Episode 1: Comics across Generations with John Jennings

• Silver Surfer: Ghost Light
• John Jennings Studio
• MEGASCOPE graphic novel imprint from Abrams curated by John Jennings
  
  

[playful music starts, then fades under voices]

Nathan Holbert:
We are back with season three of Pop and Play.

Haeny Yoon:
I'm really good at wooing, actually.

Nathan Holbert:
You come in so strong with the woos.

Haeny Yoon:
I do.

Nathan Holbert:
I love it. So we have a new season of Pop and Play, season three. I can't believe we've made now three seasons of the show.

Haeny Yoon:
I know. It's a miracle.

Nathan Holbert:
It's a miracle. Also, we're sorry.
If you're just joining us in this podcast, we've been talking about pop culture. Pop and Play's about pop culture. It's about play, it's about the ways in which people encounter, and explore, and experience media in all its various forms.
Oh, I thought you knew I was going to pass to you at the end of that.

Haeny Yoon:
So the theme of this season is intergenerational play. And do you want to talk about why we chose to do something on intergenerational play?

Nathan Holbert:
I think that, over the past two seasons, as we have talked about different forms of popular culture, as we've encountered and played with different media together, one thing that keeps coming back is the way in which different people experience these media at different times of their lives or at different times of history, as well.

[music fades out]

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. I'm actually reminded of a nerd thing. Okay. Sorry, I'm just going to talk about it, we could cut it. Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
[ind] this podcast all about you talking about nerdy things.

Haeny Yoon:
It just reminded me of this article I read by Alison Gopnik, and she's not somebody that I always agree with. But she wrote this article about intergenerational play, and it was just like with really young kids. So she talked about how there was this point where three-year-olds were really creative and they didn't necessarily have a structure for doing everything, but they were creative in their play. And she found that as the years went by and as kids got older, they started to, not lose a sense of creativity, but it started to diminish. We start to build a schematic of how we're going to do things.
And she found that when the three-year-olds and the five-year-olds interacted together, and then when the three, five, seven-year-olds interacted together, that there was something different and new that was happening for everybody.

Nathan Holbert:
Right.

Haeny Yoon:
That it wasn't just the three-year-olds that benefited from playing with older kids. And it wasn't the older kids, but the older kids also benefited from playing with younger kids.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And so I think there's this idea that in intergenerational play, there's something that older people can learn from younger people and vice versa, it's not unidirectional, but everybody benefits in that space.
So we looked for that question, where does intergenerational play happen? And how is it benefiting everybody that's involved?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. And what are the different kinds of artifacts, or media, or stories that this kind of intergenerational play can emerge from?

Haeny Yoon:
So this season, we have a lot of different topics that span a lot of different generations. So we have skateboarding, we have fashion, Nathan's favorite topic.

Nathan Holbert:
I'm going to give you so much advice on fashion. It's going to be amazing to see what happens this summer when you all walk out on the street.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, hold onto your seats.

Nathan Holbert:
Hold onto your cargo pants.

Haeny Yoon:
Cargo shorts.

Nathan Holbert:
We're going to talk comic books.

Haeny Yoon:
Detective stories.

Nathan Holbert:
We're coming back to Star Wars again, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to keep talking Star Wars until we really solve this. So join us for season three. Come for Haeny's insightful, thoughtful commentary, pulling in quotes, pulling in theories, and bringing it all together. And stay for me to say I like video games. Video games are fun.
That's Pop and Play.

[theme music transition fades in and then slowly out under voices]

Nathan Holbert:
Welcome to another episode of Pop and Play. This season we are talking about intergenerational play, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
What is intergenerational play?

Haeny Yoon:
Well, okay. Instead of defining intergenerational play just yet...

Nathan Holbert:
Sure, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
... maybe I will hearken back to a previous season and talk about how this idea even came to be.

Nathan Holbert:
Previously on Pop and Play.
I feel like there needs to be the beep from 24, beep, beep, beep. Remember that?

Haeny Yoon:
Oh my God. You just dated your pop culture knowledge.

Nathan Holbert:
I did wha- tha-, I mean...

Haeny Yoon:
To 24.
Oh my gosh. Anyway, last season on Pop and Play, we had the illustrious Anne Dyson on our episode. And I remember that one we were talking about He-Man, right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yes. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
We were talking about He-Man. We were talking about superheroes and how superheroes relate to children's play and what they bring to the classroom.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And one of the things that she said, which I think resonated with us for many, many months afterwards, is how she talks about how every generation has a Spider-Man, right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And every generation thinks their Spider-Man is the best.

Nathan Holbert:
The best, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And they have the attachments to it, right?

Nathan Holbert:
I loved that quote. That was such a great quote. "Every generation thinks their Spider-Man is the best." Which inevitably, I have to ask the question.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh no, I knew you're going to ask me that. I wasn't prepared for this.

