Aaron Cohen & Alex Schumacher

Full Interview Transcript

Cleaned transcript below. Editorial section headings and quote callouts have been added for readability.

Opening cold open / commercial condensed: The show starts with the usual zombie-comedy Splash Pages cold open and Deadly Grounds sponsor bit before the live interview begins.

Show Open and Meeting Aaron Cohen & Alex Schumacher

Leo Pond [00:03:56]: Hey. Happy Saturday everybody. You’re watching Splash Pages. My name is Leo. I’m the monkey behind the keyboard here. And here at Splash Pages, we’re bringing you real comic book conversations. No Hollywood hype. And Carrie, we have some very special guests tonight, don’t we?

Kari Sanders [00:04:10]: Yes, we do. Leo Pond. Tonight we are celebrating Brad Hosker and I with some Maker’s Mark. I’m also. Here’s a little hint for you guys for something that might be coming up later this month. Drinking out of my Cullen bun glass. But first off, I’m going to introduce who we have tonight. We have a dynamic duo.

Kari Sanders [00:04:29]: Our first guest tonight is an award winning filmmaker and writer whose comics have been included in the Space Galaxy and Alien Meatballs anthology. Scott Snyder’s the Cloakroom First Dates anthology. The End Times. And he has four more anthologies coming up this year which are yet to be announced. And our second guest is an award winning cartoon cartoonist and writer whose titles include the Effects of Pickled Herring. Awesome. Which was named one of the year’s best graphic novels for children by the American Library association in 2024. Flash Gordon Adventures Volume 2 and Punk Taco Adventures from Papercutz.

Kari Sanders [00:05:02]: As well as joining his co creator here in Scott Snyder presents the Cloakroom and his very not safe for children Mr. Butter Chips webcomic. Everybody please welcome Aaron Cohen and Alex Schumacher.

Leo Pond [00:05:15]: Hey.

Alex Schumacher [00:05:15]: Howdy. Yeah, absolutely, thanks for joining.

Kari Sanders [00:05:24]: I. Yeah, I didn’t have the button

Leo Pond [00:05:26]: in the right spot.

Alex Schumacher [00:05:27]: You know, it felt right. It was fine.

Aaron Cohen [00:05:29]: Yeah, the timing was right.

Alex Schumacher [00:05:31]: It’s all vibes.

Leo Pond [00:05:33]: You know, we didn’t cover it before the warm up there but where are you guys uh, hailing from tonight?

Aaron Cohen [00:05:42]: In Oregon. Yeah. So we’re both in Portland, Oregon.

Leo Pond [00:05:46]: Okay.

Kari Sanders [00:05:48]: I’m in Nebraska where it’s humid. As, as I was telling Aaron pre show I’m. I’m doing my best Bellatrix meets librarian kind of, kind of vibe here. That’s what we got going.

Alex Schumacher [00:06:01]: I think it doesn’t matter what Jews are, it kind of always looks like we’re in humidity

Aaron Cohen [00:06:09]: of time. They’d be right.

Alex Schumacher [00:06:10]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:06:11]: Depending on where. Yeah,

Leo Pond [00:06:15]: I’m over on the other side. I’m. I’m over on the east coast over in Connecticut.

Alex Schumacher [00:06:19]: All right.

Aaron Cohen [00:06:19]: Oh yeah, that’s, that’s where I’m from originally.

Leo Pond [00:06:22]: Oh really?

Aaron Cohen [00:06:24]: Yeah, yeah. Connecticut bros. Yeah. What part of Connecticut outside of the, the Danbury area. You know where that is? Where are you?

Leo Pond [00:06:33]: Yeah, I do. Yeah. My sister in law lives down that way.

Aaron Cohen [00:06:39]: Okay. Where are you at in Connecticut?

Leo Pond [00:06:40]: I’m over in mystic or close domestic.

Aaron Cohen [00:06:43]: Okay.

Kari Sanders [00:06:44]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:06:44]: When I, when I’m out on the east coast, we’re over there all the time. So I guess a coffee is in our future.

Leo Pond [00:06:50]: Oh totally, totally.

Kari Sanders [00:06:51]: Yeah.

Leo Pond [00:06:51]: Let me know.

Alex Schumacher [00:06:53]: I am also knowing somebody from Connecticut. Well,

Aaron Cohen [00:07:00]: and that’s the Kevin Bacon ness of it all.

Leo Pond [00:07:03]: Yeah, totally.

Kari Sanders [00:07:04]: And if you guys happen to make it to Terrificon this year, I don’t know if you have any. Are going to be there or plan on going or anything. We all will invite you over and you can eat with us over at Leo’s house. The whole crew goes to that show, we all meet up and then he lives like five minutes from the Mohegan Sun Casino. So we all.

Aaron Cohen [00:07:24]: I was actually considering heading out for it this year so. So really I might be yeah, because I, I’ve never, that’s a con I’ve never been to, but it’s kind of like my, my home con. Right. Being from, yeah. Being from the east coast and, and so I really would love to, to check it out.

Leo Pond [00:07:41]: Yeah. It’s an amazing con and it’s grown over the years. It’s absolutely huge. Have you ever been, have you been to Mohegan Sun?

Aaron Cohen [00:07:50]: Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [00:07:51]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [00:07:51]: But not, not for a, not for like a convention, just for like the Mohican sun of it all.

Leo Pond [00:07:56]: Okay. Okay. So you probably haven’t seen the, the convention center, obviously, but yeah, it’s. He had to actually move to the larger convention hall and actually last year the fire marshal had to actually shut it down. Not shut it down, but like stop people from coming in because it was like over overcrowded.

Aaron Cohen [00:08:16]: Know how to party, fire.

Leo Pond [00:08:18]: Well, it’s also great because it’s more of an old school con. You know, it’s more comic book based. It’s. He focuses more on like the comic book creators, you know, rather than bringing in, you know, like big Hollywood. You know,

Kari Sanders [00:08:34]: there’s some Hollywood, but I

Aaron Cohen [00:08:37]: don’t know how far back everybody dates. But I mean, I remember going to cons in, in New York that were in like random hotels. Yeah, right. That are on random floors or hotels. And it was just, it was just comics and tchotchkes and you can walk right up to tables and at that point buy an original art page for like 150 bucks that you could probably now auction for like a million dollars. And, you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s crazy. But those were, those were incredible. You know, those very small.

Alex Schumacher [00:09:12]: Boxes as far as the eye can see. And now you kind of have to go on a bit of a scavenger hunt for them.

Aaron Cohen [00:09:19]: Yeah, Golden Age comics, Silver age comics were sealed in plastic.

Alex Schumacher [00:09:23]: Yeah. Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:09:25]: I, My, my first Comic Con was. Well, my first, My first Comic Con. Yeah. Not my first Con, but was terrific con. I went and got to meet all my guys here. Well, him and the other folks that are around. But then I started coming to more local cons and stuff in my area. But Nebraska, I mean, like one of our cons usually has like 10 people total, you know, so it’s like, oh, boy.

Kari Sanders [00:09:54]: You know, we. I got there, I’m done in half an hour. It was great.

Alex Schumacher [00:09:58]: Just you walk around and.

Kari Sanders [00:10:00]: Yeah, yeah, walk around, like, hey, how you doing? Yeah, I’ll buy it. Hey, you want to say I had somebody sign something that they Totally weren’t in. I was in this grand island con, and somebody had their, like, protege guarding their booth for them, and they had artwork from everybody who was at the con in this little book thing that you could get. So I bought the book. You know, when I was walking around getting everybody to sign it, he’s like, I’m not actually in there, but can I sign it? And I’m like, just give me a little doodle cover page and sign it.

Alex Schumacher [00:10:29]: It’s official. Yeah, yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:10:30]: He’s like, I signed it. It’s the first thing I’ve gotten to sign.

Aaron Cohen [00:10:33]: I’m like, I’m even more to Terrificon, because I know I’ll have friends to hang out with, so. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that’d be great.

Leo Pond [00:10:40]: Awesome. Yeah, we. We’d love to see you there.

Aaron Cohen [00:10:43]: Yeah, we just did Emerald City Comic Con, Alex and I, which was a great. Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:10:47]: Okay. How’d you. Because I’ve had half the people I’ve talked to who went to Emerald City were like, People went broke there. They weren’t making their money back. It was just terrible. And other people were like, I had a great time. We had a lot of people swinging by. It was great.

Alex Schumacher [00:11:00]: So, I mean, I think it’s just the pendulum swung kind of widely depending on who you were talking to.

Aaron Cohen [00:11:05]: Really?

Alex Schumacher [00:11:06]: Honestly, I know that sounds like kind of a non answer, but I think that was the truth at that convention. And, you know, it wasn’t even necessarily people, you know, like names like you would think, you know, it was just people were locking on to whatever they liked. And so some people were having fantastic weekends. And, yeah, I think other people might have suffered a little because of that, but for our purposes, like, we were there to kind of chat with people and network a little. So for that, like, it’s still a pretty great trade show. So we had a good time doing that.

Aaron Cohen [00:11:36]: Yeah, we were. We were walking the floor. So we didn’t have a whole lot of skin in the game on the tabling part, but.

Kari Sanders [00:11:41]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [00:11:42]: You were able to meet and chat with a bunch of people that we knew, and. And, you know, that was fantastic. And. But, yeah, it wasn’t for lack of crowd, because they were. They had a pretty good turnout from what I. What I could see.

Kari Sanders [00:11:53]: Okay. Yeah, well, we. We’re talking about cons. We’re talking about networking. See, here’s the thing that you guys might not know. I am the crowdfunding expert of this network, and we do Carrie’s Crowdfunding Corner. But you guys are elevated beyond the Corner. You get your own episode of Splash Pages.

Kari Sanders [00:12:15]: Yeah. Because we love your comic. It’s amazing. And we love the other work that you’ve done too. But let’s hint a little bit and let’s go about doing some stuff with the Kickstarter, Leah, if you can get it ready to prop up. But first of all, I do want to say, I had to ask. Alexa made fun of me because I was like, how do you pronounce? I was like, what does this word mean? And Alexa’s like, can you just spell that? I do. And they’re like, oh, that’s Yiddish for this.

