

[00:07:05] Jim: [00:07:05] the afternoon?

[00:07:06] Kenric: [00:07:06] The afternoon?

[00:07:09] Jim: [00:07:09] I walked off in orange. Brown. I guess we’ll go and get drunk and halfway through the drunk, or I called up and said, Hey, I got this book that’s probably not going to last. We need somebody to pencil it.

[00:07:21] Yeah. That’s one of the first issue. We weren’t sure if we were going to get it out before it got canceled.

[00:07:25] Kenric: [00:07:25] That’s so funny. What was your initial inspiration for a dread star?

[00:07:30] Jim: [00:07:30] Well, when I met Jack Kirby, he told me that the Holquist stupidity, that the Hardy who ate audit strawberry becomes,

[00:07:37] Kenric: [00:07:37] yeah.

[00:07:38] Jim: [00:07:38] And I always saw it after that, that if I’m going to create a character, it’s gotta be able to be synopsized.

[00:07:46] Then a sentence, you know, just sort of summarize and upperly is with Santos. He was appetite that never can be satisfied and address dread star. He was an anarchist who has no second hat. He’s very good at breaking, uh, [00:08:00] governments that he feels are unjust, but, uh, not very good at, uh. Operating within a renewed, a governmental structure is one little stint as a cop proved that it was miserable failure at that particular endeavor.

[00:08:14] He’s much better at throwing bombs.

[00:08:17] Kenric: [00:08:17] That’s interesting.

[00:08:18] Jim: [00:08:18] And there’s this magic sword call God, but you know, that’s, that’s, that’s peripheral stuff.

[00:08:23] Kenric: [00:08:23] So Kirby was, was a big part of your inspiration for him. That’s kind of interesting. Now.

[00:08:28] Jim: [00:08:28] Oh, Jack was one of my favorite artists when I was back in high school.

[00:08:31] I just thought the power of his drawings were incredible. Followed closely by Steve Dicko for other reasons, mostly his storytelling and his calligraphic line. You know, there were a couple of other ones. Later on. John Carmine, Infantino, Joe Kilburn, cocaine. These are all, all these guys who I learned how to draw comics and how to write comics from looking at their stuff.

[00:08:55] Kenric: [00:08:55] Yeah, yeah. All the greats there. So you really loved Kirby growing up, and then [00:09:00] you go to work at Marvel and you’re working with Kirby. What was it? Was it, was it surreal?

[00:09:04] Jim: [00:09:04] Actually, I never worked with Kirby. Oh, really? He was overdoing work at DC at the time when I first got there. And, uh, he came back later, but he was out in California and I was in New York at the time.

[00:09:16] Yeah. And so, uh, he was doing the devil dinosaur and stuff like that, and I had just come into the office and occasionally see him, his work. But, uh, we only met later on. Um, Elle Milgrim hauled me off to his place to, for a visit one afternoon. And, uh. That’s one of the thrills of my life. Yeah. I mean, it was such a laid back and nice man, uh, doing this incredible work.

[00:09:40] Uh, then as we were sitting there by his drawing board, and he looked at this huge picture window that overlooked this Valley, and he said, you said, you know, I work in here sometimes in the UFOs go by and they really distract me. And then the jets come up after him and the hoes take off, and I’m going.

[00:09:56] Yeah, this is Kirby.

[00:10:02] [00:10:00] Kenric: [00:10:02] Did you guys talk about fairness and dark side? Cause there’s always been the, the how closely resemble that they could be. My, my take on  dark side is they remind me of the Baron from dune. So it’s, it’s, it’s all relative.

[00:10:18] Jim: [00:10:18] No, we didn’t talk about that. But actually. Uh, Santo started off more looking like Metro and at the beginning, man, uh, dark side.

[00:10:27] Kenric: [00:10:27] Yeah.

[00:10:28] Jim: [00:10:28] Um, uh, my original drawing had him in a chair and, uh, you know, looking is a much blacker outfit to look much more like metros. Um, when we did the iron man 55, uh. Roy Thomas, the editor, said, beef them up a little bit. You know, so it just look so and so. And as the years have gone by, both sat hosts and the dark side have inflated markedly.