Nathan Holbert:
I have to ask the question. What's your favorite Spider-Man?

Haeny Yoon:
I don't have a favorite Spider-Man. I just have, whatever generation Zendaya was in is my favorite Spider-Man. Oh, what's his name? Her boyfriend.

Nathan Holbert:
Tom Holland.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Tom Holland.

Nathan Holbert:
Okay.

Haeny Yoon:
Best Spider-Man. Only by association to Zendaya.

Nathan Holbert:
That's a fair way to make this judgment, in my mindset.

Haeny Yoon:
What about you?

Nathan Holbert:
It's got to be Tobey. It's got to be Tobey Maguire.

Haeny Yoon:
I knew you're going to say that for some reason. I don't know why.

Nathan Holbert:
Because it goes with the quote. It was my generation's Spider-Man. Yeah.
In any case, this idea of the ways in which multiple generations interact with media certainly has been a topic we've been discussing since the beginning of this podcast. But there is something interesting about superheroes in particular, and comics in particular, because the stories that they tell have existed for so long, different generations get a chance to come at the same stories, or come at the same characters, and then reinterpret them, or redefine them in all sorts of different ways. And also even just interact around these artifacts or around these characters.

Haeny Yoon:
I would say for me, too, that because these comics resurface and every generation has a different uptake of it, and then it gains popularity and all of that, I think then it brings new generations of people, despite age, into this universe...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
... I guess. And so I think about that. Because I wasn't a really big comics person when I was younger. But then as I got older and everybody's into these things, then, of course, I have FOMO, so I want to be into it, too. So that's how I got engaged in it.

Nathan Holbert:
So you didn't-

Haeny Yoon:
Enter Zendaya.

Nathan Holbert:
And through, primarily Zendaya. Yeah. Fair. So did you not really encounter or explore comics when you were younger?

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. So I actually prepared for this episode because I didn't want to look stupid. Because I feel like up until now, I've been a late-comer to comics and superheroes in the Marvel Universe.

Nathan Holbert:
Okay.

Haeny Yoon:
Only because I got into it because the kids that I did research with were really into it. And in order for me to understand anything that they're talking about, I had to really get myself prepared, and into it, and into the conversation. And so that's how I entered it.
So then I was thinking about how I thought about comics when I was younger. So I did think of one.
Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
I see in your notebook a picture you've drawn, I think, of yourself.

Haeny Yoon:
It's not me.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, it's Cat-

Haeny Yoon:
It's a middle-aged lady.

Nathan Holbert:
Sorry. Well, I'm looking at it upside down and across the way. I can't tell, but now I see who it is.

Haeny Yoon:
It's Cathy.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
Cathy.

Haeny Yoon:
So I looked up Cathy online today.

Nathan Holbert:
I remember Cathy.

Haeny Yoon:
And basically, yeah, so she was this comic that came out in the paper every day, or every week, or every weekend. I don't know how often it was coming.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, it was the Sunday funnies section, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Because that is what I associate comics with.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
I associate comics with the newspaper.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yep.

Haeny Yoon:
And I remember being really enamored by this Cathy comic. And I don't know why, because she talks about it in her blog or whatever in the About Me part, where she says, "I just wanted to start this comic for women like me." And she's just talking about issues that adult women go through. And I didn't see any of that. And she also said, "I couldn't really draw." And it was very clear from her first comics that she couldn't draw. But I think she got better at it.
But it's something about it was really compelling to me because, I was like six...

Nathan Holbert:
Right.

Haeny Yoon:
... and I'm reading these comics that probably don't make any sense to me because, she's talking about like, "Oh, boo, I'm 26. He didn't call me back, and I don't know if he's going to call me." And I'm like, "I don't understand this."

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, totally.

Haeny Yoon:
But I just loved it. I love the ordinariness of it.

Nathan Holbert:
Totally, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
And I guess I liked the aesthetics.

Nathan Holbert:
My dad always pulled out the funnies section and gave it to us to look at.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
So I remember that, too.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
I also didn't really get into, and I wouldn't even say I'm even really now, but I didn't get into comics til later in life. But I always felt with comics that they were something I wanted to get involved in, but it was just too big to get into it, to even know where to start. And so, it wasn't until I had disposable income that I was able to start dipping my toes in a little bit.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, so you invested in comics?

Nathan Holbert:
No, certainly not. I'll go to Comic-Con now with my kids and stuff, and you can go to some of the comic stands where you can buy comics and you can dig through the old ones. And they printed so many of these things during that era, that they're just not worth anything. They're worth $2 now. So they haven't really appreciated very much, some of the ones from that era.

Haeny Yoon:
I see.
Speaking of your kids, are they into comics?

Nathan Holbert:
Sometimes they're into comics in other ways a little bit. My daughter, for a little while, was really liking My Little Pony comics, which are really funny and really beautifully drawn. And then both of them have been into graphic novels. So they'll things like Dog Man, various other graphic novels, too.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. I do have a question for you related to graphic novels.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah?