Kari Sanders [00:12:45]: And I’m like, I got that so wrong. It was just like, Yep. I, I, I, I don’t.

Aaron Cohen [00:12:54]: I love everything. Asking Alexa Yiddish, which I’ve never even considered. And, yeah, I think that’s, I think everything about that’s great.

Alex Schumacher [00:13:01]: But, like, that’s not necessarily a bad thing because, like, you know, Aaron’s been saying this on podcast too, where it’s, you know, if any of this makes you, you know, research or, like, learn something new or, you know, be, you know, interested or fascinated by something, those are all good things. So, like, you know, the fact you have to look something up is, isn’t bad at all. It’s something that we, we’re, you know, Vlad came out of this 100.

Aaron Cohen [00:13:27]: Curiosity is a, Is a positive. Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:13:30]: Well, it, it’s weird, though. Once it figured out what I was, the, the repetition of what I was going through, it started just. It. I had, I didn’t have to keep spelling. It was just like, oh, you’re trying really hard. I’m gonna work this out. But, like, it’s like, you’re a goy, aren’t you? Okay. That’s what’s going on.

Kari Sanders [00:13:50]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:13:51]: It gave you a hard time, which is really what family is all about.

Alex Schumacher [00:13:54]: Alexis starts slowly adopting the Persona of, like, a hardcore East Coast Jew. And just.

Kari Sanders [00:14:04]: We’ve had Howard shaken on the show, I think. I mean, he’s, he’s west coast now, but he’s originally East Coast.

Leo Pond [00:14:10]: Yeah, that was my, my, my, My first wife was Jewish, and her, her mother was, like, New Yorker to the core. And, yeah, I, I’ve, I’ve heard a lot of the words. I don’t know what a lot of them mean, but I, I remember one time, actually. Sorry, stupid, stupid story, but.

Kari Sanders [00:14:33]: Tell your story, Leo.

Leo Pond [00:14:34]: We were traveling through New York, and, like, she’s going all over the place. Like, she knows the place like the back of her hand. And I, I remember like, my first time really walking through New York and we’re going on the subway and she’s, like, scramming. She’s already on a train with her daughter. And my. My coin, or whatever it was, didn’t work, and it was the only one I had, so I couldn’t get through. And I’m about to see them, like, buzz off. Yeah.

Leo Pond [00:15:03]: Luckily they realized at the last second that I wasn’t with them. But I almost got, like, lost in New York for. And this was before cell phones, so

Aaron Cohen [00:15:12]: you were five minutes from an After School special.

Leo Pond [00:15:15]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:15:17]: It’s no good, but I.

Alex Schumacher [00:15:20]: In a windowless van.

Kari Sanders [00:15:24]: I need to go, and I’m going to get my copy. I’m trying to figure out. I’m going to ask you guys after the show or maybe you can tell us now how to get a good, solid copy or where the best place that profits you the most is to get a full version of the effects of pickled herring. Because I was reading that, and I don’t. I don’t know where the pickled herring comes in yet, because you gave us a preview and it was great. But, like, my family’s obsessed with pickled herring. We’re Swedish, and it’s like every holiday you eat pickled herring, and it’s ridiculously expensive, and everybody hates it. Except for us.

Leo Pond [00:16:01]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [00:16:02]: You know, and the joke with, like, Jewish kids is, you know, a lot of our relatives are from sort of like Eastern Europe, and that area where that kind of, you know, fermented food was very popular as well. So for, you know, kid Jewish kids sort of growing up in. In our generation, I think it was more of, like, a joke food. But in. In the book, just because this isn’t a spoiler, but.

Kari Sanders [00:16:23]: Okay.

Alex Schumacher [00:16:24]: Something’s a little off with. With Grandma, and so they kind of blame that on the pickled herring that she eats. So that’s where the title comes from. Because everybody says, you know, that’s. It’s barely in the book, but it has a significant role. So that’s where it comes from.

Kari Sanders [00:16:36]: Okay. We. We fight over it like tigers in my family. Like, I would.

Alex Schumacher [00:16:41]: I would step aside on that fight.

Kari Sanders [00:16:43]: Yeah, My. My sister went vegetarian for a while, but, like, at Christmas, she was like, I can still eat the onions. They’re technically vegetables.

Aaron Cohen [00:16:53]: Yeah, we’re getting into herring. I grew up on the cream tearing instead of the.

Alex Schumacher [00:16:56]: There you go.

Aaron Cohen [00:16:57]: Yeah, So I grew up on that. Which is a shorter lifespan, I think. But for the people eating it or

Alex Schumacher [00:17:05]: you mean the product.

Aaron Cohen [00:17:07]: The product Itself. The jury’s still out on me.

Kari Sanders [00:17:13]: That is exactly what I see happening just this second.

Alex Schumacher [00:17:17]: Yeah.

Leo Pond [00:17:18]: So Schticks and Stones, you guys funded on the first day you said that. That’s amazing.

Aaron Cohen [00:17:25]: Yeah, that’s what we said. Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [00:17:27]: Seriously, I don’t know if we said anything for a while. We were all just maybe in a state of shock for a bit.

Aaron Cohen [00:17:33]: But yeah, it was a lot of texting, emojis.

Alex Schumacher [00:17:35]: It was now properly convey how we felt in those moments.

Kari Sanders [00:17:41]: Were emotions squee. Was. Was that one of the. I. I squee. I’m a girl. We get to do that. We’re allowed.

Aaron Cohen [00:17:49]: You know, I could. I could once in a while, you know, in the privacy of my own home. Maybe let’s. We.

Kari Sanders [00:17:55]: Yes, maybe let’s go slow in.

Alex Schumacher [00:17:57]: Yeah.

Leo Pond [00:17:58]: So for the people watching. We got a bunch of people watching right now. So would you like to explain Schticks and Stones?

What Schticks and Stones Is and Why It Covers Three Holidays

Families are families and holidays are holidays, and everybody around a table eating and going through the same desires of being heard and being seen and being a part of things is the same.

Aaron Cohen, 00:19:04

Aaron Cohen [00:18:07]: Sure. We can. We can tag team it. I’ll do top half and then I’ll. I’ll kid and play it right over to Alex. So I think the. Yeah. So Schticks and Stones is a holiday special, is a comic that goes over three Jewish holidays with one crazy family going through all the holidays together.

Aaron Cohen [00:18:28]: Each holiday is a standalone story. It’s Hanukkah, Passover, and Purim. And those are all connected by your main character, Ben, being interviewed and recounting. Being interviewed for a. A YouTube show that his cousin is doing, and then recounting these family holidays because his cousin fancies himself or herself an influencer. And it’s a. It’s really a love letter from Alex and I to our families and to our culture and to Jewish holidays and. And all these kind of crazy meshuggah things that happen.

Aaron Cohen [00:19:04]: And also to try to make it universal in a way to, you know, families are families and holidays are holidays, and everybody around a table eating and going through the same desires of being heard and being seen and being a part of things is the same. And we really wanted to create something that was in that vein of kind of the Sunday funnies that we grew up on and kind of Harvey and Archie comics that we kind of really love and really bring that to the forefront of this. This comedy.

Making a Specifically Jewish Story Feel Open to Everyone

Alex Schumacher [00:19:39]: Yes. Yeah. So there’s obviously a specificity in certain things, you know, certain iconography, certain, you know, the items related to the holidays. But. But, you know, the overarching thing for us was to make sure it was also accessible. And, you know, because the whole idea for us is to bring people in as a point of ingress or you know, Aaron likes to call it the jumping off. What do you call the jumping off point for people who always jumping on

Aaron Cohen [00:20:08]: point for non Jews.

Alex Schumacher [00:20:09]: Yeah, yeah, there you go. So yeah, you know, and we, that wasn’t something that was done by accident. We want, you know, that was very intentional by us. And so, you know, a lot of the themes are also things like, you know, kids being trapped in what can feel like an adults only world sometimes or feeling like they’re outcast or maybe even the ones who kind of live inside their heads and contrive of these little mysteries that may or may not be actually occurring, you know, around them. So we were injecting a lot of that into the storytelling as well. And you know, the Judaism and the representation is obviously important to us, but so is the inclusivity.

Aaron Cohen [00:20:47]: Yeah. And so each story is a mystery. So that’s a. Each story.

Alex Schumacher [00:20:51]: Little Scooby Doo specific mystery.

Aaron Cohen [00:20:53]: Scooby Doo style mystery that takes place at each holiday.

Alex Schumacher [00:20:57]: Yeah. Been joking saying it’s. It’s Mel Brooks writing a Scooby Doo comic strip. That’s what I

Kari Sanders [00:21:06]: you saying that after I’ve, I’ve read this story and yeah, I, I love that. That’s great. I. As as this one. Can I, can I bring up the thing that just kind of really killed me? There’s a section here where it’s going through and it’s introducing every single member of the family. And it’s like this person and what they do. This person and what they do. And then they talk or something.

The Prophet Elijah Gag and Building the Family One Page at a Time

Miracle worker. Missed every seder since 849 B.C.

The Prophet Elijah caption discussed around 00:21:31

Kari Sanders [00:21:31]: And then there’s just the empty chair with Prophet Elijah. Miracle worker. Missed every seder since 849 B.C.

Alex Schumacher [00:21:40]: yes.

Aaron Cohen [00:21:41]: I’m so glad that hit.

Kari Sanders [00:21:42]: Yes.

Alex Schumacher [00:21:44]: We talked about quite a bit. We wanted, you know, we wanted to find a way to make that land. And it’s just, it’s such, it’s such a good visual gag.

Kari Sanders [00:21:52]: It, it was perfect. You’re reading all these things, it’s like uhhuh. Uhhuh. Yep. The double speak lady and everything. And I know it. These aren’t just Jewish relatives. These are all of your relatives.

Kari Sanders [00:22:04]: These just happen to be Jewish, but they have the whole thing that they’re doing, you know, and so you’re relating to all of it and then it. To bring it back to, by the way, this is a Jewish thing. The Prophet Elijah.

