Red Raider Show Episode 5

aka Upward Failure

Hey, Red Raiders, it's me. Just checking in, letting you guys know what's going on. We are now officially more than a week from the first day of New York Comic Con. And you know what been really cool is if I had recorded these things either before or after or both during New York Comic Con, if I was giving like some kind of a, you know, like pre and post mortem about what was going on at the convention, what I was hoping to accomplish, what we did accomplish, that would be really fun. But instead of talking about what I should have done, let's talk about what we did do and the background of what's happening here at Comic Pop right now. I have a bit of good and bad news. It's not bad news for you. It's not like, oh, man, we're closing this down or we're stopping this and we're not going to do that. No, this is just more like, I have some good news. We had a good time at New York Comic Con, and yet we also had a surprise, unexpected, unfortunate situation take place just this past week as a result of New York Comic Con. So we're going to get into that. Let's whet your appetite a little bit. 

But overall, New York Comic Con was a fantastic time. The team and I had a blast. I want to thank not only are we going to hear this, but I want to thank Greg over at CBR and the rest of the crew from CBR for putting me up not in any hotel or any travel arrangements or anything, but rather just for putting me on the list to do some interviews at the show. I had a blast talking to Greg Cupulo and Tom McFarland about spawn Batman, which was just one of the highlights of the show. And they were so gracious and friendly and pleasant, and it was just overall, it was exactly the kind of interaction that you would hope to have at a Comic Con or with these two gentlemen. And then at the end of the show, that was pretty much one of the first things we did. But at the end of the show on Sunday. I got to record an extra long interview with Greg Kapulo where we just talked about him and his art and a bunch of other stuff. And he dropped a bunch of stuff. Like he dropped a bunch of information that I didn't know and that people around me also didn't know because you could tell they were like. Should he be saying that? And it was really cool. It didn't occur to me like, you know, if it was going to be a scoop or not. That was not my intent. Greg was just kind of like saying stuff. And I have talked about this, I think, before. I think I mentioned it on off the Rack just on Monday. But we haven't actually said any of the things that he said, because honestly, they're not mind to tell. I'd rather the interview goes out now. It was on Sunday. It's Friday. I'm hoping that that interview one day actually comes out on the channel over at CBR Presents, but when it does, I'm sure to post a link in here on Patreon. But those were great. Tiffany also got to jump in and do an interview with Zeb Wells, which is really cool and especially fun because then yesterday TIFF and I were watching she Hulk and we're watching the finale. And I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I will say that there's a shot where Zeb Wells is in the background and I'm like, holy shit, is that Zeb Wells? And Tiffany went back, took a letter, she said, what the hell is going on here? I just talked to this guy and now he's on she Hulk. And it was just really fun to have that little moment. And the interview, I think, really went well. Honestly, it was a really fun conversation that Tiffany had. Tiffany, of course, carried herself professionally and expertly, and she looked great doing it. And so just an overall fantastic experience at the CBR Skybox. A lot of fun, like, behind the scenes stuff that took place there. Like, after I did the interview, I met back up with Tiffany and the two of us ended up bumping into Scott Snyder upstairs in, like, the Skybox lounge kind of area. And he immediately was like, hey, guys, what's going on? And we ended up talking to him for like, ten minutes, which was really, really cool. And just overall, it's nice to reconnect because I haven't talked to Scott directly, or rather, without any intent for anything to take place. Not like, oh, can we do an interview? Can we talk about this? Can we talk about it? It was just two people bumping into each other and talking to each other, and that was really nice to talk to him and chat. But while we're chatting so we're doing our thing, we're chatting, him and Tyler, his assistant, and we're chatting, he and I and Tiffany. And while we're talking, 

I'm sorry, there's just there's a van that's pulling into my driveway right now. And I'm kind of like, what the hell is going on here? Apparently, the advent of, like, different individual shipping has resulted in just vans, just windowless vans driving up to you and then dropping off parcels that you ordered from a legitimate outfit and being like, hi, I'm a guy in a van and I have the thing you order from Amazon. And I'm like, shouldn't it be from like, a USPS truck or an Amazon truck? And it's like, nope, just a big, scary white windowless van. 