[00:10:56] Uh, you look back at those early Caribbean things. He’s, he’s a stocky [00:11:00] fellow, but. He’s not all that much bigger than your average human. And Sandoz sort of started off the same way, and they both sort of independently went off and just grew into these massive menaces. I did probably throw things off at one point, uh.

[00:11:17] And doing the same interview jokingly said that he was dark side, but never really mentioned it.

[00:11:22] Kenric: [00:11:22] See what you started. Yeah. Well, are you surprised how big the characters you created with the, you know, dominoes and all the,

[00:11:37] Jim: [00:11:37] cause Santos was so esoteric and weird that, you know, I figured no one was ever going to put money up to do this.

[00:11:43] Something this strange. You know, Draxxin and Gomorrah more mainstream in their own sort of alternate way. But, uh, you know, them going into the guardians, you know, it was a good fit. And, uh. But that was a surprise, and then going off the [00:12:00] duty infinity goblets, you just never saw the movies when we started being able to do this sort of thing.

[00:12:06] Kenric: [00:12:06] It’s a gigantic space opera. You get you, you did a wonderful job. That’s finals quest. Oh, I read that book. I don’t know. I can’t even tell you how many times I read that thing.

[00:12:16] Jim: [00:12:16] That’s my favorite Santo story.

[00:12:18] Kenric: [00:12:18] Definitely mine. When he’s looking into the pool, when he’s looking into the, uh, the pool, the abyss, and he has the whole conversation with themselves.

[00:12:26] That is brilliant.

[00:12:27] Jim: [00:12:27] I have to go back and read data. Yes. Yeah. We’re doing these things. The movies couldn’t hold a candle to what we can do in the comic books. We could do much more complicated things here. Spaceships would wobble on the strings and they would go across the screen. And so, uh, now. Any 30 seconds a shot, a ten second shot in a movie is something far beyond what we could do with a comic book.

[00:12:54] Kenric: [00:12:54] It’s kind of crazy, right? Cause it’s kind of flipped over. What do you think of their changing of [00:13:00] him? The law for his love of death to more of a, like an ecological terrorist?

[00:13:07] Jim: [00:13:07] Well, the way I understand it, Kevin, find you didn’t feel comfortable yet, uh, putting in the abstract characters like eternity. Or mistress death into the Marvel cinematic universe cause they weren’t sure that how the, uh, movie going public would take them.

[00:13:24] Uh, they’ve obviously gotten past that because, uh, there had been a casting call for eternity for the next doctor strange movie. So that. That cat is out of the bag, and I didn’t do this. This is not me spoiling anything. It’s out there in public record, so I guess we’re going to be seeing them. So, um, if we see the analysts again, there’s a good chance we may eventually see mr staffs, which I’d like to see happen.

[00:13:48] Kenric: [00:13:48] That would be cool.

[00:13:49] Jim: [00:13:49] I have no trouble with where they went with the thing because of those dictates. Um, I understood that they had to change stuff. I’ve worked in movie [00:14:00] scripts before with other folks and, uh. Seeing that if you go in there thinking dance, you’re getting the good carbon copy of your written a story or a fool, it’s just not going to happen, right?

[00:14:11] So, uh, I went in there and, uh, when we were at SEPTA for the end game, uh, the writers and, uh, Joe Russo’s were really opened. Talk to me about everything I knew. I knew practically everything about those things before the movies ever came out and had to keep my mouth shut for a year and a half. Uh, but, uh, you know, I understood.

[00:14:32] Uh, no, but it, it, it only the, after the movie came out that somebody pointed out to me that his. Is a new motivation that the movie was something out of the silver surfer that I had written back in issue, I think 33 or something like that. Oh, interesting. Yeah. PIM, Connie, the silver surfer. And uh, was that,

[00:14:52] Kenric: [00:14:52] was that silver surfer, the 1987 volume two series or the first series

[00:14:57] Jim: [00:14:57] of the one I wrote, whatever that is.

[00:15:00] [00:15:00] Probably the second series.