Alex Schumacher [00:22:13]: Yeah. And they’re going to have that in the script. So we kind of had to figure out like we knew that was the gag and we had to figure out kind of how to how to make that land visually. And I think in the end, we all kind of got a giggle out of it, so that was a good sign.

Kari Sanders [00:22:27]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:22:28]: This was the one page, I think we kept kind of going back to it. And I know on my end, from a writing point of view, I kept tweaking it. I was changing little things up through lettering. Right. Just to kind of make it to. To get the spacing where we wanted things and to get everything else the right way and make it land. So, you know, just. I just wanted to be as funny as possible, you know? And you did.

Aaron Cohen [00:22:49]: You did similar with. With the layout, of course. So we kept kind of working at it because this was such an important page to us. Yeah. In terms of the new book also, which has the story in it, and all the other material in the new book is completely 100% new, and no one’s seen it before.

Alex Schumacher [00:23:08]: The.

Aaron Cohen [00:23:09]: This is establishing all the characters in the family in one page.

Alex Schumacher [00:23:14]: And I think. Off. Right. Because, like, every word on this page hits. There’s not like a wasted word on this page. I mean, I don’t think there is on any of them, really. But specifically this one. It’s just, I think, you know, the stars aligned for us on this one.

Aaron Cohen [00:23:28]: Yeah, it.

Kari Sanders [00:23:29]: It flows together so well. It looks effortless, but I can. As a writer, I can see why it would be so like, I got, you know, getting it and like you said, going over it over and over and over and over and over to make it go. But once you got it, you totally nailed it, so. And. And it sets the path,

Leo Pond [00:23:53]: So. Absolutely loved it. I know it’s only the one story that. That we had a chance to read, so I definitely want to check it out to rest once it comes out. But both of you attended the. The Scott Snyder program. What were the takeaways from that. That you pumped into this project?

Alex Schumacher [00:24:13]: Yeah, that was just me.

Leo Pond [00:24:14]: I thought it was both, you know what?

Alex Schumacher [00:24:16]: But I know my nose. I’m a vagrant. That’s. That Aaron picked up on his creative highway is basically what that is. Yeah, he was.

Aaron Cohen [00:24:27]: So what happened was he got left behind at the subway station in New York.

Kari Sanders [00:24:30]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [00:24:32]: And

Alex Schumacher [00:24:35]: for two seconds.

Aaron Cohen [00:24:36]: Yeah, he kept bumping into his turnstile like he couldn’t find the door in a video game over and over again. Fairly sure.

Alex Schumacher [00:24:42]: It gets confusing for me.

Aaron Cohen [00:24:44]: And I was like, I have a comic script.

Alex Schumacher [00:24:49]: I was like, sir.

Aaron Cohen [00:24:54]: And the rest is history.

Kari Sanders [00:24:59]: Oh, my gosh.

How Best Jackett and The Cloakroom Led to the Collaboration

Aaron Cohen [00:25:01]: So, yeah, I’m a part of Scott Snyder’s Best Jackett Workshop, which is phenomenal. And what, what really, you know, comes with that is besides Scott’s, you know, mentorship, which is fantastic, and he’s an amazing writer and a very approachable person, is the community that’s kind of born from that workshop. You know, the comic community, the creators who were a part of it, you know, writers, artists, you know, everybody involved. And the cloak room is, you know, the, the writers in the cloak room are, you know, submitted and taken from that, you know, group of people. So the editors on this, Jerry Kita and Veronica Howell were part of that group. And I had submitted, you know, Crime and Passover as a script for the holiday anthology. And that’s sort of where that kicked it off. You know, Alex and I met through a mutual friend who’s also a fantastic artist and writer named Tony Wolf.

Aaron Cohen [00:26:02]: And I was talking to Tony and Tony said, I really think, you know, Tony read the script and I said, I really think you and Alex would hit it off. And that this, you know, it’s kind of up both your alleys. And then when Alex and I connected, it was just immediately like we both had an innate understanding of this family and what, and, and the gelling on creatively, what we both wanted to do, you know, it was sort of the, the frozen of finishing each other’s sandwiches. So it’s kind of the same thing there.

Kari Sanders [00:26:33]: That’s awesome.

Leo Pond [00:26:35]: And Alex, where did you start your, your art journey?

Alex Schumacher [00:26:40]: The long version of the short. We’ll do the short version.

Leo Pond [00:26:43]: Whatever you want to do, my friend.

Alex Schumacher’s Path From Webcomics to All-Ages Comics

Alex Schumacher [00:26:44]: There are people here there, they’ll get bored. So I, I kind of decided to commit to comics in, in about 2015. And so I started with a couple web comics. One of them was aforementioned Mr. Butter Chips, a sort of a socio political ish comic where it’s an organ grinders monkey who’s at the lead and just railing kind of against the dying of the light. And the other one was one called Decades of Inexperience, which was sort of auto bio, slice of life like everybody does when they first do a web comic, I think. And yeah, and then I kind of came to more of all ages, you know, children’s literature. Got an agent, did The Effects of Pickled Herring in 2024, you know, got some good feedback from that and kind of leaned into the all ages stuff.

Alex Schumacher [00:27:33]: And so then it was in 2025 when my friend Adam Malenta from Papercutz reached out and, you know, got me into a couple projects there, the Flash Gordon one and the Papercutz one. So, yeah, I’ve just been kind of trying to, I think, recapture what I. What I got into creating comics for. You know, the original things. That. That kind of excited me about it and I loved about it. And it sort of felt like there was no better time maybe in my life, in history, or at least our modern history, to kind of latch onto that, glom onto that and really embrace it. So, you know, part of that has been obviously working with Aaron and, you know, crafting these.

Alex Schumacher [00:28:15]: These sort of odes to. To not our families at all. You know, nothing to see here. Nothing to see here. Any resemblances to people living or dead.

Aaron Cohen [00:28:29]: We’re gonna. We have to put that in the beginning, right. We have to put that small in the print in the beginning of the book. Do we have to get that? Yeah, just liously, I think we’re safer that way. I think, you know, we should probably just keep that in and, you know. And then prior to Snyder stuff, I also did a number of courses at Kubert, which was fantastic, too, and had some great mentors over there. And it was sort of, for me, making a transition from, you know, film and TV stuff and other things I was working on because I always wanted to write comics, and I’ve always been writing comics in some capacity, but really kind of turning my focus completely to it. And that’s what I’ve been able to do since then, which has been quite a ride.

Kari Sanders [00:29:14]: So do you. Full script? Sorry?

Leo Pond [00:29:17]: No, sorry. Go for it, Carrie.

Aaron Cohen [00:29:19]: Do I full script? Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:29:21]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [00:29:24]: I like full scripting. You know, to me, it kind of. It’s great for conveying what I want to get across. And also it allows me to do all the dialogue and get everything in there. And then I can always revise and tweak as pages come in or, as, you know, before it goes to the letter. But that way it, you know, full script, I feel, is the best way to get the story across for me. And also, you know, Alex knows. And at least in our collaboration, especially, you know, layouts and stuff, I leave a lot.

Aaron Cohen [00:29:52]: A lot of freedom and a lot more open to. To Alex to. To comment. Our communication line is ridiculously way too open.

Leo Pond [00:30:02]: That’s.

Kari Sanders [00:30:02]: That.

Leo Pond [00:30:02]: That’s great, though. You know, speak.

Aaron Cohen [00:30:04]: We.

Leo Pond [00:30:04]: We speak to, you know, a lot of, you know, duos and, you know, collaboration is definitely key, especially, you know, between writer and artist. What were for both of you? What were your. Your introductions to comics when you were kids? Like, you know, what were the books that you picked up or the first book you picked up?

The Comics That Hooked Them as Kids

Alex Schumacher [00:30:27]: I I think one of the first I bought like with my own money may have been the Todd McFarland Spider Man Wolverine crossover. Oh, I don’t remember the year from that because I’m very old and memories just tend to wait. But it was probably early 90s.

Leo Pond [00:30:47]: Yeah, totally early 90s.

Alex Schumacher [00:30:48]: Yeah, yeah. And I just remember because the imagery is so iconic and it just sort of implants in your mind. But that was also something where I saw that as a kid and you know, my sensibilities were far more with things like, like Aaron was saying, like comic strips and Saturday morning cartoons, Don Bluth and those things. So when I started getting into comic books and thinking maybe this is a route I wanted to go, you know, I saw things like Todd McFarlane and went, well, I could never do that. That’s not, you know, maybe this isn’t for me. And so I had backed off for a while but you know, found some, some alternative comics later on, which was my pathway back in. But the very first book I remember seeing, not that I bought was. And I, I don’t know, I keep saying this on podcast and like not actually checking if it’s true, but I think it’s right.

Alex Schumacher [00:31:41]: It was like, I’m true. That’s right, actually, that’s true. Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:31:45]: Yeah. That’s the way the Internet works.

Alex Schumacher [00:31:46]: Works for certain people in this country. Anyway. It was like Batman 222. I think it was like Silver Age. And it was sort of a parody of the Paul is dead Beatles hoax. And that’s the first comic I remember reading because I loved the Beatles as a kid. I still very much enjoy them, but I loved him as a kid. And so that was something that hit very deep for me in a way I don’t think I understood at the time.

Leo Pond [00:32:15]: Oh, that’s awesome. What about you, Aaron?

Aaron Cohen [00:32:19]: For me, you know, started super early with the digest size comics in the grocery store aisles. You know, when you’re waiting there with your parents and you’re like, I want to read this. And he would just grab it because they put it real low for the kids just to mess with the parents. And then you’d, you’d see like the digest size Richie Rich or you’d see the digest size Archie and Riverdale or whatever and you just, you know, wanna, want to take that on. So the digest side stuff was always my, my first foray into it and I loved the storytelling in them and I thought they were really fun. And then the more I read comics, the more I saw, oh well, there’s you know, superheroes, and there’s non superhero titles and there’s movie adaptations. I remember them in the Star wars adaptations and Marvel Star wars books came out. Right.

Aaron Cohen [00:33:02]: That was. That blew my mind.

Kari Sanders [00:33:03]: Hard chicken, right? Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [00:33:05]: All right. Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:33:06]: I mean, they were.

