Garrick (02:11.16) Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Garrick Jones and I'm one of the co -authors of the book The Curious Advantage. I'm delighted to be joined today by John Harris Dunning. Hello John.

John Dunning (02:24.712) Hello, I'm so pleased to be on.

Garrick (02:30.07) and welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast, You are a graphic author of graphic novels and books, including Tumult and Salem Brownstone and the latest series, Summer Shadows for Dark Horse Comics. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey? I'm really interested and curious about having a conversation with you about graphic, visual, why comics are important, why they are different from the books that we read and yet.

They have a power of their own. And I also want to talk to you about some of the exhibitions that you've curated, of course. But how did you get here? Tell us a little bit about your journey.

John Dunning (03:11.55) Well, it's, I'm just trying to think about comics in particular. I mean, it's interesting that, you know, it's hard even to know terminology to discuss them with. Like I find, you I call them comics or comic books. And for me, that also includes things like, you know, graphic novels like Palestine or Persepolis or, you know, Mouse, you know, these more seriously critically acclaimed.

graphic novels and comics, but they're all comic books to me. so don't, it's funny, I think sometimes when people talk to you from other disciplines, they're worried that they're gonna insult you, like calling you a nasty whore if they mention comic books, but I don't mind being called that. comics are comics to me, and then the fact that they could be classified as literature or art, I mean, they all are to me. So that's terminology.

How did I get involved in comic books? You know, I grew up in South Africa during apartheid and there was a massive control and ban of information really. So, you know, it was a state of emergency. There was no media coming through. And the one thing that did seem to always get through was comic books. And for me, as a child, they were an absolutely essential kind of source of completely free thinking.

you know, for me.

Garrick (04:38.658) Are you saying that comic books weren't banned under apartheid? Or they slipped through?

John Dunning (04:49.022) Absolutely. They slipped through. That's exactly right. So there's a very famous comic book which was called Crisis and it was an offshoot of 2000 AD, which is, this sort of famous British comic which had Judge Dredd and that kind of thing. But Crisis was kind of very, very post -Alan Moore, very adult, very anti, you know, it was all about the troubles in Northern Ireland. It was all explicitly about South Africa.

Garrick (04:53.048) That's amazing.

John Dunning (05:16.037) explicitly about apartheid, explicitly about the Mau Mau in Kenya, all of that kind of thing. Absolutely amazing comic if you haven't seen it. It's hugely underrated. A lot of very important writers and artists like Garth Ennis, who does The Boys on Netflix, he started off there, I think he was writing there when he was 19 or 20.

Garrick (05:33.73) Yes.

John Dunning (05:37.102) you know steve dylan who who who drew the preacher and many many other things as well he also started there as a very young man almost as a teenager sean phillips he's one of my favorites artists ongoing he's got this new series well a series that's been running called criminal which is just about to become a big tv show he also started there so it was a real kind of hotbed of talent but that was really anti -aparte really s know very outspoken and it would be stocked in cna

every week, which is the news agent in South Africa. It hilarious because you couldn't get much tamer material, but it was comics, so they were just like, how bad can it be? So they just never bothered to check any of them. So that was brilliant. So that was the more highbrow explanation, but maybe the more basic was just as a kid, I remember it took me quite a long time to read voraciously, which I now do.

So it took me a while to start reading books and stuff, but I loved comic books, you know, from as early as I can remember, and I would read them obsessively. And I remember when I was about 10 years old, I started dreaming in comic book panels with captions and bubbles and balloons and stuff. So I was just really, really obsessed with comics. So it was just sort of a natural, true love, I guess.

Garrick (07:03.392) Can you tell us about your latest series, The Summer Shadows, that you've just published?

John Dunning (07:08.668) I would love to. So it's my first, what they call floppy, which I love that term, which is basically a single comic book. It's sort what we all understand as a traditional comic book from my childhoods, guess. And it's a monthly, and it's coming out from Dark Horse, which is a big publisher in the US. They've done some amazing stuff. They did the Hellboy franchise. did Umbrella Academy on Netflix. They've got amazing, amazing work. So I'm very pleased to be there with them.

