Top Cow Productions

Well, that's funny.

That reminds me of when, in the early 2000s, Top Cow put out a DVD documentary of how to break into comics.

I think it was Wade that said it at the time, that breaking into comics is like robbing a bank, that once somebody figures out the right path to take...

the bank then ups their security and walls up whatever worked in the past, and now it's that much more difficult to find a different way to break into the bank.

So, so I had, I had just kind of been getting started in comics.

I had worked as an intern at top cow.

Um, and then I had written some shorts for other publishers, like a shorts for boom and indie stuff.

Um, and, um, I was living in New York at the time I had moved out there, and some friends were sort of like, well, we'll introduce you to some Archie people, and you can talk to them.

There you go.

Well, Ryan, before I let you go, where can people follow you and find you online and follow your work? And is there any other work that you wanted to talk about that may be upcoming?

Well, I don't know if I can talk about them yet, but I'm writing a few more one shots like this for Top Cow with the guys.

And I'm doing some more, another multimedia project with my friend and collaborator Poppy, the musician.

I thought...

And also, because we got Class Clown, we got Jughead... shipwreck I was just expecting more interesting or more like charming banter between the two yeah that was the one thing that I just I don't know maybe it's just because I don't read too many comics these days and maybe the way the dialogue is written has changed a bit for audiences whatever but I just I just didn't feel like it was as playful or as interesting as Lara was written when she was done for Image Comics when she was a Top Cow character

let's drill down on that paul did you want more spice did you want more sort of romantic intrigue no i just wanted characters no i just wanted

maybe a bit more intelligence from both characters actually um like laura walks in there's this whole thing and you know it's like if i was like the secret service you wouldn't have noticed me i'm like who cares you know and then every now and then they're like shoehorn this like line and it's like she's a tomb raider it's like yeah okay cool thank you for putting that in the spotlight the i mean we know that we saw that on the cover we don't as readers need to be told that she's a tomb raider you know there was one little moment where um shipwreck talks about her uh stealing or snatching an artifact and she'll be like and she corrects him by saying like reclaiming like that i appreciate it but i don't i just feels like the writer is not a hundred percent sure if this laura is like what kind of laura are they writing are they writing uh the strong laura that is not you know that has the stuff together or are we getting the laura that's in the transitional phase like She's just survived all of the stuff that she did as a youth, and now she's kind of settling into her, okay, I'm a professional archaeologist, reclaimer and rescuer of ancient artifacts kind of vibe.

At least we'll care about something from the 90s.

Let's get really into Top Cow.

The wild covert action team of Wildcats.

Let's do

Yeah.

And I went around for, for years with my portfolio and got my ass handed to me by DC and Marvel and Image and Top Cow and every other dog shit publisher that was, uh, going around in the '90s.

And then finally one day I realized they're not gonna hire me.

They're, they're not gonna hire me.

Yeah

... more specifically Top Cow.

Uh, this is also Top Cow.

Uh, and here I'll pull this up so you guys can kind of see what I'm talking about here.

Boom.

Then they had Richard Bennett.

Matt Banning, uh, blossomed at Top Cow.

Joe Weems, Detron, uh, just an enormous amount of ink slingers, man.

These guys inked with razor-sharp precision, incredible rendering, cross-hatching.

He had come out of nowhere.

Richard Bennett had come through Continuity Studios.

Matt Banning had been inking at, at Marvel, but he sharpened up his quill and became one of the most commercial lines when he was at Top Cow.

Everybody had a certain peak that they were ascending towards, and I just could not have been more fortunate.