Haeny Yoon:
What is the distinction, or what is the line between a graphic novel and a comic? Is there a line?

Nathan Holbert:
I'm sure somebody who hosts a podcast about pop culture and play should know the answer to that question.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. What is the answer to that question?

Nathan Holbert:
I don't know. I think, to my mind, it's something about an extended story. So it's a comic, in the sense that it has illustrations and the typical thing you might imagine in a comic book. But a graphic novel is longer.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
That's the simplest way that I can think of it. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's an official definition. But I do know I've gotten graphic novels that are pretty extensive, one long story. And then I've gotten other graphic novels that are individual episodes that were released as individual comics that have now been collated into one volume.

Haeny Yoon:
Like a collection.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Uh-huh.

Nathan Holbert:
And I don't know if you call those things different or if they're all the... I don't know.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I was thinking about that, or thinking about it in my mind right now, because I do really graphic novels. And I like graphic novels that are kind of, not Cathy Comic style, but that are memoirs, or things about life, or how people, I find it really interesting just how people share, and curate, and talk about their lives beyond just a novel, 500-page novel that I have to read.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
I guess I could say I'm really into comics now. But I feel like if I say comics, people don't think about a graphic novel. There's some kind of distinction there.

Nathan Holbert:
You could say I'm into good graphic novels. You could say it-

Haeny Yoon:
Is that what it is.

Nathan Holbert:
You could say it really-

Haeny Yoon:
It's a high and low culture?

Nathan Holbert:
Say it sophisticated-like. There is something about that high-low culture thing going on here, right?

Haeny Yoon:
For sure.

Nathan Holbert:
So, yeah. And you're feeling it whenever you say it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Right. So should we just start calling everything comics?

Nathan Holbert:
Call it all comics.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
I know-

Haeny Yoon:
Forget multimodal research. Let's just call it comics.

Nathan Holbert:
It's all comics.
So I'm excited to talk to our guest today. Our guest is just absolutely brilliant about many of the different topics we've just discussed. He's an incredible artist, an incredible writer, brilliant scholar. And he writes about, and he thinks a lot about, not just comics and the ways in which visuals and text can come together to create new meaning for us to digest and explore, but also, he thinks a lot about the ways in which we encounter and explore comics and superheroes across generations. So this should be the exact right person to be talking to about this topic.

[brief theme music transition]

All right. So today we are joined by the brilliant John Jennings. John is a writer. He's an artist. He's a curator. He's a scholar. He's won multiple Hugo Awards. You got a bestselling book. You're a Harvard Fellow, a professor of Media and Cultural studies at the University of California Riverside. You also are the director of the Abrams ComicArts Imprint, Megascope, which publishes all sorts of really exciting graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color.
And if that wasn't enough, John, you've also just created with Valentine De Landro, Ghost Light, a new Marvel superhero, and the first issue comes out February 2nd.

Haeny Yoon:
Woo.

John Jennings:
Yay, woo. Well, thank you. All That's true. Except for the one thing.

Nathan Holbert:
What did I get wrong?

John Jennings:
Not multiple Hugos. I have two Eisners but only one, Hugo. Sorry.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, John. That's just-

John Jennings:
I'm, sorry.

Nathan Holbert:
That's so disappointing.

Haeny Yoon:
Let's just say we just put it out into the universe that, at the time of this comes out, there will be another one.

Nathan Holbert:
Going to manifest.

Haeny Yoon:
Manifest it.

John Jennings:
Let's work harder. You know what I'm saying?

Nathan Holbert:
Well, so to warm us up, we like to play a game. Haeny, can you explain?

Haeny Yoon:
Sure.

Nathan Holbert:
I promise you it's painless. Painless.

Haeny Yoon:
I think it is very painless. It's basically a lightning round of questions...

John Jennings:
Ah, good.

Haeny Yoon:
... to get us into the topic or into the idea that we're talking about today. And I have to say, I'm going to have to be full disclosure, I just had a conversation with Nathan about how, when I think of comics, I think of Cathy, the comic strip that showed up in my newspaper when I was young. Okay? So that's my attachment to comics. And I feel like I started to get into more comics as I started to hang out with a lot of young kids, because that's what my research is about, and they're so into it. And just understanding what they're talking about, what they're doing, has led me down a comics road.
So we're going to ask you a series of questions and you just have to answer. It's an either or thing, or pick your favorite, or stuff like that. Yeah?

John Jennings:
Okay.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

John Jennings:
All right, sounds good.

Haeny Yoon:
Great. Nathan, you want to start with a classic question? Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Let's start with a classic: flight or invisibility?

John Jennings:
Ah, that's hard.

Nathan Holbert:
Or if you want to throw in something like super strength, that's fine, too.