Kari Sanders [00:33:07]: Don’t ask him about this.

Alex Schumacher [00:33:08]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:33:09]: At the time, I’m not going to talk to him. But I love them so, you know, keep it between us, I guess. And then the real seminal, you know, series for me was when I read Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man. When that came out, you know, that really changed the way I looked at storytelling in comics overall because of just the meta aspect of it, the realistic handling of the family, you know, the supernatural aspects that were factored in. You know, everything about it really spoke to me in a different way than anything that came before it. And every issue was not what I expected. There was. It was an unpredictable thing.

Aaron Cohen [00:33:53]: And I love the idea of surprising storytelling. Right. And. And you know, kind of compressed storytelling. You know, I like it where there’s a lot happening in a single issue. I don’t like things that are stretched out too long. You know, I can always give them. There’s always more to pull from for later.

Aaron Cohen [00:34:11]: Let’s just treat every issue as. It’s. As if it’s, you know, the. The first issue someone’s reading and put everything we can into that issue. And that’s thought that I always came from. And you know, those books really sort of taught me that just. Just by reading, reading that. And then the early runs on, you know, some of the Batman runs and the Superman runs.

Aaron Cohen [00:34:31]: You know, I love the. The Bray Fogel Batman and like he’s. I loved his illustrations of the Batman at the time and, you know, that kind of stuff.

Alex Schumacher [00:34:40]: Loved Harvey too. We have a shared love of those lines too. You know, the.

Aaron Cohen [00:34:45]: Yeah, all the Harvey stuff and the Pogo stuff. We love the Walt Kelly Pogo stuff for sure.

Alex Schumacher [00:34:51]: And I think that that whole reintroducing the character, so. So you’re kind of keeping people in the know regardless when they jump in. That’s a very comic strip mentality too, because that’s something they tell you to do for the first couple years when you’re starting out to basically say the names a lot, reintroduce the characters every day because you never know when people are jumping on board. So it’s an interesting sort of correlation there.

Kari Sanders [00:35:15]: It’s a great mnemonic to. To use. And even in real life, I. My mom worked with somebody who would never not Say her name in every sentence that she said to her because her name’s Karma, so it should be hard to forget. But hey, Karma, how you doing? Karma? What’s going on today? Karma? You know, but, but that works for comics. Like you said, every issue is somebody’s first.

Alex Schumacher [00:35:39]: Yeah.

Leo Pond [00:35:40]: So, yeah, and that’s something that, you know, some, some people tend to forget, you know, and I absolutely love it that, that you brought that up. The, you know, especially what I was going to bring up earlier with, with the all ages comics, you know, you’re really seeing a, a very large explosion of those. And I, you know, a lot of like older people, you know, reading comics. Oh, you’re killing my childhood. And like that, you know, it’s uh, it’s totally yaddy eye because, you know, in order to keep comics going, we got to bring in new blood, you know, and that’s a great way to, to get kids in, you know, you bring the talent to those books.

Alex Schumacher [00:36:23]: Yeah. And it almost seemed like a fluke in some ways. I mean, because I think the real sort of, you know, inflection point for that was the Reina Telgemeier books. You know, at least, you know, as far as the being commercially viable but also building a huge audience for it. And it’s interesting how that happened because it seemed to come out of nowhere. It was like somebody just decided to give them, you know, a chance, which imagine that something grand happening from giving people a chance. And so, yeah, that. And, and it’s.

Alex Schumacher [00:36:55]: They’ve been like the only categories in the trade markets that have actually increased in sales year after year because they tapped into sort of, you know, like even with the Captain Underpants and Dogman, those in particular, they tapped into category that nobody was really paying attention to, which was the reluctant readers, mainly young boys who are, are intimidated or you know, think books aren’t cool or whatever it is. And this gives them sort of a bridge into reading. And I don’t necessarily love when people call it, you know, comics are a bridge to reading because comics are reading. So I don’t love that. But if it gets people interested in, in reading other forms of literature as well, that’s, that’s something that we should always be striving to do.

Aaron Cohen [00:37:45]: Yeah, I mean, I consider comics, I mean, not a bridge to storytelling. Right. More than anything else. Like to me, like to me it’s a bridge to. And it was because I can only speak to it for myself and that’s what it was for me. Right. Comics are a bridge to making More comics. They were a bridge for me to filmmaking.

Aaron Cohen [00:38:05]: They were bridge to me for a number of things because, you know, filmmaking is just comics that move. Right. It’s like, it’s essentially.

Alex Schumacher [00:38:12]: It’s storyboard.

Aaron Cohen [00:38:13]: Yeah, yeah. How do I tell this story? And I have the ability to tell a story and everyone’s story. Everyone has a story. Right. And I think as a bridge to storytelling, introducing comics to families or young readers, you know, our comic, the Schticks and Stones is an. Is a family comic. So, like, there’s things that go over kids heads. There are things for adults.

Aaron Cohen [00:38:34]: There are things. There are a lot of gags that are physical gags. The Hanukkah story is almost all physical gags, you know, and so each story has something for the different generations of people that can enjoy it. And I really wanted to create, and Alex as well, something that we wanted to see when we were, you know, younger in our families, you know, something we wanted to hide and not have people see what we. They thought we were reading something else, you know,

Kari Sanders [00:39:04]: I gotcha. I. I wanted to ask you real quick, Alex, about paper cuts, because especially with the Flash Gordon, because we. We’ve had art and Franco on a number of times. And so that was. That was very driven by like Franco’s art style going through. Yeah, well, well, I mean, they.

Alex Schumacher [00:39:27]: Both of them.

Kari Sanders [00:39:28]: Part of it was art, part of it was Franco. And like. Yeah, they each have their own kind of thing, but there’s like, there’s the Franco style when he’s drawing with art, and then there’s the other Franco style.

Alex Schumacher [00:39:39]: For sure.

Kari Sanders [00:39:39]: Yeah. But so were you asked to. Kind of. Because. Because I noticed that yours followed very close to kind of the Franco vision, if we’re going to put it that way. Was that a requirement when you went in there and did you have much where you did, did you get asked much? But I can see you have your own set on it, as we can see, like. Yeah. Going on.

Kari Sanders [00:40:01]: But was how. How are they asked? How did they approach you with it? I’m asking this terribly.

Alex Schumacher [00:40:06]: No, no, no, no. I completely understand. And it’s. And it’s a good question. So. So art and Franco’s designs were provided to us, and so we were asked to follow those pretty closely as far as things like the costuming and the sizes, you know, things of that nature. But we were also encouraged to sort of exaggerate it, use our own styles. So it was sort of, you know, we were given sort of carte blanche to blend the two.

Alex Schumacher [00:40:34]: But I think the Idea was to not go outside the designs themselves too much, but otherwise, yeah, we were giving pretty free rein. And that was again by Adam Wallenta, who was really great to work with on this project because, you know, very supportive and again, just kind of the liberty to express ourselves, which you don’t get a lot of the time from editors.

Kari Sanders [00:40:57]: And I love that you guys are doing it. Do you know, like, coming from a Kickstarter person who studies a lot of them, how amazing it is that for an all ages comic you guys funded on day one? Because I know people who are also like paper cuts veterans and stuff. I’m not going to throw out any names, but we’re like worried towards the end that they weren’t going to fund at all because it’s very hard to hit an all ages audience like yours isn’t. Yours does hit all ages instead of it being like young adult or children’s. But it, it’s amazing and I’m very proud of you. Like, you deserve it because what I’ve seen is like, it hits the adults too. But to have to put it in that category does often affect sales. So.

Kari Sanders [00:41:42]: Yeah. What was your marketing strategy coming into it? I mean, we have you now and we’re like, yeah, buy it. Shut up and take my money. I’m not allowed.

Alex Schumacher [00:41:52]: Absolutely.

Why the Kickstarter Funded on Day One

We just wanted to keep it real and keep it organic to the story that we’re telling and keep it funny and lively and joyful.

Aaron Cohen, around 00:43:02

Aaron Cohen [00:41:53]: Thank you. Yeah, that’s very, it’s very kind of you to say that. Yeah. Yeah. We didn’t know what to expect coming in. This is both of our first Kickstarter campaigns.

Kari Sanders [00:42:03]: Wow.

Aaron Cohen [00:42:03]: So, you know, we’re new. I’m not new to the platform because I’ve backed a ton of campaigns and I follow Kickstarter for a long time and I love what it’s done for creators and everybody else. And so this was the first foray for both of us into, into that and you know, the, you know, and then Alex can talk to this too. You know, my thought a lot with the strategy of if we’re talking about strategies at all was just to make it, you know, organic. You know, I just wanted to have an organic page and have a campaign that was organic to what we’re doing and the story we’re telling and the characters we created and, and I think, you know, sort of embedding that tone and personality within the campaign and within the page down to, you know, there’s Yiddish all over the campaign page. Right. The reviews that we put, where people put reviews are from our family members because you can’t get more, more Jewish than family members registering an opinion. Right.

Aaron Cohen [00:43:02]: Or, or as any other family. All the reviews are, you know, my mom, Alex’s mom, or uncles or cousins. Right. And so just fun stuff to put in. And then we named all the reward tiers after, you know, things that were Jewish or deli platters. And we just wanted to keep it. Keep it real and keep it organic to. To the story that we’re telling and keep it funny and lively and joyful.

Kari Sanders [00:43:26]: You know, Jewish relatives and deli platters. Got it. That’s what

Aaron Cohen [00:43:34]: the perfect day. I mean, I don’t know. We’re just gonna go get deli together whenever. When I’m in Connecticut, we’re getting deli together.

Kari Sanders [00:43:45]: Oh, yeah. Do you. Well, we. Oh, please. I’m sorry.

Alex Schumacher [00:43:50]: Oh, no, no. I interrupted you. Sorry.

Kari Sanders [00:43:53]: I was just randomly babbling. It’s something I do. That’s why I have a squirrel to keep me in check.

Leo Pond [00:43:58]: She does.

Aaron Cohen [00:43:59]: Alex is. Alex is going to talk strategy. Strategy?

Kari Sanders [00:44:02]: Yes, please.

