Hello and welcome to meters pod interviews episode one. I
recently had a chance to sit down talk with Josh Finney and
Patrick McElroy. Together. They are wild stallions just getting
their team cards you, Josh and Patrick are working on a graphic
novel called a case file Arkham. Set in the mid 1940s. case file
Arkham follows Hank Flynn, a down on his luck private eyes
back from the war and now working the main streets the
most cursed city on Earth. Arkham, Massachusetts, and
Things only get worse for Flynn when a wealthy uptown socialite
hires him to track down an artist by the name of Pikmin.
What begins is a simple missing persons case leads Flynn down a
dark path of flesh eating goals, vengeful witches and a notorious
Innsmouth. Mafia. Everything about this book looks amazing.
But enough of me talking about it. Let's hear from the creators
themselves.
Hey, how are you guys doing tonight?
Very well. How are you? Doing
great doing great. Why don't you go ahead and introduce
yourselves one by one and tell us a little bit about case file
Arkham.
Josh Kerr to kick it off.
Okay. My name is Josh Finney. I'm the writer behind case file
Arkham. I've done World War kaiju, titanium, rain and
utopia. It's in the past and I've also done some short
stories in the pros world as well.
And I'm Patrick McAvoy. I'm doing the art on case file
Arkham. And let's see I've worked with Josh on World War
kaiju. And worked earlier with our Kea doing a book called
Starkweather immortal another graphic novel. Another graphic
novel I just did last year called The Nain Rouge sort of a
young adult book. And other than that, though, I'm more of an
illustrator has been my living for the last 15 years or so. I
do illustration. And I also do multimedia work, animation, art
directing, that kind of thing for for games and educational
products. And I've I could go on and on. I've worked on different
role playing games and collectible card games, Call of
Cthulhu game and the game of thrones card game and I was on
contract with Marvel for a couple of years doing work for
their marketing division.
I always like to say, I like this, I always like to say the
Patrick is the one of your favorite artists, you just don't
know his name, right? Chances are if you like comics Cthulhu
or just about any role playing property, you probably own
multiple pieces of his art. You just never knew it.
But when I was Google stalking Patrick, I noticed I've seen a
lot of his work before knows name, but now I got him on get
him on the phone. So with case file Arkham Are you both working
on the art and story? Are you completely complete
collaborating? Or is it kind of like, you know, one of us one
department ones the other and you just get together? Or how's
the workload split up?
Well, with World War kaiju, I had an extremely specific vision
for that world that was kind of my baby that would, you know, we
had a lot of back and forth and a lot of collaboration. But I
was very hands on with this one, I would say it's a very much a
5050 creation, I may be writing it, but it is our creation.
Patrick has been very, very hands on with the plot and just
dialogue and ideas. On the other hand, I've decided to take a
step back and just let him kind of control the way it looks.
Which is kind of fun. Although on World War Casio is really
great. If anybody goes online looks these up, you'll find
they're in a completely different style. World War kg
was a painted book. It's more like the illustration work I
usually do. And Josh did a lot of the art assisting on that.
And one could say he did these fantastic 3d cities and things
for backgrounds and other textures that I would map on to
3d primitives and very collaborative and you know, when
you do a book of that scope, and yeah, in that extensive style,
you're really just one person has a hard time doing it without
some help. And Josh is able to step right in because he's a
graphics professional as well.
Yeah, I did a lot of the graphic design on that book. So like,
anytime there was a newspaper or a document or a map, I did it to
things like that. And in fact, there's as a challenge to people
have the book there's one full page that Josh did Oh yeah, I
didn't do and so people should guess which one that is
flipped through trying to figure it out right.
And it's not gonna be as easy as you might think. Because I kept
changing styles up through them. Oh, yeah, but Josh did one that
actually looks like I could have done it. And he did it
really looked through the sample pages of World War guides you
and I really liked how it had a very throwback feel to the art
and made it look like the old Godzilla movies.
Yeah, I was one of one of the visions and one of the reasons
it was so critical that we get Patrick is we needed that that
really overblown, oversaturated Technicolor look of the era and
he just nailed it. Yeah, yeah.
And and of course, the look. Thank you. And of course, the
look of guys and giant rubber. Yes, yes, they
had to look like they were actually guys in costumes.
Go into a case file Arkham. I noticed on the Kickstarter page,
that it says that you want it to be all one graphic novel. And if
you reach a stretch goals, it'll be even even longer graphic
novel. Are you planning on taking the story? And extending
it out into maybe a series or a series of graphic novels? Or is
this going to be a one shot?
Oh, no ABS? Absolutely, we are going to want to turn this into
a series of graphic novels. It's, it's around a character
Hank Flynn who we really want to keep going with for a while.
I think it's such a great name.