I did another graphic novel called WIPO which was a science fiction set in South Africa but that just came out as a single book. This is coming out as monthly and it comes out in four parts starting on the 11th of September and you can pre -order that now which is very very helpful for us. It's a little bit like in film distribution they basically categorize the initial success of comics on what the pre -order is the same as they

John Dunning (08:06.162) decide how important a film is by how many people go and see it in the first weekend. So if anybody wants to go pre -order Summer Shadows, that'd be great. But it's quite an interesting sort of genre -defying piece, I hope, that it's interesting at least. I know it's genre -defying. And it's a little bit, think equal parts, talented Mr. Ripley and Interview with a Vampire. So it's what I'm calling a supernatural psychological thriller.

Garrick (08:12.93) Yes.

John Dunning (08:35.176) So it's not sort of, you know, it's not the stakes with the heart and garlic vibes, but you know, it's maybe a little bit more Anne Rice, you know, exploring this idea, particularly of our modern obsession with youth and, you know, and staying young and, you know, eternal beauty. And I think also as a gay man, you know, it's something that I experience as well, you know, sort of

In my space as a gay man society, guess, there's something about gay culture which really does obsess about youth and youthfulness. Maybe a little bit more than straight culture, although right now I think it's kind of universal obsession. And so I think it's quite broad. Yeah, and it's all set in Greece and I spend a little bit of every year in Greece over summer. I spend a couple of months here and I absolutely adore it.

and so I was inspired by that and the kind of beauty of it and the history as well which is just so deep and so profound and all pervasive.

Garrick (09:48.298) I have a bookshelf in my library, which is just graphic novels. Some of the people you mentioned like Alan Moore and Sean Phelps and Persepolis and some of those mouse, for example, some of those great things. There's something about them that is compelling. It's, you know, we all, well, I certainly grew up reading asterisks and obelisks and I got a lot of my introduction to history from there. Probably Tintin was another one that was massively.

John Dunning (09:54.536) Hmm.

Garrick (10:17.258) influential and then there were all the DC comics of course you know the the DC Universe and Superman and Marvel.

All of that, all of those have become box sets and series now and live in a different world. But it's the comics originally, you you find a comic and even in the UK, I don't know if you remember Giles. Giles is an incredibly used to be published weekly and a single panel which had granny and all the other families in Giles social commentary. All you wanted to say about what was going on in society at the time in one panel and so richly captured.

John Dunning (10:52.178) Yeah. I don't know.

Garrick (10:54.54) What is it about the visual and the graphic that is so compelling and that is somehow different and engaging from just reading text in your

John Dunning (11:04.958) Great question, great question. I mean, I wish I could answer it comprehensively, but I've got a couple of ideas that might be useful for you and listeners to think about, like they have been for me. I mean, one is there is an absolutely, if someone's really serious about this area, there's a fantastic book by a guy called Scott McCloud called Understanding Comics. And it's sort of the, you know, it's the great text

comics criticism but it's very approachable, it's done as a comic and so it's beautifully done. One of the things he talks about is how language originates as image imbued with meaning and all the early alphabets, know, Akkadian, Egyptian hieroglyphics, know, all of those things started as image related to text and in fact it

it got further and further further separated, all the way through even into sort of ancient Greek and Roman, was a relationship between the letters and writing and the image that became more more divorced until the Victorian period where there was just reams of text. And then it started to collapse again with the 20th century really, it started to

image started to fight with word and those two things started to recombine. So I think there's something absolutely intrinsic to language. It's almost like comics is a pure alphabet. It's closer to the original alphabet and to what we read from an alphabet than our alphabets are. I really believe that. On a more personal

that i i've so i see as i was fine it's so interesting that there's such a great gateway drug to to reading and to to a lot of books as well so you know i noticed with kids you know whenever people say to me that children are struggling with reading you know or you know they're very dyslexic or they have various issues you give a kid a comic book and they will sit there and read

John Dunning (13:20.806) eight hours until that book is finished. there's something really beautiful about the immediacy of that. And it's like I even find, I I'm a writer, I don't draw. I I love drawing and stuff, but I don't draw for my comics. I love working with other artists. It's one of my, I think it's one of the most exciting things. Yeah, I work with different artists, actually. Ricardo Cabral is the artist I'm working on Summer Shadows with, and he did my book, Wiper.

