Adrian Carson: Everyone in the comic industry seems to be united on this front. Like the you know, the editors, the publishers, the artists and the fans seem to all sort of generally universally reject AI. we all understand that it's stolen valor, right? You know, like you didn't you're not an AI artist. You asked a machine to steal stuff on your behalf. That's what AI art is. And I don't want that ever. I will never buy that. I will never support it in voice acting, music, comics, any of it. As you can see, we got a very special episode of Podcasting Our Nerdy today. We're at and for you guys who can only hear, I'll quit the quit the expectation. We have David Nakiama in the building, people. Hello. Aloha from Hawaii. How's it going? Going good. And for you b podcasting on nerdy fans, you may if you go back into our archives, you'll see that this is not the first time we're having David on. He was on pretty early in our podcasting career and we really geeked out about cover. So I'm really excited to geek out even more today. I know that we got a lot of questions for you, David, so I'm not going to like hold your time and we're gonna get into it. I'm ready, bring it on. Okay, let's get this going. So the first question that got sent in, Kyle Rayner is an artist himself. When you when illustrating him specifically, do you feel a different connection to him than you do with other superheroes? How does that influence your artwork? I don't know about drawing him, but definitely like as a fan starting to get interested in comics just before they introduced him, I really felt immediately connected to him like from a storytelling point of view. I I felt like he was my f my favorite, you know, main GL. right from the start because of that connection or related to him that way. So it was it was really a treat to come back and, you know, do a little work for him recently on the the costume redesign and some covers associated with it. That was that's been a lot of fun. I'm a big GL fan and he's one of my favorite parts about it. yeah, go going into that specifically, like so you are a huge GL fan, like you just said. How are you feeling about lanterns right now? I'm up to date. I'm waiting for the for the new episode. It it was it was strange because, you know, at first I thought, okay, no one's flying around in space. It's not a very colorful show. It's not immediately what I think of as lanterns. But after I think the third episode, when we understand why John is the way he is, I was completely bought in. I was like, okay, I get it. I understand what they're doing here. and I've actually felt like the characterization is about as strong as any GL project really ever has been. You know, like I understand who these people are in a deeper way and I appreciate them more. I like I like I like John to begin with, but I like him more now. Right. if that makes any sense. So I'm bought in. I I really like what they're doing and I'm like, you know, for me it's appointment viewing when the new episode comes out, I'm gonna absolutely watch it. because I'm I'm I'm about as bought in as I can be. It used to be Silo. I don't know if you guys are watching Silo, but that was my must watch show up until the s the season three ended a couple weeks ago, but now it's lanterns. So I would need a new favorite show very soon. Yeah, because I'm think I think they have like an eight episode run for this first season. And it was getting a lot of heat, but like I am loving it too. Like Yeah, some things I'm able to call just because you the geek in me and I think the geek in you and you're like, okay, that was kinda like I wish you would have went another direction than that and surprised me more or whatever the case, but but also it's been very in my opinion, you have to take liberties here and there, but like it's very lanterns to me. Like I love it. It's a really good show. I think Kyle Rand Kyle Chandler kills it as Hal Jordan. I think Garren Pierre's Does really good job as well. I'm really excited for lanterns. I'm really excited for this series. Yeah, not the show I expected at all from from that franchise, but it's great. It's honestly anything Damon Lindelof touches, like previously he had done Watchmen. I don't know if you ever saw that. Yeah. why if this feel this show feels very much like that show to me. You know, very dark and grounded, but still super heroic. it hits all those same notes in the best way for me. If DC gave you a complete creative if they gave you complete creative freedom to design an entirely new lantern core, what emotion would power it? And what color would it be? And what would its costumes look like? Man, you know, they have so thoroughly mined that, like there are no more colors, lanterns or designs practically to touch. I I actually feel like Lanterns needs to mine new territory, to be honest with you, because like up in my shelf over here, I've got the complete Jeff Johns collection, the complete black blackest night omnibus, and they killed