5/31/13 Episode 36: Tales from the Pit

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means. It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay, so… today… I just celebrated—I mean, for me, in the past for you guys, is I celebrated the two year anniversary of Tales from the Pit. Which is my daily comic strip. And I decided I would talk about Tales from the Pit today.

I’m hoping actually it’s a larger discussion than just the comic itself, but sort of what goes into making a creative endeavor. But I wanted to sort of talk about where it came from, and sort of what—why—why I make it, and I don’t know, just some behind the scenes stories of the comic itself.

So, let’s begin with the story, the origin story if you will. Issue number one. So what happened was, I—I have an iPhone, for those that are unaware, I am a giant, giant Apple fan. In fact, something people may not know—my entire adult life, and I am forty-five, I never had a computer at home or at work, ever, that wasn’t a Mac.

Or wasn’t a, you know, an Apple—an Apple computer. I guess before Macs existed at home we had an Apple IIe which back in the day—my dad actually got an Apple—like the very first Apple you could get, like the consumers could get, my dad got that. And originally, you had to load it with a cassette tape. This was before disks happened, and you had to like put a cassette tape and for like three minutes it would go [hisses], you know, and then you could play some text games, you know, like “Hunt the Wumpus.” Anyway, showing my age here.

So anyway, we got into Apple very young, I am a huge Apple fan, I’ve learned—because every time I talk about how I love Apple, that a lot of my fans are not Apple fans. Apple seems to be—it creates great passion both ways out of people, much like—like things that I—I believe that truly great things tend to spur people in both directions. That some will love it, some will hate it. And Apple is one of those things.

But the thing I love about Apple is that their—I love their design aesthetic. I feel like a lot of what I’ve learned about being a designer has come from looking at designs that I as a designer really appreciate, and the thing that Apple taught me—this might be some future podcast of design inspirations—but the thing that Apple taught me is the idea of “Things have to do what they seem they—your intuition should just be correct. Make the thing do what people expect it to do.” And the second thing is, is the importance of simplicity. In that one of easiest ways to get—you know, how do you know it’s the right button to push? Put one button on it. You know.

Anyway. So I have an iPhone. In fact, the way it works in my family, by the way, is I will always buy the newest iPhone, and the latest iPhone goes to my wife, and the iPhone after that goes to my daughter, my eldest daughter Rachel. And so like every time I get a new iPhone it means everybody else—they shift and get the newest iPhone. So.  Anyway.

But anyway, there was—there is a app on the iPhone called Halftone. And Halftone is a—the premise of Halftone is, it lets you take your pictures and convert it to look like an old—like, style comic book. For those that are unfamiliar with comic books, back in the day. In fact, it’s probably still true.

They’re made with a system where there’s lots of little tiny colored dots, like if you look close, and so back in the sixties—I mean now the dots are pretty small, and you know it’s hard—you have to really look with a magnifying glass I think to see the dots,  but back in the day the dots were a little bit bigger, and so there’s a very distinctive look to a lot of comics, especially like the sixties and seventies. And Halftone was trying to give your pictures that comic book look.

So, I love comic books, I love iPhone apps, I like taking pictures. And I like goofing around making funny things up. So—so we were celebrating something, I forget what it was, Wizards does this thing where when we have a success—or, Magic does this thing where when it has a success they’ll have cake. And so we were having cake for something, some set did well, I’m not sure, Zendikar or Scars of Mirrodin, anyway, some set had done well, we had cake, and so I went to—up to the Bridge.

So all of our conference rooms at Wizards are named—mostly have geek names. We have The Matrix, and the ones near R&D are named for Magic cards, we have like Ivory Tower, anyway all around the building they’re named after different things, and I mean each—each department got to name their own. And so sometimes you can kind of guess who named it by based on what section of the company it’s in. Like, Double Jeopardy is near Legal.

But anyway, so, the Bridge is the main room upstairs that like, you know, if the president is going to have a big official meeting, they always meet in the Bridge. The Bridge is a Star Trek record for those that somehow don’t know that.