Garrick (13:37.206) You work with artists.

John Dunning (13:49.692) and we're great collaborators, we'll do other things together, so he's absolutely fantastic. But I'm working with other artists as well, and I work with Mike Kennedy for Tumult, he's now doing stuff for McSweeney's and The New Yorker, he's done very, well. And he's got his own book coming out as well, from Drawn in Quarterly in September. He's fantastic at talent as well, so it's really, really good working with different artists.

But yeah, mean, there's something about, I can go anywhere in the world and even if somebody doesn't speak the same language as me, I can show them my comic and they will immediately get exactly what story I'm telling and the mood and the atmosphere and sort of what I do. It's quite interesting. So there's very universal about comics and you find that because most places have

You know, when you really dig down into it, you will find comics as a language almost everywhere. I mean, just thinking about South Africa, one of the things that I haven't done enough research on, but I've seen bits and pieces of, is that there was a big tradition of photo comics in South Africa. So there was one that was called the Swartlebat, which I knew as a kid, which was a sort of very, like a very dodgy white guy dressed up in a sort of tight black outfit with a very

black leopard mask, sort prancing around fighting crime. But actually what I've seen which is more interesting is I think in Johannesburg earlier, like in the 50s and 60s, in what became Triumph, which was a sapphire town which was razed to the ground by the apartheid government because there was such an incredible creative flowering happening, know, mostly black, but it was also quite interracial with sort of everything that the South African government didn't want happening.

There were kind of photo comics which were sort of gangster comics, which were also the everybody in fedoras and suits in the 50s and 60s, very glamorous with kind of, know, photo comics with kind of word balloons over them and stuff, which are absolutely amazing documents at the time. you know, comics are a very rich kind of cultural source and quite universal, actually.

Garrick (16:10.978) They have a history of subversion. imagine, I'm thinking of Mexico when you talk and there was, when Mexico was subjected to quite a lot of military control and also the church, there was a lot of subversion that came out in comics and sort of fanzines that emerged sort of in the ghettos and so on. Contrary to a lot of the subversion. So there's a kind of history of

John Dunning (16:36.102) Absolutely and message where obviously you have those.

Yeah, and you had those two Wana Bibles as well, which are those kind of very, very pornographic books, you know, which was an ostensibly Catholic, you know, society, but they're really, really very hardcore kind of erotica. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that was that was sort of what the theme of that exhibition was at the British Library that I curated, which was called Comics Unmasked Art and Anarchy in the UK.

and it was all about subversion basically. we looked at, you know, looked at politics.

Garrick (17:09.516) want to talk to you about. I really want to talk to you about that. I really want to talk to you about your exhibition.

John Dunning (17:14.78) Yeah, I mean,

Garrick (17:21.494) Let's do that again, John. I really want to talk to you about your... Sorry, we got a lag. got a lag. Give me a sec.

John Dunning (17:21.596) I mean, it was great.

Garrick (17:32.204) I really want to talk to you about your acclaimed exhibition, Comics on Last Art and Anarchy in the UK, which was at the British Library and which drawn all the resources and the comics in the archive there. can you tell us a little bit about the concept of the exhibition and how it was organised and what you showed?

John Dunning (17:54.334) It was kind of a dream come true and it was one of those strange projects that just went so well and it was just so easy the entire thing. was kind of extraordinary. So I had heard years ago that the back catalogue, you the original artwork and stuff at 2000 AD, which had changed ownership, had basically just been thrown out into the garbage one day in the rain and that was the end of that. So, you know, the whole archive was gone.