it. That is my favorite GL storyline of all time. but if they keep doing stories that are like that, it's gonna be diminishing returns. You know, like so They can gold lantern all they want and you know they can keep or what is it, ultra ultraviolet, the these sorts of things. These are cool, but it's not it's not carving out new territory the way that the you know introduction of the color core did. So I would if I was writing lantern, green lantern right now, I would try to find a completely new angle In in the infinite universe, right, to explore with it and have that same feeling that existed when when Jeff opened up the universe the way he did with all the color cores. That's that's what I would I hope to feel again, you know? Yes. Yes, I missed that. Like Man, that was that was a good time when they opened up. Does it get any better than that? Like from from Sinestro Core War all the way through Blackest Night is just Ups. You you think you've seen the height of it and they keep going further. It's so amazing. Yes. Yes. Alright, Adrian. Alright. Now we're gonna get into X Men. If you were responsible for redesign designing the entire X-Men team for a new generation, which characters would you tackle first? Which would you focus on? And what would you change? man, dude, I I I have I think the greatest idea for an X-Men event in my head, that I'm I think is so good that I'm tempted to just give it to Marvel, like, hey guys, I had this idea, check it out, you should do this. It would be it would be so great in my head. I don't know. Maybe it's not so great, but I think it would be. I would just cherry pick my own favorites. So it's gonna be a lot of your familiar 90s, you know, Jim Lee team and you know, the the peop the characters that appeared in the animated series and, you know, bring in modern magic and give Sylock a big role and emphasize Storm and you know what I'm saying? Like, I I I'm there are some interesting new characters that have come along the way. You know, Quentin Choir springs to mind from the Morrison run. I'm not as familiar with the current run, but I'm a little more classic. I like the the older characters and I think that's kind of what they're gonna be doing in the movies anyway, so Those those are still likely to be the core of X Men going forward. And I I wouldn't shake the boat there. There's just so much good stuff to choose from. It's just telling more stories with your favorites, I think. No, I I I totally see what you're saying there. There is like X Men is like the greatest buffet if you're a comic book fan ever, 'cause there's something for everybody when it comes to X Men. There is. It's just I hope that they do this movie. I I was talking to Adrian and I was talking to my wife. And I'm like, they need to walk away from Magneto for a bit. I'm I'm Magneto in in the in cinematic universe, I'm Magneto'd out. And I think Mr. Sinister is the perfect way to go. It opens up new pathways for them that people have not seen. And I think it hopefully, in my opinion, gives them a better way to really get the story seventy-five percent right. Seventy five. I'm with you. I feel like we've been circling the Professor X Magneto, you know, d two polar ends of the same story over and over again in the film. So where it is that they're doing Sinister as an as a lieutenant of apocalypse, and that sounds fine, good, I'm into it. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. That's what I'm hoping. All right. So we'll move on to the next one. Thank you. so you've illustrated so many iconic characters. Marvel DC. is there a character you've never had the opportunity to draw profession professionally who's still on your bucket list? Yeah, I I've been really lucky. I've gotten to over the years check off so many of my favorites and even come back to ones I really like over and over again. even now to the point where I'm old enough to have done runs on characters that I really like. Like Catwoman for eighteen issues. We've been on covers for Wonder Woman and Harley for two years, over two years, continuously. So those are really special projects to me. And then last year was sort of an X-Men year where it was Rogue and Emma and and Magic all back to back to back. so I I can't complain. I got I've been able to do like Just about all my favorites. To answer the question though, like what are the ones that I haven't done? there are a few outliers here and there, like Hellboy. Never drawn Hellboy in my life. cable, I realized, I've not really drawn ever. Not like the, you know, the way you think of cable. but I think I think the characters that I most want to draw and haven't probably are are video game characters, because that's sort of my my side hobby. And and it doesn't seem like Nintendo's ever gonna publish any comics after they're maybe they didn't love the Valiant Run that happened in the early 90s and they don't want to touch that again. Whatever the reason. But if someone made a Metroid comic, I would kill to work on