John Jennings:
No, no, this is good. No, I want to play by the rules. You know what I'm saying? I would say flight, because I'm Black in America. I'm already partially invisible anyway.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yes. So deep.

John Jennings:
They wrote a whole book about it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
All right. Here's a less dramatic one. Well, I don't know. Maybe not. Who played Batman the best?

Haeny Yoon:
This could be a very controversial one.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
You know it's hard, because I really like really Michael Keaton a lot. But then again, I also like the fact that Val Kilmer did a great impersonation of Michael Keaton as his Batman.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, right.

John Jennings:
I don't know if people knew they did, but he was actually, he just became Michael Keaton.

Nathan Holbert:
It's an interesting approach.

John Jennings:
I'm probably going to go with Michael Keaton, actually. Because I like certain aspects of all of them. But he was really good. He was a lot better than people thought he was going to be.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
You know what I'm saying?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Yeah. Okay, cool. All right.

Nathan Holbert:
All right. Well, I didn't actually know if you were contractually allowed to answer a question about Batman. So let's go over to Spider-Man. Who's your favorite Spider-Man villain?

John Jennings:
Ooh, that's a good question. Man, when I was a kid, it was the Hob Goblin. Really liked the Hob Goblin a lot because I like the fact that he was a legacy villain. And I think that he actually was even more terrifying in some ways than the Green Goblin. I'm torn between him and Doc Ock. I always liked Doc Ock, too.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
But I think the Hob Goblin man, that dude was like... because who is he? And he was so cool. Yeah. I mean Hob Goblin. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
That's a good one. All right. How about Cyclops: pop or nop?

John Jennings:
He's one of my favorite X-Men.

Nathan Holbert:
Is he really?

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, nice!

John Jennings:
Yeah. You know what it was? Because when I first started reading, I came late to the X-Men, and I was always a big Greek mythology fan.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
So it was like, yeah. And I always liked him because he, in some ways, now, I read him as kind of a Black character, because he actually had to always restrain himself, and he couldn't really be himself. So it was a lot of code switching he had to do just because his power source is so powerful.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Anyway. I think too much.

Haeny Yoon:
I think I love the answers to your questions because I feel like it's another layer of theoretical thought that I-

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
It was like, "Oh, this is actually a more complicated question than I thought it was."

John Jennings:
They're not simple questions. I never really cared for Wolverine that much. I thought he's a frat boy with unbreakable bones, you know?
You know what I'm saying? I'm like, dude...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
... chill. Anyway, sorry.

Nathan Holbert:
All right. Who wins the Science Fair? Is this Tony Stark? Is it Shurey? Is it somebody else? Reid Richards, maybe?

John Jennings:
Honestly, according to stats, it's supposed to be Lunella Lafayette, man, Moon Girl.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh.

Haeny Yoon:
Ah.

John Jennings:
Moon Girl's supposed to be the smartest character in the Marvel Universe now.

Nathan Holbert:
Wow.

John Jennings:
So, yeah. I know. So I'm like, Lunella.

Nathan Holbert:
I like that you have the Bible with the stats in it. You're like, "Well, I can answer this quantitatively, actually."
Oh, I love it. That was perfect. That's it. That's Pop and Nop.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Oh, by the way, my toddler is home, so you hear screaming and crashing in another room.

Nathan Holbert:
Perfect.

John Jennings:
Because he's like, perfect toddler. He's really good at what he does.

Haeny Yoon:
I was waiting for what perfect toddler meant, but I love it.

John Jennings:
Yeah. Yeah. He's really serious about his...

Nathan Holbert:
Toddling.

John Jennings:
... vocation, toddling.

Nathan Holbert:
Great. Well, so, as I said before when we were talking, we just wanted to talk with you a little bit about your experiences with comics, both as a creator, but also as somebody who's a huge fan of comics. Can you maybe just tell us how you got started into comics?

John Jennings:
That's my Mom's fault.
My Mom's fault. Yeah. Because she's always trying to teach me stuff. God dog it. She was always trying to teach me how to read and be a good person. Uh! Anyway.
So, no. But seriously though, I started reading comics because my Mom got me, I think it was Mighty Thor, Spider-Man, or Superman. But I was a really big fan of folklore, like Norse Mythology, and Greek Mythology, and Egyptian Mythology. I don't know, it just fascinated me, just stories from other countries. And I just fell into that super early. I think I saw the connections between something like the Mighty Thor and the Thor from actual Norse Mythology. So that's what got me hooked.
And then after that, man, I just started to read anything that looked like a comic book. I used to read Hot Stuff and Casper. I used to read Archie comics, anything that looked like a comic book. That's the trick my Mom, and they let me read Heavy Metal, because she didn't know it was not for kids, it was awesome.
And she was like, "Oh, it's a comic book." I'm like, Yes, it is."

Nathan Holbert:
Yes, yes.