Alex Schumacher [00:44:04]: Yes. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, you know, just echoing a lot of what Aaron said. You know, we worked with a great production artist and sort of page manager whose name Joey Galvez, who, you know, we. We were. We would have been lost without him as far as, you know, putting the page together and, you know, trying to come up with rewards, tears, that worked and things like that. And he kind of led us through the wilderness on that one, which we greatly appreciated. But, yeah, I think a lot of it was just, you know, and it sounds.

Alex Schumacher [00:44:36]: It sounds maybe trite or, like, cliche, but it was really us kind of putting the word out to whoever we knew. And, you know, that included family and friends. You know, we weren’t. Weren’t too proud to beg from people we knew, but it was just about connecting the story with people. And. And we put out, you know, bookmarks here. Here in, you know, town. We passed them out when we were at Emerald City Comic Con.

Alex Schumacher [00:45:00]: And people, you know. Yes. I think stickers, bookmarks, postcards, things like that tend to be thrown away, but I think they can also kind of make a connection.

Aaron Cohen [00:45:10]: What are bookmarks, Alex?

Alex Schumacher [00:45:12]: Well, maybe not, but. Well, something must have. It could have been the bookmarks, but I. But I think those.

Kari Sanders [00:45:18]: I like bookmarks.

Alex Schumacher [00:45:19]: Yeah. See, I think they’ll still make an impression. It’s a personal thing. You’re handing it to somebody. You’re making that connection. So, you know, that was all part of the strategy as well. Just kind of getting it out there in any way possible. And, you know, I know you kind of jokingly said that this is coming afterward, but this is still something that we’re super grateful for that people, you know, allow us this time to do that because it’s still, it’s still going.

Alex Schumacher [00:45:41]: So this is still incredibly helpful. So we.

Kari Sanders [00:45:44]: Oh, we’re going to push this hard.

Aaron Cohen [00:45:46]: Yeah, yeah, we have some great stretch goals. And also the other thing that we did was we pre launched over a month prior to which we were told was something that was good to do. Yes, we did a very early pre launch and then did a bunch of outreach pre launch wise to try to get as many pre launch followers as possible. So as far as marketing goes, that was something that was advice given to us that, that we, we took and we, I know before we launched we had over a hundred pre launch followers which I think is some sort of a what people try to hit. I, you know, but, but that sort of was a, a big goal of ours moving forward was to get that pre launch page in front of people before we launched.

Alex Schumacher [00:46:32]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:46:33]: Leo, can you pull it up again so we can start looking at like the different reward tiers and stuff they’re talking about?

Alex Schumacher [00:46:39]: Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, no, and I think part of that, you know, was just also engaging with people. So we were doing things like revealing the covers and you know, just getting people to kind of buy into it during that pre launch period. I think that was a really important, you know, aspect of that, which I think, you know, we did okay. 60th successful campaign that Geek Collective has helped market. Nice, Joey. Thanks man.

Aaron Cohen [00:47:01]: Joey, look at you.

Kari Sanders [00:47:02]: Awesome. Joey. Joey, you gotta talk to me about Kickstarter stuff, crowdfunding. Let’s, let’s scroll back up so we can start from the top and look at the different bundles we got going here and stuff.

Alex Schumacher [00:47:16]: Rewards in the often.

Aaron Cohen [00:47:19]: Yeah, we’re going to be adding things as the, as the, you know, as the campaign goes on, things will get added, which is cool.

Alex Schumacher [00:47:25]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:47:27]: So we got a secret cover going on there.

Alex Schumacher [00:47:31]: Alex, want to talk about the COVID Yeah. So Mr. Mike Kunkel, who you may know from Hero Bear and the Kid, from Billy Bastian and the Magic of Shazam from plenty of other books, you know, he is graciously lending his talents to a mystery cover for us that will be revealed at some point in the campaign, but you’ll have to follow to find out. But you know, we were really, really grateful for him signing on to die because is especially his style in this sort of all ages, you know, vein is just, you know, picture perfect for what we’re doing. And you know, I can’t say what it is, we’re not going to reveal it just yet, but you’re definitely going to want to at least back to find out because it’s going to be pretty phenomenal.

Aaron Cohen [00:48:17]: Yeah, fans are going to be really excited about it too. I think it’s going to be a, you know, it’s a Kickstarter exclusive cover, so it’ll be something that’s specific to the campaign.

Kari Sanders [00:48:26]: Those I love, I love having something that nobody else gets. I, I was joking. When I looked over at my sofa, I think like Alex was like, yep, I know what she’s doing. But I, I had 20 Kickstarter boxes fall off earlier this evening when I was walking. I have a stack. I’ve, I’ve been waiting to do an unboxing but I did find his stash. So that was good. But I had to like pick up all these things.

Kari Sanders [00:48:51]: But so if, if, if you’ve gone ahead and like supported the project already, if you got in for a reward tier, are we going to be able to grab that mystery cover as an add on or do we need to change our tier to pick it out or.

Alex Schumacher [00:49:06]: No.

Kari Sanders [00:49:06]: How do we do it?

Aaron Cohen [00:49:07]: You can definitely grab it as an add on if you, if you haven’t, you know, if you haven’t grabbed them yet. It’s included in the three cover tier. You can get all three.

Alex Schumacher [00:49:16]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [00:49:17]: So when it’s available will definitely be something that’s available to everybody. You know, when we, when we reveal the, the COVID shortly.

Kari Sanders [00:49:25]: Awesome. I like check out all these things.

Leo Pond [00:49:29]: I, I love this. The Edu Institution bundle tier. How popular was, was that?

Aaron Cohen [00:49:35]: So that we just kind of got that, got that out. And you know, we’re also reaching out to. Because the book itself sticks and stones. While not, we’re not considering it an educational book, we’re not doing it to, to teach, but we’re doing it also as part of Jewish representation. It’s very true to the holidays, it’s authentic to our experiences and we think there’s a lot of opportunity there for religious institutions and schools or education to, to have something fun to read for the holidays that are also teaching the kids about Jewish holidays and other things while having fun doing it. So this tier is for, you know, a highly discounted rate for 20 units or 20 units, you know, 20 copies of the book. I just read it in front of me and I’m like, it’s not a unit. Yeah, it’s like copies of the book.

Aaron Cohen [00:50:23]: And then you get the dubious honor of having Alex and I come and chat with whoever you want for like half an hour, 45 minutes with your class, your community center, your congregation. You know, ask us any retirement home.

Kari Sanders [00:50:39]: Yeah, that is very cool.

Aaron Cohen [00:50:41]: Yeah, it’s our ama.

Kari Sanders [00:50:46]: Me at home on a Saturday night, because I have nothing else to do and would really just like to learn about the things that I was reading and pronouncing wrong to Alexa being like, how does this work? Oh, okay.

Alex Schumacher [00:50:57]: And like everyone’s saying, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, not that we’re setting out to be educational, but we definitely are into having conversations with people who are interested. Because that’s the whole idea. That’s always the idea when you’re, you know, introducing things about different cultures is, is just kind of gaining that initial interest, having the, opening the conversation, opening the dialogue. And it’s something that’s kind of missing from a lot of spaces these days. So, you know, we’re trying to at least encourage that with our community.

Kari Sanders [00:51:27]: I, I think that there’s. This is going to sound weird, I think maybe for me particularly, but there are some very bland cultures in America where we all just kind of do the same thing. And they’re like these incredibly rich cultures. Like things like, they’re just like, oh, he’s Jewish. But, but oh my God, there’s so many things going on and there’s like this whole other language and there’s all these different holidays and it’s not just Jewish, but a lot of just why. Okay. I use this before when I was talking with porn sec was I’m a white girl in Nebraska. I encounter nothing.

Kari Sanders [00:52:08]: Like everybody is like Lutheran basically. You know, that’s, that’s pretty much everything we don’t have. I mean, we have a couple Catholics, but that’s about it. And so like learning about different religions and things that are beyond just religion, just a way of life and stuff is fascinating for me. I love it and I love it when it’s brought up. So this is just, it’s beautiful. I think it’s very educational. Even as a 50 year old woman.

Kari Sanders [00:52:36]: Like, wow, I learned some stuff reading this and I’m not a total ignoramus. I’ve studied things, but I was just like, oh, wow, this is like real family centered. And so you feel like you’re part of a thing. It’s not just like I’m writing down a history paper or something. You’re just sitting there hanging out and learning stuff with the family and being like, what does that word mean? Oh, that’s great. I Love that. You know, I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I love that that’s what we want.

Aaron Cohen [00:53:00]: And then you ask Alexa and then boom, you’re good to go.

Kari Sanders [00:53:03]: Yes, exactly.

Alex Schumacher [00:53:04]: And then the Jewish grandparent would do. So it was. It’s a perfect response.

Aaron Cohen [00:53:10]: But they would say it many, many times. Yeah, yeah. And they would call. They would call Alexa Siri the first four times probably.

Kari Sanders [00:53:19]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [00:53:20]: And then try to record an outgoing message into her and then call me

Aaron Cohen [00:53:24]: and say, the fax isn’t working.

Alex Schumacher [00:53:26]: Is the light beeping? Harold, is the light beeping yet?

Kari Sanders [00:53:30]: Did you program the Google? Did you put the words there? I want a different picture on the Google. Why did you put the picture on the Google?

Aaron Cohen [00:53:39]: What happened? Someone said no one’s paging you.

Kari Sanders [00:53:42]: Oh,

Aaron Cohen [00:53:45]: yeah, yeah.

Leo Pond [00:53:46]: I. I know this is totally off topic, but you mentioned facts. Do either of you guys watch the Pit?

Aaron Cohen [00:53:53]: I do. I’m a couple episodes behind, so no spoilers, but yes.

Kari Sanders [00:53:56]: Okay.

Leo Pond [00:53:57]: Okay.

Alex Schumacher [00:53:59]: I have an 18 month old, so I don’t watch much of anything.

Leo Pond [00:54:02]: Okay.

Kari Sanders [00:54:04]: I just read, you know, this I

Alex Schumacher [00:54:06]: want to watch is the back of my eyelids and I barely get to watch that.

