A SHADOW CALLED DANGER! + TOM & DICKless HARRY - SerioComics 66 + Q&A with Brad Rader
Betje Interviews Me For Should We Buy A Gun? + Marc Sobel Blurbs It!
Betje Interviews Me for Should We Buy A Gun? and Her New Book Is Available For Preorder!
I featured
and her book 5500 Miles of Comics in SerioComics 61 and mentioned that she’s been working on climate change comics.She’s now finished making that work into a book and it’s available for preorder!
Betje also interviewed me as part of that announcement.
I spoke to Dave Cowen of SerioComics and he said something that really resonated with me, as this is my experience as well:
I think my advice to anyone who is considering writing a book, particularly about a sensitive topic, would be to take a lot of time. Or take your time. You sometimes have to mature into an issue. A lot of things can be written fast. And sometimes art that is spontaneous is perfect for being so. But often with a sensitive issue, it seems from my experience, you really don't know what you don't know, until you work your way through it, many times over.
She also asked me about my experience self-publishing Should We Buy A Gun? via SerioComics.
How did you go about getting it published and why did you pick that route? What are the pros and cons of self-publishing versus traditional in your opinion?
Oh gosh publishing... I actually left a comfortable job at a talent agency due to a conflict of interest: I wanted to hire a literary agent to sell the book to a traditional publisher and I couldn't work there and be a client. Unfortunately, the literary agent and I were unable to find that publisher in 2024, so when the election happened in November 2024 here in America, I just felt like I didn't want to keep waiting and I went forward with self-publishing it via SerioComics and print on demand technology…I will say the cons of self-publishing are significant in that it's challenging to get the book into bookstores or to have it seriously reviewed. The pros are that I have complete freedom over what is in the book, the timing and how it's promoted…
You can read the rest of that interview at this link to Betje’s Substack!
Two-Time Eisner Nominated Marc Sobel Blurbs SWBAG?!
Also last week, I was honored to receive a blurb from Marc Sobel, who is the editor of the Fantagraphics companions to the Love and Rockets series.
By the way, did you know according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the word Blurb has a “Seriocomic origin”? It was coined by Gelett Burgess at a publishing dinner party when he jokingly pointed out how helpful and artificial the new act of “Blurbing” would be.
Merriam-Webster says “By his seriocomic act at the dinner party, Gelett Burgess helped set a standard in the book industry: apply blurbs to all jackets to sell books. Before long, the effectiveness of blurbs was proven beyond a doubt, and they became commonly used in advertising of any sort.”
Now I would add to my interview with Betje one of the pros of self-publishing via SerioComics is I plan to continue to receive and add blurbs to the book forever :)
How I Met Brad Rader
I met Brad Rader at last month’s The Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books.
It was the first day, the Saturday morning, before the festival even opened.
And it was pouring rain.
This didn’t stop him from enthusiastically engaging with me.
And buying the festival’s first copy of Should We Buy A Gun?.
The next day Sunday.
Brad came by again in the morning.
And told me he had read the whole book the night before!
And really liked it!!!
I guess I’ll have to ask him for a blurb too :)
The following weekend he invited me to QCon.
Which is a queer comics conference in West Hollywood.
There he gave me a free press copy of HARRY & DICKless TOM.
Then this week he stopped by my apartment to hand deliver:
A Shadow Called Danger!
I had the pleasure of reading both as well as another work in progress.
And interviewing him below about it :)
Brad Rader
Brad Rader is an EMMY® award-winning director for the TV series “SPAWN” by Todd McFarlane.
As an animation artist Brad Rader has worked in the TV as a storyboard artist on various series including Rainbow Brite, The Littles, The Real Ghostbusters, ALF and ALF Tails, Batman: The Animated Series, Biker Mice from Mars, Gargoyles, Men in Black: The Series, The Legend of Tarzan, Atlantis: Milo’s Return, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Stripperella, King of the Hill, and Bob’s Burgers, among others.
He’s also made a number of comics including for Bob’s Burgers. Recently, he’s returned to A Shadow Called Danger!, which started as a Bush-era political satire comic strip but has returned to fight the Trump administration.
Rader’s self-published queer comics erotica, HARRY & DICKless TOM, is a legendary tour de force, and has blurbs from Alison Bechdel, Chip Kidd, Gary Panter…
A Shadow Called Danger!
The series is set in the present day of an alternate universe where the paramilitary take-over Trump attempted on January 6, 2021 was successful.
Mike and Brad have been publishing the strip weekly on Instagram.
And some of the captions speak to the challenge and necessity they feel in making it…
“I don’t know what to write. The events taking place in our consensual reality far outpace what Mike and I can throw together in a week’s notice for this series.”
HARRY & DICKless TOM
Speaking of blurbs again, Alison Bechdel, the author of Fun Home (SerioComics 35) and Dykes To Watch Out For blurbed this book!
