In this episode Yehudi Mercado cries in virtual Dagobah.

Topics include the busiest pizza day ever, the easiest sale he (n)ever made, everything is bigger in Texas but especially chickens, playing with the Avengers, freeze beams, Yoda speaking to you telepathically IRL omg hold us, mission cameos, and special edition trucker hats!

Links:


Transcription:

Kara: Welcome back to the comiXologist podcast. I’m here with Matt. I’m Kara, Slim and Kzam.

Matt: It’s an honor to be with you Kara, at any time. You know that.

Kara: Back in our pod pit.

Matt: I think lair sounds cooler. Pod pit sounds like it’s dank. We’re in the dank…

Three people enter, one leaves, I think.

Kara: We’re at Comic-Con, speaking with Yehudi Mercado, who is going to talk to us about his amazing, awesome books because I just discovered you as a creator and I read everything because it’s so much fun.


Yehudi: Thanks.

Matt: She did. She mainlined all of your Submit stuff recently and it totally fit because you and I had spoken previously about Buffalo Speedway and you have another book out, Rocket Salvage, which Kara immediately fell in love with.

Yehudi: Nice.

Kara: It’s like podracing if podracing was good.

I was just about to give a little…Rocket Salvage is about this ex-space racer running a salvage yard where he used to race and stuff happened. Serious past, stuff happened, he’s got kids and maybe they’re clones.

Maybe there’s a mysterious backstory.

Matt: It’s the age-old tale.

Kara: It’s awesome. The art is so cool. Everything about it is awesome.

Yehudi: Bachan, the artist, really nailed it. He’s amazing.

Matt: It’s different because you generally would draw and write your previous Submit books. What was that process like for you to just step back a little bit and only write?

Yehudi: It was good because they didn’t want people to mistake it for Pantalones, TX, that all ages, they wanted to skew a little older so they, “OK, what do you think about someone else drawing this?”

At first, I’m like, “Damn, I want to draw aliens and robots and…”

Matt: Yeah, I want to draw those right now.

Yehudi: But then I say his Imagine Agents and I’m like, “Well, yeah, that guy. Yeah, go for it.” He was amazing. He took my original designs and just ran with them.

Kara: I got to the first double-page spread in the first issue and I was going through in Guided View so all of a sudden, I’m panned out and I’m in the stadium with all the aliens everywhere and the race is about to start and I was like, “This is awesome! Why isn’t this a TV show yet?”

Matt: A wink and a nod there, I don’t know what happened. We’ll see. Maybe that was breaking news, I don’t know. What was the process like for you and this book to come together and…? How did this come together for Boom?

Yehudi: Basically the first time I met Boom, I’d pitched them three ideas and they’re like, “We love them all, let’s do Pantalones, TX first, and then Rocket Salvage next.”

Matt: Sounds easy. I’m going to go do that. Just go and pitch some ideas and I’m making a comic book.

Yehudi: Exactly. They saw me at C2E2 one year and then…I had Buffalo Speedway, the printed edition with my pizza boxes, they were impressed.

Matt: Who wouldn’t be?

Kara: Buffalo Speedway was my introduction to your work and it just opened my eyes to a whole new world of pizza boy competition.

Yehudi: Exactly. The unsung heroes of the road.

Matt: They really are.

Yehudi: Modern day Pony Express.

Kara: You were a pizza boy?

Yehudi: I was.

Kara: What’s your pizza boy story?

Yehudi: I was delivering that day on the busiest pizza day ever.

Kara: This is based on a true story?

Yehudi: Loosely based, yeah. In Houston, Texas, that was miserable because in Houston in the summer, almost like Orlando, you’ll get a sudden downpour of rain and I was driving a CJ-7 Jeep with no top.

Matt: Dream car. I just swooned.

Yehudi: It rains for like 20 minutes, downpour, then shuts off as if someone just shut off a valve and then it’s so hot that it’s like jungle feet. The roads are steaming.

Matt: What happens to the pizza? In real life, what do you do? Do you just put that on the engine?

Yehudi: Pizza Hut had a nice oven bag.

Matt: Yeah, they have those. There’s no dark sky to yell at you when it’s about to downpour back then.

Yehudi: Some of the things like the air conditioning shutting off in the shop, happened to me.

Kara: On that day?

Yehudi: Not on that day but during that summer.

Kara: In general.

Yehudi: It’s a Pizza Hut Express so it’s just an oven. You’re in an oven. If there’s no AC…seriously we were walking, we had to stand in the refrigerator between shifts just to not die. Our skin would steam.

Matt: Oh my God, it sounds like a horror movie. They could make a horror movie around being a pizza boy.

Kara: I just loved the pacing of this book. It felt like you were in an action movie. Then you’re like, “But they’re all pizza boys.” They’re all racing each other to get a cut of the till and all this wacky stuff is happening.

It’s a day of the OJ Simpson car chase and the World Cup and a sports event. All this stuff is happening. It was like the perfect storm of pizza.

What I really loved about this and which reflects also in the rest of your work is the characters are so…they just open their mouths and speak and I’m like, “I get it.”