Leo Pond [00:54:12]: Not really a. A spoiler, but there’s a point in the story where the. There’s like a hack and they got to shut down all.

Alex Schumacher [00:54:19]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Cohen [00:54:22]: Okay.

Leo Pond [00:54:22]: Okay. Good, good, good. Yeah. So. So they need to bring out all this old equipment and you have these, you know, younger doctors, like, you know, trying to figure out like what a fax machine is and stuff like that and like the actual phone ringing and everything. Yeah, it was hilarious.

Aaron Cohen [00:54:37]: There’s some. There’s some good stuff and then it just ages and dates everything around me. But yeah, it’s, you know, it’s fun. It’s fun to see someone toil with

Alex Schumacher [00:54:44]: it to avail you of any guilt. By the time I get to watch any of these things, I’ll probably have forgotten whatever spoilers you may give. So please speak freely.

Kari Sanders [00:54:56]: He knows it’s the same with me. Like I, I have him putting like he’s. He is sharing with me old saying elsewhere episodes.

Alex Schumacher [00:55:03]: Nice.

Kari Sanders [00:55:04]: This is my life. I’m like, I gotta binge watch some St.

Alex Schumacher [00:55:08]: Elsewhere because there are worse things.

Kari Sanders [00:55:12]: So where do we have on here? I want. You were talking about stretch goals. So where do we go to look at the stretch goal section? There are other scrolling up.

Aaron Cohen [00:55:20]: There are some sketch rewards too that are fantastic. So you could get. Okay, you could get one of the books signed and remarked by Alt Alex.

Kari Sanders [00:55:30]: All Right.

Aaron Cohen [00:55:31]: There is a sketch commission, one with Alex and one with Ralph. Ralph Singh is our colorist and letterer on the book. Taylor Esposito is the letter on the Crime and Passover story, which is fantastic, too. And Ralph also illustrated our variant cover. The Akira variant cover was Ralph. So. So he also has a sketch tier there as well. So Alex and Ralph both have one, and then the.

Aaron Cohen [00:56:01]: Drawn into the stories. Those went first. So those are. Those are gone.

Kari Sanders [00:56:06]: Those are gone.

Aaron Cohen [00:56:07]: Unless Alex finds it in his heart to add another one at the last minute. But, yeah, they’re. They’re. They’re all. They’re all gone for now. But that was phenomenal. And I can’t wait to include. Include cameos of backers in the stories.

Alex Schumacher [00:56:25]: What they don’t know is it’s just going to be stick figures in the back with a label.

Kari Sanders [00:56:29]: Yeah, Joe,

Aaron Cohen [00:56:32]: it’s just a name card on the deus.

Alex Schumacher [00:56:34]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:56:37]: So what if you’re ordering a sketch? What. What are we getting here? Is it like a five by nine or what? What size?

Alex Schumacher [00:56:47]: I think I was doing nine by 12.

Kari Sanders [00:56:49]: Nine by 12. Okay. For the commission, I’m like, throwing out numbers. You’re like, who does a five by nine?

Aaron Cohen [00:56:55]: 220, 221. Whatever it takes.

Alex Schumacher [00:56:57]: Yeah, two by four, whatever it is. Yeah, it’ll be nine by 12 board. And I work traditional. I think every Ralph is traditional as well. So, you know, it’s actually the original art that you’ll be getting in those tiers.

Kari Sanders [00:57:10]: Oh, very nice.

Aaron Cohen [00:57:12]: And that’s how Ralph is based in Germany. So his shipping is coming from Germany because that’s where he’s based from for his.

Alex Schumacher [00:57:18]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:57:18]: Okay, so. So how much is it to get the, the. The OA. To get Sketch.

Aaron Cohen [00:57:25]: Yeah, Sketch is a $75 trim that comes with. Comes with the book in the PDF.

Alex Schumacher [00:57:31]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [00:57:32]: Oh, very nice. That is.

Alex Schumacher [00:57:34]: And the commission.

Kari Sanders [00:57:35]: Yeah, that is phenomenal. And what. How are you doing original? Like, if somebody says, like, hey, here’s a picture of me, can you make me this? Or are you doing like, hey, pick a character, do this. Do you have limitations on it? Because some people do, some people don’t.

Alex Schumacher [00:57:51]: So I did. I did say. I think we said that I’ll draw, you know, whatever, whatever. You know, dealer’s choice. But I will say there are limitations to that because people often assume that if you’re a cartoonist, you can also do caricatures very well. And unfortunately, the reality is that is a very specific skill set and one that I do not really Possess. Like, I’ve done them before, and I sort of, you know, capture the, like, I hate to sound, like, ethereal about it, but I just kind of try to capture the vibe of the person because I can’t do character. It never actually looks like them.

Alex Schumacher [00:58:29]: So if you want a caricature, here’s what I’ll say. I’ll do it for you, but you’ll be disappointed. So your best bet, if you’re buying that tier, is to ask me to draw your favorite character from fandom.

Aaron Cohen [00:58:41]: But if you’ve never seen somebody illustrate vibes before, very cool.

Kari Sanders [00:58:49]: I, I get that, though. I, I, I bought a, a tier from a different. I’m not going to go into names because I, I don’t, I try not to play favorites or anything. I also, I don’t, I don’t spend anything until after I’ve done the shows, because sometimes I’m the one that’s putting it up and it shows how much I spent. And I don’t, like, it’s embarrassing for people to know how, like, they’re like, how do you pay rent? I’m planning on living in cardboard boxes that are all sitting on my sofa right now from Kickstarters that I funded.

Alex Schumacher [00:59:20]: Worth it, right?

Kari Sanders [00:59:23]: Absolutely.

Aaron Cohen [00:59:24]: They’re really good for shimming tables.

Kari Sanders [00:59:27]: But I, I asked somebody, I was like, can you do me? And they’re like, you know that I don’t do likenesses at all, right? And I’m like, okay, can you just, like, make the hair happen? Like, all I need is just, like, put. Because it was. I’ve been collecting me as other people, as comic book character. I had a really cool one from Joe St. Pierre. It was Mia’s, the shade, you know, from Starman. It was like, yeah. And that was really fun.

Kari Sanders [00:59:53]: I have some other ones that have been coming in, but I asked for one in specific. He’s like, it’s not going to look like you at all. And I’m like, that’s absolutely fine. The only thing I want in here is the hair to represent me. Everything else is you. It’s all you. Just, Just give me the hair.

Alex Schumacher [01:00:09]: That is a wide breadth to give people, which I think is appreciated for people like me.

Kari Sanders [01:00:15]: Yeah, well. And, yeah. And it’s, it’s always, like, putting the things. And people are like, I, oh, I tortured poor Jose Pierre. He did that. And then he also, like, I made him do a pinhead remark on his sketchbook cover. And I sent him, like, four different ones. They were all, like, artistic interpretations of pinhead so it wasn’t just like a video thing, you know, so.

Kari Sanders [01:00:39]: But he was like, yep, that, that, that one took me a while. That one was kind of a pain. But. But he did it. He nailed it. But it was like, sorry.

Alex Schumacher [01:00:50]: Yeah, yeah. So that’s as far as my limitations go, I would say. That’s. That’s the main thing, I think, you know, you’re looking at my art style, you know, on the pages and the sample pages and such. Kind of know what you’re getting. If you follow my Instagram or anything. I do these, you know, Sunday funnies I’ve been calling them, which are just my versions of comic strip characters that I started doing on a whim. I think it was earlier this year.

Alex Schumacher [01:01:13]: So you kind of know what you’re getting. So I’m not, you know, at least with this. Because oftentimes you. You might ask for a commission from people and, you know, their work from something else, but it might not be what you were hoping for in the commission. So with me, you know, what you see is what you get.

Kari Sanders [01:01:28]: So.

Alex Schumacher [01:01:28]: Yep.

Kari Sanders [01:01:30]: Oh, Leo, do you want to pull up the. The spelling bee?

Leo Pond [01:01:35]: Yep. Yeah, I wanted to make sure we covered that because we are coming up on time. But just wanted to go over real quick for everybody watching. If you haven’t checked it out, we have a relaunch of our website. And if you’re looking to find out more information about Aaron and Alex, we have their event right here. And also we got pages set up for both of you as well. So if anybody’s looking for your information, you can bring it right on the website here. And also, Carrie, uh, if you wanted to put their information in your corner here for the Kickstarter, Uh, we’ll get it.

Leo Pond [01:02:16]: We’ll get it on there as well.

Aaron Cohen [01:02:17]: And then if you follow the campaign, there’s going to be a bunch of stretch goals coming up too that are going to be. Be including. We’ve already unlocked the bookmarks and the next. The next. And it’s a bookmark with a piece of matzah on it too, so you can’t go wrong. And. And the next up is a playing card with the family member on it. A playing card with a family member on it.

Aaron Cohen [01:02:40]: Is that 4,000. And then we go hollow foil cover and then a signed and numbered art print of the COVID with. From Alex.

Alex Schumacher [01:02:51]: So some very 11 by 17 too. So.

Kari Sanders [01:02:54]: Okay, so is. Is it a random family member card or do you pick the family member card?

Aaron Cohen [01:03:01]: We’re gonna. I think it’s gonna Be a random family member. Right? Everyone gets one random family member.

Alex Schumacher [01:03:05]: I think that’s what we were talking about.

Kari Sanders [01:03:06]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [01:03:07]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [01:03:07]: So. So are you gonna put like a major stretch goal and you get the whole.

Aaron Cohen [01:03:15]: Just.

Kari Sanders [01:03:15]: Just pitching it to you, you know, like that. That would be cool.

Aaron Cohen [01:03:19]: Me thinks somebody wants a deck of cards. Yeah, I think, I think that. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Alex Schumacher [01:03:29]: Yeah.

Leo Pond [01:03:32]: Now, Carrie mentioned spelling B, so what’s that, Carrie?

Kari Sanders [01:03:45]: Oh, this is the first collaboration that you guys had together, right? Okay.

Alex Schumacher [01:03:51]: Crime and Passover was funny enough, the first one. Yeah.