He's a private eye who works cases in the town of Arkham,
which, you know, anybody who's read Lovecraft pretty much knows
this the the center of all evil. And we both really have an
affinity for the film noir aesthetic and that hardboiled
era. And then, and we both really loved Lovecraft. So it
seemed like a fantastic way once we zeroed in on you know, this
was going to be about this. Private I hardboiled private ins
world, which we started zeroing in on that we said, Yeah, we
could do, we could do dozens of stories. Yeah.
Ideally, we'd like to do one one of these books a year, and it
would each book could be an individual case. And so this
first one is kind of revolving around Pikmin. He's hired to
find this missing artist. But you know, future plots include,
you know, he gets hired by a man who's lost his memory for five
years and Flynn is now Hank Flynn is now trying to piece
together and of course, it turns out to be the shadow out of time
and
okay, you know,
there's one where he ends up going to end Smith and dealing
with the Innsmouth mob, we actually there's, that's the
overarching thing that ties them all together as he keeps having
these visions of daggone. But I don't want to get into that
guy. You don't want to go too far. You got to get people to
want to get the book. Don't give it all away spoilers.
But it's amazing how easy once we once we got into the swing of
it, it the Lovecraft world fits really easily into the whole
film noir aesthetic. Yeah. And I added some flourishes that are a
little more like the, you know, German expressionist silent film
era, you know, and, of course, the, the film noir directors
were really influenced by that as well. So it's not really a
great stretch, right? So visually, it all really fits in
nicely with Lovecraft.
Well, that opening sequence that we have on the website and on
the Kickstarter, with the Google chasing the capital, there's a
bit of am and Nosferatu in some of those shots. I see it.
Absolutely. Oh, and it's a totally different style for both
of us. Really, Josh has never, you know, indulged in a more
hardboiled dialogue style. And I have only briefly worked in
black and white line work. And definitely not in this sort of
horror, Stark blacks. And, you know, crazy details on the
bricks and kind of things like that style. So it's fun, in a
way because we're both a little out of our comfort zone that
we've we've both come up with. So that's another kind of
exciting aspect of all this,
but it's also things we both love intently, so it's not like
it's that much out of the comfort zone. I mean, we enjoy
every second of it.
Exact trying something new is always exciting. I think
the closest I ever got to Noir is my first book and a lot of
the stories I've written are are hard cyberpunk, but that's not
quite new. RSF
would you want to live in the world? that you're making for
case file Arkham Why or why not?
I you know what? I would accept the fact that it's it's
ultimately Lovecrafts universe and the level of Bleak that's
involved craft get to you, when you're realizing, you know,
dealing with Cenobites is more uplifting, more hopeful.
So you're saying no, which is the correct answer.
I'd live in World War kg. That'd be fun. But this and No, no, I
wouldn't.
And I would want to live in a world where they had made this
sort of genre into movies in the 1940s. So that we had Humphrey
Bogart starring and Cat people or something. So I want to live
in that world and probably want to live in it in 1947.
Imagine where cinema would be today. If that's what it was
back then. Yeah.
Yeah, oh, I can imagine one of the great you know, more
directors in a in a, you know, a big studio picking up say, the,
the Lovecraft library and say, We're gonna make movies with
this guy stuff. And oh, man,
I'd love to have a zoo with all of his, especially the creatures
from the mountains of madness. The elegant things? Yes, the
elder things I hadn't I was blinking. Just to see them.
Yeah, I've got an image in my head because I never went and
looked up any images of what other people have, have
interpreted the mass, but I've got you know, this solid image
in my head. I'd love to see that as a real thing, but not be near
one, you know. Kind of a zoo like where they're pacified with
tranquilizers or something.
But believe it or not, I did do a book a few years back, gosh,
over five years back now for Lovecraft Necronomicon primer by
who was a Llewellyn publishing. And it is available in
bookstores everywhere. I don't know if you can get anywhere
other than Amazon these days. That was fun because I got to
illustrate, gosh, like 20 or more different Lovecraft
creatures each chapter was about a different creature.
Have you all seen the movie Battle Royale?
You know what? I've read quite a bit of the comics and I saw half
the movie on Netflix and then I had to I forgot why I didn't get
to finish it.
But you're familiar with the concept essentially Yeah. Hunger
Games this is we're getting to the to the real meat of the
interview here in a battle royale situation between all the
fast food and cereal mascots who would win and why
I knew somebody was gonna ask this eventually.
Cereal mascots. Yeah, okay.
