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Two speakers discuss a newly discovered, exceptionally high-grade copy of Superman #1 that sold for about $9.2 million, explaining comic scarcity, historical disposability, and strict grading standards (CGC, Overstreet) where even minor wear reduces value; they contrast this with overprinted 1990s comics and note key issues rise due to character first appearances (e.g., Punisher, Moon Knight, Guardians). They recount the attic find preserved between newspapers, mention provenance and major auction houses, and warn about counterfeits (notably TMNT #1). The conversation shifts to how eBay and speculation changed collecting, then to digital comics via Comixology and GlobalComix features, device preferences, Apple vs Android file transfer friction, and broader streaming/login usability issues. They end by promoting Cleveland’s small-press Genghis Con after Thanksgiving and tease holiday gift ideas.
Transcript
Relentless Geekery 239
Alan: See, I got Green. Here we go. All right.
Stephen: Check everything
Alan: One of these days I’m gonna get the cool backdrop and have, But for now it’s just this is my life surrounded by stacks of things ever-growing.
Stephen: Right. So it’s almost Thanksgiving, let’s talk comics. That, that’s some exciting stuff going on
Alan: So you, you sent me a very cool notice that somebody just found a copy of “Superman #1.” And as that’s one of the, the big three, right? Action with the first appearance of Superman, Detective 27, first appearance of Batman and Superman, the first one where he gets his own comic, and it sold for something like $9.2 million.
Stephen: you’re not in the nerd comic industry, you may not grasp the significance. So like you said, it’s one of the big ones. This is w- at a time when people got comics for kids that shoved them in their back pocket, went on the playground, threw them in the dirt, stepped on them,
Alan: Use them as a placemat while they were eating cereal, so it has a nice ring right on the cover. Little ring. Yeah.
Stephen: cheapest paper they could get and stuff, you know. So there aren’t a lot of these in existence. You know-
Alan: all the paper drives for all the, the war effort and stuff like that, that comic books were absolutely some of the first things to go. So
Stephen: So most of the ones that are in existence, there’s a grading scale for those that don’t know. A company that, you know, grades, looks at it and says, “Oh, this, that, and the other thing, give it a, a five out of 10. It’s got a crease, it’s worn, the, it’s rolled, it’s been bent, the colors have faded, it’s got some
Alan: The staples are loose. In fact, that’s an interesting, it used to be that there was like the Overstreet Price Guide long ago was the one that first collected information about what things could be worth and established the grading system where it was like mint and near mint and very fine and all that kind of stuff.
And then the Comics Guarantee Corporation was the, were the guys that formalized, “Let’s make this on a 10-point scale,” and they had all those parameters that you just talked about where you- to get a perfect book was next to impossible because just the act of printing something will sometimes have just a little bit printed off, or the act of shipping it will have just the slightest little nick in the cover or something like that.
So they, to get a book in 10.0 is next to impossible, and yet here’s this 100-year, 90-year-old comic book.
Stephen: Let me say first, so most people looking at their own comics and I’ve gotten this from the comic guys, they bring their comics in and they say, “Oh, they’re near mint.” And then they look through them, they’re like, “Yeah, these are fair, good condition.” “No, it’s near mint.” “No, it… See, it’s got this little crease.”
“Oh, that’s not a big deal.” But that is, that’s how you rate them. They get strict about that.
Alan: And it’s mostly the cover, ’cause that’s the first, big boom that you get when you look at something, but it’s the color of the pages. If you have something that’s survived decades and that the pages haven’t faded to a, a kind of a yellow-brown instead of white when it was first printed, that’s extraordinary because that’s just chemistry.
That kind of pulp was so low quality that just exposure to oxygen, if you don’t read your comic book in a, a whatever,
Stephen: hermetically
Alan: isolation tank, exactly, it will have come in contact with air. So it doesn’t have to have been through any abuse or anything like that. Just the act of it living long, it tends to deteriorate it.
You know what I mean? So-
Stephen: and I’ve heard stories, people bringing in and the ’90s were not good for comics, let’s just say. Th- there’s not a whole lot of stuff people care about from the ’90s overall. So people will say, “Oh, I’ve got all these near mint Spider-Men. They’re old. They’re, from, whatever.”
And then they bring in half a box of ’90s Spider-Man, and it’s we’ve got 10 copies of each of these in the dollar box,
Alan: yeah. In fact, that’s a big thing to talk about, scarcity that we just talked about from things from the ’30s and ’40s. It’s really tough ’cause they survived really tough times and the bad paper and stuff. There… when things were exploding with direct comic book stores instead of newsstand sales and the black and white explosion of the ’80s going into the ’90s, things were regul- they weren’t printed in the millions like they were way back in the first golden age of comic books, but there were still 500,000 copies printed, and people were aware that if you hold onto your comics in good condition, they might be worth something someday.
So people did, but they’re only 30 years old, and there’s still 300,000 of those 500,000 around. You know what I mean?
Stephen: just because your comic’s 30 or even 40 years old, you take Spider-Man overall, and there’s one or two that people really want. Amazing Fantasy that’s the one,
Alan: yeah, I heard that. Yeah, exactly.
Stephen: And a couple number one appearances or whatever. But out of the 750, 800 r- run of all the different Spider-Man, literally there’s s- double digits worth of comics that anyone really cares about.
So y- you literally have less than 100 comics that are really worth something. The rest, maybe you have a $10 comic here and there, but most are dollar box stuff. And that’s what people don’t realize, that, just… I’ve had this with Pokemon, comic books, other things. They’re like, “Oh they’re selling Pokemon cards for $1,000?
Magic cards. Oh they’re selling Magic cards for $8,000? Here, I got a bunch.” Yeah, these are all commons from, pretty recent sets. Nobody wants them, it’s a couple that are worth money. It’s a couple comics. The same across the board, but it’s a common thing with people.
“Oh, these are mint condition and they’re old.” My father was like that. “It must be worth a lot.” No, it’s worth crap. Nobody cares,
Alan: If w-what’s interesting I have a big collection and I have, I, I have curated it enough, got it all in the database. I’m getting some things graded, that kind of stuff. One of the things you’ll discover when you start putting things into these online depending on the grade, but also just on the basis of scarcity, a lot of the things that have gone up in value over these last 10, 20 years is people realizing and we’ve talked about this a little bit, like “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which was in Marvel Superheroes, if I remember right, like number 20.
Stephen: Marvel presents? Yeah, maybe Mar- one of, one of those
Alan: yeah, exactly. But it was like middle of the run. It wasn’t a number one, which people often speculate and buy a couple extra copies of. I sure did that. But then it’ll be like that for whatever reason. And Marvel I’m sorry, “Guardians of the Galaxy” kind of went dormant for a long time until the movie came out and then everybody was like I wouldn’t mind having that comic book.”
And then you find out that like what makes it valuable. The, in “Spider-Man #129,” who would collect number 129? Oh, the first appearance of The Punisher. You know what I mean? Like a significant character is introduced and I use Collectors with a Z, and they have information about everything. The people there are amazing curators of all the various different things that might make something unique, that is stand out from a regular run.
