The Michael Knowles Show - Over $3 Million For Non-WOKE Comic Hero ｜ Eric July

00:00:00.000 Warner Brothers has a Batgirl movie coming out. Correction, Warner Brothers had a Batgirl movie

00:00:08.060 coming out. Warner Brothers spent $90 million so far on this Batgirl movie, and the Batgirl movie

00:00:15.600 was going to be the first Warner Brothers movie with a transgender leading character.

00:00:23.020 And now they're just going to shelve the movie, apparently destroy the footage.

00:00:27.640 The actor, Ivory Aquino, just wrote an open Twitter thread to the head of Warner Brothers,

00:00:34.680 said, Dear Mr. Zaslav, I just read an article on The Hollywood Reporter about supposed funeral

00:00:39.760 screenings of Batgirl and the possibility afterwards that the film footage would be

00:00:44.460 destroyed. If this is the case, please, please reconsider this. It's the movie is apparently

00:00:51.180 so bad that not only are they willing to burn $90 million, they're going to burn the footage

00:00:57.060 just so that it never gets out at all. Here to help me make sense of this is not only a really

00:01:03.680 high level, extremely insightful cultural critic, but also a comic book mogul himself. That would be

00:01:11.680 Eric July. Eric, thank you for coming on the show.

00:01:14.780 I appreciate you having me back, Michael.

00:01:16.700 So Eric, I want to get to you in just a second because you, since we last spoke, you have become

00:01:23.520 a major comic book mogul with millions and millions of dollars in non-woke comic book sales. So we'll

00:01:29.140 get to that in a second. First though, you've got to help me make sense of this. I don't follow the

00:01:33.700 comic book movies. I don't really follow comic books. I certainly don't follow the Warner Brothers

00:01:38.620 internal politics. So I didn't know that there was going to be this Batgirl movie. The trade papers

00:01:45.200 are really whining about this. They say Batgirl won't be released in cinemas or on HBO Max.

00:01:50.360 The $90 million movie was reportedly close to completion when they decided to shelve it.

00:01:56.880 And it features the DC Comics first transgender character. Seems to me there's some correlation

00:02:02.840 there. Am I correct?

00:02:05.140 You are somewhat correct. So with a new transfer of power that we have over there at Warner's because

00:02:11.060 AT&T sold off their entertainment assets. You have that Warner Discovery merger. New CEO has

00:02:17.920 come in and that new team of leadership. They've axed and shelved a lot of different things. And one of

00:02:25.060 those, of course, were Batgirl. And I think this is very significant mainly because, yeah, of course,

00:02:30.640 nobody was really interested in it. I don't know how they managed to spend $90 million on that

00:02:34.480 in the first place. That, to me, is impressive. But nobody was really interested in this old

00:02:40.200 race-swapped Batgirl. It was very predictable. Of course, 0.98

00:02:44.320 they always led with the social justice aspect of it. First this, first stat. Not really the content.

00:02:50.280 But apparently it was so bad that they were willing to just take the tax write-off of the $90 million

00:02:54.780 and say nobody needs to see that. That is significant because we've seen companies put out very bad

00:03:02.320 material. But this, and we saw some leaks, not leaks, but, you know, on-set footage, and it looked pretty

00:03:09.000 bad. I mean, this had to be impressively bad. So they were like, no, we put this out. We're going

00:03:14.740 to tarnish our brand even more than what it already is. Let's make sure we put that on the shelf to

00:03:20.340 where nobody can ever see it. That's pretty significant from a production company.

00:03:24.960 That's a great point because a lot of the comic book movies that have come out recently,

00:03:30.140 they're not exactly Casablanca, okay? They're not the greatest movies. They're

00:03:34.560 generally formulaic. There's a lot of the woke nonsense in there, which people don't like,

00:03:39.160 but they want to see the good guy blow up the bad guy and smash up a city. So they'll go and see it.

00:03:43.640 The threshold for the quality of movies is not all that high. And yet apparently Batgirl didn't even

00:03:50.140 reach that very modest threshold. And they said, it's better to write this off on our taxes and burn

00:03:56.060 it than it would be to release it. That's huge. I don't know. I can't point to a time to where I've

00:04:02.560 seen something like this happen where it was almost done. It wasn't like they were mid-production.