And at the same time I've been going to Angoulême, which is the big comic book convention and festival in France, which is the best comics festival in the world to my mind. just seeing how seriously the French take it and then seeing the whole European approach to comics and their love for comics and their comics curators and comics archivists and big government sponsorship to look after the comics tradition of those countries.

And in the UK, there's just absolutely no support for that at all. And the comics material was being destroyed. And at the very best, it was being exported to the US, where it was being collected by people. So I felt like quite strongly we had to put a stake in the ground. We had to create some sort of responsibility for the comics tradition in the UK, which is profoundly important, particularly in American comics. But we have our own tradition as well.

Garrick (19:20.032) It's huge. I think about the UK. I think about the UK and Bino, for example, and some of the other sort of basic all the children comics in the UK are amazing and hugely influential in the sort of education of my generation. I don't know anymore.

John Dunning (19:28.99) Let's see.

John Dunning (19:36.35) completely. And then you had this thing, the British invasion, where Alan Moore went over to America and wrote Watchmen and took over American comics. Neil Gaiman went over and wrote Sandman, took over American comics. know, Grant Morrison, who's just one of my absolute favorites, he went over and wrote Doom Patrol and eventually like an absolutely key Batman. I mean, he also completely took over American and therefore global comics. So there's a huge tradition there.

I so I was determined to do this. I wrote a letter three times a year to the British Library for five years, none of which were answered. And then finally, this guy was leaving the British Library and he was asked what he would like his last exhibition to be. And he said he would like it to be comics. So I was brought in finally. then they just, I mean, the British Library were just the most incredible people to work with in the entire world. They just so got behind it. They loved

It was very interesting because after the Second World War, lot of the material was not properly categorized as you can imagine because they were being bombed and there was no staff. But they did collect a lot of the stuff, so there was a huge amount of comics there that hadn't been properly catalogued. And that's one of the things that the exhibition did was kind of get the stuff catalogued and available for the public, which it now is. So they've got a really, really great collection there.

And what I did was brought my dear friend Paul Gravet, who's a writer about comics and many other things. He's basically just a fixture in comics globally, great researcher and discoverer of new comics and traditions. I brought him on board and together with Adrian Edwards, who was a paternal curator, we basically just went crazy and did this show, which was, you know, when it opened, it was the most successful show they had at the British Library. And it

certainly the show that it brought in, I mean, people, think it was, mean, a giant proportion of the audience had never been to the British Library before, so it it was just so good for everybody, know, it brought people who'd never been to British Library in. Then it also really allowed people who hadn't really approached comics before to maybe approach them differently, with a different attitude, because it's at the British Library, so was, it was huge fun. And what we decided to do was approach it,

John Dunning (22:03.39) you know, as how have comics been seditious and how have they, you know, what is the seditious tradition in comics? And we found that very powerful. I mean, because, you know, we saw that that was absolutely the case. know, comics have always flown under the radar and people who do comics have been allowed access to young minds in a way that is not properly policed and to the minds

population generally. you know, political views, views about gender, sex, sexuality, the occult, religion, you know, all of these things have been discussed in a way that haven't really been discussed in that same way in other places and certainly not in mass media. You know, just because they're too policed, you know, and I think it's quite interesting because, you know, one of my absolute favorite comic book creators of all time, guy called Daniel Klaus,

He wrote the screenplay for Ghost World, which was also his comic book, which he drew and wrote, and he won the Oscar for that. But he's done so many amazing books. He was worried, I interviewed him many years ago for Dazed and Confused, and he was worried about the respectability that comics were achieving, because he was saying, we've always been kind of in the gutter, and we've always been outside of people's policing.