John Jennings:
Great comic book.
Anyway, but that was how I started reading it. And then my Uncle Willie, God rest him, at the time, he was really into art at the time, and so he could actually draw anything that was in front of him. And so I was introduced to my second favorite superhero, Spider-Man, through Ross Andru's Spider-Man. And so my uncle, could draw Spider-Man just like him. And I was like, "Oh my goodness."

Nathan Holbert:
Wow.

John Jennings:
Then he said, "I'm tired. I want you to do this yourself, and I ain't got time for it right now." I was like, "I'll show you." And that's how I started drawing pretty much, actually, too. I was already drawing, but I was like, "I'm really going to draw my own Spider-Man now because you're not going to talk to me like that, tired person."

Haeny Yoon:
Wait, so you said Spider-Man was your second favorite. Did you already tell us who were your first favorite?

John Jennings:
No, no, no, no. It's Daredevil. Everybody knows that. Right, Daredevil-

Nathan Holbert:
That's great. So basically, it was because your uncle got sick of drawing for you that...

John Jennings:
A little bit.

Nathan Holbert:
... that you do what you do.

John Jennings:
Yeah, a little bit.

Haeny Yoon:
I think that's pretty cool. First, I have to acknowledge your mother for introducing you to Mighty Thor, because I feel like that's what we want to do with teachers too, is to find a thing that the kid is really interested in and then try to make a connection. And I think that's a really sophisticated move that she made, which, I don't know, I feel like that's a great teaching moment.

John Jennings:
It was. It is. And my Mom, she's still a massive fan of anything action-oriented, anything horror. So pretty much all the crazy pop culture stuff, it is her fault.
And then secondly, I think it was librarians that I knew. So Mrs. Barry, I don't know if she's still with us or not, but Ms. Barry, she worked at the school library, was such a good librarian because she would pay attention to what we were into and give us things. Yep.

Nathan Holbert:
Your life is so wrapped up in comics these days, I know, and among other things. But you're in that space. I wonder, do you play with comics in a similar way as you did as a kid, or is it all business now?

John Jennings:
You know, I try to be the same.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
But yeah, I never would've imagined that I would be doing as much comics work as I am right now.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
And so it's a blessing, actually. It's something that I wanted to do all my life. And it only took me 40 years to accomplish it. That's not a long time.

Nathan Holbert:
'S Fast.

John Jennings:
Fast. Exactly. So there's still a lot of play. I think it's mostly in my independent space, though. One of my favorite hobbies reason is? It's so crazy. So you're familiar with public domain superheroes, right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

John Jennings:
There's hundreds and hundreds of superheroes in the public domain for whatever reason. So there are different archives out there. So I will actually go and dig through these archives and redesign public domain characters for fun. It's actually fun. And I pretend they never stopped being published.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
And so I was like, "Oh, so what if," I don't know, "the Black Terror," that's a public domain character, "what if he actually got a chance to have a comic in the 1980s or 1990s?" And actually, he probably did. Because he's pretty popular. So I was just playing around with them and say, "Okay, well this is my 90s version of this character or that character."
It's relaxing. And then some of this stuff, it takes off, actually. There's a lot of business now. Because right now, all the hats that can be worn in comics, so I'm probably wearing all the hats, because I'm editing, I'm writing, I'm drawing, putting together creative teams, because it's fun. But it's a lot of work. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, we talk about that some, actually on this podcast, we've talked a little bit about the ways in which work and play, how sometimes we try to keep those worlds separate. Or what happens when we try to find ways of merging those spaces, or of playing within spaces that we might usually consider work, or-

John Jennings:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think what it is, too, is that people sometimes will call me a workaholic, right, which, I don't like that, actually, because it pathologizes my passion for something.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
And the other thing is that's like, "No, I'm not sick, actually. I love what I do."

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I really like how you phrased that, though, because when you're talking about remixing public domains, you were talking about how, "Sometimes it leads to something, sometimes it doesn't. It's just relaxing. It's something that I really enjoy doing." And I think that some of the things that we've tried to talk about in the last few seasons is how play can be really productive.

John Jennings:
That's right.

Haeny Yoon:
It doesn't have to necessarily have an intention from the get-go. It could be something that's fun, and enjoyable, and interesting. And I think the nice thing about that is, it could lead to a product that could be out there, but can also just be something that is very fulfilling, in and of itself. And I think you demonstrate that, which is really cool.

John Jennings:
No, I really appreciate you saying that. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me Crate Digging. I'm not a DJ.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

John Jennings:
But it's that same idea. What's interesting about the public domain is that it's, for the most part, a static data set. It doesn't get added to a lot.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

John Jennings:
So it's really cool to see how other people remix it, too. It really is like DJ-ing to me.