Anyway, so we're chatting, Scott, Tiffany, Tyler and I, and they ended up getting interrupted by a colleague of theirs. And so we're just hanging out and we resume our chat, and then we wrap up with the intent of doing something sometime. Him jumping on the show, us promoting his new initiative on comixology because there's a new team up between Scott and jock that looks really exciting. And then Dan Harmon just walks up with this wake of an entourage, like he is front and center. And I didn't know that Dan Harmon was about as tall as I am because he's a big dude. It was just like, holy shit. Because I've never met Dan Harmon before. I've never pursued that kind of interaction. I dig his stuff, rick and Morty and community and all that HarmonQuest, but I'd never actually seen him in person. So I see him walking up and immediately from all those outfits, I'm just like, oh, right, Dan. Hey. I didn't say anything to him. But he starts walking up, and then you see that there's no way you can talk to this guy because behind him, as I described it's, a wake of an entourage just, I don't know, like a dozen people behind him just coming along. And I don't know what he was doing there because there was nothing on the docket up there for Harmon to talk about. But I've actually been looking it up. I'm like, what was he doing up there? I don't know. But whatever it was, he was doing it with authority. It was just fun. I was like, hey, what a fun moment. That's the kind of moment that I want and pursue at comic con. It's just kind of like, hey, I'm doing this thing, and I'm not doing anything other than what I want to be doing. I'm not pursuing anything. I'm not crossing any boundaries. I'm just having a fun conversation with somebody and then somebody else will show up. And here's another example of that. 

So Chris from comic tropes reaches out to me. He's like, I'm on the floor. Where are you? So I tell the team, I'm like, all right, I got to go meet up with Chris. I'm going to go say hi. So I go down to artist alley and I find him. But I find him talking to Daniel Warren Johnson. So Chris and Daniel Warren Johnson and I end up in this kind of fun conversation. We're talking about art. And thanks to Tiffany's experience and her own artistic pursuits, her own because she is an artist in her own right, her own watching of art blogs and stuff like that, I have absorbed a whole bunch of different fun, like knowledge about art. And so I was able to hold my own and talk to him about airbrushing and pasta pens and colors and so forth. And so I was able to actually look like I know what I'm talking about. And that's why it's really important. It's just a life lesson to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. That's something that I didn't even really consciously choose to do as a kid, but it was something that I ended up doing over and over again where I'd be like, that person is way smarter than me, and I like their jib. So I'm going to see if we can hang out and be friends. I don't know if it was a conscious thing. I know that was one of my closest friends from childhood, was like, exactly that. I was just like, I didn't know him from Adam. I didn't know what he was like or anything, but I knew he was smarter than me, and I knew I wanted to be a part of that. And it ended up resulting in one of my longest friendships of all time. And it's only been that way. I've only surrounded myself with smarter, funnier, interesting people. And that will make you my extension, hopefully. I mean, some would argue that's not necessarily true, but screw them. But yeah, so that was fun. But again, it was like, oh, I'll just go. I'll go meet up with Chris, we'll chat about YouTube, and boom, D-Dubs is there, or Dubbers, as I'm trying to call him. But yeah, we ended up chatting with him and then going our separate ways and then heading back and shooting some stuff and just enjoying the show. 

