Tell us who you are.

Yeah.

I'm a Florida c- retired Florida police officer from Boynton Beach, Florida, down in West Palm Beach area.

Um, I'm the son of a pretty famous homicide sergeant from Miami.

She's, uh, she's actually featured in the Griselda Netflix series, her character, um, Sergeant June Hawkins.

So my mom was like this alpha female super cop in the late '70s, taking down drug dealers and, you know, that's pretty much how I grew up, with Dirty Harry type men in my life, right? So I ended up falling into law enforcement.

You know, after Florida State, getting my degree, I figured I liked catching bad guys, being involved and, you know, I fell into law enforcement and making a difference, you know? And with that came struggles and, you know, stuff like alcohol addiction and PTSD and bad diets and bad, um, coping skills, you know? And, you know, it led to me gaining about 50 pounds from the time I graduated from the academy.

Our spaces are filling up very quickly.

Yeah, okay

...

I was like, "I don't know," but part of our Thousand Trails camping club, you, there was a Roundout Valley campground.

I got eight days booked in.

We'll drive over there.

Your family come see us.

Hey.

Mm.

keto 50 is just for the kindness of your heart

i went to sports nutrition school and also became a nutritionist and i became a health advocate where i can help you guys with blood work and all that stuff and it became when i was diagnosed with heart disease i didn't know anything about that stuff i didn't know what ldl was i didn't know what heart disease really was except for it's killing all of us right so i took a deeper dive into it i started realizing there's some things i could tweak you know my diet the processed food some of that stuff and you know losing that 80 pounds did you lose it while you were copper i lost 50 pounds as a cop that's where the whole keto 50 nickname stuck i was in evidence and everyone noticed me you know um losing weight and hey what's going on and The nickname stuck.

And then as I started coaching guys, kind of like what I was telling Mike, he'll call me and I'll be like, yeah, do you go for Doritos or go for pork rinds? Don't go for Doritos and all this stuff.

That's all I was doing.

And I got into records and dispatch and it started kind of growing a little group.

Still didn't know I was going to do it.

I was retiring.

I think is important to that as well.

What are some of the comics that you think laid the groundwork for Fantagraphics for the for it as a, you know, company, like capital C company, but also for you as just a lover of the business or excuse me, a lover of the format?

Well, I could answer that in a few different ways.

Where I would start is the 90s is when Fantagraphics, I think, really established itself as a publisher of progressive, provocative, good work.

And it not only published artists like the Hernandez Brothers and Dan Clowes, Peter Bagg, who were all pushing the boundaries of the medium and doing different things with it.

But what was also happening at the same time was this it being a part of a kind of youth countercultural movement that was happening in the greater music world in particular, but also in the alternative media with the alternative weekly newspapers and zines and magazines.

You had this coalition of youth that were interested in non-corporate content.

And, you know, you can think back to like Nirvana wearing the corporate magazine still suck T-shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone.

How do we keep kids and people of all ages under the covers with their flashlight and their comics, even if that flashlight's on their phone? How do we get 50 more years of Fantagraphics?