Leo Pond [01:03:55]: And this is hitting store shelves rather soon, right?

Crime and Passover and Their Other Team-Up Work

Aaron Cohen [01:04:01]: Yeah, this is. I think it just hit. Gets cut the printer and it just shipped out. Right?

Alex Schumacher [01:04:05]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [01:04:06]: Because they’re seeing stuff that nobody else but some of us have seen right now. This is. This is fun. This is the coolest thing I’ve read in a while. It was so much fun because I was a spelling bee girl in school and I’m a witch. So there we go.

Alex Schumacher [01:04:24]: This is your story.

Kari Sanders [01:04:26]: It is. I really related to you, Terry.

Aaron Cohen [01:04:29]: I wrote it for you.

Kari Sanders [01:04:30]: I did. I. I appreciate that, Aaron, so much.

Alex Schumacher [01:04:34]: In the pastiche of Looney Tunes meets slasher film.

Aaron Cohen [01:04:41]: Yeah. I remember when I wrote this, I was like, alex, how do you feel about drawing blood stuff and some gore?

Alex Schumacher [01:04:51]: I was pretty excited about it.

Aaron Cohen [01:04:52]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [01:04:54]: I was up to the task. Especially like the spine coming out of the of scoop or of a shaggies.

Aaron Cohen [01:05:01]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [01:05:02]: Or not shaggies body there. Yeah. It was fun. It’s fun challenge.

Aaron Cohen [01:05:07]: Yeah. This was one of the most fun stories to write.

Kari Sanders [01:05:10]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [01:05:11]: Wow.

Kari Sanders [01:05:12]: This is a beautiful story, folks. It’s. And. And you guys should grab this. It’s. It’s issue two, right. Of the Cloak Room.

Aaron Cohen [01:05:18]: I think it’s actually issue five.

Kari Sanders [01:05:20]: Or is it five?

Alex Schumacher [01:05:21]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [01:05:22]: Okay. I. I saw something about. Yeah. Oh, that is five. I saw. I thought that maybe one of you had something in issue too that might have been bad research on my part.

Aaron Cohen [01:05:31]: Three was Crime and Passover.

Kari Sanders [01:05:34]: Oh, okay.

Alex Schumacher [01:05:35]: You’re not wrong.

Kari Sanders [01:05:37]: All right. Okay.

Aaron Cohen [01:05:38]: Correct.

Kari Sanders [01:05:39]: That’s right. That’s what got me confused. But you guys, this is. This is fabulous. It’s. It’s. It’s. It’s a girl going to a new school signing up for the one activity because your parents make you want to sign up for something and you’re going to fit in and make some friends, and she goes for the spelling bee because she thinks she’s in a witcher school and it’s kind of different than what she thought.

Kari Sanders [01:06:03]: And it’s very different from what everyone attending thought. So it’s. It’s beautiful. We aren’t going to show you the end, of course, because you got to get it, but you can see it. It just starts off in blood and. Which is wonderful.

Alex Schumacher [01:06:20]: From there it’s.

Aaron Cohen [01:06:21]: It’s fun. There’s a lot of little flying hearts like the one on the bottom of the page.

Alex Schumacher [01:06:25]: Yeah, I guess I got to draw a lot of internal organs, which was a blast.

Kari Sanders [01:06:29]: Here, here’s some organs for you. How you doing with your.

Alex Schumacher [01:06:35]: My Google image search is probably a nightmare for forensics, but it was a lot of fun to do.

Kari Sanders [01:06:42]: Oh, I write horror. I understand.

Alex Schumacher [01:06:45]: Exactly.

Kari Sanders [01:06:47]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [01:06:47]: I’m a big comedy horror fan. I think comedy horror stuff is so fun. And, and this was sort of my. My take on a. On a comedy horror, you know, kind of comedy horror slash coming of age that we all loved growing up. You know, those kind of things. And you know, really born like, like exactly like you said, you know, this young witch, you know, her parents want her to make friends and find her people and do after school activities and you. You have to put yourself out there to meet somebody.

Aaron Cohen [01:07:20]: And so she does. And she does it in a way that she doesn’t expect, you know, in grand.

Alex Schumacher [01:07:26]: It’s a glory fashion.

Kari Sanders [01:07:28]: Yeah, it’s a goddamn pun as well.

Alex Schumacher [01:07:31]: It is.

Aaron Cohen [01:07:34]: We love a pun. We love a pun.

Alex Schumacher [01:07:36]: I mean, aren’t you is the people of funds?

Kari Sanders [01:07:40]: I didn’t know that. I thought it was my family and kitchen people. You’re claiming it. You’re. Do you have a flag, sir? Do you have a flag to plant?

Alex Schumacher [01:07:53]: No, that’s where I failed in this moment.

Aaron Cohen [01:07:56]: You could see Alex at grossingers and the Catskills every Saturday night.

Alex Schumacher [01:07:59]: No, I have a little monkey that does the rim shots for me.

Kari Sanders [01:08:06]: Oh my God.

Aaron Cohen [01:08:07]: Mr. Butter Chips.

Kari Sanders [01:08:08]: Yes, folks, if you have not checked it out before and. And I hadn’t heard of before and I’m so glad that I did because I started reading before this. Go and look up Mr. Butter Chips. It is it. It is a very fun webcomic and it’s following an accordion monkeys like regular life. Being like the man right now kind of and saying things like the man and go jack off in your mother’s ass. But you know, like just a lot, a lot of different little references here and there.

Kari Sanders [01:08:43]: It is definitely not safe for work, but it is so safe for your soul. It’s gonna be like, yeah, this is gonna make you happy.

Aaron Cohen [01:08:51]: That should have been your tagline, Alex. That’s pretty good.

Alex Schumacher [01:08:53]: I should pay her. Yeah, that. For that line.

Aaron Cohen [01:08:55]: That was a really good tagline.

Kari Sanders [01:08:58]: I asked for an autographed copy of something, and you can have that done. How’s that sound? There we go. All right,

Leo Pond [01:09:07]: well, before we wrap things up, whoever wants to go first? What do you guys. And, Alex, I know you have limited time when you’re not doing comic work. What do you dork out about?

Alex Schumacher [01:09:22]: You want to go first? Are you. I’ll follow suit.

Kari Sanders [01:09:29]: Do you build toy boats?

Alex Schumacher [01:09:32]: Well, now you just stole my thunder. No, toy boats are wonderful, but. But not. Not necessarily something I dork out about. You know, it might sound like a very cliche thing to say again, but, I mean, music is one that I’ve always talked out about. That’s a. It’s a big thing in my life. It’s a big part of my creative process.

Alex Schumacher [01:09:51]: It’s a big part of my mood stability and emotional fortification. So music is definitely something I geek out about. And I’ve recently kind of stopped being as much of a music elitist and kind of broadened my net to start listening to other things. Some like, you know, newer pop and, you know, maybe some pop punk, which are things that I adamantly stayed away from in the past. But you know what? When you. When you open your heart to things, sometimes you find treasures. So I’m glad I did that. So music is a big one for me.

Alex Schumacher [01:10:27]: I mean, Aaron is far above me on this one, but. But movies. I’ve always loved movies and musicals. You know, growing up, my mom was an actress, an amateur actress. She did community theater in LA and in Monterey when we were there. So I grew up on musical soundtracks. And, you know, we watched a lot of the old movies, the My Fair Ladies and the Music Mans and, you know, all of those. So I guess that ties back into the music, too.

Alex Schumacher [01:10:53]: But also, film has been big for me as well and very inspirational because, like Aaron said, it’s kind of comics in motion. So you can extrapolate a lot of inspiration from certain shots, perspectives, you know, the way they. They portray movement. You know, a lot of those are almost directly applicable if you. If you can kind of see how to do it. So, you know, for me, I think those. And probably my son, maybe that’s a silly thing to say, but, you know, he’s little, so we’re trying to take it all in, and. And so we kind of dork out about that, I guess, because there’s some.

Aaron Cohen [01:11:30]: Eventually you’ll just start geeking out about what your Kid geeks out about.

Alex Schumacher [01:11:34]: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Aaron Cohen [01:11:35]: You try to have mutual geek.

Alex Schumacher [01:11:37]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [01:11:37]: And that’s. That’s.

Alex Schumacher [01:11:38]: And he does a little dance. He loves music. So we have this. This Bluetooth speaker in the living room, and we’ll come out in the morning and he’ll point to it and make a little noise and put on music, and he’ll start doing his little bop. So hopefully we’re passing some of that on. Thank you. Thank you for saying it’s constantly.

Kari Sanders [01:11:52]: I appreciate that. Nuts. Dark out about family, man, that family’s awesome.

Alex Schumacher [01:11:59]: And I’ve talked out about a lot of things in my life, but those are kind of the things that, you know, like Leo was saying, I sort of have the time and. And a bandwidth for right now. But. But yeah, and creating, you know, creating with Aaron and creating in general or, you know, when, like you said, outside of that. But those are. Are still important for my, you know, my emotions and my mood as well. And mental stability.

Kari Sanders [01:12:22]: Yeah, it’s. It’s good that you can equate your job with mental stability, because some people are just like, this is just a job. Some people are like, oh, I have his deadlines. I’m gonna go insane. And you’re like, hey, I’m getting something out of this. I create, I produce. I feel I’m done. I’m good.

Aaron Cohen [01:12:38]: It’s the only, you know, one of the only things that, you know, I think is helping the sanity in the world around us that’s so crazy is, you know, to be able to try to get a story out and produce something in the world that. Not like, you think, oh, this is going to do so much good, but it’s like you just put a piece of you out and that’s all you can do. Right? And that’s. I think there’s a beauty in that. I think there’s. It’s healthy. And I think there’s a mental health aspect to creating that is helpful to your. To your soul and to you as a person.

Aaron Cohen [01:13:06]: You know, and without not just creating through writing, like, creating anything, you know, music, art, a piece of furniture, a table, like whatever it might be, you

Alex Schumacher [01:13:15]: know, Peter, you know. Yeah, busking.

Aaron Cohen [01:13:23]: I have it. No, mimes, too. They count.