Can't okay, right off the top. I mean, I gotta cut to the chase
here. You can't count out Count Chocula is the only vampire in
the group. But on the other hand, I would think isn't isn't
a carrot. Kind of like wood. I don't know if you stuck a
vampire through the heart with a carrot. But in that case, you
know Jack from the jack in the box. He's got the pointy carrot
nose. And I think he might be able to take out Count Chocula
Yeah, if he's just so I've given us a lot of thought. Ya know
if he's a if it's a Japanese made production, Japanese based
reality? Yeah, I think Jack would have it in the bag
strictly because he knows he seems to be on top of
everything. And he's got the weird head. Now if it was a
United States modern day production. If this was a US
type film, it has to be the Windies mascot chick because
it's a girl and right now you know that's the that's that's
what's selling with the kids. Well, maybe the
kids that break up break up into a team windy and team Chocula Oh
yeah,
well yeah, cuz the vampire exactly.
I don't even know.
They could have forgiven forbidden love steak.
Oh, yeah, you gotta have the forbidden loving or the love
triangle.
Tony the Tiger has has been dumped by Wendy and now he's
there. hooks up with a bad boy Count Chocula This is
practically writing
blueberry He's already dead I love the idea of a whole island
of mascots killing each other on that that's worthy of just a one
shot book on its on its own.
Just change the mascots just enough so you don't have to deal
with any legal issues. So
you can write that as one of them as a bizarro story, right?
Yeah.
Now is this I have to interview the interviewer? Is this a
question? You've asked other people before? Did you save it
up for us?
This is my first interview. Oh, I've never had that interview
before. You missed that part of the conversation?
throwing spitballs at you.
Yeah, this is this is my first interview. Ever.
You're doing great so far. Oh, great. Great. That's
good to hear. Good to hear. Okay, another serious one. And
I've asked this over many beers with many friends. What
superpower would you have if you could choose a superpower?
Hmm, that's a tough one.
And don't think about consequences like you know, the
whole if you could time travel you might call it you know,
causality and don't worry about that stuff. We're just we're
making it easy.
This is an X Men style power where you have one specialty
power it's not a Superman suite of powers situation. Yeah,
right.
Right.
Yeah. Not sleeping sounds pretty good. Get a lot more done that
way or not aging would be nice. Yes.
Not aging I think is a good one. Yeah. It works out well for lots
of villains at least. Like, like, no DC, you've got Raj al
Ghul and savage Vandal Savage. Course he's got the sweet of
Paris. He's super stressed. On
the other hand, if we're talking about pure gratuitous worthless
powers that really don't have a lot of value, but they're just
there. I think we're all at that point where every once awhile
you just want to be able to make somebody's head explode through
the internet.
Yes. scalings
when you said yes. You said useless I was thinking about
like you were thinking matter either lead or Arm Fall Off Boy.
Actually, a character showed up in one battle
seriously.
And then that always leads to the next question, Hero or
villain?
Oh, I didn't answer really but I did. I concurred with not aging
because I think it's not a very good power for 100 years or so.
But after a while, it really starts paying to
make small investments and everything and just see which
ones pay out.
Exactly. Also, I'll be upfront with you I you know, I I've
approached that I am 40 now and you start thinking I'm like
gonna get all the all the stories I want done in time. I
mean, that actually weighs on me now. I used to you don't think
about it but it actually does weigh on me now.
You know what that's a good argument for matter eater lad
because as we get older we can't eat as much as we used to.
Okay, so the not a hero or villain.
All of the great not aging characters seem to be villains.
But I would I would think I'd at least be chaotic good
old d&d alignments
I would actually I would be the I would be the asshole you don't
want but the asshole you need. Right? So not quite a hero of
it. But the asshole you need
the complete asshole with the heart of gold. I'd like to build
an asshole. How can folks get a hold of you on the web? Or at
least follow you? I know you've got the Kickstarter. I'm going
to be linking to your Kickstarter and any other
websites that you want me to link to in the show notes. But
anything else that Joel wanted to plug while you're here or any
websites you wanted to mention Twitter, Twitter accounts,
anything?
Well, actually, at this point, after my Facebook experiences,
I've just come to the conclusion maybe I shouldn't encourage
people to follow me.
Follow me I'm much more politically
Yeah, exactly. You're more charismatic than man. I've just
stopped caring. But as far as finding the I'd say the best
thing to do right now is go to the 01 website 01 Publishing
website, which has has a lot of help a lot of my books available
01 publishing.com I'd also like to plug everything I've done,
please, please, please go by World War guide, you go by
utopia, it's which is the cyberpunk story. And if there
it's still in print, titanium rain, Patrick,
those are good things. You know what I first want to plug the
concept of stretch goals? Oh,
yes, thank you. For ego.
Because case file Arkham is, by the time this comes out, I've
got my fingers crossed that we're going to be past 100%
funded on Kickstarter, which is absolutely phenomenal. But we
have stretch goals. 8000 is our minimum for which we will do the
most awesome graphic novel, I think, yes, I think anybody's
ever read. But it could be even better. Because at $11,000. If
we get up to 11,000, we're going to add 20 pages of content for
no extra charge. Yes. And if we make it to 14,000, we're going
to double the content, for instance, search. If somehow
some wonderful person came in and said 19,000 got us up to
$19,000, we would triple the size of the book.