So I'm worried that now that we're becoming accepted into the mainstream and to sort of literary and art spaces that maybe that will destroy. Yeah, I quite like that. I mean, it's so punk rock, know. mean, of course, you know, as soon as you become successful, you complain bitterly about it. But it did stick with me that there was something, I mean, you the material that we saw in the British Library was just so wild and untrammeled. You know, you really want that to be preserved.

Garrick (23:37.112) mainstream he doesn't want them to be

Garrick (24:02.914) We're talking to John Harris Dunning, who's the writer of graphic novels, including Salem Brownstone, Tumult, and the later series, Summer Shadows, from Dark Horse Comics. John has also curated the acclaimed Comics Unmasked, Art and Anarchy in the UK exhibition at the British Library, the most prestigious exhibition of comics to be held in Britain ever, which used the comic resources and archives of the British Library. John is also a social commentator who writes for GQ, Esquire, Day's, ID, and the Guardian, et cetera. John.

You're amazing. I have to talk to you about curiosity though. How do you define curiosity and what are you curious about?

John Dunning (24:43.346) Hmm, I think it's absolutely all important. I love the fact that that's what drives this podcast. It's this thing, do you know, when you sometimes look at somebody on social media, I mean, you know, to be honest, it is maybe something which is like a young person's thing to say, but when they say they're bored, I just cannot understand people when they say they're bored. know, mean, adults say it as well, like, are you up to? I'm bored. It's just, I don't get it. So for me, curiosity

kind of is the lifeblood of existence really. I always find, and this is where my process of comics is, I'm always researching something which I'm proposing to do. I I probably do 2 % of the projects that I'm thinking about, but curiosity drives everything I read and everything I do.

Garrick (25:34.52) That's amazing.

Garrick (25:40.194) Yeah. Do you have a view on AI and you know the generation of images through AI? Do you have a view on how that may impact our world in some way or your world, the comic world for example?

John Dunning (25:55.816) Yeah. Look, it's not, you know, I mean, it fills me with horror really at this point. And I think it fills a lot of people in comics with horror because of what is happening with it. So there's this thing called scraping where they basically will, know, artists material will be fed into AI and be able to reproduce somebody's material which is being used and, you know, and then it creates all sorts of issues.

creators and stealing of somebody's material, all this kind of thing. So it's not a thing of you to... I also... And this is my ignorance because it just doesn't... Because I find AI something which is not useful to me at this point. I don't know enough about it, but I look at a lot of AI material. It just looks so cheesy. You know, like, stuff. You know exactly the kind. It's like you

you can just see the search terms in these really bad like kind of computers, of generated images. So they're not lovely and they're not massively exciting to me. And I think that there is a danger that if extremely kind of commercial gauche capitalistic forces wanted to use these tools to produce very low quality material at no cost, it's becoming possible.

I think that's the danger. you know, I've got such belief in people's innate curiosity and delight in the unusual and creative that I hope that what it is is a bit like a panic about digital music and the creation of instruments through technology. I hope that's the case.

But I'm not massively excited about this point. Having said that, there's an artist called Dave McKean who collaborated with Neil Gaiman and did all the Sandman covers. He's an amazing painter. He did Arkham Asylum, famously, with Grant Morrison, which was the most successful graphic novel of all time when it was released. And he's an artist's artist. And he's been quite playful with AI, and he's been quite curious about it and not.

John Dunning (28:16.582) not treating it like Frankenstein's monster. he's still questioning it. I mean, don't think he's embracing it with open arms, let's see. For me, it's not a great tool because I just, it's a bit like, look at a paperback from the 80s, which I have an obsession with and collect obsessively, and you look at a Kindle. mean, the Kindle is the lesser form of technology for me. I mean, it might be more complicated, but it just doesn't work as well as

lovely chunky 80s paperback with a species lurid cover. And I feel the same with AIR. I mean, it's interesting to see a performing monkey like AIR, but there are so many great comic artists who just do a better job, so I just don't know why you'd be using it. But who knows? Who knows where it goes?

