Drive Podcast 1

Transcript

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• [0:00] [intro music]
• [0:07] Hi, and welcome to the Drive podcast. My name is Dave Kellett. I'm the cartoonist behind the sci-fi comic strip Drive, which can be see at drivecomicomic.com and all we're gonna do on this and future podcasts is answer any fun, interesting, weird, maybe out of left field, maybe centred to the story line, questions that you might have on the strip or the characters or the planets or the ships or the technology or the aliens or anything to do with the strip. So, by all means, feel free to send in your voice mail questions to the phone number 310 909 6057 and you can send a voice mail and we can incorporate that into future podcasts.
• [0:47] For today, we have four or five questions from different parts of the world for the strip, so let's dive into the first one.

Question 1

• [0:54] Hi, I'm Rohan. I'm from Guilford, Connecticut. And, I just wanted to know, is Drive something that ends, is it sort of, like, one story, or does it kind of go on and on sort of indefinitely?
• [1:04] That is a fantastic question and is one that I get asked all the time. But the first thing we have to talk about is: How awesome is your name? Your name is Rohan! Which you probably get a lot of abuse about, but not from me, because I think that is the coolest name ever. My god, if I named my son Rohan, every time I would call him for dinner, I would be, like: Riders of Rohan! What news from the Riddermark? "All right, dad, I get it. Riders or Rohan." What... what news from your king, Theoden, and Eomer? "All right, dad, I'm coming. I'm coming to dinner."
  Anyway. But that is a great question. So let's get back to that question.
• [1:42] So, Drive has a definite arc. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. And as I initially thought of it, it would take somewhere between 5 and 7 years to tell. It's looking like it's gonna take 7 years to tell.
• But as I get closer to the mid point... or around the mid point of the story, I'm realising that there are offshoot stories that I would love to tell. And, kind of how Star Wars had the sort of Star Wars universe line, where they'd follow a bounty hunter or follow a particular planet, I could very much see Drive doing that as time went on. So, yeah. Perfect question, though.

Question 2

• [2:21] Hey there, this is Cara Morgan, from Los Angeles. I just want to know more about the Fillipods. Where did you get the idea for them and would you maybe read us a very short sentence of Fillipod poetry? That'd be cool. Thanks.
• [2:36] Oooh. Where did the Fillipods come from? That is a good question! That raises a bigger question of where do ideas for anything come from. Gosh, I don't remember where the Fillipod idea came from. Just this idea of multi-legged, centipede-like mamalian creatures that were super soft and like to write super-high-end poetry and everything they did was around poetry and art and culture. I like the idea... Living in Los Angeles, as I do, I often get invited to play openings and gallery openings and this and that from friends, and, all my bands playing here and there. And it's sort of this delicate dance as an artist living in the city, of having to navigate that. "Oh, I can't get to this one" or "I can't make that one" or "oh, so sorry, I couldn't make this one." And I love the fact that Fillipod culture was 99% just the delicate dance of artists trying to decide what events they're gonna go to and what not, and that even tiny events get huge, epic poems written about it, like, "I love the way you tie your shoes" and that sort of thing. So, I love that aspect of Fillipods. And... and, I, that would lead naturally into the role I needed them to play, which was, being administrators for the galaxy, the human galaxy. So that's sort of the in the nutshell where they came from.
• [3:54] And as far as, reading a snippet of Fillipod poetry, I actually do have, a little snippet from Tessanananan. She was the, the, the one who coined the famous phrase "the best defence is a well turned-phrase". And anyway, the way I sort of imagine Fillipods, they don't have a British accent, obviously. But, if you read Fillipod poetry, you sort of have to read it in a sort of nasaly, RP British accent. That's sort of the Queen would have. So. This is a poem about butter, right... [clears throat]
• [4:32] The way you spread your butter is like none I've ever seen.
  The way you spread your butter is like a golden figurine.
  The gentle ark of knife and hand, the curvature, the dance,
  The angles of your toast so grand, you leave no knock to chance.
  Its perfect spread, all corners there, the butter spread divine,
  I dream but of a taste of it, your butter please be mine.
  And this is not a simile, no metaphor, like most.
  If not a means of sexy talk, I'm just speaking about your toast.
• [5:05] [musical interlude]

Question 3

• [5:12] Patricia Allan, Iowa. The new Ring ship pilot, is that supposed to be a boy or a girl? Just curious.
• [5:21] It's funny, when I drew that strip, my thinking in my head was that, oh, everybody's reaction was gonna be, like, oh, wow, there's a pilot among the, among the three cousins, that's interesting because no one can catch them, they have a pilot, and oh, what does that mean and oh, wow. And yet everyone's reaction [laughs] was: "Hey, is that supposed to be a girl or a guy, Dave? Dave, is that supposed to be a girl or a guy? I can't tell." So that, that's an interesting sidenote.
• [5:52] The answer is: I drew it as a guy. But he just happened to have little flares on his cheek and, and that sort of thing, and a kinda buck teeth. And I don't know what about that character or what angles or arks made it seem more feminine. But looking at it now, I see why people asked that question. But anyway, the answer is: It was meant to be, drawn as a guy.