So it’ll be a significant event in the comic book or a significant character introduction or reintroduction, ’cause sometimes it’ll be Starhawk floated around, but then this new costume made him super popular and then he’s back, or something like that. So of my like top 10 most valuable comics, some things are what you would expect, like “Amazing Fantasy #15” or “Giant-Size X-Men #1.”
But some things are like “Werewolf by Night,” which introduced Moon Knight, and not only like it was in the middle of a run and it wasn’t a big-selling comic book, so w-we even know there’s not 300,000 of those out there. There’s 30,000 and not of people didn’t collect that comic and keep it in good shape.
So I have some delightful surprises where it’s oh, I… Because I bought everything I really did have complete runs of that thing. But the thing, if you cherry-pick something out of the collection, it’s that thing that’s gonna be valuable even more than the number one of that title. “Ghost Rider,” which, I often complain about, like I just don’t understand its popularity.
I think it’s a ridiculous premise and it’s never been a good book to me. And yet, “Marvel Spotlight #5,” it’s funny how much these things run around in your head. That was the I used to love the books that were like the tryout books. For DC it was “Brave and Bold” and other and for Marvel it was “Marvel Presents” or that kind of stuff.
And once in a while it’d be like, we tried, I don’t know, the “The Green Machine,” some like little, all kinds of different things. And then all of a sudden, something like Swamp Thing pops up in the middle of House of Mystery, I think it was, right? And then it has an amazing impact. But who was not only buying, but like holding onto them and making sure they were in good shape, something that was just a, an entertaining little book, and then when you’re done you know what I mean? It’s– But that so much of my really valuable stuff, the delightful ones are, man, I bought this thing for 12, 15, 25 cents, whatever the various different periods of comic book pricing are. And because I have been a, an odd collector all my life, 90% of what I have must be in like near mint.
I know that’s, like you said, people come in saying, “Oh my God.” But I really did love my comics. I kept them in good shape. I put them in boxes where they were not exposed to light and heat and spills and whatever else it might be. And so once in a while when I pull something out, it’s like this thing is, like Sandman number one is 50 years old, 40 years old, and yet it looks like I just bought it off the newsstand.
It’s really in pristine, beautiful shape. I’m hoping that one day that’ll matter to somebody besides me. You know what I mean?
Stephen: So with all of that we’ve got only a few Superman Action Comics number one out there. They’re worth a lot, but they’re old, they’ve been read. Nobody bought them to collect them at the time. So they’re fours, fives, in grading scales, and they’ve gotten a good amount of money because of the rarity and the popularity.
Alan: That’s
Stephen: suddenly on the market, this lady dies, 90-year-old lady or something like that, and had always told her kids, her grandkids, ’cause you gotta think her grandkids are in, are our age, and she’d always said, “Oh, we’ve got some comics. They must be worth something ’cause they’re old and we used to collect,” blah, blah, blah.
But nobody thought much of it. They never looked for it. She died. They’re cleaning things out for the estate sale. They find these comics. Lo and behold, Action number one in… it got graded at a nine. There is no other comic, Action Comics number one at this level.
Alan: That’s right. The best copy they’ve ever discovered. I think I– when you posted that on my wall, I think I even commented on it. From what I understand, the reason that it was kept in such great condition was because it was between old newspapers. Honestly, if I’m in an attic and I’m cleaning it out and I just wanna get the house cleared out so I can sell it, I would’ve taken that whole stack of newspapers and chucked it.
And instead, whatever inspired them, I think it might’ve been, “Hey, let’s look at what cool headlines there were from the ’30s. Oh my God, war being declared,” or whatever else it might be. The fact that they even found it and that they found it so hermetically safe from heat and moisture and all that kind of stuff is an amazingly cool
Stephen: And no mice.
Alan: No mice.
Stephen: imagine finding an action
Alan: no bugs, no… Yeah.
Stephen: Oh my God
Alan: And in an attic, I’m picturing, doesn’t that that’s the hottest part of your house. That’s where you’re not well-insulated and stuff. So that thing, it could’ve been baked. It could’ve been… ’cause things get brittle with heat. And so in all those ways, the fact that she had mentioned multiple times, “Hey, we do have some old comics,” and that had stuck in these kids’ heads, so they were– Maybe that’s, of course, why they were looking in newspapers, because they were told there’s treasure to be found, and they didn’t treat anything cavalierly.
They checked every box, every pile where things might be. Can you imagine that? Pulling out that Gina newspaper and going, if you know anything about it at all. Superman, one of the most recognizable characters in the entire world. From what I remember there’s a couple of silhouettes that you, everybody can tell what the character is.
Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, Superman. With the arms akimbo type. And the fact that they found… Number one, they must have been peeing themselves with we, we– She really was right. There really are amazing treasures.
Stephen: So here, my other thought was, so I don’t know who discovered this, let’s say the grandkids, they’re 50, I imagine any of the kids going, “Damn it, we could’ve gotten these things, 20, 30 years ago,” and whatever. But so Superman, I think number one had gone highest like 1.2 million before
Alan: a million, which was an, an incredible thing. When people talk about like “Antiques Roadshow” type stuff, making a million dollars is… Remember we talked about being on the Objects of Power tour. That’s one of those unique, significant, there’s only so many in the world, w- worth a million dollars.
A comic being worth $5,000 is an extraordinary thing from one that sold for a quarter or a dollar or whatever.
Stephen: This went for how much,
Alan: I think it was 9.2 if I remember right. Heritage Auctions, shout out to them. They’re one of the… There’s a couple big auction houses that are names. They’re known for handling all these things well. They’re not trying to rip people off. They actually b- one day maybe this will come out as, the Lakewood Collection or the Baltus Collection.
They have collections that they’ve named because they were so significant. Mile High Comics was one of those places, I guess maybe also Denver. You know what I mean? It’s a little bit less… They– When they’ve discovered a cache, a treasure trove like that, you actually get little certificates inserted in your sealed grader box because it’s from a collection, kinda was it once owned by Elton John or Lucille Ball or something like that, with provenance to knowing it came from this extraordinary complete runs of “Batman” from, 27 to 100, which is just…
Sometimes there’ll be a s- well, a, a particular issue, but finding mid-range issues that you know that everybody else just kinda read and chewed up and threw away, there’s extraordinary stuff out there. So I it reignites all the people. It, I… When I shared this on my, my Facebook thing, I had a friend that said he had…
everybody loves these treasure stories, right? You go to like a, a flea market and there’s somebody there that has a box of… And th- in this case it was, he had old “Playboys” and he uses them for art reference, the, But then he’s going through them and he found a copy of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” number one.
Which like, it, in it really was a, a goof-off book. It was in black and white by a couple guys that went on to be like Eastman and Laird. They really made a career, a fortune out of having these characters that just caught on like wildfire. But the first issue’s black and white, low print numbers and stuff like that, it’s an extraordinary find.
And I need to throw this in there. Remember we just laughed about with people finding out that, “Oh my God, this comic book could be worth $9.2 million,” people are gonna start to try the scam things where you take a dollar bill, bleach it, and then
Stephen: Yeah, we were joking about that. I’m like there’s the next heist movie.”