Alex Schumacher [01:13:25]: I was. I was refraining from saying that. But, yeah,

Kari Sanders [01:13:31]: unless you’re knocking on pork, in which case you’re thrown into the scorpion pit. But that’s.

Aaron Cohen [01:13:36]: And then for me, in terms of geeking out, I’m sort of like the. I think Alex and I could just kind of reverse it, which is what Alex said too. His first was music, and then it was like film and musicals and stuff. And mine’s the reverse. My first, first is film and musicals and then my second is music. And you know, I think that’s why Alex and I also jive so much on, on, you know, on creating as collaborators is because we have such similar geek influences on, on our sensibilities, you know, familial influences on the work we do and, and our sense of humor. So those things all kind of jive. But you know, film wise, I mean, back on the east coast, you know, in the city used to have Kim’s video.

Aaron Cohen [01:14:14]: And I remember going into those kind of video stores wars and just geeking out on VHS as a bootleg, VHS as a foreign films, right. That have films organized just by director, which you don’t find anymore, where you just go through, you find a director you like and you just go through every movie in the catalog, right? And you see how that person has grown creatively, how they’ve changed creatively, how their storytelling is different. You know, you take someone like Nolan, you know, when you take, you know, following and then Memento and then whatever, you can kind of see this whole trajectory of, of these things. And I had a kick where I was just getting everybody’s first film. Like, let’s see all the famous writers, whatever the first film was. I was going to watch everybody’s first feature film that they made. And I had a whole blackout curtain, first film festival thing for party of ones. Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [01:15:04]: You know, is there anybody that you

Kari Sanders [01:15:06]: would say don’t check out their first film?

Aaron Cohen [01:15:09]: No, no. I mean, one of my favorites of all time is Richard Linklater. And you know, his first film was Slacker. And I must have watched Slacker like a dozen times. And it’s, you know, it’s a meandering movie, but it’s all about these vignettes and these stories and I just, I love it. I just love Slacker. And he’s, you know, he’s still no slouch, you know, he’s, you know, fantastic. So I love that.

Aaron Cohen [01:15:37]: And then with music and then musicals, no doubt, you know, east coast musicals. I grew up going to musicals, classic musicals. We were just on the east coast last year, last summer, and we saw like three. We saw like Moulin Rouge. We saw Little Shop of Horrors, which I love. That’s my favorite musical. Little Shop of Horror is my favorite musical ever. And we saw it like off Broadway and it was fantastic.

The Movie and Musical Influences Behind the Work

Aaron Cohen [01:16:01]: And you know, we got last minute tickets Is like, everything about it. I sing it around the house. It’s embarrassing. Then music wise, it’s more like soundtracks. I’m a soundtrack guy, so it goes back to movies in a way. Like, I love seeing how someone puts a soundtrack together, whether it’s musical or whether it’s a collection of songs. And then I create soundtracks when I’m writing for stories, and then I’ll play them to set a tone, you know, while I’m creating something.

Kari Sanders [01:16:29]: I. I’m going to throw out something here. I. My mother was huge in theater, and I was actually a theater major for an entire semester before I. We won’t get into that, but I had some reasons I needed to leave college. But this is the perfect time to say, I guess because I’ve been learning Jewish things, that the. The movie, the musical that I have seen the most, and I actually got to see. It’s Fiddler on the Roof is what I’m going to say.

Kari Sanders [01:16:59]: But I actually got to see. I can’t remember his name right now. Who played Tevye? Topol, I believe.

Aaron Cohen [01:17:09]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [01:17:09]: Yeah. I got to see Heim Topol play Tevye. And I was. It was so weird. It was like the third time I think I saw it live. And I was in this little balcony area, and I’m sitting with my mom and my sister. And in the scene where he sends his youngest daughter away and is just like, I can’t take it. No, you go.

Kari Sanders [01:17:32]: You know, I started bawling my eyes out, because. Of course you do. And sitting in front of us were a bunch of Hasidic Jews wearing the full everything. And they, like, stood up and embraced me and, like, hugged me while I was crying. And it was like, one of the most beautiful moments. My mom was like, oh, my God, you’re, like, disrupting these people. I’m like, mom. They understood why I was upset.

Kari Sanders [01:18:00]: It was. It was a beautiful moment to me. It’s embarrassing to you, but, you know, to me, it was just this, like, oh, my God. Yes. It’s so hard, you know? So I. I’m sorry if, like, Fiddler on Earth is a really cliched thing to say, but it was. It was like that, to me, was a moment that was just like.

Alex Schumacher [01:18:18]: Yeah, it’s like

Aaron Cohen [01:18:21]: a reason. It’s a good musical. It’s a classic.

Alex Schumacher [01:18:23]: It’s a classic. It’s quintessential.

Kari Sanders [01:18:27]: Okay.

Aaron Cohen [01:18:28]: You have a human moment, you know, that’s. That’s to be celebrated.

Kari Sanders [01:18:32]: Yeah. Was my first experience in, like, having somebody from a different Culture. Ish. Point. Because it was very, you know, they had the hats and everything going on, which is not normal in Lincoln, Nebraska, or Omaha, Nebraska. So it was like this, like.

Aaron Cohen [01:18:49]: Yeah, for sure.

Kari Sanders [01:18:51]: Yeah. Because that. But. But it was. It was this awesome time, and I loved it. And so I. I love that you guys are into the musicals too, because that was. That was what I was raised like, too.

Aaron Cohen [01:19:03]: Yeah, it’s. It’s. I do. I do love a good musical.

Alex Schumacher [01:19:06]: Yeah.

Aaron Cohen [01:19:07]: Even some of the bad ones. What are you gonna do if you

Leo Pond [01:19:10]: like Little Shop of Horrors? If you do come to Terrificon often? Bill diamond has a booth there, and he often brings the original Audrey.

Kari Sanders [01:19:23]: No.

Leo Pond [01:19:25]: Yeah. Bill diamond worked with Jim Henson.

Alex Schumacher [01:19:29]: Very cool.

Leo Pond [01:19:30]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [01:19:31]: Yep.

Leo Pond [01:19:31]: Uh, yeah. So, yeah, it’s really cool when he. When he brings that out. He also had the last, like, the original E.T. from the movie.

Aaron Cohen [01:19:44]: Oh, wow. Is he the one that’ll be cool to see.

Alex Schumacher [01:19:49]: Yeah.

Kari Sanders [01:19:49]: Is he the one that walked around with the hand puppet Audrey, or was that somebody else that was just cosplaying?

Leo Pond [01:19:54]: His Audrey is big because there were

Alex Schumacher [01:19:57]: different versions in the movie.

Aaron Cohen [01:20:00]: He has the final form Audrey. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kari Sanders [01:20:02]: Oh, because I’ve seen there’s one guy who kind of dresses like Seymour and then has, like, this. Only like, this part is the pot for the plant, and then he has a whole Audrey.

Aaron Cohen [01:20:15]: I think I’ve attended a con where there wasn’t Little Shop cosplay.

Alex Schumacher [01:20:19]: Yeah. At least a little bit.

Aaron Cohen [01:20:21]: Yeah.

Alex Schumacher [01:20:21]: Also the music connection there. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops in the movie version of Little Shops of Horrors was the. The voice of Audrey, too. That’s why it’s so phenomenal.

Kari Sanders [01:20:31]: Oh, thank you for that

Aaron Cohen [01:20:35]: video.

Kari Sanders [01:20:36]: A little knowledge nugget, everybody. You’re learning more. You guys have been very educational tonight. Thank you.

Alex Schumacher [01:20:45]: Who knew? Take that, Mrs. Jones from first grade.

Leo Pond [01:20:52]: So we’ll kick it on over to you, Aaron, first, where do you like people following you on social media?

Aaron Cohen [01:20:58]: I’m on. I’m on Instagram at. Aaron Cohen writes I’m on Blue sky at. At the A. Cohen. And those are probably the best two places to. To find me. And then we got, you know, we got the Kickstarter going now.

Aaron Cohen [01:21:10]: You can find me there, too.

Leo Pond [01:21:13]: Awesome. And what about you, Alex?

Alex Schumacher [01:21:16]: Yeah, I’m on Instagram and Blue Sky, I believe at AJ Schumacher Art is the handle. Facebook. I have my personal website, Alex Schumacher art.com and the aforementioned sticks and stones Kickstarter.

Leo Pond [01:21:32]: Awesome. So I want to thank everybody for watching this fine evening. Definitely. You know, check out Aaron and Alex, A lot of their information is shown us up above or down below, depending on where you’re watching or listening to us. And also check out our website. We have all that information there. So, Carrie, sign us on out.

Kari Sanders [01:21:49]: Hey, everybody, if you want to check out me, go to Carrie Sanders on Facebook, because I have all the other forms of social media, but I don’t actually use them at all other than to follow people. So if you want to read my stuff, if you want to see me on different shows, if you want to hear my opinions on things, find me on Facebook. Get a hold of me there. That is the easiest way to get in touch with me and get ready because this Tuesday, I’ve got to say I’m gonna. I’m gonna fill in for Drew here. Excuse me. It. It takes.

Kari Sanders [01:22:19]: It takes just a second. So coming up this Tuesday, we have artist extraordinaire Tyler Crook, who you might know from Harrow county or some other things, who is also recently putting out his pages to get ready for November’s release of Archie in Hell. So just in case you can’t make it. Well, you should. But anyway, going on, follow me @GhostBusterman1984 on Instagram and. Wait, Drew took over my. The whole segment? I don’t know. But yeah, I had one last question because we started it about the herring and then we stopped.

Kari Sanders [01:22:59]: Where is the best place for somebody to give you money, Mr. Alex, in order to get a copy of the effect of Pickled herring?

Alex Schumacher [01:23:08]: As of now, the situation with the book is that I basically have all available copies. So if they want reach me at one of the social media sites or website listed, I can just deal with them personally.

Kari Sanders [01:23:22]: Okay. Awesome. That’s all I had.

Leo Pond [01:23:25]: Awesome that. We’ll catch you later.

Kari Sanders [01:23:28]: Thanks, everybody. Love you. Good night.

Aaron Cohen [01:23:30]: Thanks so much.