Nathan Holbert:
I've heard you talk about this idea of remix, and Hip Hop, and the way in which it intersects with comics, before. Can you maybe say a little bit more about that? How do you think about this idea of remix, or this idea of taking existing pieces and finding ways to reuse them, or turn them into new things?

John Jennings:
I think that's all we do. You know what I'm saying? You've probably seen this documentary, Everything's a Remix. It's on YouTube, in particular, but it's one documentary. And it's looking at how one thing either is, as a pastiche of something else, or it's a remix of something else. And from stuff, say, what's his name's cut-ups? What was his name? He did the cut-ups?

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, the artist.

John Jennings:
Burroughs. Burroughs.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
William S Burroughs, right? Yeah. So he would do these things where he would actually take two books, and put them side by side, and then cut across, and. That's how we got to word Heavy Metal, I think, actually. It's from a cut-up.

And so, there was this idea of finding connections and actually mixing things. Approximating things is something that's actually super Afrocentric actually, too.
And then of course you have someone like the great Greg Tate, God rest him, who said that DJing is ancestor worship. Because essentially, what you're doing is you're juxtaposing different timeframes, different artifacts from different times, or from different genres, and he's turning through equivalence, making them the same. And I think comics do that too, because think about it. If you create a comic, each panel is a slice of time. So you can actually time travel. You can have the first panel be the 1800s, second panel be in the 1960s. You can draw the third one to be in the 2050s, whatever. And by doing so, you're making this patchwork quilt of just experience. So I can see the connections between the two.

Then of course, I used to teach a class where I used to talk about this idea of the See-J, someone who sees and remixes. So it's that idea where you're looking at things and then you're sampling them through the scoptophilic instinct, and you're sampling things with your eyes. And then you're remixing them. And so even though people are losing their doggone minds over this AI thing, I'm like, "Well, that's kind of what we do, too, right? It's like we make things that are approximations of things and styles."

Anyway, so I know that's a long-winded answer to your question, but yeah, I think that there's a lot of overlap. And I think there's a reason why Wu-Tang Clan had these comic book nicknames, like Tony Stark and Johnny Blaze, that stuff like that, right, where they have, it's a similar making of another identity, right? It's looking into another skin through the medium. You know? Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
That's cool. I'm wondering, I want to ask you a little bit about your, building on this. I want to ask you a little bit about your process. Since you just spent some time thinking about new characters, specifically a new character with Marvel. But I know, like you were saying before, you are doing this all the time. I'm wondering, I mentioned before that comics, one of the unique things about comics is the fact that the story, the character, these things exist across time in ways that I think is really vivid, more so than some other, potentially, stories. Of course, all stories exist across time, right? But there's something really vivid about these. And they keep coming back as being pop culture over and over again. I'm wondering how you think about, or do you think about, the previous generations, the previous iterations, all of those things as you're engaging in this creative process of making something new or-

John Jennings:
I don't know. It's really a critical nostalgia that's connected to comics.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Nostalgia's a huge part of it. You know what I'm saying? We want to get back to those heroes of yesteryear, right?
And the other thing that's really cool, that speaks to, sometimes that's very problematic, too. But superheroes is a problematic genre. I love it, but we should probably work things out before we go around and beating up people, right? Particularly people who, you look at Batman, people could have mental illnesses, I don't think we should probably beat them up. You know what I'm saying? But anyway, nevermind.

Nathan Holbert:
That's a different podcast.

John Jennings:
But yeah, so part of the attraction, I think, again, and this is something that, again, there's a sense of play. If you go to some of those public domain sites, people have up these prompts, "Okay, create the Avengers with all public domain characters." And so you have to find power sets and-

Nathan Holbert:
Right.

John Jennings:
Because you have a certain amount of power sets. There's only a certain number. And sometimes you create a new one, but for the most part, all the power sets already done. You got super strength, you have mental capabilities, can you throw fire? I don't know. Can they shrink, that kind of thing. All these power sets are out there and you remix them. You mix them up and stuff like that. So that's been really cool.

Now, for something like Ghost Light, you talk about digging through the crates. Me and my friend Angélique Roché, are working on a book right now called, My Superhero is Black, and it's going to be coming out, hopefully on time, from Simon and Schuster and Marvel. And it's a rough guide to the history of their Black characters. From 1950 to current day.

So I came across this character, and I remember reading this book too, when I was a kid, I think I probably read a reprint of it, 1969, this character called Alby Harper, that was a Black physicist who helps the Silver Surfer. And he literally sacrifices his life to save the world. And then the Silver Surfer puts this cosmic flame on his grave to mark him as a hero forever, for as long as Earth exists. Hyperbolic Stan Lee, "You shall be a hero forever."

And I'm thinking like, "Yo," and this is in the middle of the George Floyd protests, Chadwick Boseman's death, so much violence against the Black body, as a corpus. And then I had recently lost my sister to a heart attack. And I was just thinking about, it's a lot of death, man. And I was like, "Why is this brother in the ground still?"