So we ended up filming a whole bunch of stuff for the Con. We ended up through fun, random chicanery Procuring, an iPhone that has a really nice camera. You may have seen the previous New York Comic Con 2021 footage that was all shot on our Samsung Galaxies. So we were like, let's try the iPhone. And by the way, not because we were like, oh man, I hear the iPhone's great, let's buy an iPhone. Now, through some unexpected windfalls, an iPhone appeared from the ether. And that's all I'll say about that. Not that I stole an iPhone, I'm just saying, more like my folks ordered an iPhone, they sent two and they didn't ask for the other one back. So now we got an iPhone and we're using it just for filming, and the footage looks good. You actually may have already seen it because we filmed the Tom King scene at the end of this week's back issues with the iPhone and integrated it with our Canon SLR camera footage that we shot. Since we knew that the episode is going to be shorter, we shot it on the Canon instead of the Panasonic HCX 1000, which is our official camera for shooting back issues. It's technically a camcorder, so it can shoot long periods of time as opposed to the current crop of SLRs that can only shoot probably about like 30 minutes or so, which is what we ended up doing. 

Which also segues into the regrettable news, which is that, like, this week back issues originally, as you know, was going to be Batman the Abduction from Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle, kind of the key into the whole spirit of the Halloween season. But then we ended up actually having the time to cut the back issues that we shot on premises. And throughout the year when I've been procuring information and set up for New York Comic Con to justify our going and to justify our trespasses and to end up producing something that you guys want to see, I kept asking over and over again, like, what do you guys want to see? What do you guys want? Like, what kind of content do you want from New York Comic con? And overall, the revealing opinion was just do what you do, maybe, but there too, but don't sacrifice quality. So we ended up finding a location and filmed in there and ended up just doing back issues at the con. And as a result of it being at the con, we were able to shoot like a fun little extra bonus that you could only get because we were at the con. 

I feel like it was a marriage of both worlds and I'll tell you more about that in a minute. But the episode went out and it ended up being about like, I think 28, 28 minutes between less than 30 minutes, which is significantly shorter than your normal average episode of back issues. But I felt like, you know what, it's a Batman book. A lot of people really responded to that looney tunes crossover back in 2017 and it's got the Tom King cameo plus the cachet of it being something that we filmed at the con. So it's a very uniquely centralized episode. It ended up being the worst performing video on that channel in years. It ended up being the worst performing episode of back issues we've probably ever had, not including, I think, Spiderman gen 13. I think that one was still the worst. But it did really bad. It's still doing really bad. And I honestly, for the life of me, don't really understand why I do this for a living. So I know kind of like, what mistakes can be made. And this felt like we really crossed our t's and dotted our eyes. I mean, if you look at the analytics for an episode of back issues, the smart money would say the shows are too long because retention is 58%, 60%. So a little more than halfway through so a little more than halfway between an hour and 90 minutes is about the length of this week's back issues, right? So we would assume that if an hour is too long for your average viewer, then 25 minutes should be just right. And yet over 2000 fewer audience members watched that episode and the video has a 15 minutes retention. So technically, yes, I think there's more of it being watched than usual. But if you look at the trends and the analytics, technically, this is the perfect length for back issues according to the retention. And yet, and so I don't know if maybe YouTube didn't push it out. I don't know if the audience didn't really understand what the show was going to be because of the thumbnail. I don't know if they saw the words Elmer Fudd and thought, nope, just not going to watch it at all. I don't know if it's a combination of factors. Maybe it's just YouTube was like, oh, this isn't your normal length thing. It's not a short, and it's not a back issue. So what is this? We're not going to push it. Plus, the audience that was then left to see it went, oh, well, more fun. I'm not interested. Or, oh, it's only 25 minutes. How fun could that be? I honestly don't know. And that's something that I would love to get some data on just so that we don't make that mistake in the future. But I'll tell you this. We ain't shooting no more back issues at New York Comic Con, because for whatever reason, that did not work for the audience, worked for us. We had a great time. We shot in a panel room. New York Comic Con said no to panels, to us, for ten years. They've been like, no, you guys don't warrant having a panel room. And so we've been like, all right, you know what? We'll figure it out. You know, we'll borrow booth space from other creators. You know, like when we had our signing on Saturday at the Cuba School, which went great, by the way, everybody was awesome. Or we can set up at the DC booth, you know, like we had before, which, by the way, they did not have. DC had no presence in your Comic Con. They didn't come at all. Which was kind of like, oh, that's really kind of indicative of you guys nowadays. But there was a panel room downstairs, and I said this when they said, well, we'll put you on the waitlist this year. I said, look, we could take one of the small panel rooms. We don't care. Just give us an hour in one of the smallest rooms in the building, and we'll fill it. And they didn't. But then while we were walking around, I was scouting around. Not really actually actively scouting. I was just kind of walking around, and I noticed that there was this one room. It was like a one it was the first panel room at the bottom all the way at the end. So I go in, and it's dark, like the motion lights are off, and I go in the back, and I see there's, like a green room, kind of curtained area that's behind the stage that you see in the episode. And that was what killed me. By the way, if I had one regret about that episode besides how horribly it did it, is the fact that there was a black couch back there, and I didn't think to pull it out. I was really worried about us being caught and thrown out. And so I was like, I picked a shorter book. And that's why we're a little quieter than usual because I was just not yelling. I didn't want to be too bombastic. Why we didn't invite audience members to watch the episode. I didn't want to call attention to us. We wanted us to get in, shoot the show as best as we could and then get out. But if I had my druthers, if I knew that nobody would care, I would have pulled that couch out, man, because that would have been so much more fun to have this real kind of back issues, comic pop experience, have it sitting on a couch shooting the show the way we always do. But in this panel room, that would have been that would have put it over the top for me. But in any case, we had this panel room, we shot the show, and the only time that anyone came in was when clean up, like the cleaning people came in. They went to empty a garbage can, which was empty, so they were like, oh, okay. And then another time when a woman came in and she was looking at her phone and at the end of the show asked her what was going on, and she was like, oh, I just wanted to get away from everything and sit down and look at my phone for an hour. And we were like, oh. So that was literally everybody who filled that room. And we didn't go back. I should have gone back to see if that room was ever filled. But I'll tell you this, it was empty the whole damn day when we shot. So what the hell is that all about anyway? So that was the experience of shooting back issue. That was the kind of bad news about the Con and about the channel right now, is that this week's episode just bombed hard. 