[00:15:01] Kenric: [00:15:01] I think it’s 87 series. Yeah.

[00:15:03] Jim: [00:15:03] Yeah. It was somewhere around there was obsolete into the infinity gauntlet.

[00:15:06] Kenric: [00:15:06] Yup. Yup. Yup. That’s that. Seriously.

[00:15:08] Jim: [00:15:08] We would have to say around that time, uh, but they, uh, they took, uh, the bullshit line that, uh, Thanos was feeding to the surfer and used that as his motivating force, you know, uh, you know, escape.

[00:15:20] Cool.

[00:15:21] Kenric: [00:15:21] That is kind of cool. That’s very cool. So you did a lot of work for DC as well, not just a Marvel guy, but you’re kind of run the gambit. How was it like working on like Adam strange and Batman and Gilgamesh and some of those classic DC titles

[00:15:34] Jim: [00:15:34] depended on the editor?

[00:15:38] Kenric: [00:15:38] Isn’t that always?

[00:15:40] Jim: [00:15:40] Yeah, unfortunately that’s a, that’s a big thing.

[00:15:43] Um, you know, some of this stuff, at the beginning I was working with Bob Strack and later on Tom Palmer jr and they were really great to work with. We, I think. Say I have a mystery in space run and the, [00:16:00] the aesthetic Iran, the Holy war, kind of fun. ROPs uh, after that, it sort of went to pieces. By the time we got to bizarre adventures are gonna say, you gotta stick everybody into it.

[00:16:11] It just became a mess.

[00:16:12] Kenric: [00:16:12] Yeah. You got too much.

[00:16:14] Jim: [00:16:14] Yeah. And, uh, plus we added different artists over the other issue, so it was

[00:16:19] Kenric: [00:16:19] driving me nuts. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re riding an arc and they’re changing the artists like that, does it, does it make it too difficult?

[00:16:25] Jim: [00:16:25] Uh, yeah. Because, uh, it doesn’t look the same.

[00:16:29] So they went with this one artist who was doing a terrific job, uh, whose name is escaping me at the moment. And suddenly we have this Brazilian artist who didn’t speak English and uh, uh, didn’t understand half of what I was asking them to put down. And, uh, they were constantly having to get things re drawn and it’s just a hassle.

[00:16:50] Some stories are really nightmares and some go really smoothly.

[00:16:55] Kenric: [00:16:55] What, when you, when you look back over your, your career besides dressed [00:17:00] R right now, cause I’m sure that’s probably your favorite project right now because it’s all you right. You’re doing basically everything. Uh, you have a team and you get your Kickstarter, which has gone really, really well.

[00:17:10] But when you look back before that, is there a favorite storyline that you really loved? I know he said a fan of the fan is quest, but, or is that the answer?

[00:17:19] Jim: [00:17:19] The Marvel is probably my favorite. Oh, nice. Uh, that had its drawbacks. I just located the finger in the middle of that job and, uh, when I was already committed to inking it, so every morning I’d have to, uh.

[00:17:34] Take this a filter pen into my, onto my hand and draw for a few hours and then take it off for lunch and then take myself back up for afternoon works session.

[00:17:45] Kenric: [00:17:45] Oh

[00:17:45] Jim: [00:17:45] man. So there are, there’s just always a good story there. So probably probably the worst was the death of the new gods. That was just a nightmare from beginning to end.

[00:17:54] Oh really? Oh yeah. It was just terrible.

[00:17:57] Kenric: [00:17:57] We made it so bad.

[00:17:58] Jim: [00:17:58] Okay. I’ll tell you, [00:18:00] uh, grant Morris made it bad. Oh yeah. He kept on requesting he was going to do the follow up series where they revived him and Christine adds things to it. And some of the answer wasn’t really crazy about like, merging the apocalypse and a new Genesis because, uh, John Byrne had already done that, but he wanted it.

[00:18:23] And so I said, okay, I would accommodate. And uh, then when. He came out with his, uh, his version that had nothing to do with anything we had done and he said, well, I had never attended to do that. Why did you keep requesting these things? Write up my story.