So I literally dug him up. But it was a knowledge of the past. It was a knowledge of the nostalgia. Because some people push back against these legacy characters. I've noticed that there's been some kind, "Why is Miss Marvel Pakistani?" And "No, we got, how many Spider-Men do we have to have? We got a Spider-Grand, we have a Ghost Spider now. But also, Miles Morales and all this stuff. "I just want one. I just want it to be this one dude." Right?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, right, right.

John Jennings:
But nah, it's not going to happen, man, I'm sorry.
But yeah. I think it's super important, but it's also, you have to have some wiggle room around the history of things. And I'm really kind of, I don't know, I'm excited that Marvel's decided to let me do that. Because that's a brand new Black superhero that they didn't have, that they kind of already had.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Yeah. Anyway, sorry. That felt like a very long-

Nathan Holbert:
No, that was-

John Jennings:
I'll stop.

Nathan Holbert:
You know what's great about it, you covered so much territory there, as you always do, in your thoughtful answers. And it really got to one of the questions that Haeny and I have been talking about with this particular topic, was the way in which history intersects with this thing nostalgia. And the ways in which that can be both freeing, and exciting, and joyful, and also toxic, and ugly, and problematic in our society.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
So thinking about how you can use history as a play space and explore it in different, you even talked about exploring a character at different eras. What does this one look like in the 90s? But then playing with it in the future? Playing with it now. That's so cool.

John Jennings:
When I think that superheroes, lend itself, because you mentioned it, Nathan, that these characters, they have, if they're well-designed, I think a lot of the early characters was, these are really smart people who come up with these characters. But they had no choice. They were trying to feed themselves. But what they did is they created a really, really interesting amalgam, the way that we think about American comics. The superhero's so problematic, but also, it sticks with us because it's a reification of very simple ideas. And they're primal images. Superman with his chest, the crest or whatever, it translates. It's no different than, say, creating Apollo, or Demeter, or Hades, or whatever.

Nathan Holbert:
Yep.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
It's the same process. It's the same process. What happens is, like you said, "Oh, we're going to sell it." You got to pay to the big guy, which is, capitalism. That's our religion.
But anyway, so it's that process that's happening constantly, I think.

Haeny Yoon:
That's making me think of something too, because I just realized that I actually have a book in my house. It's actually called Shattered, the Asian American Comics Anthology. And it was an Asian American author. I think just redoing and rethinking superheroes with the Asian American identity and community. And I find it was...

John Jennings:
What?

Haeny Yoon:
... I found it as an adult. Yes. But I just realized that I never thought that was actually possible. And I think it is really important to think back historically. And I think what I hear you saying is, how you can deconstruct some of those ideas. And we're talking about remixing, remix history, so that now we're in a present and a future that is actually different and more exciting. And I think that's really cool. It's an interesting direction. And it's so fun to talk to you as being someone who's leading that.

John Jennings:
Well, first of all, thank you for that. That's really kind. No, but I think there's been some really great folk. Stuff like Watchman [indistinct].

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, right.

John Jennings:
So The Watchman is a deconstruction, is probably one of the greatest deconstruction, superhero mythos, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Totally. So powerful, too.

John Jennings:
Yes. But it's also a alternative history story.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
Right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
It takes place in an alternative universe, so to speak. So people was actually existing, they posit that the government would control them, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Right.

John Jennings:
And it just sets up these really, really interesting ideas about, "Yeah, if we really did have these people running around, what would they be like? How would they really affect history?"

Nathan Holbert:
Well, so I guess this is a big question, but I want to ask it as a closing question is, where do you want to see comics go next? What are you excited by? What are you hopeful for? What are you curious about?

John Jennings:
That's a great question. There's so much potential that's still being imagined with the comics. We're just now getting to the point where people understand that, "Oh, guess what? You can make other types of comics besides superheroes."

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
And don't get me wrong, I love me a good superhero. But I'm publishing comics about history, and about other worlds, and non-fiction comics, and stuff like that. Can be all these different things. We want to normalize comics in the space. So I think that's one thing I'm excited about, that we get to see comics about everything. Because the media, it's like saying, "Oh, talk shows are just for cooking shows." That's ridiculous.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
So why do we limit comics as a medium? So I want to see that explored.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I love that idea. I was just, the multi-genre comic. I think about, I have a cookbook, a Korean cookbook, that's a comic.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
I just realized that comics are a part of my life when I didn't think it was. But yeah, just how it's so interesting and so different. And I just like it. And I thought about even the genre of cookbooks, how cookbooks have turned into something more than just recipes written down in a spiral-bound book. It's like memoirs, and storytelling, and comics.

John Jennings:
What is a recipe? It's a story with a deliverable, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
You know what I'm saying? It's like, "Here's a story. Ooh, that story tastes good. You need some, salt."