Yehudi: You knew exactly what I’m getting at.

Kara: They’re immensely relatable. You know – if not someone – you know what your expectation for that character should be. I saw that also in Pantalones, TX, which, as you said earlier, is your more all-ages book.

Matt: Adorable, it is adorable.

Kara: So cute. I love how it’s all about the little kid who just wants to make a name for himself in Pantalones, TX.

Yehudi: Exactly.

Kara: Then all of a sudden there’s a giant chicken.

Yehudi: Of course. Well in Texas, there are giant chickens.

Matt: That’s just the way life is.

Yehudi: A fact of life.

Kara: Everything is bigger in Texas.

Matt: That’s why I want to move there, just so I can eat the giant chicken.

Yehudi: It’s a common theme I’ve noticed in all my stuff that our heroes are always on the other side of the law. Cops versus pizza boys.

Matt: Is that what you did, were you on the other side of the law while you’re delivering pizza?

Yehudi: Yeah, cops would f*** with you, pizza boys. It was just an easy target, they know you’re going to speed. They just drift in front of you, slow down…

Matt: Cops troll pizza boys. That’s probably some unspoken society thing, everybody knows when they see the top on the pizza car. What do you know when you order pizza? Do you sit back and reminisce?

When someone comes and delivers you a pie, what’s that process like?

Yehudi: I’m very respectful.

Matt: A big tipper.

Yehudi: It’s funny though. At conventions, my worst audience are pizza boys.

Kara: Really? Oh no.

Yehudi: I see someone with a Pizza Hut hat on and I’m like, “Hey.” I was in Houston at Comicpalooza. Buffalo Speedway takes place in Houston and I see a guy with a Hut hat.

Matt: It’s a perfect moment.

Yehudi: I’m sold. This guy is going to be the easiest sale I have. No. He didn’t want anything to do with it.

Kara: Too close.

Yehudi: Too real.

Matt: Too real. It was a traumatic experience. It was like he was thinking back to the war and the background was all red.

Yehudi: It’s like when Platoon came out and they had to tell vets to go in pairs.

Matt: Exactly right, yeah. I want to jump into the Disney stuff.

Kara: You’ve been waiting.

Matt: I don’t want to step over any of your questions.

Kara: We’ll bring it full circle. Again, these themes recur in Rocket Salvage, the hero on the fringe. Again with a clear character voice, just trying to get by. Just trying to do his thing.

Yehudi: Just trying to survive.

Kara: With lots of fancy technology.

Matt: It is a good segue. That was amazing. She was gawking. No-one will ever see the face she made but it was impressive.

Yehudi: You could feel it.

Matt: You could feel the energy. We’re Facebook friends, you and I and I saw that you made a big announcement on Facebook like, “Yeah, I can finally talk about what I’ve been working on for so long.”

I was stunned that you had kept the secret that you were doing this amazing, cool project with Disney and Marvel. Can you walk us through it a little bit?

Yehudi: Yeah. I wrote and art directed the Guardians of the Galaxy mobile game. After I was done with that, they’re like, “Hey, this project needs an art director.”

I’m like, “OK.” They sort of described it, I’m like, “What did you say? It’s a toy that then has sounds?” I was like, “What is this?”

It’s Disney Playmation. Basically I always say it’s like playing laser tag with your action figures. Basically the kid wears an Iron Man arm on his arm and he’s shooting at his action figures.

You have a whole game but then also there’s voices and missions, audio missions coming from the game. It’s almost like dungeon mastering your experience. It’s like you’re playing with all the Avengers.

Matt: It’s amazing.

Kara: Awesome.

Yehudi: Then it ties into an app. The kid will go play his missions and come back to the app, checking, see his score, download new missions. It’s like a game that you can just keep adding more games to.

Kara: Do they have this in grown-up size?

Matt: I imagine that’s what you did all day, you were testing the technology out with people in the office.

Yehudi: We’re in close quarters. It’s like the Skunkworks initiative. We’re in very tight quarters. I hear lasers and Hulk roars on an endless loop. I had to get noise cancelling headphones.

Kara: It’s Iron Man, is there a Jarvis voice?

Yehudi: Oh yeah, Jarvis talks to you the whole time.

Kara: Do you ever find yourself talking back like, “Jarvis, re-calibrate!”

Yehudi: It’s amazing, you can flex it up and do the palm cannon. Freeze beam.

Matt: It’s so badass that I wish…I have a son so I am allowed to then jump in and play this when it comes out but I was blown away because I had never even heard about this project.

I guess I’m so used to comics and some seeds come out but for a huge corporation, it was a total secret.

Yehudi: Couldn’t even say the word “Playmation.” Someone got in trouble for putting it on LinkedIn. You couldn’t even say what we’re working on.

As soon as I announced it, everyone was like, “Congratulations on the new job.”

Matt: You’re here for a while.

Yehudi: Finally got to see it in public.

Matt: You couldn’t even tell anybody what you’re working on? That part is so freaky to me. You come home and you’re like, “I can’t talk about what I did today.”