that. Or Zelda or Castlevania or Nira Tabana or or Horizon Zero Dawn. Like I g that's the stuff that I or or a lot of anime too, actually, honestly. I like t would love to draw some anime characters, but these things just don't happen very often when you're in the Western comics world. Yep. I guess that's an extension of that question. What about unprofessionally? I probably don't probably don't like the do you like to draw in your free time too? No. I'm a little bit embarrassed, I guess, because like when you think of a a real a real artist, you don't you imagine like like a a French painter going out and plain air painting the beautiful countryside, you know, with oil paints or you know, maybe some cool hip guys on the subway and he's drawing random people. I'm not into any of that stuff. Like I don't keep a sketchbook. I don't want to draw in you know, random people in the real world. If I'm drawing something it's sort of purposeful, like you know, I It's it's a specific assignment with a specific goal and I'm not wasting hours on for fun stuff. I I think the work is the fun part. So I just want to get to the work and not and not do sketches of any kind. So I'm a little bit embarrassed like that's what they say a real artist is supposed to be, but I've just never been that guy. And then w where's the time in the day too? Probably part of that for you as well. That has you know, that the last few years have gotten so intense with the deadlines that the only way to cope with it has been to find all the efficiencies, you know, like doing less original hand drawn, drawing directly into Photoshop saves time, not doing s a lot of, you know, on the side sketches, you know, if I can help it. just whatever it takes to get the thing done at at quality. Because I d what I don't want to do is put work out there that is subpar. That doesn't get anybody anything. but I also don't want to like not sleep. You know, I don't want it to compromise my health. So I I gotta I gotta find that balance. before we get into the next question, I wanna shout out to our sponsor, Philfest, who is sponsoring our next few episodes. Philfest is a mental health festival that's happening in Hutchison, Kansas. I You don't have to be in Kansas. You could be anywhere in the world to donate. Go to podcastingwinery dot com and go to the Philfest landing page. you'll see many ways you can get involved. One specific way is a t shirt, where half the proceeds of that t shirt go directly back into Philfest and putting on more festivals like Philfest. So be sure to check out Podcasting ordinary.com, click on the Fill Fest banner and learn how you can become a save point to somebody. Yes. Alright, on to the next question here. your artwork has become incredibly popular among comic book collectors. Have you ever created a cover you thought would be a massive hit only to discover fans connected more strongly with something completely unexpected? So that totally That totally happens. So like I I remember You know, in the first few years of my cover career, two things would happen, right? Like you would you would make a piece and you would think to yourself, or I would I know why it's you in this, I would think to myself, this is the best cover I've ever done. It's so so so much better drawn than anything I've done before. Surely everyone's gonna love it. And then you put it out there and it's crickets. Or the exact opposite, where you're like, well, I can't win them all. This one wasn't so great, and then everyone's loving the hell out of that. So I sort of learned this lesson early on, right? Like you cannot predict at all, you know, you're doing your best i in each one, but you can't really predict which ones are gonna pop off for the audience. So I've actually gotten to the point where I go in with no expectations when I put anything out there and I let the audience tell me what's good, you know, with their likes and their comments. And I, you know, if you ask me what's your favorite cover. I don't know until I've heard the reaction. Because it's a it's cloud per it's crowd participation, right? It's like a performance. Like I put something in the world and then they tell me, and then maybe I do more stuff like that, or I let the I let the comments guide me in the future with what I'm doing. so yeah, that what you said is absolutely something that happened, but I'm I I learned that you you can't think that way. you have to you have to be prepared to engage with the audience. I have to say, like your audience, your fans, you have a very active fan base. Yeah that you especially on Facebook. like you're like you and I'm part I'm part of that fan base by the way. Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, you know, you're all about engagement, you're all about like What's working for you guys, what's not. Like what you're speaking to is totally true. Like, I don't know many comic book artists or many artists or fan like quote I don't know if you find this word cringe or not. Celebrities who who engage with their fans as much as you do. Yeah. You're so congrats. And I were we I was gonna say I'm speaking on half of some little fans that we appreciate that. Yeah, but you're very attainable. That's what I was gonna say. It's like attainable. Like you some of them keep themselves on this higher echelon and you're just very down to earth. well that thank you. Thank you. I I you know I I think a couple things are happening there, right? Like kind of what you said before in the previous question was, you know, how do you think about the art when you put it out there? And you know I I I have it's the audience that's gonna tell me. It's it's not up to me at the end of the day. So and if you try to fight it, it's it's just counterproductive. You know, like I cannot tell the audience to like this. They're gonna like what they're gonna like. And all I can do is try to sing that song correctly, right? and then like in terms of engagement, that's just me trying to find out, I guess. Like What people are into and and why. And, you know, you know, this is a sort of a lonely job, you know, like most of the time you're sitting in a corner of a dark room drawing by yourself. So it's so nice to to chat with real people about something that you have a shared interest in, like these comic book characters and these TV shows that we all really like. So for me it's just like, I just wanna connect with people. You know, that's kind of what it's all about, is It's like, you know, when you go to a Comic Con, the same thing. so if a creator is not doing that, I'm w I'm wondering what they're what's the fun part for them, you know? Like if you're not talking with people about the thing you love in common, then I guess it must just be process for these people, right? Like just the physical act of making it. But to me it's the sharing. Sometimes I think it like some people in you know, get lost in the sauce, so to speak, where it's just like it's like I I like a better word, I won't say on forget to be humble, but it's some somewhat of that. It's like forgetting that losing that fan inside you, forgetting that like you were once on the other side of that table. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for reminding me. I wanted to address that too. Like it's been a long road, you know, where eighteen year old David had a plan to be Jim Lee one day and twenty twenty plus years go by and it's you you're that stuff isn't really gonna happen, right? Like you're not it's a long road and a and a long mountain to climb and you're you are being you're gonna be a starving artist for like for real for for many, many years. So it's it's not like that's that long ago, you know, where things were not where I'm I'm grateful now to be able to work on things I adore, like all the time I feel really lucky about it. But there are there are some pretty lean years in there and I I don't forget it because it was that long ago, you know. That's great. That's great. All right. We'll keep it moving. We value your time. So you've worked on comics, video games, action figures, and trading cards. But if you could create an entirely original superhero universe with complete complete con complete creative control, what would make it visually creatively different from Marvel and DC? well, I I I've got it. I have I have the answer for this. It's too early to share anything about it, but I've been planning my own book where I do my own thing, write it, draw it, the whole nine yards. there does one sketch exist for this thing? No. But I have a story outline. I know what the characters are, I know what the conceit is, I know what design work needs to be done, and it's just about finding the time. to go work on that. But you're you're calling it an interesting time because I really think for the f next month, believe it or not, that as soon as next month might be when I started. So it may it may take it may take years. It maybe it never happens, but I know what it would be exactly. and it's just been about you know like how how do I turn down Transformers or Harley Quinn or Emma Frost. I can't. So it's been a I've been doing those dream projects the last few years, but I think the stars are aligning where maybe I can actually tackle that next month. Or start to. So I'll see you in twenty thirty two. We'll revisit this conversation in twenty thirty two. You heard it here first, but it it's not coming anytime soon, so don't don't hold your breath. David, with the popularity of retailer exc exclusives, virgin variants, and foil covers, how has the collector market changed the way you approach your artwork? Do you ever design a cover specifically with a collector in mind? Hmm. Interesting question. well I'll tell you, it definitely changed the business a lot. I was, you know, I was professional since I don't know. Depends how you look at it, but maybe like started getting on the cover thing in like twenty fourteen in a bigger way. Like I've sort of been on the on that path ever since