So we won't make that mistake again. Whatever that mistake was. That's the real concern is that I don't even really know what we did wrong. And it's hard enough when we do know what we're doing wrong and we do it anyway because we just love the show and we love making this kind of content. But man, that was a downer, but not a black cloud over the event. The con went great. We had an amazing time, terrific interactions, and overall just it was a great experience. As far as after the New York Comic Con is concerned, we're moving our shooting schedule from Thursdays to Wednesdays, or at least we're trying to. Ben's new employment opportunity, he got a promotion. And so as a result, that's great. But as a result, it's put his consistency in flux. And so both he and Ethan are a little less flexible than they used to be. And so we have to kind of like hash out what days we're shooting and then when and how much. And I've already been kind of faced with the issue of we haven't had a lot of time to shoot, like everything that I would like to try and shoot. So this only kind of puts more of a monkey wrench into things. But we're working it out. We're all reasonable people. We have fun doing it. No one's unhappy. So we are working out a good system and making it work. The only thing is it just allowed us to have to change our schedule. So instead of shooting on Thursdays, which we've been doing for over a year, maybe a little more, maybe two or three years, we're moving to Wednesdays, which means that that ups my timetable because I gotta make sure that I'm prepared by Wednesday, unless you're counting this week, which we are shooting on Friday. So I guess we're shooting today. 