Garrick (29:09.803) Maybe it's going to be like all things. We play with it now, we figure it out, we incorporate where it's useful and then it has a life of its own. But the thing about humans is we tend to adapt and evolve and keep on finding ways to keep ourselves relevant, perhaps. I'm not afraid of humans being wiped out by AI.

nor comic books being wiped up by AI because there's something very beautiful about holding something that has been created by a human. when you know it's drawn by a human, you feel that. think you do. And we respond to that.

John Dunning (29:31.068) No. No.

John Dunning (29:45.736) Well, look, the other thing is... The other thing just to bear in mind... Yeah, sorry.

John Dunning (29:57.052) Yeah, I mean, the other thing to bear in mind about, know, artificial intelligence is, know, it's a misnomer. It's not intelligence. You know, it's to do with algorithms. It's a memetic thing, you know, it's miming, it's producing things which are being, you know, reprocessed and things which already exist. So it's not an intelligence necessarily, it's a way

Garrick (29:57.208) Go on.

John Dunning (30:25.564) recreating or reproducing in reformatted ways. I think that language is quite problematic because I think that language makes people afraid of what it is. know, like, my God, it's going to start thinking for us. But I mean, it can't think, it doesn't think, it produces things that we request of it. And it's just about how, as you say, how we use it and how we adapt it to our purposes. I mean, I think one of

It's maybe a useful terror, it's highlighting our terror of living in a completely capitalist society where if it really is all about saving money and making money, then the cheaper and the easier something is, even if all art of any quality disappears, is useful because that saves cash and it makes money, so then that must be good. So I think it's highlighting these things which we have to deal with anyway.

Garrick (31:23.992) this is fascinating. that what you're saying is that it highlights our own humanity in some way and causes a reflection on what are the values in society and what do we really value and what do we want to value going forward?

John Dunning (31:39.26) Let me bring this back to a really good marketing ploy here. Speaking of Summer Shadows, my new series, which starts on the 11th of September, which is about vampires, and not about vampires, all, still talking about AI and what we've just been discussing, all monsters are an extremely useful way of viewing ourselves, and all monsters are created by...

Garrick (31:51.992) Yes, please do.

John Dunning (32:07.784) terrors that are useful to look at, that are both attractive and horrifying. I'm thinking about the original, just looking at vampires, I'm looking at Dracula being this kind of, it's Victorian period where women are covering their table legs because they're so afraid of sex and they want to be ravished by this thousand year old handsome, bestial, blood sucking monster.

which is obviously super attractive and titillating. Then you get the AIDS crisis and you get this terror of sex happening in America in the 80s and the complete annihilation of this incredible work that had been done by gay men and women in terms of sex in the 60s and 70s and this liberation that was happening in America, completely annihilated by the AIDS crisis. And then you get Anne Rice's gay erotic

vampires you know with her vampire chronicles and interview the vampire so these monsters come to save us basically because they keep this conversation going and in my book and my vampires

Garrick (33:19.118) I'm so curious about most.

Garrick (33:25.358) I'm so curious about monsters. Tell me more about monsters and the role that monsters play.

John Dunning (33:34.531) I never thought that this would be this conversation. I love the fact you're saying. I'm so curious about monsters. you know, as I say, you know, those are the vampires that I'm looking at. for instance, the vampires that, you know, I'm looking at now are, you know, this, the vampires I'm looking at for my book in Summer Shadows are maybe about,

you know, this idea of gay men being afraid of aging and also maybe placing youth and beauty above all other things, although I think that that's, as I say, quite universal across all different people in the world. But then it's also maybe playing a little bit with, I don't know if you've heard of Brian Johnson, this entrepreneur who's trying to stay youthful as well and is basically using the blood of his son.

which he's basically drawing out of his son and rinsing through his body. mean, these sorts of very exaggerated, these kind of like bio hacks. that's what I'm playing with in my book. And also this idea of, I'm sure there's very nice billionaires. I don't know a lot of billionaires, so I can't judge really. But there's also just something about, Shadows started.

was inspired by this idea that, you know, I'm on this little Greek island, it's actually perfect beach, there's almost nobody there, it's very wild and very raw, and then suddenly around the corner of this cove comes this giant black yacht that just sits there for three days, you don't see anybody coming in and out, and then it disappeared. And that just started me thinking about like, you know, who's on this yacht? What is this money buying you, like if you're sitting in this kind of giant plastic?