[00:18:38] Kenric: [00:18:38] Right, right. What’d you take away from that? Like, I’m there.

[00:18:41] You’re not going to compromise on that kind of stuff unless it’s completely outlined, or is it moving forward?

[00:18:47] Jim: [00:18:47] I think I, shortly after that sort of stopped working for DC. It was chaotic period at that point. I said, I’m getting too old for this shit, so I just [00:19:00] worked off and did something else. I don’t remember what it was at this point, but I just sort of, I think I finished off as our adventures and say, let’s, let’s get.

[00:19:07] Do something else.

[00:19:08] Kenric: [00:19:08] Yeah. He back on the Provo Brovara series, Peter David tick on the, uh, the unenviable task of continuing the story. Is there, was there something about David that like entrusted you to, to allow him to do that?

[00:19:23] Jim: [00:19:23] Well, he took over the series when it was first also. Uh, I like Peter’s work. I like Peter most of the time.

[00:19:30] Uh,

[00:19:31] Kenric: [00:19:31] and we had him on. He was great.

[00:19:33] Jim: [00:19:33] Yeah. If you, if you’ve got a fever, you know what I mean? And, uh, you know, I just trusted him to do it. I was busy with breed. Uh, they wanted Redstar up at first, and, uh, so I suggested Peter and he connected up with them and he called them. And, uh, it ended up that we’re a unique issue, six issue run, uh, seeing that we’ve got to.

[00:19:54] I’m devastated and has been doing so well. I think we have some plans. Nothing definitely that set [00:20:00] or that at this point. Uh, Peter’s ran on the series two and

[00:20:04] Kenric: [00:20:04] basically, yeah. Yeah. How did you, did you have to wrestle the copyrights away from Marvel to be able to do this stuff? Was dread star?

[00:20:14] Jim: [00:20:14] No, no. It was always mine to create her own right from the start,

[00:20:18] Kenric: [00:20:18] because it was on the epics in print.

[00:20:20] Jim: [00:20:20] It was in the Epic imprint. Our a work for hire agreement was such that I kept copyright and checked. It started off at Epic illustrated and then went over to eclipse publishing for awhile for one new graphic novel and then back at with Marvel, and it was going to be a. Uh, one story inside. I think maybe this is bizarre adventures.

[00:20:43] Uh, Denny O’Neil had a black and white book and it was going to be in there. And then RC found out about it. He scouted with it back to Epic illustrated and then talk to me about doing a regular series cause he wanted to start a new line. So, uh, you know, it’s [00:21:00] all over the place and it was always mine.

[00:21:01] Kenric: [00:21:01] Yeah. That’s awesome. Do you think working on the Omni bus kind of put that desire back into you to to do a new dread star story

[00:21:09] Jim: [00:21:09] on a lot of different levels of about three years ago, I injured my hand. Oh, compressed air action. A big crater between my thumb and forefinger on my drawing hand.

[00:21:20] Kenric: [00:21:20] Wow. How the hell do you do that?

[00:21:23] Jim: [00:21:23] Uh, compressed air explosion.

[00:21:24] Kenric: [00:21:24] Oh my God.

[00:21:26] Jim: [00:21:26] And, uh, so basically, uh, I didn’t draw for three years. That’d be strange. I could have dreams that made a drawing to wake up in the morning and go, Oh damn. And uh, but all this time I was squeezing this little ball that we had, uh, on the coffee table when they were watching the news or a movie and, uh, you know, stretching and, uh, yeah, first I could do about 15 minutes and then a cramp up and head after.

[00:21:55] Running under the cold water, but it’s only got long growing longer. And what do we [00:22:00] got to be habitable? Um, I had a remaster of color on it and the stylist was a much easier thing to handle in a pencil because you don’t have to put the pressure down. And it took me about six months to go through and get the colored remastered in such a way.

[00:22:16] I mean, working mostly, it was a mix of, uh. Uh, photos, you know, I’ll be in the actual, uh, negatives from the Epic illustrator run and then going through the actual books and scanning them and then retouching and making it look so it didn’t look like it was reprinted out of the comic book. Select all the blacks and then blur everything else.