And I guess we're shooting what I am prepared for, which is a Black Panther book. We're going to do the Mega Black Panther event, do more, and so that'll be shot and ready to go. And then hopefully we'll be able to shoot the the Halloween episode for with Tiffany. Oh, that's what fell. We were shooting an episode for Benny and we heard a sound of something fall. I was wondering what it was. And so I've been walking around the studio kind of trying to figure out what it was. And it was my Kenner Batwing Bat plane in the Batman section of the library. Thankfully, the wing part here is supposed to pop off, so it's not totally broken. And what's it called, his cockpit was supposed to come off too, so I got to find that too. But anyway, yeah, so we're shooting that and then we got to figure out more. The other thing is that in the wake of our underperforming episode of back issues and the lower performing other things we've been working on, we're trying to kind of like figure out our best way to survive and to push forward into the future. And part of that is things like this giving out, hopefully fun rewards about what you guys are interested in here on the patreon, but also over on the channel side, making stuff that you guys want to watch. I was just watching an interesting interview with a prolific YouTuber who talked about why he's successful or how to be successful in YouTube. Because I'm always looking, I always want to know what the latest trends are, what the latest algorithmic approaches are. Not just because I'm trying to like, chase trends, but mostly because I want to know what we're supposed to be doing or I don't want to be missing some crucial element that is essential to our survivability. And one of the things, the chief thing that he mentioned was just making stuff people want to watch, just keeping an eye on what people are interested in and what they want to watch. And I had thought that back issues is kind of like the main thing people want to watch. But based on this most recent episode, I'm kind of wondering, is that true? Is that still true? Will that be true come the future? And so that's scary and that's interesting. And of course, I want to try and make sure that both channels, comic Pop and returns, are viable and have their own not just their own audiences, but they appeal to the audiences that they are geared towards. So that means more elsewhere, exchange episodes, more podcasts that pertain to subject matter that you guys care about, that you guys are interested in, and more importantly, that you'll watch, that you guys are looking for. Off the Rack has consistently worked out, amazingly enough, that's a show that I was like, should we even kill this show years ago? And now I'm like, how could I live without it? Like, it's one of our most produced shows. It rivals back issues in its amount of shows produced. And so I'm really happy and proud of that. And it's allowed my wife and I to connect and talk about comic books. It's allowed us to connect with creators and have them jump on the show or see that we value what they're doing through that show. And hopefully more importantly, most importantly, connecting readers with the books that they want to read. And so there's a value there. 

So off the Rack is working out pretty well. If I had to really get into it, I could change it. Or rather, I want to change it. Not for the worst and not in any majorly significant way, but I'd love for off the Rack to be Tiffany and I sitting at a table, sitting across from each other with dual coverage of each other's reactions and have a producer kind of handle the chat and to have a screen that I can see that has the super chats in it. So it's less about me producing the show because that's me. That's all I'm doing. You know, I host the show. I'm thinking about, oh, is the camera in focus? Is the audio working? Are there batteries in that machine? Is the lighting okay? Do I have to color balance this? I got to edit the show. I got to make sure I've got good editing software. I've got room on my hard drive. I can back up this show. Like, everything about it is just me focusing hyperfocusing on every single aspect of the show. And it would be nice to make a show that's as seemingly simple to produce, like off the Rack and not have to worry about every minutiae of it. But the problem with that is I'd have to have people to do that, and we just don't have them. And I simply don't have the funds to procure those kinds of people. So it really doesn't matter. But that's if I had to really like, pick a change for off the rack. It would be to do that. It would be to, you know, make it a little more polished, a little more podcasty, you know what I mean? Like make it cleaner and a little more professional and really achieve the kind of visual language that I'm going for. But otherwise the show is still good and it's still going fine. 

That's actually one of the few shows that I don't have to really worry about Elseworlds. I don't know. I don't know. It's kind of up in the air. It's been almost a month since we've done the show, and it's because other projects have been in the way and it's the easiest show that I can push to the side, which is a bad sign, a really bad sign. And so if you're still listening and you have any thoughts, not necessarily about what we should do, but more about, like, is the show, is Else Worlds an invaluable show? Is the show is that show the most cutble? And if so, why? What is it about Elseworlds that makes it easy to push it off to the side? What should we be doing to make Else Worlds better, to make Else Worlds more indispensable and to make it something that you crave, that you need to see? Obviously, I would love to start I think we talked about this a little bit in the beginning of the year that I wanted to start integrating the team into that show. But maybe that's not the show. Maybe it's a different show. Maybe Else Worlds is the show that I did, that I do with Joel and occasionally with other creators. And maybe we need to start producing something new. Maybe we need to start, like innovating. So let me know what you think, because that's the big question of the hour, because that's something that I think is important and to address, because that's the kind of show that I can make, that I like making, that I'm good at making, you know, kind of sit down, hash out a topic, podcast, topical, themed to one particular thing in the realm of comics. 