then. But a few years after that, you started to see that trend in the industry with the artist variant covers and I I found some retail partners and the business really took off in the convention space. You know, we would make things that we would sell on our website. this is Unknown Comics, by the way, if you guys are familiar with it. They're my business partners for this stuff. And we do conventions together, we have for many years, and you know, they they help me with my online sales and it's been a great partnership. and so yeah, for sure, like the stuff we're working on. you know, it's it's a lot of what's hot right now, and it's a lot of what does David want to draw, you know, kind of. so there's a lot of expert in there, no surprise, right? yeah, so it definitely has influenced like what projects I've worked on and you know what my output is, I guess you could say. But in a good way. It it's it probably allowed me to work on hotter things sooner than I would have otherwise. probably incre I I think I think it's fair to say it made my brand stronger overall, help me a great deal. so Overall I think it's been a really great thing. I also think like the collectors really seem to enjoy it. Like people you know, we'll we'll we're just at what was it, San Die San Diego just a few months ago. That was the hot seller. People really wanted, you know, our new absolute books and foil transformers and that kind of stuff. That's what they want. They want that special thing that not everybody has. They they like getting it signed. Now it's even more special, you know, like That's a it's it's not just the book. It's kind of like the experience too. Yeah. The story itself. If you look at the back in the back of me right now, there's so much story. especially on the Deadpool one. so but no, it's that's exactly what it is. It's like give people the sign, and this is like takes back to a moment in time, right? Totally, yeah. And then do I design it that way? I would say no. mostly it sort of happens automatically like I'll I'll make a strong composition and then certain ones will be like, that would be a great foil and then they make it a foil. But it wasn't like planned as a foil. with an exception. There's there's a series of bad seeds covers, four of that always were intended to be spot foils right from the beginning. They come out all the same day on October twenty first, as part of that event. so that's gonna be interesting to see, you know, what happens when you actually planned it that way. I'm excited to see. I have no idea how these printed out, but they were w they were designed with foil in mind, so hopefully they'll be extra good. That was gonna be my next question. Like I was anything designed specifically with the concept of we want this to be this or that. Yeah. Yeah, it do it's not normal. Usually it's an after the fact thing, like you have a cover that was already gonna be an exclusive and now they want two or three exclusives. So the natural thing is, okay, we'll make a a tray dress version, a virgin art variant, and a foil. You know, like that that's pretty pretty standard practice. It is, yeah. I hate it sometimes. 'Cause I have to have them all. You don't have to have them all. You have to, but like right now I'm chasing the dungeon crawler crawl comic books and there's just so many. So if you could collaborate with any artist or writer on a dream crossover, who would you choose? Which two universes would collide and what would the cover look like? okay. Well if we're dreaming big here, you know, like my my comic book route Mount Rushmore has pretty much always been, you know, Jim Lee is Washington, and then it goes like Adam Hughes, J. Scott Campbell, and then I don't know Korean digital artists or something. But I le for fun, it's it's all of them. It's me and Campbell and Adam Hughes and Jim Lee are doing it's gonna have pretty girls in it. Mm it's Justice League, but it's all the girls. Sign me up. Yes. Yes. That'd be that'd be interesting, for sure. That would be that would be that would be a that would be a great movie too. But The closest I got is we did a charity piece for the Hero Initiative some years ago, and the gimmick was that they would be teaming up two people on each illustration. So I get this FedEx box in the mail one day. I know it was coming, but you know, like it's Campbell has drawn this immaculate rogue on one half, and I need to add Silock to the other half. But it's so nerve-wracking because it's like My favorite guy, and the piece of paper is so valuable that he's touched it and made this thing on already. I'm nervous as hell about destroying it. And then on top of all that, what you wouldn't know, without looking at it up close, is the man has made no mistakes. There's no white out at all. I looked at it in the light and it's all it's like perfect. So not only is he that good, but he's effortlessly good. It's so unfair. Yeah, because I I I I would assume that most artists like have a massive investment in