Anyway, so we go up to the Bridge, there’s cake, and Ethan is eating cake. Now I believe at this point, Ethan is relatively new, being that it started in March he must have just—he could not have been here more than a month or so because I think he started—I think it was very shortly after he started. But anyway, I took a picture of Ethan eating a piece of cake, and then I decided that it would be fun to make a—a little comic out of it with my Halftone app.

More because I was just entertained by the app—and I don’t think when I first made it, my intent was to show it to—was to put it anywhere on the internet. I just thought it was funny. And then it entertained me enough, I’m like “Oh, whatever, I’ll tweet it.” So—in fact, it’s possible before I tweeted that—the Halftone version, I just tweeted a picture of Ethan eating the cake. Which I think is what happened. I think I just tweeted a picture of Ethan eating the cake, and later I went back and I changed it—I thought it was funny, I posted it.

I got a decent response. And at that point, be aware, it wasn’t a thing—it wasn’t like—it was just, I made a comic I thought was funny, I posted it. And then the next day, I posted another one. And I just—I don’t know, for that week every day I posted one. Because it was just—I was being entertained by it and there were so many possibilities of things I could do, and then—and then I think by the end of the week I was like, “This isn’t that hard to do.”

So—look, a little background. For those that don’t know, I mean obviously welcome to me. I have a comedy writing background. In college, for example—I mean, in high school I started doing a lot of playwriting, and they were mostly comedies. In college I started an improv troupe. I started a writing workshop that did sketch comedy, I did stand-up, and so I did a lot of different things with comedy.

I eventually went out to Los Angeles, I tried—I wanted to be a sitcom writer, I mean long-term I wanted to create TV shows, but—I wanted to write comedy, I mean Roseanne is the one show I was on staff on, so I mean I—my background is I like writing comedy. I have a lot of background in comedy. And I’ve always been fascinated by comic strips. I love comic strips. I think comic strips are cool.

And I—I remember thinking that one of the things I always thought would be awesome to do is to have a comic strip. Now, the only thing that was getting in my way, for those of you who have ever seen my one piece of Magic art, “Look at Me, I’m the DCI,” which is I can’t draw. And people go “Oh, but you know, xkcd, he uses stick figures,” No, he’s much better at drawing than I am. Much better. I am very limited in my drawing abilities.

I mean really—for example, Look at Me, I’m the DCI,” here’s how I did it—I have an art style that very few people use. Very few. I actually drew that sixty times, and then picked my favorite one. So.  Also, by the way, for those that are—a little trivia about “Look at Me, I’m the DCI,” I got paid a dollar. Originally they were going to pay me full price. Like a full—whatever price. And I said “No, no, that’s crazy, because I can’t draw.” And I said, “Look, just pay me a dollar.” They had to pay me something to own it. And then they gave me a dollar and they gave me a check. And this is a funny story.

So I get a call from—I get a call from the Finance Department. So they say to me, “So, it says here that we owe you a dollar check.” And I say yes. And they go, “Well, could we give that to you in cash?” I’m like, “No, I want a check.” He goes, “Do you understand that it costs us more than a dollar to make a check?” I’m like “Yeah, sure, I—but… they were going to pay me a lot of money, I volunteered to just get one dollar to save us some money, and so—you know, yeah. Give me my check.” And he’s like, “Well, why—why do you want a check?” And I’m like “Because I want to frame it.” And he’s like, “You’re not even going to cash it?” And I’m like “Yeah, you’re going to be off a dollar at the end of the year.”

Anyway, I still have my check. Framed with my art, my original art. Look At Me, I’m the DCI. In my den. I have four pieces of art, by the way, for those of you—trivia that care. I have the original Maro, because it’s named after me and I bought the original art from Stuart Griffin. And by the way—here’s an interesting—see, today’s podcast is me just starting on a topic and drifting off. One of the interesting things about Maro is, the painting wasn’t made to be a Magic painting. It was just painted to be a painting. Sue-Ann Harkey, who was the Mirage art director, saw it, thought it was cool, and bought the rights to the image. And then we later figured out where to put it.