Alan: yeah, th-this co- “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” number one is renowned for, because it was black and white and low print quality and everything, it was relatively easily duplicated fakely, and then all of a sudden there’s all these extra copies of “TMNT” number one on the market, and they had to find out how do we differentiate, because the scammers weren’t perfect.
They missed not only on the front cover, but on the inside it had something in particular in the indicia that they weren’t getting right. So if you were a collector, you had to learn to tell the difference between an authentic and a fake. And that hardly ever happens because printing a comic book is big color print press type business usually.
But that perfect confluence of it’s black and white and it’s got crappy staples and stuff like that, you could kinda do it, and it looked more authentic than the regular one because it was actually in better shape. You know what I mean? Anyway, that, that’s a fun story behind that. That was a scandal in the comic book industry, discovering that someone was really producing fakes.
Stephen: A- and one of the things eBay, eBay has ruined this a bit. It’s ruined it, but it’s also brought it to a different level of things. You can’t so easily just go to any yard sale or or thrift place or whatever because everybody’s already there digging through them and wanting those.
And most of the people selling it want more for something than it’s worth, and anything worth money is already gone. That’s part of the issue. And people are buying this stuff just to collect it to resell later, like the old Star Wars figures. So
Alan: most of what I’ve heard about interesting finds like that is that it isn’t that there’s highlighted books. Someone is selling an entire collection, and you’re like I’ll pay $1,000 for 10 boxes of comic books.” And they don’t realize that hidden amongst all those various different things is one book that’s worth 1,000 bucks.
Might be that all the rest are what you said, reading copies or, they go in the dime box and stuff like that. But the hope is that the people that had the collection might not have already known what they had, cherry-picked it, sold it, and stuff like that, and that you might get a, an amazing find.
You know what I mean? So
Stephen: So here’s my little rant and I’ve probably ranted about this before. So we ju- we’ve had these comics now selling for a million dollars, nine million now for a comic book. Obviously these are valued, sought-after collector’s items like jewelry, like art, a- and stuff i- in some realms.
Now, does everybody want comic books? No, but not everybody wants a, an original Picasso either, i’ve had that discussion. It’s okay great, it’s a Picasso, but I’m not paying that much for it. I’ll get my Indiana Jones poster or something. I like that better. But my point is, comics, the nerddom area, gets looked down upon, and not as much as it used to.
Marvel changed that perception a lot, but it’s still kinda la- “Oh, those kids things. Oh, you guys are nerds, huh?” But when you’ve got comic books getting more money than some football collectibles, what’s that? And how, if you wanna talk about silliness factor, you don’t think football has the, a extreme silliness factor?
Yeah, I’m gonna sit on my couch all day and watch m- grown men run around chasing a ball for a lot of money. Okay, come on. Y- seriously, you can’t say shit about the nerddom comic area if you do that. I just… Sorry.
Alan: There, that’s honestly, how many– I’ve had this kind of conversation for a long time, like people that don’t get being a collector, wanting to have one to N of something, wanting to have the first appearance of, Jim Thorpe. Was he even around when they were doing c- football cards and stuff like that?
I know that there’s like Ty Cobb baseball cards, and that’s extraordinary to find. Honus Wagner, if I remember right, Tris Speaker, those are some of the ones that like, they just, they’re extraordinarily valuable because it was a lesser team. All those things that figure into scarcity and disposability and all that kind of stuff.
So I think that once you get into the collector’s mindset, it’s weird to still have people saying my stuff, bubblegum cards they’re a real collectible versus comic books are silly.” It’s like, really? For the people that buy all the plates and spoons, for the people that buy the mint coins
Stephen: figures,
Alan: there’s all kinds of ways in which that that kind of, makes itself real.
E- exactly. There’s– And there’s a craze seemingly every 10 years where, oh, everybody buys Beanie Babies because they understand that this could be valuable to somebody, maybe to me, but also to other people, and then they hold onto it and they try to keep it in good condition and stuff. I– it is often, it’s, I– what I just think about that is good dismiss me, stay out of this realm.
They’re gonna be worth something, and I’m glad I’m not competing with you to buy them all. One of the… Another thing that happened bad in the comic books industry, probably 20 years ago, was that there started to be competitors to CGC that, that there were other grading services, Pacific and trying to think.
And a couple geeks that had made a lot of money in dot-com days they had all this money and they don’t necessarily want the big mansion and the big car and that kind of stuff. They kinda wanted what they loved when they were growing up and “My mom made me give them away, so now I’m gonna go get all the Iron Mans that I so much miss.”
And then that really started to affect prices in the market, and it started to be that they were predatory, that it wasn’t at all for the love of the market. It was– They were not, and not only, like there’s… Bidding is what it is. You forget outbid all the time. But they started to actually like, “Are we gonna influence the grading service?
That if I send you 100 books, I get a better price, but I also get better treatment?” And there might’ve been grade inflation going on. So anytime that money floods into a market like that, there’s the little possibility of, I would call it corruption. You know what I mean? That it, that money influences things.
And we’ve talked about this before. When I used to go to Comic Cons, it was so innocent. You know what I mean? Like you, you really would… If you were at the, the booth and you had $5.70 of books and you could say, “How about five bucks?” And the guy make it five and a quarter.” And like that little bit of bargaining was like my first experience.
I didn’t grow up in a, a bazaar in Marrakech where everything was bargained for. So it was that first little thing of… and but y- the guys who did it, they were like kids growing up, and they knew that this was really an important thing to you. I had So many times– I, I like “Mad Magazine,” as and “Mad Magazine” was always on the periphery of comic books, but often they’d have some.
And so when I’d find those things at a Comic-Con, I would be like, I don’t wanna bargain with you. I’m just so happy to find some of these. I’ll pay you.” Th- usually they’re, in some cases, this is a ri-ridiculous thing to say, some things you could have them for 10 years, but they never go above cover price.
And I was like, ‘Mad’ was, like, 30, 35 cents back then. I don’t wanna rip you off. Can I give you a dollar for each of these? Because you did the work of holding onto them for 10 years so that I could find this, to me, incredible treasure.” And guys were just so tickled that I wasn’t trying to bargain them down, that I was actually like I don’t know that it matters what the market says, but between you and me, I really want these.
And I’m really willing to buy them all from you. And let me not waste your time about this.” You know what I mean? So it– even back then I was weird, you know what I mean? I wasn’t trying to always hedge my bets and Jew people down a little bit. Sorry, that… You know what I mean. I… Whenever you say Jip or Jew or something like that, it’s like, I’m not a prejudiced person.
It’s just part of the vocabulary. You know what I mean? So anyway, but aware that, oh no, people might, “No, he did it.” So I swear to you, I’m not.
But that, that– Some of those first experiences of being able to talk to those old collectors and being able… I know I, at one point, I brought out– I knew Gene Colan was gonna be at a convention, and I brought along old “Daredevils.”
And he was like, not just signing them, he was, like, paging through them and going, “Oh, I loved drawing this one.” This was, “Daredevil versus Doctor Doom,” I think it was. Maybe “Daredevil 39 or 40.” And th- to show that you loved his stuff enough to be aware of the quality of his work and that he remembered doing it.