“If you’re running out of bookshelf space, toss all the gender theory and porn and replace it with this slender volume. Brad Rader’s erotic road trip is smart, hot, beautifully drawn, and surprisingly transcendent.
It really is an awesome piece of work. I’m amazed at how Brad can draw in different styles like that. I can only draw in one style, which I guess means it’s not even technically a style, just the best I can do.
I remember those penis/vagina stories from “National Lampoon”! They were pretty mind-blowing. But not as mind-blowing as “Harry and Dickless Tom.”
Not Just Satire But Also Resources!
I was impressed that Brad and Mike include resources sometimes in their comic.
So that it’s not just fantastical satire but also reality resistance.
And hope to see more of it in their pages.
Personally, I donate monthly to the ACLU!
Shadow comes from a lineage
Something Brad and Mike’s work speaks to is the lineage of anti-hero heroes that fight against power.
Whether that be Zorro or Robin Hood or V for Vendetta.
Their Shadow is placed in that lineage.
But it also speaks to the need for heroic efforts in reality too…
Whether that be a new leader.
Or our own individual efforts.
John Hughes Inspired
I was immediately intrigued by the premise of Rader’s HARRY & DICKless TOM.
Which is a form of body swap comedy.
Which itself was inspired by John Hughes.
The screenwriter of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Uncle Buck, Pretty in Pink and Home Alone.
Hughes had written about the misadventures of a high school football player who mysteriously found his dick exchanged for a vagina.
And then later wrote about a high school cheerleader similarly surprised by finding her vagina exchanged for a penis.
I myself played with this concept as well in a screenplay in the 2010s.
I called it Sex Change :)
It was fascinating to see that the same almost Jungian mythological premise.
Runs its way through many kinds of writers.
While Sex Change lives only as a PDF.
I can recommend HARRY & DICKless TOM to those who want to experience an exhilarating, erotic, queer version of the perhaps timeless tale :)
OK, let’s see what Brad has to say about his work…
Q&A with Brad Rader!
SerioComics: What’s it like to take on the second Trump administration so strongly at this time in history?
Brad Rader: Thus far the series, ‘A Shadow Called Danger’ has gained very little notice or public response. We’ve (my creative partner, Mike Wellman and I) been posting it weekly (or whenever we can complete a new episode) to our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr since June 2024, and have created a dedicated Facebook page. We’ve gotten some interview in the comics blogosphere. I’m trying to get our website up and running. Last week we printed a collection of the first 39 episodes titled ‘A Shadow Called Danger: Protest Edition’ which will be for sale at the website and at Anti-Trump protests in the Greater Los Angeles (California) region. So far, the response has been disappointing, but it feels like, in the last month or so, we’ve turned a corner and we’re gaining traction.
SerioComics: What are your goals and reasons for bringing this character back now and what are the risks and values that you think about why you are doing so?
Brad Rader: You’re referring to the fact that Mike and I started ‘A Shadow Called Danger’ in 2006 as a near-future dystopia where the George W. Bush administration had gained a permanent and unbreakable hold on National Politics. I had been invited to contribute a comic series to Metro G, a start-up free LGBTQ+ oriented newspaper based in Long Beach. ASCD was cancelled after 10 installments for not being ‘Gay’ enough. Mike and I ran out of gas afterwards, and the project remained fallow for many a year, with periodic discussing about continuing it in some form. In Februay ’24, I received Divine Inspiration to repurpose it into a present-day alt-universe dystopia where Trump’s attempted January 6th 2021 coup had succeeded. I pitched it to Mike, and, with surprisingly little re-writing, were able to use 95% of our original work.
My goals? To commit suicide by Maga-hats. I don’t want to live in the world Trump seems bent on creating. I may find myself frustrated in that quest, since I’m following Divine Guidance. On the other hand, perhaps my path is that of the martyr.
SerioComics: You are the artist and Mike Wellman is the writer. What is your working relationship like? How much influence do you have on the story and him on the art?
Brad Rader: Mike writes it; I have license to change as I see fit, though I flag Mike on any changes and we discuss. He contrives key images he wants to see, often constructing the narrative to justify those images. We’re trying to minimize the word-count, since that takes space away from the artwork, but I will often suggest adding words of explanation, since the audience can’t read our minds.
I suggested the romantic scenes between Lance and Hassan. I also designed and suggested the characters of Renee Zohdayach and Morris Weems, lobbyists with a secret side-line of assassins-for-hire. Unfortunately, we haven’t had time/space to explore the later capacity. Hopefully before page 60. All we know is that they share a past relationship with Lance, the qualia of which is unknown, even to us, their authors.
SerioComics: Can you tell us why it's important that the art looks so beautiful and captivating in a satire?
Brad Rader: In case this is the last thing I do, I want it to be the best thing I’ve ever done.