00:04:08.960 It was basically done. The film was basically done and it was ready to be put out via HBO Max or

00:04:14.520 whatever theaters, wherever they were going to put it. And they just said, no, this can't see the light

00:04:19.040 of day. Get rid of that and get it out of my face. But I don't know. I'm not as willing to jump on like

00:04:25.080 so many other folks are like, oh, this means there's going to be a change with DC Comics or Warner.

00:04:30.400 I think this is more of the new leadership not seeing really eye to eye with the direction that

00:04:36.080 the old leadership was going. They're probably going to still put out their own nonsense themselves,

00:04:40.260 but it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense. But it still is very significant for a company to

00:04:46.120 invest that much in this product and just to say, nah, we just can't put it out.

00:04:51.280 Because I'm thinking of the recent woke flops and even semi-woke flops where you come out with

00:04:59.380 Lightyear. And Lightyear, they made a big deal about including a gay kissing scene. And they got 0.64

00:05:04.920 rid of Tim Allen because Tim Allen, I guess, is too conservative. And they release it and it's just

00:05:08.920 a major disappointment at the box office. Every time that they try to remake a good movie and they

00:05:14.100 say, okay, we're going to remake it, but here's the big splash. We're going to only use chicks. 1.00

00:05:18.380 You know, that's going to be our really imaginative, creative decision. We're going to replace all the

00:05:22.960 men, the beloved male characters with the women. And then they always flop and no one ever really

00:05:27.360 likes those movies. So is your contention that Hollywood is, they're not actually getting the

00:05:34.160 message here. This is more of a kind of internal political power play. Or do you think there's some

00:05:39.120 hope that these executives are thinking, huh, I'd prefer not to keep losing hundreds of millions of

00:05:45.060 dollars on this woke nonsense? I don't think that they're so ready to change, but I do think that

00:05:50.940 there is. And I've made this point before. I think there's a big disconnect between a lot of even

00:05:55.960 leadership and the executives versus the people that are like on the ground or the actual creatives

00:06:02.660 that are that are part of this. Then the ones that aren't really investing their own money into the

00:06:07.600 project. I think that executives of major entertainment companies have been convinced that this was the

00:06:13.760 way of the future. And if you looked at Twitter or you looked at TikTok, it may have seen that way

00:06:18.380 that this is what people, let's say, wanted. But when it comes to customers actually spending their

00:06:22.980 money and their dollars on certain things or viewing things, you're seeing that that's simply not the

00:06:27.740 case. No matter how many retweets you get, no matter how many these weird stand accounts that get

00:06:32.360 created, it doesn't really matter. They're not necessarily paying willing customers. So I do think that

00:06:38.200 there's going to be a pivot at some point when people continue to look at the bottom line,

00:06:42.980 the executives do it. And they're like, OK, guys, we're not making money. You see that? I don't

00:06:46.740 know if you heard about like the CW. They got new ownership or something of that nature. And they

00:06:51.180 just flat out admit it for a while now. They've been operating at a loss like that. That kind of

00:06:56.880 went under the radar. I was like, wow, that's pretty significant like that. They were just making

00:07:01.960 content and weren't it wasn't that they weren't making profit. They were operating at a loss. Wow.

00:07:07.600 And I think as more companies start to do that, then you'll see a pivot. I just don't know if we're

00:07:12.160 quite ready, which to me is a beautiful thing, because that allows folks like myself and others

00:07:16.900 to try to be competitors in this market. Well, you are you are a competitor. I think

00:07:21.420 you're probably more than a competitor. So since we last spoke, Eric, you you are the owner of

00:07:27.800 Ripaverse Publishing. You put out this non woke comic book. And I thought when I first saw the story, 0.98

00:07:36.480 I said, Eric Julyman, that's cool. Good for him. I hope he makes a couple bucks on that. That's a

00:07:40.580 good effort. You know, me, I don't know anything about comics. Maybe I'll even buy a copy. Then I

00:07:44.720 look down. You have made if my numbers are correct here, Eric, I don't want to out you have people

00:07:50.740 come hitting you up for cash. You have sold three and a half million dollars worth of comic books.