But anyway, what this means is, it’s a full-size piece of art. It’s not—most Magic art, if you’ve ever seen it, is pretty small because it just needs to go on cards. So it’s just, you know, it’s normally it’s like eight inches square or something. Or, you know, eight by ten inches or whatever the correct proportions is.

So I have Maro, I have Look at Me, I’m the DCI, I have Jester’s Sombrero, which was the packaging image from Unglued, and then I have Mise, the packaging image, or one of the packing images from Unhinged. Mise, by the way, was a birthday present for me from Matt Cavotta, who drew the card and is a friend of mine. Which was very cool. Anyway, sorry. Deviating back.

So I always had wanted to do a comic strip, but was hampered by the fact that I can’t draw. And watching over the years, there’s been many people who have done Magic comic strips, you know, I remember—one of the famous ones was called UG Madness, of which I showed up as a character, as a little devil with little wings and… you know, MTG Pro made a comic, there’s lots of people that made comics.

And I’ve always thought it was funny that, you know, it was neat to see a comic, but one of the things I always wondered that I had never seen—or maybe it exists and I just hadn’t seen it—is a daily comic. So it’s kind of like a, you know, Far Side-ish thing—the kind of comics I’ve always enjoyed have been one-ofs. Have been like single-frame, like The Far Side. I mean I like Calvin and Hobbes, and all that. I mean I think the three-beat ones are fun. I just—somehow for me, I always imagined doing a one-panel Magic comic. And like I said, I had this—I had the limitation of my inability to draw.

So anyway, I think what clicked was, I started taking pictures and turning them into these little things and they were funny. Sort of a photo comic. And it had never dawned on me before that I could—that I could, instead of drawing, I could use pictures. And that once that hit me I’m like “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I can make a comic strip!” I found a way to get around my huge limitation! And so I started making the strip. It was mostly—I don’t know, it just—I mean I think the reason I did it was many-fold. I won’t pick a number because as I tell you I’m not sure how many this number’s going to be.

So first off, I like writing comedy. I miss writing comedy. You know, there’s just not a—I mean, I try to put humor in my blog and in my column, you know, obviously in my podcast. I try to do humor but it’s not a consistent thing, and that—I think part of me, part of my brain just liked the idea of “You know, just—what if you could try to be funny every day.” You know? And that—the challenge of that.

The second is that I’ve been trying to do more stuff in social media that broadens kind of what I do. And one of the things I’ve been very conscious of is I got onto Tumblr.

Oh, real quickly—for those that like—that like my blog, my blog 100% is the result of my Tales from the Pit comic. Let me explain. So what happened is, I started putting my comic out on Twitter. And I think it was Evan… Evan says to me, he said “Oh, why don’t you collect your comics somewhere that, you know, so that people can see them?” And he suggests Tumblr. And I’m like “Oh, I’d never heard of Tumblr.” And he goes, “Oh, well yeah, it’s really easy to sign up,” and a couple people talked to me about it, I think it came up a couple times. “Oh, you should post this on Tumblr.”

So I’m like “Oh… okay, I guess.” And I got there, it was easy to sign up, and so I got it, and so I started to just every day I put my comics there, I think there was an app for it, so it was very easy for me to do. Must have been an app for it because I was—one thing about my comic, by the way, it’s 100% produced in my phone. The pictures are from my phone, the… Halftone is in my phone, I upload it from my phone. Like, that—the comic touches nothing but my phone. It’s completely generated by my phone.

And… so, oh, by the way, Evan—I was just dropping names. It’s Evan Irwan of… of… The Magic Show! And anyway, a bunch of people suggested Tumblr, I said OK, I figured out what it was, and so I started putting them on Tumblr.

And then there’s this little feature on Tumblr that says, “Can people ask you questions?” And I was like “Okay, I guess people can ask me questions.” Little did I know—I had no idea what would happen when I—yes, people can ask me questions. Anyway, the “can people ask you questions?” Me clicking “yes,” my whole blog came out of that. Which—it’s funny, the comic now is a little tiny part of it and all the question-answering is the major part. But Tales of the Pit is directly responsible for the blog happening. And one of these podcasts I will do the Blogatog podcast. But that’s not today. Today is Tales from the Pit.