[00:22:40] A lot of works. It was, like I said, about six months ago, as soon as 1500 pages.

[00:22:45] Kenric: [00:22:45] Yes, it was a hundred

[00:22:46] Jim: [00:22:46] page. Each page, I spend at least an hour a day and I get, I think that built up the hand again. So when I was at a convention, then somebody asked me to do, [00:23:00] try and do a drawing for this charity. I managed to pull it off in a half hour up in my hotel room that night, and I went, gee, this is pretty cool.

[00:23:08] And then I met Jamie Jamison, who is my anchor on the dread star return book to him. She had been working with Keith different and thinking his drawings at the convention. And I thought, well, let me try doing a couple of these things. And I had the covers for the omnibus books and it was real pain. And it took him about two weeks, at least one of those books.

[00:23:31] Each one of those covers. Yeah. So I said, I do not want to eat. Uh, and I talked to Jamie about inking some of my sketches, and she did that. And I really liked what she had done. And, uh, then they have the video. So if you’re drawing, how would you, would you do a, um, alternative cover for this middleman? Uh, SIG them, do it and show them.

[00:23:53] I said, huh. Okay, let me see what I can do. Can Jamie naked? And it came out really [00:24:00] nice. And so I was already started on Jetstar secretly. It was about 20 pages into it and I said, awesome. Hey Jamie, how would you like to become a full time anchor? And she jumped at the chance and she’s been working. She was working on it up until six weeks ago when she got pulled in 19.

[00:24:22] No, seriously serious about it. She was recovering. Now

[00:24:27] Kenric: [00:24:27] that’s some scary stuff.

[00:24:28] Jim: [00:24:28] It’s a little bit of a lag and going to be a little bit of a like, yeah, we thought we’d lost her a couple times. She, everything that you could get wrong with this virus. She got a, they say it’s a miracle that she’s alive and she didn’t do that by herself.

[00:24:42] She lives by herself out there in California, and, uh, basically, uh. You know, uh, a couple of folks, Joel Adams and, uh, Spencer back and I were on the phone with her over a daytime to get her through there. And we went through the terrible hacking into the [00:25:00] pains, hallucinations to the problem is going. And she hung in there and she’s a on-demand now.

[00:25:08] Uh, she actually thinks she may try doing a little inky today. She was telling me,

[00:25:13] Kenric: [00:25:13] wow. Well, I’m so happy to hear that she’s doing better and got through the worst of that cause. That’s scary.

[00:25:19] Jim: [00:25:19] Yeah. You know, uh, it was a real eyeopening experience going through it with her, and she was the one that suffered, but I got the education out of it.

[00:25:28] Kenric: [00:25:28] Yeah. You know, I, I’ve watched people around me. I leave the house. I have a painter’s respirator that I purchased. Before everything, just right before everything really started going down and we got gloves and I don’t leave the house to go to the store without wearing that respirator. When I walk into the store with my gloves that, and I don’t get the people that walk around with no mask on, and I have friends obviously, that I grew up with and they know, and they’re on my Facebook and they’re talking about how they just can’t wear a mask and they won’t go into the store if they require a mask.

[00:25:57] I’m like, that’s your line in the sand. Not wearing a

[00:26:00] [00:25:59] Jim: [00:25:59] mask. Where are you located?

[00:26:01] Kenric: [00:26:01] We’re in Seattle.

[00:26:02] Jim: [00:26:02] Okay. You started it off.

[00:26:04] Kenric: [00:26:04] I know, right? We’re the, we’re the cause of everything. It feels like sometimes

[00:26:08] Jim: [00:26:08] I say, you know, I’m in New York.

[00:26:13] Kenric: [00:26:13] Yeah. That’s even worse there. You guys took the, I mean, it hit New York and it would just went like wildfire, but you guys is a governor, governor Cuomo. He’s, I think he’s done a good job.

[00:26:24] Jim: [00:26:24] Oh, he’s been a PIP. You know why to run for president. Throw this out there right now.