00:07:58.260 The number I have in front of me is you've sold 50,000 copies pre-sold of your of your comic book.

00:08:04.560 Yes, that is very true. Three point four million. And that is still I'm trying to get used to that

00:08:10.480 because that's a big number. But I didn't expect that. I expected it to be successful. Don't get

00:08:17.160 me wrong. Right. I put hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own money to to get this thing

00:08:21.780 off the ground. But I thought of this 45 million different ways. And I would have never came up

00:08:26.640 with a way that I would. Hey, I'm going to make three. I would have been like, no, there's no way that

00:08:29.900 we do that. But man, for us to come out, do that, to have over 40,000 purchases, over 50,000 total

00:08:35.980 books. So to put that like comparably speaking, like looking at companies, if you look at like

00:08:43.640 Comicron, they put out the data for a diamond accounted for this many in sales for the major

00:08:48.680 publishers. The top selling graphic novel last year, like in our genre, superhero graphic novel

00:08:54.240 was like, I believe, 24,000 copies. So to put that in perspective, we destroyed them by double

00:09:01.220 their their copies. And this is our first book. Right. This is a very significant thing. And I

00:09:07.340 think that when I came out and said, hey, I'm trying to go out there and actually I think we

00:09:12.160 can make a splash. I think we can be very competitive in this market. I think people knew

00:09:16.860 it. But now that you see it, it's more tangible. And as these books start getting shipped out going

00:09:20.800 into September, it becomes more and more real that, holy crap, there's a big demographic that

00:09:27.540 wants this, but they're more so they're paying customers. Yeah, I didn't get access to access

00:09:31.880 media advanced copies. I didn't get that. I didn't get the coverage from the big comic book. In fact,

00:09:36.860 the ones that did cover us were writing hit pieces about us. We didn't have any of that. We just did

00:09:41.740 it organically. And we, again, accounted for more than 50,000. It just goes to show just how thriving

00:09:47.440 this market can be if you simply just market it well and give people what they want. Who buys comic

00:09:53.100 books? Maybe this is probably my own naivete. I don't know that I've ever read a complete comic

00:09:59.340 book in my life. I've read parts of them. I've been given comic books. And I'm not saying I didn't

00:10:03.820 enjoy them. I just, in my mind, this was a really relatively small market. I didn't, I assumed it went

00:10:10.640 woke, just like every other entertainment medium went woke. And then, so you come out there and not

00:10:15.900 just saying we're gonna, we're gonna be anti-woke, but in this, what I assumed was more of a niche

00:10:20.720 market and you just completely blow it up. So who are these customers?

00:10:26.040 These are customers that I think have felt just disenfranchised with where entertainment in

00:10:31.140 general is going. And I think it's just entertainment altogether. Some of it's comic books. Of course,

00:10:36.560 a lot of our guys are former comic, considering that I've been a commentator in this space.

00:10:40.880 A lot of the guys that like this material are gonna be comic book guys, but we also got new customers.

00:10:45.640 People that just see the direction of where entertainment's going. You see what Rings of

00:10:49.920 Power seems to, they're about to do with Tolkien. You see what's happened with Star Wars. You see

00:10:54.500 basically every brand that a lot of us have grown up on has been ran into the absolute ground.

00:10:59.940 So for someone to come by and say, look, I'm not really trying to beat anybody's head over

00:11:04.580 with politics or anything, not even my own. You know what I mean? I just wanting to give people

00:11:09.280 material that they can be entertained by, kind of get lost in. And yeah, it will expand into

00:11:15.320 other types of entertainment. We're starting with the books. And these are just guys that number

00:11:20.140 one, have money, right? They're willing to spend, not just people retweeting stuff, people that are

00:11:24.100 willing to spend money. But I mean, just look around us and how everything's really going in

00:11:27.820 the toilet as of recent. People want something different. And all I did was give them, granted,

00:11:34.420 I spent a lot of money. I got the best artists that I possibly could. And I made this presentable

00:11:38.820 because it needed to be comparable. And they just came out in full support. And I think we're just

00:11:43.920 really just getting started. Well, I like that point that you're making there because all the

00:11:47.820 time people pitch me on ideas. They're always, you know, because the Daily Wire is promoting content.