Anyway, I liked the idea that I could challenge myself every day. I really—I mean, there have been Magic  comics, but I felt like I just wanted a Magic comic to exist that was just daily. You know, everyday, and that could capture whatever was going on. Like I wanted something that was kind of—could be topical at times.

Now be aware, there’s a huge limitation that I have, which is I work for the company. You know, I’m one of the spokespeople. So—the funny thing for me is I often come up with comics that would be hilarious but not… you know, I do not have the freedom to publish just any comic I want. In fact, I—every once in a while I’ll put a comic or I’ll run it by, you know, people at work and go “What do you think?” and they go “Oh, you can’t publish that!” So. Deep in the recesses of my brain I’ve made some comics that are funny but maybe not appropriate. If I was outside the system—if I wasn’t, you know, working for the company, maybe I’d publish some of those.

But anyway—so I liked the challenge, I really liked the idea that Magic would have a daily comic, and there are some comics out there. I’m not—I don’t want to dis any of the existing comics. I always enjoy it when I see Magic comics, and a lot of people do very fun work, and they’re awesome to see.

Oh, the other thing by the way is, as I’m trying—one of the things I’m big on is trying to understand social media. And that one of the things I realized was that words only get you so far. That, like, I look a lot about how much I get retweeted and reblogged, and sort of where my messages go and what kind of impact they have, and one of the things as I experiment and I realize that I was trying to sort of create a product that had a different feel to it. Yeah, I have Twitter, and I answer questions on Tumblr and Google Plus, I mean I do different things, I do this podcast, but the comic is nice in that it’s something that’s very bite-sizeable, it’s visual, you know, it has some different qualities to it. And, like when I really get a comic that, you know, just sort of hits one out of the park, it gets reblogged all over the place. So that is kind of cool that just this image (???).

So that’s why, kind of why I started. I mean, I—like I said, I didn’t mean to start, I kind of accidentally did it, and then just sort of said “Oh, I can do this.” Now here’s an important thing to understand about the comic, by the way, is—I do not spend a lot of time on the comic. I’m a busy man, and, I mean—basically what I do, here’s my thing, is—sometimes I’ll take pictures, and I’ll go “Oh, this is a funny picture, I’ll come up with something.” Sometimes I get a joke and then I hunt down what I need.

Usually if I make up a joke I hunt down images. That’s why I’ve been doing a lot more Magic images is that it’s just easier to do at home. Because a lot of times like I’ll wake up and I’ll go “Okay, I’ve gotta make a comic.” You know, I’ll make a comic before—while I’m getting ready.

And that’s, by the way, as a little side note, I do not spend a lot of time on this. I know that the—the quality veers wildly all over the place. You know, this is the kind of thing where if it was my job then I could fine-tune them, and every one would be—I think the overall quality level would be much higher. But the fact that I spend, you know, sometimes five minutes to come up with it, I know that there—there is a variance.

But, the thing I do love also is trying to find a way to be topical and make jokes about kind of—be able to have some fun with whatever Magic is going on. And I try whenever I can to be in the moment and do jokes that are topical. I don’t always, sometimes—some of them are more, you know, I can do the joke any time. But usually if there’s something I can make a joke about that’s a current thing, I try to.

So let’s talk a little bit about some of—so once again, I didn’t set out to do recurring things. I just have comedy in my blood, and like when I hit something that I know is funny, then I just go like “Oh, okay.” And one other part about trying to come up with comics every day is I realized that some days, you know, something will come to me and some days it’s not as easy. And so one nice thing about having some running stuff is it just makes it easier when I’m struggling one day that sometimes I have stuff I can go to.

Okay, so my biggest reoccurring comic was the—“Another day of—another day of productivity lost.” So what happened early on, when I was doing the comic was, I did a lot of R&D. If you look at the evolution of my comic, early on most of the jokes were about R&D itself. And what I learned eventually was that some of that’s good, but that I ended up centering more of the jokes in the game itself and less about us making the game. And I still do R&D jokes, it’s still part of the comic.