And not all was good memories, ’cause sometimes it was done as work for hire, and they don’t own the character. But just some people still had artist pride in what they had produced. And I had a couple wonderful interactions like that, where I wouldn’t just show up and say, “I love you.” But it’s like, “Mr.
Grell, I really have held onto this for a long time. And it, it’s, I swear it’s not going on eBay.” It’s so that I can look at this and say, “I love this, this Green Arrow, and I met the guy who did it.” And it just was old Warlord, old… It’s especially fun when you can say like we did with B.
Craig Russell, that you don’t just bring the work that they’re always known for, that you bring something wonderfully obscure and they’re like, “How do you have this? Nobody else really cared about
Stephen: I haven’t seen this in 30 years
Alan: I’ve always loved your work ’cause it looked so unique compared to everything else.
You know what I mean? I love artists where you can immediately tell that’s Jack Kirby. And maybe that’s not true anymore ’cause they’ve had imitators since then. But like Bill Sienkiewicz for a while, and we could– You and I’m sure, could name all of our favorites. But P. Craig Russell was one of those these are like fantasy beautiful.
They’re not just comic book trope beautiful. He really had like the, if you’re reading about Elric, Elric was not a big brawny guy. He was like a, an albino that was only powerful because he had his cursed sword. And so he always drew them as look, as if the wind would blow him over. But what he surrounded him with in the books were all that other a tree that doesn’t really grow on Earth kind of a thing.
You know what I mean? He had an amazing penchant, pen-al for doing things that were clearly fantasy. I loved
Stephen: L- yeah, l- Frazetta or Hildebrandt brothers, the very distinctive style very, Pete Craig, thin line art, not thick outlines, and sometimes very detailed without being dense detail.
Alan: Exactly. Very delicate, like filigree instead of a chunk of gold and stuff like that. I just, I– That, getting a chance to meet him at Adams was just the coolest thing in the world. And the fact that the place wasn’t thronging, I felt, everybody get in here. This is a, this guy’s an amazing guy.”
But also by it not thronging, we had a chance to talk and really, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve had that wonderful coincidence of if you go to the Comic-Con and you go there on Sunday morning when everybody’s still sleeping off Saturday night’s revelry, you get a chance to talk to the Jim Strakos of the world for an hour.
And I just was in heaven because of all kinds of things, so
Stephen: So yeah, there we go. The it, and you know what? I don’t know when we’re gonna see one at that, a- any comic sell at that price for quite a while,
Alan: that’s it, I hope there is a certain, anytime something like that happens, it does reignite a little bit of, “Wait, comic books are really worth something,” and then maybe we’ll see my collection will go up by 2% just because the aura around comic books has brightened a little bit.
You know what I mean? So
Stephen: you get those guys going, “Oh my gosh, nine million comics are going up. Let’s buy everything.”
Alan: I feel, and I guess this is segue time. As I tried buying comic books again. I stopped again because it just was somehow the overhead and what the, the storage needs and all that kind of stuff. I’m just not in that place in my life anymore. But I had Comixology for a long time, which had a lot of stuff, and I just discovered a thing called GlobalComix that does the same kind of thing.
They’ve got 100,000 comic books digitized online, and it’s cool. Anytime you have competition, you’re gonna have them kind of expansion of features and what they’ll each carry, sometimes exclusive, but sometimes they just have to keep up with each other. So one of the things that GlobalComix does is they have a thing where you can go into panel mode that instead of only being the page and then you shift to the next page, it actually, as you use the arrow, goes panel to panel, and so you get it blown up.
And once in a while, that’s really cool when you have P. Craig Russell artwork and you can see it on your big monitor, not this size, but this size. It just makes you appreciate it. Oh my God, this is beautiful. It’s just startling with how so much work that was put into scratching things on, whatever kind of special paper and the special pens and that kind of stuff.
They made such evocative, beautiful, detailed things. So I’m digging that, that feature of GlobalComix and have been working my way through some stuff,
Stephen: so Colin and I have talked about this, and I’ve said that it’s becoming easier to publish digital comics. And like Amazon actually, you can publish a digital comic on there. And it’s making it a little… I said I, I think at some point more people are going to be moving to that like other things.
He disagreed and so far he’s been more right than I have. I think there is a bit of a shift towards digital and more digital reading, but I haven’t, it’s not been wholescale like in books. Books really have changed a lot. But 2025 bookstore print book sales have been up over 2024. So even that’s not, 100%, but,
Alan: Yeah. It’s the experience of reading a book as well as the book itself. I don’t know, I’m not at my most comfortable when I’m sitting here in front of my screen. I like laying in bed with a book kind of propped on my chest and, exactly the
Stephen: Yeah, and you and Colin giving me the damn omnibuses trying to kill me. I gotta keep checking my life insurance policy. You guys give me these things it’s like I’m holding them, I’m falling asleep, it’s crushing my skull. But I will say I read a lot, and I have no problem reading off my Kindle.
I’ve got a nice little s- I’ve got a seven and an eight-inch Kindle, and those seem like the perfect size for me. They’re easy to hold. I can read well, adjust the font if I need to. I’ve got a, a bigger tablets, but I don’t read books on them too often. But I read my comics on them because the smaller screens to read a full page is too small, but it’s just the same size on a bigger tablet.
Alan: Exactly
Stephen: read the whole page. I don’t like doing the jumping between, ’cause it takes something away with some of the way they have the overall,
Alan: that the artists themselves were artistic about how they have page flow and stuff like that. That one of my Black Friday things that I’m looking for is, because I now have this goal for comics and ComiXology, I really want something that is, the screen is the same size as a comic book page, and I’m going to get one.
They’re– nowadays they’re like $1,000. There’s really high quality ones, and not necessarily from like the Nook from Barnes & Noble. I kinda want a full-featured iPad or something like that so it has color. But I just, I’m looking forward to having that experience of even though it’s heavier than a comic book, it’s not, as you just said, “Here, have the entire series of ‘Planetary’ and have it dent your sternum while you’re reading it.” So
Stephen: so the, the Global Comix, it’s a s- it has you can subscribe to it to read everything like the other
Alan: Exactly. And it, it’s– They got just Spotify and various other music services have done. I still buy CDs and I still buy books, but somehow comic books that was, wow, I don’t know, that really is, I don’t know, bulk. Have you– I already have 40,000 of them, that kind of thing. I just decided that I’m gonna do that digitally, and it might be that digital thing is now gonna leak into ar- other areas of my life.
People have often made a very good case for why in the world do you still have books? When you go on vacation, you shouldn’t have to bring half a dozen books because that’s how many you’ll read in two weeks. You gotta bring one Kindle, one iPad, and then you have- Yeah … infinite number of books if you just remember to download them, and that’s not even true.
Everywhere has Wi-Fi nowadays. You can have a book delivered in a minute via Wi-Fi and stuff like that. So it– I’m gonna… I haven’t done enough of that experience, and that’s one of the things I’m, I guess I’m looking forward to learning is if I get an iPad and it’s exactly what I like, but maybe there is a paper-thin one, maybe there’s an iPad Light or there’s, like I said, a Nook or some kind of not iOS but, the, the Google OS.