00:11:54.600 And so they'll say, hey, I've got an idea for, I say, I'm going to stop you right there because I

00:11:58.480 don't even want to hear the pitch because then I'm legally liable if you, so let's just stop it right

00:12:03.260 there. Do you have a product that you're offering me or do you have an idea? And they always say,

00:12:09.080 well, no, I got an idea. I said, well, listen, man, I'm lousy with ideas. I have so many, I got

00:12:14.200 ideas pouring out of my head. That's not what we need. What we need is really strong execution.

00:12:19.680 And so you put your money where your mouth is. You said, look, I got a good idea for this comic

00:12:23.040 book. I got a good idea for where the marketplace is going to go. But we can't, it's not enough to just

00:12:28.240 say, we're not woke. We're not, we're not the left or whatever, you know, and then, and maybe

00:12:32.960 people give you a little bit of their money for that. But, but what you're saying is, no, we're

00:12:36.340 going to make a very, very high quality product that happens to not be left. We're actually going

00:12:42.500 to compete on the level with these guys and go toe to toe and you win. That's the probably the

00:12:49.640 most important part of it. Like I put my money where my mouth was. I actually spent hundreds,

00:12:55.360 a couple of hundred thousand dollars to just get the bad boy off the ground, paying my

00:12:59.360 artists, Gabe L. Taib, Cliff Richards. These are people that have been in the game, you

00:13:03.800 know, for decades, you know, worked for the big guys, done that, you know, Gabe with being

00:13:07.560 on Star Wars and Superman. And, uh, you know, we, we, we basically went everywhere to, to try

00:13:13.820 to find a group that we knew could make this come to life, but also were just really good

00:13:19.540 at what it was that they did. And this isn't my first creative project. Um, and I like to

00:13:24.120 think of myself as a, as a decent writer, but we put that all together and we came up

00:13:28.560 sort of with a game plan to, to, all right, let's make something that's first and foremost,

00:13:32.640 actually good. Right. So it doesn't matter. Let's say where this person is on the political

00:13:37.060 spectrum. They see this cover, how are they going to feel about it? They start flipping

00:13:40.860 through the pages, how are they going to feel about it? I don't want them to want it to feel

00:13:44.340 cheap. I want it to feel like it's something worth investing, uh, your money in because I'm not

00:13:49.960 owed these people's money. Yeah. If I led with that, putting a point, like I was, oh man,

00:13:53.560 anti-woke or I'm, uh, it's a non-woke. Yeah. I would've got a couple of guys that would allow

00:13:57.740 my pockets up. But the fact that we said, all right, here's the artwork, you know, here's

00:14:02.780 that we've been very transparent about how, where it is that, how these numbers line up.

00:14:07.260 We've been very transparent with, uh, you know, give you the story. We give you the

00:14:11.300 synopsis. We give you the breakdown of that. We introduce you some new, new characters, all

00:14:16.060 of that. And, and we did it all way, put it on our own website, right? Not having to go

00:14:21.080 through a third party in order to do it kind of, uh, uh, making it to, to, to look like

00:14:26.540 we needed it to look. And people saw that finished product and say, you know what? I want to invest.

00:14:31.680 I want to pre-order. I want to give it a shot. And I think that's where a lot of creatives

00:14:36.280 who are, let's say more so closer to our line of thinking. I think that's where they lose

00:14:39.980 it. People come into it. Like I have an idea that of, of this type of entertainment, but

00:14:45.060 they haven't even like actually made it come into fruition to even present it as something

00:14:49.880 that's worth buying into. And I wanted to make sure that we did that. And this is why we're

00:14:53.880 able to get the pre-order out relatively quickly. It just launched last month. Um, and it's going

00:14:58.460 to be out, you know, going into September. So it, it aligned perfect. And I really took

00:15:03.220 this serious and I got the best in the business to work with me.