[00:26:34] Kenric: [00:26:34] You won’t hear anybody on this podcast disagree with that.

[00:26:39] Jim: [00:26:39] This has been a nightmare on so many different levels.

[00:26:42] Kenric: [00:26:42] I just don’t understand how you can listen to it and open his mouth and not realize all the lies that are coming through. I would have more respect if he would just admit when he’s messed up, like firing the, the, the group of people that get us prepared for a pandemic and says, Hey, you know, I, I thought I was cutting costs.

[00:26:59] I made a mistake. [00:27:00] We’re going to try to correct this right away, but he never admits to anything wrong, you know? No, no.

[00:27:07] Jim: [00:27:07] It’s just that animal,

[00:27:08] Kenric: [00:27:08] which is just, it’s, it’s really bad.

[00:27:10] Jim: [00:27:10] Well, there’s November coming,

[00:27:13] Kenric: [00:27:13] right? November is coming

[00:27:15] Jim: [00:27:15] until November until January.

[00:27:17] Kenric: [00:27:17] I worry though that this first round of Cobra is going to go away, come the summer, mid summer people to be like, Oh, it’s all good and everything to go out, and then we’re going to hit another round of it in the fall.

[00:27:27] Jim: [00:27:27] There’s a good chance. Yeah. We’ll watch. We’ll watch what’s going on in Georgia right now.

[00:27:32] Kenric: [00:27:32] Yeah. I don’t like taking, letting people go back to work. I was like, this is crazy. I have a friend, she cuts. She texted me today. She’s like, Oh, I’m back at work. I love it. I’m like, really? They already opened it up.

[00:27:42] That’s kind of crazy.

[00:27:44] Jim: [00:27:44] And they haven’t even hit their pinky yet.

[00:27:46] Kenric: [00:27:46] Yeah. University of Washington did a scale. They, you know, they’re. That’s a great school, and they actually ran a model to try to figure out what our tipping point is, and it looks like we’ve [00:28:00] already hit that bell curve for us. And they’re saying May 18th could be the.

[00:28:04] The soonest date that we might be able to go back. Everything’s in, nothing’s accurate, right? Everything’s just in assumptions and very round numbers. Like, we could do this, we might be able to do that. But they said the earliest could

[00:28:20] Jim: [00:28:20] be made.

[00:28:22] Kenric: [00:28:22] Yeah. Well, you know, I read an article today where there’s 90 different vaccines being tested right now.

[00:28:30] So you know, you gotta kind of weigh that when someone releases a statement is now we’re going to have vaccine. Yeah. Well, you and 89 other people. So, and it’s interesting.

[00:28:41] Jim: [00:28:41] Oxford group has a head on this coronavirus research before this all began. They’re, they’re, they’re most hopeful at this point.

[00:28:52] Kenric: [00:28:52] Oh, that’s good.

[00:28:53] Oh yeah. Big fingers crossed. Big fingers crossed. Well, Jim, man, this has been really exciting. I very much [00:29:00] appreciate you coming on today. Uh, I don’t. I don’t know how much to tell you how much you, I’ve read so many of your stories growing up. Uh, I was a Marvel kid, so you know, my favorites were Spiderman and X-Men.

[00:29:12] And then when, once you released FENOs quest, I telling you, I read that so many times, I can’t even recount how many and. Big part of it. And when they, when they did the Avengers movies, I was so excited that they were doing the pheno storyline and I thought they kept the spirit of what you did in there.

[00:29:32] And it was, it was cool. So is there anything that we need to let people know about besides get over to kickstarter.com look up Jim Starlin and you guys will find the dread star Kickstarter going on right now. And really back this project cause it looks amazing.

[00:29:48] Jim: [00:29:48] It’s a ripping good yard. I have to say I’m quite pleased with it.

[00:29:52] It’s a love story, a death of a familiar character in it. And I think it’s quite fine. Yet by the time [00:30:00] he hit that page 100 and, uh, it’s, uh, the start of a whole new story lab.

[00:30:05] Kenric: [00:30:05] Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate your time.

[00:30:09] Jim: [00:30:09] My pleasure.