And yeah, so we've got that back issues, the good, the bad, and the ugly, we need to start. Oh, and it's funny, the real big change, the real big thinking is that thumbnails are the most important thing about, like, directly connecting with new viewers, right? Like back issues. We've pretty much figured out the formula for back issues, or at least I thought we did. But as far as I'm concerned, back issues is back issues. Couch set, camera editing, comic hosts, we've got it. But the thumbnail we found is apparently causing trouble not with the algorithm or with YouTube, but with the audience, with potential audience, with the new audience, with new readers, viewers, I should say, because it's not using the visual language that YouTube is used to, that YouTubers or. People who watch YouTube are accustomed to. We need to have more visual faces like we can more visible faces, and a little less complicated looking, like fewer distractions that people can, like, focus on just the name of the show or the name of the book, the host of the show, and that's it just what the show is. And I was thinking about how back issues is pretty straightforward, but it still has a lot of clutter in the thumbnail because the hose, the set is there's a lot of stuff to look at. And I wonder, is that the case? Does the show need to change a little bit? Do we need to pare down the set, maybe declutter it a little bit? If the thumbnails are cluttered, does that mean the sets cluttered? Does that mean that there's too much to look at? But anyway, apropos of that, I was thinking about the good, bad, the ugly, because I was looking at that thumbnail. And that thumbnail is very cluttered because it's like all the cardinal sins. We're breaking with the backish thumbnail with more stuff. We got the text on the top, we got the books on the bottom, the hosts in the middle, and the background of what they've got. I need to completely overhaul that entire system, despite the fact that people actually still watch that show. Thank God. Also, the let's talk show found this to be reorganized. Too much text, not enough focus. It's not clean. It's not as clean as I wanted it to be. And it's funny because it was clean when Tiffany designed it. And then I took over and it got more clutter because I'm not a graphic designer. But yeah. So we got to overhaul the whole damn system. 

And between you and me and the lamppost, I'm also hoping to I think if you've been here long enough, you've seen that I have had designs on changing the main comic pop logo, but over the year, I've come around on that. I think we have a logo. I think it's very I think it works, but I think it needs a little updating, a little tweak, and I think it's I want to get rid of the house. Tiffany has worked on a couple of prompts, a couple of designs, and I think eventually, hopefully soon, we'll be able to implement a design that works for everything and just get through that house. I think we've moved on from that. I think it's time for just a little refresh, a little update that cleans it up, makes it a little more I don't know, just makes it work a little better. But as far as visual design goes, it's the thumbnails that need the overhaul. So that's one thing we need to do. But content wise, what about that new Elsworth type show? What else would you like to see? We need to make something that you guys are going to want and that you guys are going to want to stick around with. It's not enough, I think, for you to feel like you're part of this and that you're supporting us and that you're like, you know, you're a member of this team, but also that, like, you want to see what we have to say about something. I don't want you to be here out of obligation. I want you to be here because you're entertained, because you enjoy it. So hopefully we can continue to do that because I'm constantly thinking about it. I promise you I'm not sitting on my laurels here. I'm not, like, wasting time. I'm not taking it easy. I am constantly thinking about this kind of thing. 

And as you can tell from the show and the Patreon and my team that I don't necessarily work great alone. I need some help, even if it's just hashing out ideas like this, I need some kind of idea to bounce off of. So that's that. Thanks a lot for listening. Of course, welcome. If you haven't already been here, you're a Red Raider now or more or higher, and that's it. So I'll see you guys here on Patreon and of course, on the channels. But thank you all so much for your support, for making this happen, for making for continuing to allow this to happen. And I'll see you guys here on Patreon. So long!