00:15:05.800 Now, what makes it non-woke? Because the libs always come after us and they say, you use this

00:15:11.640 word woke. And we said, well, actually, first of all, we got the word from you. You guys invented

00:15:14.920 the word. We just kind of throw it back at you. Now you're running away from it. But they say,

00:15:18.600 you use this word woke, but what does it really mean? You know, it's this catch all buzzword

00:15:23.000 and it allows you to rally the troops. And I guess there's a point to that. So what, what would

00:15:28.440 distinguish these comic books from say something that DC and Marvel's putting out?

00:15:34.120 See, well, a lot of these guys are for one, they're not creative at all. Like they come into

00:15:38.520 it leading with their personal individual, let's say social political views. Let's say

00:15:42.880 that. Uh, so when I think of wokeness, I look at a writer, I look at a person that is masquerading

00:15:49.320 as a creative thinking that first and foremost is about highlighting what I individually believe

00:15:55.640 from a political or social, uh, more so from a social view. And it doesn't even matter if

00:16:01.500 it makes sense for that character that all has already been long established. I am going

00:16:06.000 to make sure I write that into it. So what they end up doing is let's say using these characters,

00:16:11.800 Batman, uh, Superman, some very prominent characters as a vehicle to, uh, basically spread

00:16:18.960 whatever personal social views that it is that they have. And we're not talking about things

00:16:24.060 such as like universal truths of, of good versus evil, which is really what the comic books had

00:16:29.200 historically been about. So what I did was say, you know what, everybody knows where I'm at,

00:16:34.040 I'm about Liberty, you know what I mean? But my idea of giving you a, just a straight up comic

00:16:39.980 book, isn't to beat you over the head with everything it is that I individually, uh, believe

00:16:45.880 in. I just want you to be, let's say entertaining. Yeah. Under like the great Stan Lee once said

00:16:51.160 about social issues, like he liked to put it under laying the plot, not to where it felt like he was

00:16:56.120 beating a reader over the head. Well, that's the complete opposite of what guys are doing right now.

00:17:00.420 They are not only beating you over the head, they're telling you that you suck in the event

00:17:04.100 that if you don't want to buy into this, well, uh, and this is what's remarkable to me to see

00:17:09.280 these massive companies have people that represent them calling their fans, actual paying customers,

00:17:14.820 racist or homophobic or, or misogynistic, which is one of their favorite ones. Cause God forbid,

00:17:19.900 you don't like a female character. See, I'm not interested in doing any of that. I think with 1.00

00:17:24.000 these customers deserve some sort of respect, um, because they don't have to invest into this.

00:17:28.300 And I just want to, I just want to entertain you. You're not going to just get an on the nose

00:17:32.200 political, uh, narrative with these books or social political, uh, narrative with these books.

00:17:37.320 I just wanted to give you good entertainment. I really like this distinction that you're making

00:17:41.080 here, which is it's not, it doesn't make it woke necessarily. If a character espouses some left

00:17:49.220 wing viewpoint, because let's say you got some super lib character in the, in the book. And that's,

00:17:55.100 you know, one of the defining features of this character is he's a super lib. So then when he

00:17:59.120 starts spouting lib nonsense, you would expect that that would make sense. But you're saying it's,

00:18:03.760 it's when it's, it's when the lib nonsense comes completely out of the blue. And especially with

00:18:10.160 these characters who have long established, you know, roles and, and traits in our conscience,

00:18:16.740 someone like Superman or Batman or whoever, when all of a sudden they start sounding like,

00:18:21.120 you know, a 14 year old girl on Tumblr in 2022, that all of a sudden you say, hold on, wait,

00:18:26.320 that's not Superman. That's not Batman. That's you, the comic book maker using my beloved character

00:18:31.700 and taking this beautiful piece of intellectual property and just perverting it for your own

00:18:36.960 stupid political ends. And we saw that one of the big examples of that with, uh, Tim Drake,

00:18:42.680 the Robin and the bat family, where he just recently was turned a gay just to happen. I mean, 1.00

00:18:48.200 we've seen it. It's visual. Like we know that he's had girlfriends, uh, with like spoiler and

00:18:53.300 these other characters. We know that's a thing. And that's a part of, of him ice man. That was a

00:18:59.080 huge deal when that happened with, cause this guy was basically like a womanizer, uh, if anything.