SerioComics: We talked in person about how hating the Trump administration and its supporters sometimes seems to only empower them. What did you learn from your tactics in taking on Bush?
Brad Rader: That our original series wasn’t ‘Gay’ enough. We have the chance to correct that lapse this time around.
I’d like to make the series more spiritual, but Mike and I haven’t figured out how. Generally, speaking, we’re inspired by ‘Casblanca’, wherein the project of the movie is breaking Rick out of his cynical shell and prompting his re-engagement with society.
SerioComics: What do you have in mind for the rest of your run of A Shadow Called Danger? I particularly liked the RFK Jr moment and a bit of Musk. Will we see more of the latter?
Brad Rader: I’d like to wrap it up by page 60, either take a break and/or move on to something else. However, we’re acting and reacting to events in Magamerica and around the world, so who knows if we’ll even make it to page 60, or if momentum will keep us going afterwards. As for RFK Jr or Musk returning, who knows? Every member of the Trump regime is already a caricature; it seems a shame not to ridicule them all. But there’s only so much time and space.
SerioComics: What was it like working in animation?
Brad Rader: Bittersweet. I’m officially retired since August ’24, though I haven’t let my membership in TAG Local 839 (The Animation Guild, a local in IATSE) lapse.
I got into the biz a couple months after I graduated from Art Center College of Design, (Pasadena, CA) in 1983. I answered a job posting seeking animation storyboard artists at Ruby-Spears, a subsidiary of Hanna-Barbera. I was hired on because of some comic-book page samples in my portfolio. I knew nothing about film, was uninterested in animation. Ironically, I’ve spent the majority of my 42-year career doing animation storyboards, and only occasionally getting the opportunity to work at my first love, drawing comic books.
Which isn’t to say that I haven’t had some fun times in the animation trenches. High points: ‘The Real Ghostbusters’ Season 1, ‘Mighty Mouse’, ‘Alf’ and ‘Alf Tales’, ‘Batman Animated’, ‘Gargoyles’, ‘Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys’, ‘Spawn’ Season 3 (for which I won an Emmy), ‘Men in Black’, ‘Stripperella’, ‘The Batman’, ‘King of the Hill’, ‘Bob’s Burgers’, ‘Bless The Harts’ and ‘Little Demon’.
‘Batman Animated’ was a special apex. I loved drawing the Bruce Timm character designs, Kevin Altieri was my director. Kevin and I were so in synch that he could hand me another artist’s boards and say, “This doesn’t work; fix it”. In fact, Kevin and I had already crewed together on several projects for DIC, and had our working relationship finely tuned. In any case, ‘Batman Animated’ turned out to be “easy” in a way that almost no other project (animation, comics, illustration, etc) has. I made my deadlines working a 40-hour week (at DIC I average 60-hour weeks) and had time to help other artists on their sections. ‘Gargoyes’ was excellent but it wasn’t “easy”. I transitioned to directing in the mid/late ‘90’s, on ‘Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys’, ‘The Blues Brothers’. ‘Godzilla’, ‘Spawn’ and ‘Rosewell Conspiracies: Myths and Legends’, and that was NEVER easy. In fact, I quit directing because it was too much work for something that wasn’t ‘mine’.
SerioComics: What was it like working in Comics?
For the first 8 years of my career, I was continually trying to break into comics. Every year I’d do a new pack of sample pages and take them to that year’s San Diego Comic Con (now ComicCon International), get universally rejected, sulk for several months, then, as the Con season approached, do a new sample pack. This cycle continued until 1992, when my employment on ‘Batman Animated’ got me noticed at DC, and the assignment of ‘Batman Adventures’ issues 4 through 6. This led to “The Mark: In America”, a 4-issue mini-series published by Dark Horse in 1993/1994. After that, a pattern began that has shadowed my entire career in comics: after each job ended, it was like I had to break in all over again. Also, I was trying to gain a toehold in comics at the precise time when Image Comics was taking the industry by storm. My style was antithetical.
That’s why I transitioned to directing animation in 1994-’95. Comics seemed like a dead-end and storyboarding was yesterday’s news, so what else was left?
However, I still kept my eye on comics; when Bob Schreck, the editor on ‘The Mark’ for Dark Horse, was head-hunted by DC in 2000 to become one of their group editors, I reached out to see if he might have work for me. This led to a 7 issue run on ‘Catwoman’ in 2002/2003, and later, the graphic novel ‘Fog Town’ (written by Anderson Gabrych), pubished in 2010 under the Vertigo Noir imprint.
SerioComics: When did the change to more personal comics happen and why?
Brad Rader: After I was fired from ‘Catwoman’, I was really depressed about my career. (Side note: in 1983, I started getting gay-porn illustrations published in various Gay Rags. I lost interest because of the low pay and lack of response.) I decided to self-publish my homoerotic sketchbooks, which led me to unearth the 6-page story fragment I’d done in the late ‘70’s and abandoned as a 20-year-old, not knowing how to continue it. As I viewed it again as a man in his early 40’s, I was filled with lots of ideas, the first of which was: the man with a vagina must get fucked by a woman with a dick.