Question 4

• [6:11] Hello. My name is Martin. I'm from Austria, yes, Austria, that's in the middle of Europe. Not Australia. And my question is: Will there ever be Drive/Sheldon crossovers, officially made by yourself?
• [6:29] Well, I'm glad you clarified that it was, an Austrian accent and not an Australian accent that you have, because, [laughs] I was gonna make a joke there. You sound Austrian, you did not need to clarify that. But anyway. So, to your question: Will there ever be a Sheldon/Drive crossover? And the answer is, in my mind, I have sort of created one. I don't know that it will ever be one in the strip, but, in my mind, Sheldon, from my other, comic strip "Sheldon", is a software billionare and owns a software company called "Sheldonsoft". And, in my mind, I'd always thought that it would be funny if in the way that corporations sort of survived over the centuries, by being bought out and brought into a conglomerate, or, transmogrified into another incorporated name... I thought it would be funny if over a 400 year period, Sheldonsoft had become IndústriaGlobo and that was, one of the, one of the [laughs] the parentage companies that had become the big, massive corporation of the age. Anyway. That, as I said, will ever come out in the strip, but I thought it was a funny little way that that might tie them together.

Question 5

• [7:40] My second question today is: How did it - for all of us who don't follow your interviews and stuff and background info - how did Sheldon come to happen? What was the first idea? And how did, Drive come to happen? What was its first idea? And which came first?
• [8:08] Well, Sheldon came about first. Hugely came about first, because it started in 1998, 1999, something like that, when I was living in England. So, I had a good decade jump on Drive. But Drive, interestingly enough - since you asked, about them together - Drive came about in some small measure because of a Sheldon strip. I had done this strip where I talked about how, everybody thinks that their empire is gonna last forever. The Romans, the British, the Americans. You know, they all think that, that because they're the great power now, they'll always be the great power. But I found it sort of interesting how, for the Romans, the, the idea of Londinium was this tiny little outpost that no Roman soldier wanted to be posted to and it was this crap place in the Empire. Way in the outskirts of Rome. And yet, a thousand years later, that was the centre of the global empire, the British Empire. And, so, basically, how fate does not always, is not always kind to the current of the day, and that you shouldn't imagine that, because you're a power today, you'll be a power 400 years from now. And that was sort of the basis for one of the underpainting ideas of Drive, that there's no reason to think that Venezuela or the Ukraine or some minor power today could be the major galactic, powerhouse 400 years from now. And so, the strip originally was going to be called "The Second Galactic Spanish Empire" and [laughs] then I realised that was a terrible title. And so it got shortened down to "Drive". But I like the idea that the Spanish would have a second go-around, they could create a second empire. And so that was sort of the big drive for Drive. Hah, badum-bump, what a terrible accidental pun. But anyway, yeah, so that's how it all got started.
  
  
• [9:53] And that should do it for the first Drive podcast. Answering your questions about the strip and anything related to it. If you have questions going forward, you can leave a voice mail on the Google voice number 310 909 6057. No one will pick up, it's purely a voice mail, number. So, feel free to call. Leave a quick question all we ask is that you leave your name, where you're from and a short and snappy question. The snappier the better. And thank you guys for listening. And thank you even more for reading the strip.
• [outro music]

Trivia

• Do not call the phone number. It is now inactive Dave set up a new number:

(650) 550-VINN
or
(650) 550-8466

• The MP3 file is 10 minutes, 25 seconds long.
• The podcast was first announced in the Drive blog and it was first published on a blog post through the now incactive link drive.libsyn.com.
• It was published anew on Patreon as a public post.
• There are several references in this podcast.
  • [1:04] references the Lord of the Ring trilogy, specifically the tome 2, The Two Towers.
  • [4:32] Tessanananan was mentioned on Page 0102.
  • [5:12] references the member of the Pilot Species on Page 0115.
  • [6:11] references Dave's other comic Sheldon.
  • [8:08] references a specific Sheldon strip, and the point of Empires not lasting has been re-iterated in the SPRT podcast bonus interview with Dave Kellett.