00:19:03.820 And then out of nowhere, he's just gay. And they it's, it's a form of gaslighting. Cause they act 1.00

00:19:09.060 like none of that material exists, but then you go look into like the actual, um, oftentimes it's like a

00:19:15.640 self insert, right? It's a, it's a, this person was gay or, uh, this person had a close gay family

00:19:21.380 member or something. And they wanted to make sure that they use this character to do that,

00:19:24.620 which is why the writer, uh, Tom Taylor, I believe is his name for that. Uh, like when Superman's son

00:19:30.660 turned gay out of nowhere, that was the recent one. Uh, when that happened, I mean, the day that gets 1.00

00:19:35.580 announced, he's doing interviews and he has the, you know, the S on his chest and it's a rainbow.

00:19:40.620 Like it's a, it's a rainbow S on his chest. And like, dude, you're telling me why you're doing

00:19:46.440 this. That's exactly what, what you're, why you're doing this. You're letting us know. And that had

00:19:50.660 us turned so many people off to what's happening with the mainstream, uh, comic book industry,

00:19:55.000 which is why we're thriving. Cause I'm simply just promising. And we put out a public code of ethics.

00:19:59.800 I want people to hold me to, I'm promising like, Hey, I'm not going to be beating my audience over the

00:20:05.180 head, but these things that people care about more so from like the continuity standpoint,

00:20:08.920 whether that be with sexuality or anything, doesn't matter what it is. These are, these

00:20:13.440 are values with a company. And I want, when you get ice on number one, you own a piece of history,

00:20:18.520 not something that's going to get retconned out of existence because some writer just felt like,

00:20:22.500 well, I want them to be gay out of nowhere or something weird like that. We're just not 1.00

00:20:25.660 interested in doing that. I like that code of ethics. I like that promise. Cause even this is

00:20:30.500 getting really weird now, even beyond comic books and the superhero movies into James Bond,

00:20:36.280 who's, who's kind of a superhero, but he's kind of like a normal hero, superhero. And you're seeing

00:20:42.520 a lot of continuity errors there as well and rebooting and restarting in ways that you hadn't

00:20:47.740 seen before. And then to your exact point on this, after this last James Bond movie,

00:20:51.940 there was talk that there, the next James Bond would be a woman. And my first thought was,

00:20:57.840 no, he won't because that wouldn't be James Bond because James Bond is a dude. That's why his name

00:21:05.780 is James. So you can have a spy lady movie, but that ain't going to be James Bond. And because they

00:21:13.480 know that this content won't, won't stand on its own. Nobody's going to go see, you know, the brand

00:21:19.200 new, here's your next double O agent spy lady. No one's going to go see spy lady. So what they've got

00:21:25.460 to do or that no one's going to go see, come see super gay guy. No, no one's going to do that. So 1.00

00:21:29.800 they got to just take all the characters that you do like, and then shoehorn their own, their own

00:21:35.040 agendas inside of that. So on your, on your code of ethics for the, for the comic book beyond just,

00:21:42.540 you're not going to be super didactic. You're not going to cram stuff down people's throats.

00:21:46.680 How does that even play on the, on the rebooting and the timelines and the retconning?

00:21:51.280 So that's what the code of ethics is about. We had like three, three main points and it really

00:21:55.880 doesn't even talk about like wokeness or anything. It's more of, Hey, continuity is, was a big thing.

00:22:01.480 A big thing that turned me off from like modern comics was that, look, man, we have 16 reboots.