Not Google. What do they call it? I can’t believe I’m– Android. Android, exactly. And I don’t necessarily have to stay everything with Apple if the best format for my reading my beloved comic books is a different device.
Stephen: the one, the– so I’ve got an Android-like tablet and I’ve got an iPad, and I use the Android-like tablet more often because I’ve got various formats. It just seems easier to work with files. If I have books from friends or I’ve got some stuff I’ve purchased like on Humble and I download it, it’s easier to get it on there.
And I’ve got a whole bunch of comics from Humble Bundle I’ve gotten so I can transfer it. Apple makes that really difficult to do
Alan: really? That’s interesting because, you would think that there’s standard formats and as long as they covered the e-book and the, I’m try- ECM or whatever I’ve seen. But
Stephen: with the Android tablet, I plug it in, I use my file explorer like I do with everything I have on my computer with my files, and I drag the, the e-books or whatever that I’ve gotten and drop it in a folder, and then I unplug it and go read. Done. Apple on
Alan: of the digital rights management. Okay.
Stephen: Yeah, on PC now I have to get iTunes, which doesn’t always work with Windows, and you have to do this and give it permission here, and then I’m logging in here and I have to go find…
It just from the PC standpoint, not using everything Ama- or Apple, I have to go through multiple steps. And then it’s nothing easy to just drag and drop. On iTunes I’m looking at it, I can move my music, but to move files over, I have to connect to one of the cloud services. I have to put my stuff in there.
It has to up… it, I’m sure some of it is just because I have everything set up for Windows and Apple’s a different environment, but Microsoft and Apple both how can we make it inconvenient for the opposing enemies?”
Alan: a switching cost. Exact- I know what you’re saying. Maybe that’s probably why I haven’t noticed that Apple is more difficult because I really do use Mac and iOS and stuff like that regularly. And so it is a– I love the fact that it is as integrated, that I can be reading something here and I can go into the other room and pick up exactly to like the page, the panel of what I was reading.
So the fact that it has that handoff has been like that’s even more advanced than what I’ve seen elsewhere. But that’s because I’ve already got everything set up to do that instead of trading back and forth between browsers or between operating systems.
Stephen: And, I use Plex for a lot of the movies that I’ve gotten from my DVDs.
Alan: media server. Exactly. Yeah
Stephen: I watch something here on my computer while I’m working. I go into the living room, turn on Xbox, and I keep watching it right from there. I do it from my phone and, so everything that’s a cloud-based service works pretty well.
But s- a lot of these you can connect to … There are a couple iPad apps that you can connect to multiple cloud services, and that’s not too bad. I put stuff on my Google Cloud, and no matter what I’m using, that’s what I connect to.
Alan: See, podcasts are like that too. There’s many places to get a podcast and that they have different degrees of how well it integrates, what the me- the meta information that’s brought along with it and stuff like that, how easy it is to keep track of what you’ve listened to. Am I on episode 132 or 133?
And things like
that. ‘Cause it, playing with the world of TV, we watch our British baking show, and you find out that if you’re, like, on either the Roku box or Google OS, it keeps– It doesn’t share information as to we’ve been watching our baking show and is it, can I go to exactly the same episode depending on the one, and even along the lines of it was there.
You and I have talked about this before. It was there and now it’s not. They had a new, licensing agreement with somebody else, and that information doesn’t travel. So then we have to go and say we were on like season three, episode seven,” and you go there. But then each time you go to, through it, it tries to start you over at episode, season one, episode one, ’cause it keeps its own internal track.
And now there’s overhead of every time we have to go and look at what we’ve watched and remember, “Oh yeah, that was patisserie week, remember?” So it’s very funny to me. It was so convenient, and then when that breaks it’s “Can’t you guys just
fucking work this out? Can you please?”
Stephen: to drive people with OCD crazy.
Alan: Yes
Stephen: I got halfway through on this streaming, now I gotta switch to that. So I- I’ve been known to do this if there’s a show I’m watching, TV series that I’m binging somewhere and it changes or whatever. I’m like, “Crap. Okay episode one.
Okay, now I’m done. Episode two. Oh, I’m done. Episode…” So I have to go through three seasons making them all marked watched so I’m not looking at it going, “Great, I’m on season seven and five, six, seven are watched, but one, two, and three are not. I gotta go fix that.”
Alan: So honestly, that would be a solution, right? I should go in, start watching it, fast-forward to the end, have it tick it, mark it so that it knows I watched it, and then even if I have to watch three seasons, pseudo-watch, at least that way it’ll know I’m now on season four instead of minding to assert, “Give me season four.”
Stephen: and then there are s- things out there like Just Watch, justwatch.com or whatever it is, where you can keep track of the shows and seasons you’ve watched. And I’m like, “That’s really cool, but really, am I gonna sit there and watch four episodes of ‘Supernatural’ and then log into this website and mark them all down?”
No, I’m not.
Alan: If it talked to, if they had ways to be able to do it as an extension that it kept track of that for you. That, but apparently not yet. I’m pretty sure that every single one of those has its proprietary stuff because they want to make it that leaving me is hard. You know what I mean? I don’t want you to…
and just funny, as we’ve talked about, we don’t tend to be subscribed to everything because I don’t want my multiple channel bill to be as big as my cable bill was when it was bloated. But then when you turn Apple TV on and off because there’s new “Ted Lasso” or there’s a new series I wanna watch, it, it– there’s a little bit of they keep it improving it or at least changing it, and you go back to Apple, it’s the menu bar is different and how you search is and all that kind of stuff.
It used to have a QWERTY keyboard, and now it just has the little A, B, C, D or vice versa. And and they aren’t all the same. So that thing of you wanna sit down and relax, and then there’s 10 minutes of overhead of getting to the show you wanna watch so you can relax. It’s once in a while, things like, it, it, of course it has subscriptions, so you have to put in your name and password, and it knows you’ve paid and that kind of stuff.
And once in a while it just loses it. Whatever the little meta information, the file that it keeps that in got corrupted, and I have to reassert that I have an HBO subscription. And and they’ve made it relatively easy. Use your phone with this QR code on screen, and it takes you right
Stephen: Oh yeah, I love that. Yes
Alan: But then it’s like I was gonna just watch TV. I don’t always have my phone with me, so now I gotta go get my phone, et cetera, et
Stephen: Yeah, I, there, there was a night a month or two ago, we were playing a Champions RPG, and Reese got a phone call, and he’s like, “Ugh, excuse me.” And he’s in the living room for 40 minutes. And I’m like, “What the heck?” He’s like with our phone, we got a subscription to HBO, and we got a subscription to so and and, it was six months, and then it was so much for another six months or whatever so I’ve had it on my phone, and that’s why I watch stuff. But now Shannon wanted to watch it at home through the Xbox, and her mother wanted to use it at home, and she’s, computer illiterate. But Shannon was talking to her mother, and I’m trying to walk them through how to verify, and it’s coming to me, and I gotta give it to them.
And I’m like, “Wow,” that, so
Alan: Oh, man. It’s a tangled web, especially, like Colleen and I say this all the time, when there’s something that’s really ridiculously difficult, it’s h- honestly, we’ll keep working at it to make it work, but there are so many people that are not anywhere near as smart or adventurous or determined as we are, and like they’ll just give up.