And that’s one of the things by the way I realized about the comic was, the breadth of things I could do, because—I could make fun about the game, I could make fun of R&D making the game, I could make fun of the audience reacting to the game,  you know, I could make fun of elements of the game, art from the game, cards from the game—I could get cards talking to each other or “Where are they now?” All sorts of different stuff I could do.

And Magic’s a pretty deep depth for doing comedy, by the way. I mean, probably because there’s a lot there. So, I was doing early on a lot of R&D—I took a lot of pictures of R&D. Like if you look at the first maybe six months of You Make—not You Make the Card. Of Tales from the Pit. It’s mostly shots of R&D. And I would pose shots.

The other thing I learned is, posing shots are tough. I mean, one of the things that’s interesting about doing a comic is, it made me have a lot of respect for visual storytelling. Because for example, mostly what I’m doing when I’m doing jokes is to set up a punchline. And ideally you want the setup on the left and the punchline on the right. So if I take the picture wrong, sometimes I’ll have to cross the word balloons, which is a pain.

But anyway. Today is me just all over the board. It’s just “Mark’s… Mark…” I think my topic today should be “Mark just goes, talks, and then he gets to work.”

So the “Productivity lost” was just—I took a picture of people playing. Just playing games. I’m like, “What should this be?” And then somehow I thought it was funny that like, oftentimes just in R&D we’ll go off on topics, and, you know, it’s a bunch of bright guys who are all pretty geeky, and like we’ll just talk about whatever. You know.

And I thought it was funny, and I thought it might be funny to capture that. And the “productivity lost” line was just me joking that, like, “Yeah,” you know, “sometimes we just go off.” And the funny thing is, the first one went over OK, but I thought it was funny so I did a second one. And the second one was the one that hit—like, that was the “weaponize the ponies” one.  Where we’re talking about the Transformers vs. the My Little Pony.

Which is funny, by the way, for those behind the scenes, is I do a lot of pop culture references, and somebody at work had said to me “Hey, come on,” you know, “you should…” Something like, you know, “Why don’t you make more references about stuff we do.” And I’m like “Hey, I make a lot of Magic references.” And so I thought it was funny, I did a cartoon where I was referencing like Hasbro properties because both Transformers and My Little Pony are Hasbro properties. But anyway. That was me making kind of an in-joke.

And so, that’s where that one came from. Most of the other running jokes, I think I just came up with something that I liked. Like “So you think you can Biomance,” which has become my—uh, there’s a style of joke which is called the… “What do you get when you cross this with that?” joke. And I think those are funny. So this just became a way to tell that kind of joke because the whole shtick of the Simic is they crossbreed things.

Like, Liliana, “Ask Liliana” came about because I just thought… I had a picture of Liliana sitting in a chair, the one from Innistrad, and I just needed to use it for something because—a lot of the things that I do is I’ll just pick a picture, and go “Make this funny.” And so I picked that picture and I said “Okay, make it funny.”

And I was trying to come up with something that—I don’t know, the—a lot of comedy for me is when you take two different ideas, and take two things that don’t seem to belong together, that a lot of comedy comes from juxtaposition. (???) was funny, you know, I used to do stand-up. One of the things that is very funny when you get around people that write comedy is, this desire to understand comedy. And so I spent hours and hours sort of debating why something’s funny. What’s funny about it?

And one of the things that comes up a lot is juxtaposition. Is that kind of, one of the things that makes things funny is, taking two things that don’t belong together and forcing them together. And so “Ask Liliana” was me just going “What is the worst job you could have Liliana do?” And I’m like “Advice columnist.”

And you know, it was funny enough that I’ve done a bunch of them just because it was funny. And like I said, a lot of them—I don’t even know where they come from. Like I have a running gag where Nicol Bolas does prank phone calls. Like I have no idea where that comes from. It just spoke to me. I think maybe because like—he’s a mastermind, you know, he’s a devilish puppetmaster, and like, you know, that for fun what would he do, blow off steam, you know, he makes prank calls.