00:22:08.280 There's 55 different versions of the same character. You don't know what universe that,

00:22:12.380 Oh, well that's Batman, but it's not earth. That's earth to Batman or that's earth three. Like,

00:22:16.360 you know, that's nonsense. And it really turns me, turned me off. Certainly as a reader,

00:22:20.540 I want to make it easy for people. So having, I talked about comprehensive timeline, but main thing

00:22:25.120 like limit, like the whole reboot thing, limiting all of that, because again, I want people to get a

00:22:30.020 book and they know years down the line, if we're still continuing to tell this story, those events

00:22:35.080 happen. Those are things that actually happen. It allows the reader to get invested. Like, why would I

00:22:40.720 buy a DC book? When I know two years from now, they're going to have some cataclysmic event and

00:22:46.480 it's going to wipe everything that I just read to where it does not happen. Good luck. And I say,

00:22:51.660 this is the one of the biggest Batman fans that exists. And I'm, I'm very knowledgeable on him.

00:22:56.140 I have to come up with a freaking diagram to try to make, make it make sense. When someone asked me,

00:23:01.400 Hey, I like Batman. I saw his movie. Where do I start? Oh, well, there's issue one of Batman,

00:23:06.900 but you don't want to go to that issue one is detective comics, but that's, you know,

00:23:10.960 it got rebooted. And then I have to try to explain this to them because they themselves have made a

00:23:16.680 lot of continuity issues. So this is why I talk about like a lot of, this is my lifelong dream.

00:23:21.540 This was always my lifelong dream to do this. It just kind of got sped up considering my,

00:23:25.420 my recent like success and other avenues. But there are other issues that were wrong with comics that

00:23:30.760 also plague it that, yeah, they may use sometimes wokeness as a, as a way to kind of put this shoehorn

00:23:36.880 this stuff in. But those aren't the only problems we found issues in distribution of comics from an

00:23:42.200 economic perspective, uh, with a diamond basically in like two other public, uh, distribute distribution

00:23:48.280 houses that basically control the entire industry. That didn't make any sense to me, but there's all

00:23:54.080 sorts of things wrong with comics. Um, and I just want to, instead of always griping about the problem,

00:23:58.940 like I've been doing for so long, I want to be a part of the solution.

00:24:01.420 That's great. I love that idea. And even your observation on the rebooting, it kind of ties

00:24:07.760 into the, the lib woke view of the world, which is that history doesn't matter. Tradition doesn't

00:24:14.880 matter. The past is always bad. And then you can just re remake the whole world anytime you want,

00:24:20.260 whether that's, you know, through the communist revolution or whether it's by, I don't know,

00:24:24.620 changing your pronouns and chopping off your body parts that you can just constantly be remaking the 0.50

00:24:29.600 world. And I wonder there, there must be a relation there. And I love that you're saying,

00:24:34.200 no, we're actually going to respect our readers. We're going to respect the characters. We respect

00:24:39.420 the narrative. And we're going to give you a high quality product. Uh, Eric, since I think there

00:24:44.600 isn't nearly enough money, we we've got to give, get you to 5 million or 6 million in sales.

00:24:49.260 Where can people get the comic?

00:24:51.580 You can go to rip a verse.com. Uh, if you want to actually view, of course, the company and everything

00:24:57.440 it is that we're, we're doing the first book that you can pre-order still right now, there's 30 days

00:25:01.940 left, uh, to get in on the pre-order campaign. I some issue number one, I believe you guys are

00:25:07.460 going to love it. It's, um, about a character who by the name, of course, I some, that's a former hero

00:25:13.060 name. He used to be a hero recently retired. And now there's this event that is going to be bringing

00:25:19.260 him into the city that he likes to stay out of and everything kind of hits the fan from there.

00:25:25.040 So you can read the entire synopsis, uh, breakdown kind of of the story. And there's so many different

00:25:30.480 items that you can get on, on the ice, um, issue number one, uh, campaign. Just again, go visit

00:25:35.700 rip a verse.com. You can get in. And like I said, fulfillment is about to start in the next couple of

00:25:41.260 weeks going into, uh, September. So get in where you can fit in, get in while you still can. That's

00:25:46.800 great, Eric. Thank you so much for coming on and congratulations on really sticking it to all the

00:25:52.080 woke people and, and making a good product in the process. Appreciate you so much, brother.

The Michael Knowles Show - September 05, 2022

Over $3 Million For Non-WOKE Comic Hero ｜ Eric July

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