So don’t they want this thing to be easy to use so that people are, “Hey, I really wanted to watch the Browns game.” Amazon and various different services now have live sports, which is a big breakthrough, ’cause for a long time only ESPN. But then you start trying to do it and it’s like I need a different login or license because it really is a different thing even though it’s incorporated within.
And there really– There’s been a couple times where we’re trying to get on to watch s- Only Murders in the Building or something like that, and it just is one screen too difficult, and we’ll be like, “How about baking? How about we just go watch the– that we just watched it last night? We know it works, or at least we hope it works between last night and today.”
Stephen: my, my mother is not a techno person at all. We’ve set things up. She’s gotten really good, figured out the Roku, and she can search, and she can go to the different s- Doesn’t have all the tech jargon down. I’ll say or if I say a widget or an app or whatever, she’s like I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And I’m like, “I have to try and explain to you. It’s just a channel. Have you looked at the channel?” I’m on here.” “What cha- No, not on the Spectrum app, using the Prime channel.” You know what I mean? It’s jargon. But I gave her a tablet, oh man, 12, 13 years ago, that I had gotten with my phone, and I set it up for Facebook and email for her, so she knew how to do all that.
But because I set both of them up the same time and people were, sending her messages on Facebook, she would get an email and then click it, and it would open up the Facebook app, and she’d read whatever and go back to her email. So to– in her mind, she wasn’t differentiating what’s the difference
Alan: It was all one thing exactly. Yeah
Stephen: her tablet is so old and the apps are so old, and it’s not been updated, it, things stopped working. It broke. So I’m like, “Ugh.” But she has a laptop, so we wanted to, I wanted to show her on the browser everything, how to get to Facebook and her email. And that took a bit to get logged in because I don’t know my password.
How do I know my password? How…” It was saved, and you never had to type it. It’s that type of thing. Finally got it all set up and the, showed her the email stuff and clicking on it, and then it’s a new v- round of explaining. “Okay, so this email, you’re not on Facebook.” It says Facebook.”
“Yes, but it’s an email.” What’s that mean?” And, “Over here on Facebook, see this notification icon? Shows you.” How come those are all the same?” “Because when you get a notification, it sends you an email to tell you have a notification.” Then why do I need the y-” “I I don’t, you don’t need that, but it’s what you’ve been doing,” so she said looking through here, there’s nothing on email I want if I can get the notifications here.” “Great. You don’t need email. There you go.” So she gets on Facebook, and she’s looking through it, and I’m explaining the feed as opposed to your profile page and what you’ve posted and how to look at peop- And then she’s go- You know, she’s used to email.
She goes how do I delete all this stuff?” “Oh, you don’t. This is other people’s Facebook.” I don’t wanna read this. I wanna delete it.” “Just move past it,” and trying to explain that concept, you’re in somebody’s house looking at their wall, reading their journal, is what you’re doing.
I don’t wanna do that.” That’s what you’ve been doing.” “No, I was on email.” “No, th-” So she’s sitting there a while going through this order. She closes the laptop and walks away and does something else. I’m like, “So did you figure it out?” She goes, “Yeah, I figured out that none of this is very important.
It’s all junk, so why do I care?”
Alan: I said, “I don’t have any interesting friends.” And so
Stephen: Yeah, I was…
all right, good to go.
Alan: We were just at a, a party on Saturday night, and and he… people our age who they often have exactly what you’re talking about. The parents or grandparents that are grandparents. But they– some of them are still sharp as a whip.
A 96-year-old lady that really she doesn’t want you to do it for her. She’s like, “Walk me through it, but explain what you’re thinking while you’re doing it so I can troubleshoot, so that I can– I’m not gonna be having to call you every single time.” And so there– it’s interesting that is a lifeline, a real connection to the world for people when they were feeling a little bit isolated.
They discover Facebook or any number of other social media, and they love seeing the pictures from their nieces and nephews and grand and all that kind of stuff. So I, it– I love that, hearing about how, and if anything, that does keep their mind sharp when they’re having to learn a new thing. And I think the benefit of learning it is enough.
I get to stay in contact with my family and friends, but my friends are now in, still back in Wisconsin, and I’m in Ohio, and all that kind of stuff, you know. So I… The biggest thing I like about social media is that I have friends from high school, college, work, or whatever else it might be.
Stephen: friends you don’t have to pay.
Alan: So it keep-keeps the cost down. And just once in a while I, I– You get such wonderful news, sometimes terrible news, but at least you’re, like, keeping up with them and you can, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry that you’re going through this.” But it isn’t so much of the clutter of it.
It isn’t the memes, it isn’t the endless politicking, it isn’t the endless sales and stuff like that. It’s just once in a while you get to read from Tom Cortese that he had a great… we just, we talked, like I’m trying to think of how we got to it, but it was, I mentioned a relatively obscure book because we were talking about language.
I posted a little thing of here’s all the fun things. Language has all these wonderful inconsistencies and they tickle me. And then I said, “You know what you need to read is a book called ‘P is for Pterodactyl,’ because it goes through every letter of the alphabet where it’s a silent letter or it’s wrong in some way, and so that’s the perfect wrong book to give a kid because they’re not…”
And he said, “I have that book too.” And like that’s why we became friends 40 years ago, because we started talking when we worked at Bubby & Zeidy’s, and it was like the cool odd music that nobody else listens to, what he did, and a cool book, and the love of fractals and math. And this is the guy that became a rocket scientist.
He’s the guy that did the weather simulations for NASA so they’d know what opportunity it was to launch something, ’cause it really matters that it’s good weather. And so bright, and one of those guys that like, man, if you’re friends with him, you feel like you made the team. He’s so bright, and yet I can keep up with him and actually surprise him once in a while.
I guess I’m okay too. You know what I mean? So
Stephen: So you mentioned the 90-year-old that wants you to explain. I love that because one– this is a slight offshoot rant. One of the things I have a lot of problem with in tech support are people learning, wanting to do s- they want you to walk you through it, and then what they do is they get a screenshot.
They write down, click this button, click…” But they don’t know what any of the other buttons mean. They don’t know why they’re clicking that button and what the impact is or what the other choices are. So then as, when something changes or it’s a little different or they need to make a different choice, they have no clue ’cause they haven’t learned how to do it.
They’ve just done the rat in the maze, left left get my food. Left left get my food. And that’s, something I try and do when I do talks and they’re informational, I always try and explain why you’re making that choice and what it impacts, what the other choices are.
The funny thing is there are times people are like I’m too confused. That’s too much. Just tell me what to click.” And I’m like okay, but you’re gonna be calling me in a month,” or whatever
Alan: You hope, you teach a person to fish and they, all those people that use a GPS but never look at a map, there’s a disconnect there as to they don’t have that view of the world where they get how far and close are things. If I want to go somewhere else, is it on the way or is it not?