And the way that it works is 8000 will get us half the book
three. Yeah, we got up to 11,000, we get the whole thing
in one and done whole thing, which is what we really want.
And if we go into 19,000, we can include some cutscenes. A lot of
background material, extra art from Patrick,
probably an extra short story in there. You know, lots of things,
all this stuff we could do as
well. We're toying with publishing, the original Pitmans
model will include the original Pitmans model with some
illustrations from Patrick possibly.
Yeah, so. So those are really important. 14,000 is ideally
where we'd like to get and that would be wonderful. It's, it's
6000 over our initial goal. But we've got a couple of weeks to
make it. And I'd like to ask anyone who's thinking of backing
the project or already has backed it to think about how
groovy it would be at twice the length and try to get all your
friends to come on board. You know, again, get an extra copy
for your friends. You never can tell when you're going to need
one. I'm sure most of the people out there have friends. I used
to have some.
Yeah, I started a podcast.
But yeah, that's the main thing I would want to plug. And we're
working with you that I worked on with Josh and cat, the
publisher of 01. Also, the name rich. The other graphic. I did
two graphic novels last year, how good is life? That one's
more for kids. It's not a swear word in it. And it's a really
fun one. And then I do a podcast called The Ninja mountain
podcast, where I'm one of a group of hosts from all over the
world. And we are talking about illustration every week. No, we
don't. We used to do it every week. Now we do it whenever we
feel like it because we're also busy. And then of course my
website is make a flow graphics.com
All right. Yeah, I call my podcast sometimes weekly
podcast.
It's a great name. Yeah, I like that
sometimes weekly podcast but um, 16 days, 16 days to go as of
this recording, I'd love to see extra artwork in the back of the
book. So folks, get out there. Click that back this project
button. Tell all your friends like like they were saying get a
get a copy for your friends. You never know. You forget a
birthday comes up. You can have it sitting there. Ready to go
for him? I think if you're listening to this podcast
anyway, you're into this type of fiction and your friends
probably are two I'm looking at are we it's just fantastic.
We've got an incentive that I think every Lovecraft fan needs.
And that is a shot glass from an authentic Innsmouth pub. The
dive.
Yes, Josh. Josh created a fantastic for the dive. And it's
got to be seen to be believed.
Yes. I love it.
You're still gonna ask us what Cthulhu Therefore,
oh yes. Why did I skip them? Yes. What do you think? Cthulhu
tastes like?
Well I actually put some thought into this since I had some
warning beforehand and I'm going to say that either he tastes
like the deep dark pit of despair where it's filled with
dark matter or or waffle house or worry tastes like yellow cake
washed down with a glass of heavy water
well, I don't know I guess I guess if you mix him with peanut
butter at dark creature who wants to sell it swallow your
soul but sticks to the roof of your mouth?
I was just thinking calamari
Yeah, I'm gonna be getting one of these the dive window
stickers. This is fantastic.
We have an ongoing joke cat and I that every once in a while
this will come up that we keep imagining what a love prep
themed sushi restaurant would have on its menu.
Well, what have you come up with?
Oh, well, you know, they're the rules themselves wouldn't sound
right, you know, just Cthulhu roll Star Spawn Roll Deep one
roll. But what would we actually make the rolls out of so of
course there would be the Kung Fu one would be the calamari.
Right, the tendrils coming out and then I don't know for a deep
one probably would be the equivalent to What's the capital
roll.
I imagined deep ones tastes a lot like hamachi. And that's why
you see so few baby deep ones because people are always
harvesting the row.
We've seen a few reaction to the word hide you themed roles. So
why not low prep themed rolls a natural fit, it
fits perfectly.
I now want to have a deep one row roll with a daggone egg on
top. All right, we've made the audience angry. Leave them
wanting more.
Well, all right. Well,
that's that's all I have for you guys. Thanks for coming on me.
despod being the inaugural interviews episode for me.
despod. I appreciate you both taking the time to come on the
show.
It was good meeting you, David. Yes. Yeah. All right. Well,
thank you very much support case file Arkham. And I don't know
rock on.
To have a sign off. I normally just say we'll see you next time
folks,
and be excellent to each other. Right
in the dark one, take your soul.
I really had a great time talking with these guys, as well
as a little bit of time with cat from 01 Publishing. I also feel
better backing a project when I know that the creators are
passionate about it. And as you can tell from the interview they
are please go check out their Kickstarter, which is linked in
the show notes for this episode and consider back in case file
Arkham Patrick, Josh, thanks for coming on the show and I wish
you guys the best of luck. Our theme music comes to us courtesy
of odd sprite check out more of their work at odd sprite.com
Muniz pod is released under Creative Commons Attribution non
commercial no derivatives license, which means you can't
change it or sell it but share it all you like. We'll see you
next time folks