Yehudi: All I could really say is, “It’s a toy that goes with an app.”

Kara: What does one do as the art director of a toy?

Yehudi: Good question. That’s way they brought me on a little too late in the game because they were like, “It’s an audio experience. You’re shooting and you have the toys,” but then the app, it needs to give you context of the missions you’re going to go on.

One of the missions in New York is you’re in Central Park, fighting alongside Hulk and there’s a bunch of bomberbots that you have to fight. You tell that to a kid, they’re like, “What’s a bomberbot?”

I have to illustrate all these things.

Matt: You have to help them. You have to guide them a little bit.

Yehudi: Give them a little bit of a mental picture of what they’re going to go imagine they’re fighting. It’s an interesting design dilemma because also they could play and they could never touch the app. They could just all play with just the toy.

We have to accommodate that kind of gameplay also.

Kara: That’s so interesting. That’s definitely one of those jobs that people don’t realize is a job. They’re just like, “Oh, here’s the toy.” They don’t really think about what went into it.

Yehudi: We get into it with the writers like, “You’re creating all these characters, I need to draw those characters. Don’t go too crazy with so many characters.”

Matt: Exactly. When I saw, in the ad, but I don’t think they’ve demoed it yet, is the lightsaber. Is there any public knowledge about how that works? Not yet?

Yehudi: Star Wars is next. I will say that.

Matt: Star Wars is next. I was curious how that would work. My assumption – though you probably can’t confirm it or not – would be the lightsaber gives you the commands with maybe C3PO on there. That would be kind of cool.

Yehudi: It was more of a headset.

Matt: Didn’t he wear a headset when he was training with the lightsaber?

Yehudi: With the blast shield. It won’t have that. It’s more of simulating Yoda speaking to you telepathically.

Kara: I want that.

Yehudi: Seriously, I almost cried the first time I did the demo.

Kara: No, I believe it. You’re laughing. I’m about to weep. I’m about to sympathy weep.

Yehudi: Everything’s scored. Everything’s got sound effects.

Kara: That’s so beautiful.

Yehudi: Walking in Dagobah…

Kara: I’m getting goosebumps.

Matt: With the animals making noises in the background?

Kara: Oh my God.

Yehudi: It’s incredible.

Kara: Coming to you soon from a galaxy, far, far away.

Matt: We might as well do a podcast about unwrapping those and playing with them. Just audio of us running around the office.

Kara: I need that. We need those things. Is there some kind of secret sub-level of Iron Man toy where you go on a mission to deliver pizza?

Yehudi: I did draw myself into one of the missions.

Kara: That’s awesome, that’s very cool.

Matt: That’s a smart move, I think.

Yehudi: He who controls the pen, controls the world.

Matt: That’s right.

Kara: That’s right, you said that there are comics that go along with it?

Yehudi: Right, yeah. The setup of the mission is the first frame of the comic.

Matt: It’s great, you’ll have these high-end amazing toys that you wish you had when you were a kid but then there’s also…they try to pull you into, “These are great toys and movies but there’s also comics, let’s check these out.”

Yehudi: We really want it to be a platform. Every Wednesday, a new mission. Stay on comic schedule.

Matt: That’s smart.

Yehudi: It’s going to be a whole different beast, once it’s live.

Matt: And everyone is on the edge of their seats hoping everything goes well. Everything is aligned. I appreciate you taking the time out…

Kara: Wait.

Matt: Oh, you’ve got one more? Sorry.

Kara: Yeah, you didn’t say anything about his hat. He’s wearing a Rocket Salvage hat.

Matt: I didn’t notice that.

Kara: Where do we get those?

Matt: At your booth?

Yehudi: One of a kind.

Matt: Oh no.

Kara: What? No! No Rocket Salvage trucker hats.

Yehudi: Not yet.

Kara: Pending.

Yehudi: If you want, I do have a calendar from the year 3573. It’s basically a pinup of Rocket Salvage.

Kara: That’s awesome.

Yehudi: Fake holidays on there.

Matt: Do you have one of the Iron Man blasters in your backpack at all times?

Yehudi: No. Ha! Those do not leave that room.

Matt: They’re probably tethered to a wall somewhere in that office.

Kara: Manacled.

Yehudi: My boss, soon she’s going to be on a panel – I think Saturday – depending on when this comes out. I think she might bring it with her.

Matt: We need to go to that panel.

Kara: NOW we can sign off. Thank you so much for your time.

Matt: We appreciate it. Everyone check out Rocket Salvage from Boom/Archaia. Your all-ages stuff is fantastic.

Kara: Pantalones, TX.

Yehudi: SuperMercadoComics.com

Matt: Thanks again. We’ll team up when everything comes out. We’ll have a comiXology Iron Man/Star Wars lightsabers mash-up, it’s going to be amazing.

Kara: Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Yehudi: Thank you.

Matt: Thanks again.


(Source: SoundCloud / comiXology)

Sep 25, 2015 6:14pm
2 notes
  1. comixology posted this