If you only have that exact little rat through a maze type thing, then you’re trapped with that GPS, but you don’t have the choice of knowing everything else that’s around it, so
Stephen: connecting that, I was just watching an online entrepreneur video talking about how to y- how to prosper in the age of AI. They’re like: “Look, AI is good, but it is not good at figuring some things out, and this is a skill that we don’t learn in school.” And they gave this example. They said: “Look, if you were in school and your friend was really good at math and you were really good at history, so if you did…
A- and you’re taught to, learn this is it, these facts and blah, blah, blah. But if you did both of our math homework and I did both of our history homework, that’s cheating and it’s not good for school and education and all that.” Now, put it into the business world that if you’re on a project with somebody and they’re really good at the presentations of the project to get the dollars and you’re really good at figuring out what those dollars are needed for and where they could go, and you combine those skills to make the presentation instead of one pers- two different people doing the exact same thing, that’s looked at i- in a good way.
We were efficient, we used our resources well, we could figure out… But we’re not taught how to do that in school. And one of the things AI doesn’t do well, for example, what’s a good business to do on Etsy? And this is one of the things I’ve looked at, and they’re like: “Oh, you make T-shirts and you make it like this.”
And then you get 5,000 people making the exact same T-shirts in the exact same way on Etsy
Alan: the exact same advice when they asked, “Okay,
Stephen: But what this video was talking about and this person who’s done this and, has online businesses, I looked at what the popular T-shirts were. T-shirts are popular with this, with, 10 things.
Okay. If people are watching dog videos and buying dog shirts and then these sayings or whatever are popular, how about if I change those sayings and put them with dog shirts and sell that? And boom, it’s different. But that’s something AI is not good at figuring out and telling you. So they were– Their basic thing was, in today’s world you wanna prosper with AI, you have to do what AI does not do.
You have to be in that area where AI is not going to solve the problem and figure it out. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people who think AI will solve every problem, even I’ve been sent instructions that somebody got from AI to do a s- very specific niche thing between APIs between two different services.
These are two different services that have very specific things for this one specific thing I’m trying to do, and AI has no clue how to do it, and they send me these instructions as it see how easy it is?” Yeah, those are, those don’t work.
Alan: It broke at step three out of 20. It didn’t work, exactly
Stephen: So that’s what this video is talking about.
I’m like, oh, that’s a– I love that way of looking at it, and it’s pretty darn true
Alan: Yeah, so that’s really insightful because I think for a long time we’ve had that tendency towards specialization that people silo themselves more and more so they can be the guy that really knows how to code in Java for very specific middleware or whatever else it might be. And I date myself, Java is no longer the fair-haired boy.
What I’ve often tried to explain that and I really think I have this is, and E-Edmund Wilson used to talk about this. He had a book called “Consilience” that was about how there are big realms of knowledge, and there’s a particular kind of genius that comes from being able to see the similarities, like in biomimicry, that if you learn how Velcro was invented, it’s ’cause somebody looked at how a burr works on your cloth on, like sticks to your clothing, and that we can mimic that so that the…
Like nature figured this out. How do I make a seed that’s gonna stick to things and then be carried away far away, so I’ll find a new, l-less dense of my particular kind of plant type thing? And toot my own horn, I’ve always been really good at that synthesis that I can see how… Like I went to a futurist conference one time and a guy was talking about, the way that you powder a donut is the same way that you sputter gold onto a ring, and you try to make it so it’s the right amount.
You don’t want it to be overwhelmed and totally covered in either case. You don’t wanna put on more than you need to. And so the same, there’s all kinds of examples of where you can take something that you learned over here and translate it with some changes and mirrors.
Stephen: able to think in that way
Alan: And exactly that, to be able to, way back, remember all those essays you wrote, compare and contrast between.
There’s all kinds of things that when I was doing it, it was like this just seems like a kind of foolish exercise, but I’ll play the game. But I was really good at it about here’s the ways in which it is similar, and here’s the way in which that similarity starts to break down, and here’s the way in which it’s very different.
But then there’s all this middle ground of a-all those things that are everything is a spectrum instead of being yes/no, one or zero kind of a thing. And so when I’ve tried to explain sometimes how you solved something, how you figured out a puzzle to be able to track I kinda knew a lot of stuff already, and it’s a matter of picking out from various different realms of knowledge that it was a little bit of an adhesive and it was a little bit of…
You know what I mean? Like there… and that breakthroughs happen in terms of medical science and chemistry and stuff like that, where they find out that protein folding is kinda like solving this kind of puzzle. Let’s find a machine that’s really good at that kind of puzzle and not have a human being have to do it.
So AI will be really good at each of those idiot savant talents, but it might not do those things where it joins things together unless they start to have feed it all kinds of books like “Consilience” and my… I should do it. I al- I always have 10 Mensa talks I could do, and this is another one of those things I need to do is Here’s breakthroughs that I’ve had where it was obvious to me after a little bit of playing with it that this was, but everybody that I presented this to, they were like, “How in the world did you come up with that?”
And I don’t know. I don’t know how I have a, an ability to do that, but there’s a certain amount of how does humor work? It’s because you take something and put it in a slightly different context, a different word or a different, like a paraprosdokian, where you lead people on a path and they take a left turn.
And so I’ve always had that playfulness. And so one of the reasons that games are cool is because you get to practice that. You get to figure out what’s important in a game and what the strategies might be the rules for survival and for winning. But while you’re doing it, you’re j- I don’t know that I sit there “I’m gonna study the manual until I figure it all out.”
You just play, and after two, three, four, five plays, you find that you’re finding those things, those commonalities or those things that if everybody’s doing it, no one’s getting ahead. Whereas if I just do this slightly different thing and take a little bit more risk, but if it pays off, it’s a, it blindsides other people.
It’s very cool to see that work. You know what I mean? So it whatever, if there’s a, a particular kind of genius that I have, it’s when I read “Godel, Escher, Bach,” a, a great book that talked about how the similarities between this math theory and this music theory and this artistry were, had similar elements.
And every page I was like, “Yes. Yes, that’s true. That makes sense. That’s exactly right.” And it wasn’t like I had to slog through it. It was more like, “Give me more.” And I just love where people have had similar insights like that, people with a good sense of humor, it’s really fun to see, I can track how your brain works there.
That you just, you change the color of this, and it makes for a whole different joke. It’s really cool, actually.
Stephen: And one of the things I hear a lot is where do you come up with your ideas?” And just about every author has heard that from multiple… “How do you get your ideas? Where do you come up with your ideas?” And a lot of time the, the question is met with “What do you mean where do I get my…
I just do. They come out. They’re all over. They’re
Alan: You’re all over.
Stephen: Yeah. “Everywhere I go I get ideas.” But what I’ve come to realize is some people’s brains just do not work that way. They’ve not trained themselves or their brain doesn’t function that way to see these things. You’ve probably heard other authors say this.
It’s like I went to buy groceries at the store and I saw this guy with a dog, and it gave me this idea for that, and there you go, I got a story.” People are like how do you do that?” What do you mean, how do you do it? You just do it. And that happens a lot, and that’s what I was noticing with this entrepreneur thing.
I’ve done that with some things. I’ve talked to people what if we did a T-shirt like this?” Me and Casey have done this. We could do this idea.” “Oh, that’s a great idea.” And yeah, it’s not that big of a deal, but I guess that’s how my brain works and sees that. And it’s difficult to understand some people don’t function that way.