whiteout. Like that's part of your monthly budget. Well the real the reality is, Eric Larson said this online the other day is like you get one chance, right? Like you can put whiteout down once and draw over that, but more than that, and it's like d drawing on tissue paper or something. It's like it's not really gonna work. so you know, pluses and minuses like Yeah, I I do a lot of work digitally for speed like we talked about, but I do still you know, this there's some decent money to be made in originals, so I do when I can. try to keep that skill alive. But it's it's harder. No, I bet. And and that's gonna be that's one thing I was wondering about that with the twenty twenty six and everything you know, going too digital, everything's kinda digital, it's like it's that a lost art form, you know. that. I don't think so. I mean like if anything, what I sense is an uptick in the heat on original art. You know, like as the industry has embraced Photoshop production because of the speed benefits, it means there's less original art being made and there's less to go around theoretically. It's probably more more and more focused on hot covers and less and less on individual pages, you know, whatever, but there's less. And then you do wonder about like in the future, like are some shady practitioners going to try to, you know, foist AI comics on us and it elimin either eliminates jobs or eliminates the number of covers being made originally. I I think the trajectory I see is that, you know If if Photoshop already made the value of the original art pages higher, AI will do that even more so. There will be few fewer practitioners, fewer people who can even pull it off as time goes by, fewer instances where it was made for a professional product, so less and less supply and theoretically greater demand. I I see that just pushing the prices way up in the future for original art. No, and I think you r you're I see what you're saying, I think you're right. I was having this conversation with Gavin Hammond, he's a voice actor. and we were talking about the voice acting front. And this is probably about two, three years ago where we did the interview with him. And even two or three years ago, he was talking about how like it was already happening that like jobs were coming less and less for him because they were going more toward AI models. Okay. And as a voice actor, how that was troubling for him. so no, I that's why I was kinda curious on like on the artist side of things if you're seeing that as well. I am not I at at the moment, I think for the foreseeable future, everyone in the comic industry seems to be united on this front. Like the you know, the editors, the publishers, the artists and the fans seem to all sort of generally universally reject AI. we all understand that it's stolen valor, right? You know, like you didn't you're not an AI artist. You asked a machine to steal stuff on your behalf. That's what AI art is. And I don't want that ever. I will never buy that. I will never support it in voice acting, music, comics, any of it. and I think most fans can see right through it. You know, you can tell that that It's that samey, you know, look that AI has, which isn't yeah, you know, it might be detailed, but it's like it's soulless and it's kind of samey and ugly at the end of the day. So I don't really think anyone wants that and at least this generation, you know, is still gonna be valuing human produced art, you know, like show me a substitute for Adam Hughes or J. Scott Campbell. No way. Not even close. Yeah. we I know we have some questions from outside of here, so we'll jump into that one. I know Ernie, you have something that from one of our friends of the show? Yes, we do. Let me pull up that question. And this is from a story crew, friend of the show, and he's a huge Transformers fan. Like that has like a giant collection of Transformers. So you've done some pretty impressive number of Transformer covers. What originally inspired you to start drawing Transformers and what is it about those characters and that universe that keep keeps bringing you back? That is such an interesting project for me because like as a fan, like my first big fandom in life was Transformers. That was the first thing I was really, really into as a kid. And that was the only toy I had. Didn't have any G.I. Joe's or Thundercats or whatever. I had Transformers and that's what I was always asking for. And like to this day my favorite Christmas presents were Optimus one year and a couple years later Metroplex. You know, like I I've never been happier. Probably about anything. You've got Metroplex, I'm jealous. I got tryptocon. Yeah, my brother had that, but Never had any combiners, never had so sound wave or any of his cassettes, never had whatever, I could go on. Those were my those were my two big ones. Anyway, so I I lived and breathed the cartoon, I I loved the movie, you know, like all of that love transformers. but I never, like as I was drawing it, I kind of as a