SerioComics: What was it like to create “Harry & Dickless Tom” at different stages of your life?
Brad Rader: I didn’t get laid until a couple months after my 21st birthday. All my homoerotic artworks prior to “first lay” were done from the perspective of a desperately lonely, completely closeted, young faggot who didn’t know if he would EVER be able to get with another man. After “first lay”, experience disabused me of several of my earlier misconceptions: for instance, middle-aged men (the kind I was hot for- Ed Asner/Lou Grant was my first adolescent crush) tend to have areas of saggy/baggy flesh, not the perfectly toned bodies of college-age athletes. Also, pre “first lay”, sex and romance were deadly serious, dramatic, etc. As a 40-year-old jaded queen, the whole thing is rather amusing; my tongue is reflexively permanently embedded in my cheek.
I published ‘True Adult Fantasy’ #1 (mostly pre-first-lay illustrations and the story fragment that later became, ‘Harry & Dickless Tom’. In ‘True Adult Fantasy’ #2, I was inspired to draw 2 more chapters of ‘H&DT’, the challenge being to match the style of the original story fragment. After the failed attempt of the follow-up chapter, I decided to make a virtue out of my inability and drew ‘Chapter 4’ in the style of Jim Steranko inked by Joe Sinnott. After publishing TAF #2, I underwent ankle surgery which laid me up for 2 months. I took my period of convalescence as my opportunity to flesh out H&DT into a 100+ page graphic novel in time for Comic-Con 2006, where I put a copy in the hands of Bob Schreck (looking at portfolio samples at the DC Comics Booth). He flipped, said, “This is exactly what I’m looking for!”, which led to my illustrating the ‘Fog Town’ graphic novel.
What has the response been over different eras?
Brad Rader: I’m not sure. Sales have slowed down, but I’m not doing much to promote H&DT at this late date. Ed Luce has told be that H&DT heavily influenced him to create ‘Wuvable Oaf’. I had two of my panels swiped in, “Al-Queda’s Super-Secret Weapon”, by David J. Zelman, published by Northwest Press in July of 2013. This pleased me greatly. (Mr. Zelman swiped the “slap” panels from page 88.)
How does it feel to now be a patron saint to queer comics makers in LA and elsewhere?
I didn’t know I was, other than the two instances I mentioned.
What inspired your decision to illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy?
Brad Rader: I was listening to a conversation vid-blog between Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon about Vernon’s book, ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey’. I was hooked from their discussion of the first stanza, “Midway along the journey our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood for I had wandered off from the straight path”. I bought the Vernon book as well as “The Portable Dante”, Edited by Mark Musa” so I could read the original while reading Vernon’s commentary. I resisted illustrating it; the project was too big.
Finally I couldn’t hold myself back any longer and started drawing in my daily journal/sketchbook. My first two sketches were for Cantos 32 and 19. After that, the dam broke and I started from the beginning.
I am not a Christian; I was raised to be an Atheist. My experience with Christians is that they’re no more likely to be kind, generous, loving, etc than nonbelievers. In fact, often less so, if one adds the tendency of self-righteousness over their cruelty. I found spirituality as a member of the Al-Anon 12 Step program, where the only suggestion is to develop a relationship with a Higher Power of one’s choosing. That freedom has allowed me to be respectfully interested in other people’s concept of Higher Power, including Christians. It is with that frame of mind that I delved into the Divine Comedy. It turns out Dante was a heretic; that made him and his magnum opus much more attractive.
One of the appealing features of the ongoing “Sheldrake/Vernon Dialogues” project (90 episodes as of this writing) is their non-evangelical Christianity. They are not what I call “Asshole Christians”; i.e., they don’t insist that the entire world subscribes to their version of reality, whatever that is. Actually, it’s hard to tell—Calling oneself “Christian” is almost meaningless, as there are almost as many variants as there have been practitioners over the last 2000 years.
Have you always been inclined to mix the sexual and the spiritual?
Brad Rader: Only in recent years. In a way, ‘Harry & Dickless Tom’ was my first foray, though it didn’t start out that way. It was only when I was inspired to create the ‘Vagina Goddess’ that the hidden purpose of the novel came into focus.
What have you learned about how the two work together in comics and life?
Brad Rader: I realized a few years back (around the time I published H&DT) that my favorite rock and roll songs are those that address spirituality in non-specific terms, i.e., that don’t mention “Jesus” or “God”. Not so much George Harrison singing “My Sweet Lord” but Paul McCartney singing “Fixing a Hole”. Even John Lennon’s “Imagine” is a tad too direct for my tastes.