Alan: That’s right. You really have to I, I– This is, so the upside is, “Oh my God, I’m so happy my brain works like that.” There’s any number of times that kind of smarts looks like witchcraft, that people are really spooked by, “Wow, I, I don’t feel secure around you because you get these insights that nobody else gets.
Are you gonna use them against me?” It’s like no.” I, like I said, did you hear the word playful in there? Did you hear the word… but that’s what people think is that if you’re the only one that knows how to do that, you’re immediately gonna parlay that into some kind of power, some kind of,
Stephen: that’s how their mind
Alan: it I… and exactly, that’s insight into if they had that ability, they’d be thinking of how they could kinda take advantage of it and others. And I don’t know, when you have so many ideas and people are like why’d you give that idea away?” Because I have another thousand coming along. It’s not a scarce resource to me.
It’s oh my God, I have an explosion. I have to sift through things to decide what I’m gonna work on,
Stephen: isn’t that the joke with movies or books? It’s like, “Oh, how about this? I got this great idea, but if I tell it to you, we’ll split the profits. You just have to write it.” Oh my God, I have just loads of ideas. I don’t need your ideas. Ideas are not– That’s why you can’t just send an idea to a publisher.
They won’t even open it, they won’t read it, nothing. Because if they’re already working on it or they do the same thing, you’ll sue them. But i- ideas mean nothing. And people don’t understand that until you’re in one of these industries. Everybody’s got ideas
Alan: Harlan Ellison had a great story about that. I think I might have mentioned this before where, they were putting together a a an anthology of some kind, but it was for charity. And so he was like can you come up with a story for free for us?” And he was like, do the printers get paid?
Do the distributors get paid? Does the cover artist get paid? Why does everybody else get paid except for the people that think that because ideas appear out of mid- in midair, they’re free or they’re even worthless or something like that?” And he had to say even if it seems that it’s effortless to me, it is not that way to other people.
It’s quite effortful and sometimes impossible.” And so there’s nothing wrong with knowing what your particular talents are and saying, let’s find a fair divvy on this.” It isn’t you can only have the idea, “Hey, you execute it and we’ll split it.” Y- you have to find something that… I think I’ve mentioned before that I like a writer named Charles Stross, and he’s so bright.
He often has 10 great ideas in a book that are besides the main line of the book that he’s writing. And one of them that he had was a guy that was just so full of ideas, but v- interesting enough that he’d be like, he had, had a whole company that was based on as if it was an incubator. “Let’s try this.
Let’s try this.” And every one of those ideas that made money, he didn’t have to make all the money, but he had so many ideas. It’s “Just give me 10%,” and you do 10% 100 times and you’re still doing pretty well. You know what I mean? So I loved that he found a way of taking his not even playful, kinda a little bit crazy, a little bit random, but it from the germ of an idea can come something that’s you shave off the oddest parts and then it fits into the existing scaffolding that the w- that the reality is and stuff like that.
And some people are really good at that, that they hear an idea and they think how to make it practical or practicable. You know what I mean? And so you need that collaboration that you were talking about, that it isn’t just one person that does each of those things. There has to be enough, I don’t know, middlemen or just enough people willing to talk to each other to say that’s what I was shooting for, but what about this?”
There are some people that are great at the naysayers. You know what I mean? The people that, that really, they’re not good to have in a brainstorming session ’cause you’re supposed to be just throwing ideas. What they really are good at, “We have a thought about this.” And sometimes it’s like, “Oh, that really quashes the idea entirely,” because, they’re really good at poking holes in things. And so you have to bring them in at the right time in a project, or you have to make sure that they’re not the only one making decisions, because sometimes you have to have the boldness to say that’s not an entirely true thing. It’s a risk, and we can mitigate that risk.
And but thank you for pointing it out, because otherwise we might have been blindsided by this thing happening.” So there’s, I don’t know, that’s just, boy, we have discussions in Mensa about risk management and people that really were at one end or the other of that spectrum, and somebody had to be in the middle of saying, “You heard of insurance, right?
That’s what insurance is all about. It’s that you don’t take no risk and you don’t take foolish risk.” You try to assign what’s the value of if this thing goes wrong, what would it cost me? What’s the odds of it going wrong? And then what am I willing to pay to avoid those odds and pay, not pay that cost?
And that’s how insurance gets figured out. And then not only in Iowa Metsa, but like I worked at Progressive Insurance for five years, and to hear how many people didn’t have the insurance mindset to say, “Why are we going forward with this project or this entire line of business?” And not look at it from an insurance viewpoint.
It’s like how can you work for a big insurance company and not think like insurance does? Because people don’t, because they are already siloed or they’re– You know what I mean? They kind of tune out. “All I gotta do is get my report out. I don’t care why.”
Oh,
Stephen: yeah.
Alan: I will one– In closing, I guess we should come up.
Genghis Con is happening the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Stephen: is that one? I haven’t heard of
Alan: It’s a cool small press, alternative press expo. It’s particular to Cleveland. It’s relatively small, but anybody that’s in this like, Northeast Ohio area and from surrounding, they pull down from Tennessee and Indiana and stuff. So it’s like going to Artist Alley, where it’s all the artists and writers that you’ve never heard of, but you look at it and it’s like, “Wow, this is beautiful.”
You should be like, “Are you self-publishing? Are you trying to get like your portfolio looked at?” So I wander around like trying to be a Medici, I will sponsor you. I have a little bit of money and if the problem is like, it’s going onto Kickstarter or GoFundMe and not only looking at things on screens, but being able to talk to the, the creator right there and see what their fire is, what their joy is and stuff like that.
So I, I– Sometimes the weekend after Thanksgiving is quite busy, but this is worth taking a couple hours to do. It’s a place called the, the Pivot or something like that. It’s a relatively new facility. It might’ve been an old facility that’s been renamed, but it’s worth going to. So Genghis Con, everybody, if you’re in the Cleveland
Stephen: Yeah, I’ve got a genghiskhancleveland.com
Alan: There we go. Exactly. So
Stephen: Interesting.
Alan: okay. It, one of those things that
Stephen: week, though, I’m out at, in, in Florida
Alan: If that’s a place that might be good for you. If you’re gonna bring your various different books and stuff like that and have a booth, they have a whole range of not only comic books, but all kinds of other publishing and artwork and crafty things and stuff like that.
It’s really a cool event, especially right before Christmas. You’ll find things like, “Oh, I got something that I didn’t even know they wanted, but this is really cool.” So
Stephen: You know what? We’ve talked about doing that. Maybe next week we’ll talk after Thanksgiving, how was Thanksgiving, blah, blah, blah. But some i- interesting ideas for Christmas gifts,
Alan: Exactly.
Stephen: With specific people.
Alan: Yeah, because Black Friday is now, 30 days long. You know what I mean? There’s just, everybody’s pushing to get their Christmas sales up, and there’s all kinds of bargains to be had. So yeah, we’ll talk about that. We’ll make some recommendations and maybe just spot ideas and stuff. Okay. All right.
Always a pleasure, Steven.
Stephen: Yep, you have a great Thanksgiving. Tell Colleen
Alan: Same for you. Exactly. Very good.
Stephen: All right