Like I said, I don’t know why—and then I had—I have a series with… Niv-Mizzet being a stand-up comic, maybe… playing… anyway, they’re just things I think are funny. I don’t know quite where all this stuff comes from. I mean, the other thing I do try is to shake up the kinds of humor. Because—I think just like my column, or like this podcast, or like my… anything, really, is I try to do a diversity of material.

And, I mean, I try to make it funny every day, but sometimes it’s more slapstick-y, I do puns, sometimes, like, I love doing the kind of “You’ve got to really know Magic to get this reference” ones. I don’t do those tons, but ones where like “You’ve really got to know Magic to get this joke.” A little of that is fun. And I—I’m definitely having a good time.

It’s funny, because, like I said, I just passed my five hundredth comic. Or by the time you will have seen this, I will have passed my 500^th comic. I do 250 a year because fifty weeks—I take two weeks off and do the Best Of. So I do fifty weeks, five comics, you know, one every day—every weekday. So that’s 250 comics a year, and I just passed two years, so I hit my 500^th comic.

Which by the way kind of boggles my mind. Because I’ve done five hundred comics is—I remember when I posted my 475^th or something, Eric—not Eric, Aaron Forsythe, his response on Twitter that day was “I don’t know if I’ve done 475 of anything.” So. But I guess if you follow along, between—I am—my comic, or not my comic, my column, later this summer is going to do its 600^th column. Which is also kind of mind-boggling. But I guess I’m just stubborn in that I pick things I like and I do them.

And like I said, the comic’s been interesting in that it is—some days I wake up and I curse the comic. Because I’m like, you know, “Oh, I have to come up with a comic.” But the thing that I love is, I love the fact that I force myself to do it. I think—one of the things they say about the way to sort of keep your brain active is just make it—in some ways, I think of it as a workout for my brain. That, like, I’m in a job where my brain matters. Like I have to be creative and I have to sort of, you know, mentally be there. And so in some ways I feel like when I wake up, doing my comic is like my little mental calisthenics.

And also, the thing I find hilarious is, I’ll wake up with no idea what I’m doing. I mean, sometimes I have some idea. Sometimes I’ve done it the day before, sometimes I’m taking a picture, so sometimes I have an idea what I’m doing. But other times I have no idea. And it’s always amazing for me when I wake up and I have no idea, I have no idea what I’m doing, and then like I send out a comic I’m really proud of. And I’m like “That feels really good.”

I mean, it’s—and it’s a nice little simple thing. You know, that, I mean, taking a—I love my columns, but they take a while to write, you know. And even this podcast takes thirty minutes. My comic doesn’t have that kind of time. So.

Anyway, I have parked in the parking lot—or, in the space. I don’t know—I guess today what I was really talking about was, I’m hoping a little insight into the fact that I get off-topic a lot, is that I—I have a love of—of creativity. I love coming up with stuff. I love humor. I love Magic. I like making fun of Magic.

And that I think the comic and the reason I make the comic is, I want my social media to sort of portray me many-faceted, in that my column is one facet of me and my podcast is another. My blog is another. And my—I think my comic is just a different way—it’s kind of my funny side, the side that kind of looks at things and says “Isn’t this kind of funny?” And so anyway, I enjoy doing it, people seem to like it, so I will continue to do it.

And anyway, that’s today’s. More reminiscing. I think from time to time I like to sort of introspect and look at my own stuff. I don’t do that tons. Most of the time I’ll look at Magic as a whole. But I feel every once in a while it’s nice to sort of self-examine and—one of the things I always talk about writing in general is, writing helps you understand who you are as a person.

And it’s not just writing. Communication helps you understand who you are as a person. I think my—you know, my blog and my writing and my podcast and my comic, all of them kind of help me understand who I am, and that a lot of how I understand things comes from me trying to express, so—anyway, got a little deeper than you thought from me talking about my comic.

Okay! So I am now at work, I gotta go, so thanks for listening all about Tales of the Pit—Tales from the Pit. I always mess that up. It’s Tales from the Pit, making fun of Tales from the Crypt. Which is an old-style comic from the fifties with horror. Anyway, it was fun talking about my comic, and I guess it’s time to go make the Magic.