young artist, I thought, ooh, drawing robots is hard, I'm never gonna able to do that. So I never even considered the idea of trying. to draw the Transformers. More years go by, and then, you know, they had different versions of the book. And and then when the when the new series came out, a couple of interesting things happened. One was that they chose the G1 designs, which is like in my heart, like my favorite ones. And I'm looking at Daniel Warren Johnson draw this stuff and I'm like, okay. I get how to draw G1. Like I could do I c I can understand it. I under I can connect with it now. So that happened. And then on a professional level, my my DC editor, Ben Abernathy, happened to be moving from the bat office at DC to be an editor at Skybound. He asked me if I wanted to come along for covers. I'm like, I have never thought anyone would offer that to me because, you know, maybe I have a reputation for drawing, you know, Marvel DC, pretty girl, whatever stuff. And I mean, good luck finding robot art, you know, that I've done. It's very few and far between. So that he would ask was a surprise and and I never expected to have the opportunity. but of course I was interested as a fan. So that got me in the door and you know, it we did a whole bunch of cool variants to start with. We did a six part devastator, you know, connecting cover series, and then it was off to main covers for for a good long time. So we did a a nice long run on that. And I'm not done yet. we The main cover run is gonna end, but I'm sticking on for some other open order covers. It's important to me that it be open order. You can still get it if you want easily. I don't wanna be buried in a ratio or whatever. but I'm still not I'm not done yet. Okay, good. Good. He's gonna love to hear that. Yeah. Yes, he is. I I I have one follow-up question to this. So you know G one, you know Transformers the movie. Mm-hmm. You know, that scene with Optimus and Vegatron. Did Hot Rod shoot Optimus? No. Different color laser. You see the different color laser, I swear it's Hot Rod. Well, there it whether there's some animation mistake or whatever, you know from a storytelling point that that that's not the intention, I don't think. I know. No, I wasn't. Yeah, I mean they were trying so hard to set up Hot Rod as the new leader and you know, it's just not what the audience was ready for, so No, love Hot Rod, didn't like Rodimus. No, no. He they they needed you know, Hot Rod as a you know, a young punk kind of character is cool. but Rodimus is mistake. Yeah. Yeah. He was like, you know that interim leader. He had a he had a role to open the matrix of leadership. That was his role. And then I went back to Optimus. But yeah, thank you. Settling that right now. As if I'm the authority. we're gonna have to get you back on for a part two because I know we got through like half the questions. You wanna do one one more? One more for the road? One more? Sure, okay, let's do one more. pick a good one. Ernie, I'll let you pick one. You wanna go with number ten? Yeah, let's go with number ten. So looking looking towards the future. What's the one artistic project you haven't accomplished yet and would make you say, I've officially made it. And is there anything coming up that you could tease for the podcasting while nerdy audience? Ooh, let's see. something huge is gonna happen in the Harley side of things. Very excited about that. So stay tuned. if it was another couple of weeks we could talk about it, but we're not quite there yet. that's probably the number one thing I'm most excited about. And then like what is the unfulfilled goal? It's that it's that book we, you know, would love to get started on one of these days. I I'm enth I've been enthusiastic about the idea for a long time and just haven't had the days to work on it. So if I can ever get that going off the ground, that feels like I don't know, like chapter three, you know, like your third act f for me. You know, I I d I I had a career in video games and I I've been doing the cover artist thing and I really enjoy that, but it's been a long time since I did any real storytelling and I do have this idea, so that feels like The unfulfilled goal that it'd be nice to focus on in the future. We'll see what happens. Who knows? I got a huge Harley Quinn fan and my family who's gonna love hearing this have their eyes peeled for Harley Quinn stuff. man. It's a couple of things. It's a couple of huge interesting things going on that I could not be more excited about. But with that said, thank you, David. It's been great. And like a and we'll we'll discuss and figure out maybe if it's like a month or two down the line, we'll get to the other half of the question. So if your question did get answered, we will make sure it gets answered sometime in the future, maybe when David's less busy, if that's a thing for him. I don't know if he's ever gonna be less busy. But but we'll figure that out. David was good. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.