Nathan Holbert:
I think that might be a good story with a different storyteller, perhaps.

John Jennings:
Exactly. Exactly. No, but seriously, if you think about it, yeah, the comics are all over place and pretty ubiquitous when you think about it. But we put them in this little box, this little panel, so to speak, and we won't let them grow. So yeah, I think that was one of the things I'm really excited about.

So doing something like CamCon for instance, where he gets to see all these African American creators make comics. He just, Cam had never seen that many people in their space before, ever or anything. And they had some of the top artists in there. So there's a power there that we should definitely tap into, particularly for education.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Great. Well, John, thank you so much for hanging out with us today in your crazy, busy schedule. You're so delightful to talk to. Every time we have a conversation, I feel like I learn all sorts of new things. I come to new understandings of things I thought I might have known. And I'm always inspired. So I really appreciate you making time to hang out with us on Pop and Play.

John Jennings:
Oh man, it was an honor. Seriously, y'all are awesome. And thank you for letting me just go off on crazy diatribes.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot. And I've been very self-reflective on this episode. Okay, have to end with this. We usually ask our guests at the end to tell us what's poppin'. And basically, that just means, what's out there that you're excited about in pop culture, that you want people to know about, that is popping or happening in your life?

John Jennings:
Oh, man. Well, I think the first thing is people should definitely check out Megascope.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

John Jennings:
By publishing Imprint with Abrams, we're doing some really cool stuff. We just published a book about Queenie, which is Stephanie St. Claire's nickname. She was a gangster who ran Harlem back in the day. She was Bumpy Johnson's mentor. So we just put that out. See? It's a comic book, but it's also a history book. And then of course, if you're a literature teacher, guess what, we're putting out an Afrofuturist version of the Count of Monte Cristo.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, that's so cool.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, nice.

John Jennings:
It's set almost 200 years after the Polar ice caps melt. So it's still a pirate story, because everything's water everywhere, right? It's such a beautiful book.
But other things I really am into, I want to check out Jordan Peele's new podcast. I listened to the first three episodes of it. I've heard it was just the rest of it's terrifying, it's called, Quiet Part Loud, very excited about that.

I'm super excited about, I forgot who's writing this, but Lee Bermejo's new book, I think it's called Vicious Cycle, about these time-traveling assassins. They're trying to... Yeah, it sounds dope. But you've seen Lee Bermejo's work, it's just so beautiful.

Well, maybe I'm really excited about Chris Robinson and Company's collection. They're doing a remastered version of All-Negro Comics. It's on Kickstarter. So they're doing a 75th anniversary, remastered edition of the first African American Collection of Comics.

Nathan Holbert:
Wow.

John Jennings:
That should be dope, too. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's all happening, right?

Haeny Yoon:
That's a lot.

Nathan Holbert:
That's a lot.

John Jennings:
Sounds great.

Nathan Holbert:
That's a lot, poppin. Yeah, you gotta check out the Megascope collection here. Even just looking at the website of the covers of each one. These are just like absolutely beautiful.

John Jennings:
Yeah. And you know Abram's slogan is, the art of books. So they're not playing, they make beautiful books. I don't know. We're just trying to garner support, libraries and teachers check them out. We have a book about the Tulsa Race Massacre. We have a book about the Orishas from Brazil coming out from Hugo Canuto. We're trying to do some really cool things with the medium, yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
That's awesome.

John Jennings:
Thank you.

Haeny Yoon:
I'll be getting off this and listening to Quiet Part Loud.

John Jennings:
Oh yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
It looks awesome, and scary, and I love it.

John Jennings:
Oh, that's great. No, I'm here for it.

Nathan Holbert:
It's so cool. Yeah, let's check that out. Thanks, John. That was amazing.

Haeny Yoon:
All right. Thank you so much, John, that was so great.

John Jennings:
Thank you. I really appreciate you having me.

[Theme music fades in]

Nathan Holbert:
This season of Pop and Play was produced by Haeny Yoon, Nathan Holbert, Lalitha Vasudevan, Billy Collins, and Joe Riina-Ferrie, and assistant produced by Lucious von Joo, at Teachers College, Columbia University with a Digital Futures Institute. Audio editing and production by Billy Collins.

Haeny Yoon:
For transcripts and to learn more about our guests, visit tc.edu/PopandPlay. Our music is Selections from Leaf Eaters by Podington Bear.
Pop and Play, of course, would not be possible without the fabulous team that helps put this together. Thanks to Oluwaseun Animashaun for running the Pop and Play social media accounts where you should follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok under popandplaypod. You can also follow us on Twitch under popandplay.

Special thanks to Drew Reynolds, Jen Lee, Blake Danzig, Brianne Minaudo, Moira McCavana, and Lucious Von Joo, who all helped with our outreach and/or website support.

Shout out to Ioana Literat for the Trashies. Watch on Instagram and TikTok.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.