Garrick (35:29.761) It's the monster.

John Dunning (35:32.442) It's the monster, you know, and the monster is this kind of this mad money making, which we're all told we need to do, you we need to make money and if you're rich, you're successful, you know, all this kind of thing, but it sort of, it eventually becomes a coffin, you know, not wanting to be too obvious a metaphor. And, know, and then you're in this coffin floating around. that was my useful use of monsters. And that comes back to what you're saying, you know, it's like, what are monsters? Monsters are really important.

voices of our cultural conscience really in a way. They always are. There's always a reason for a monster. These monsters don't happen for nothing. know, and it's just so interesting how they come about culturally. You know, I know that you spent time in Greece as well and vampires are massive in Greece, you know, and the time, the most recent time when was huge panic about vampires was in the 50s.

in Greece after the second world war there was a terrible famine and people were dying and was huge social instability and there was a massive belief in vampires and terror about vampires. So just really interesting how they've become this focus for our group fears.

Garrick (36:42.68) There's a... Yes. In many cultures, in Greece, for example, they have, I think the term is the Kallakaijarai, which are monsters. African cultures too, the monster is always there. Western culture, the beauty and the beast, there's always the monster. The extreme and exaggerated version of ourselves perhaps, or the thing we're most afraid of, the other, the scary monster. Phi Phi Fo Pham, I smell

John Dunning (36:48.274) Yeah, they all cultured, I would argue.

Mm -hmm.

Garrick (37:12.44) blood of an Englishman.

John Dunning (37:16.526) And of course, as we all know, the other is always oneself. know, I mean, that's what one's really afraid of. You know, I mean, I'm thinking of Frankenstein here and it's like, it's such an incredible work. But I mean, what it is, is this moment where you're starting to see real strides forward in medicine, in science. And you know, suddenly man has feels that he's starting to have a certain responsibility.

in nature and then realizing that we just have no idea what to do with it and actually we are very savage ourselves and it's probably not a good idea for us to have very much power. Certainly not over life or death. As we saw since 100 years later we dropping nuclear bombs on each other. She was definitely right Mary Shelley. It's interesting that that monster Frankenstein was very much her looking at her society and seeing kind of

what could go wrong. She's looking at her time and her people, really, and creating this Frankenstein's monster out of

Garrick (38:24.982) I'm really enjoying our conversation. have to say I hadn't expected us to talk about monsters and certainly it's been fascinating talking about the visual and the power of comics and this the the way the role they have in society to keep things open and subterfuge in some way the way that they kind of cause us to look at what we take for granted and exist to kind of keep us thinking

been critical in many respects. I'm wondering, as we come to the end of this, what are you personally most curious about now, John?

John Dunning (39:08.026) I hadn't really thought of it, Gary, but I think I'm most curious about format right now. Because I think that's the challenge all of us are being given across all of the arts. The visual arts generally, cinema, literature, comic books. The formats are changing so quickly and the way audiences are interacting with them so quickly.

That's what I'm curious about because I have such a belief in the things I'm passionate about because they're so human and they're so ancient. But I'm also aware that one has to be really nimble about how one's presenting them and how one's interacting with them. So that's what I'm curious about. And I think it's probably to do with the confidence in one's passion and then an ability to really kind of roll with the punches and be super organic. And actually that's quite exciting. I mean,

The last thing I want is everything to stay the same. So one has to believe that change can be good.

Garrick (40:13.902) That's amazing. I have a question for you about if people are wanting to get into graphic novels or wanting to get into comics and they haven't really explored it much but they're curious and they want to read a few, do you have a couple of titles and authors who you've mentioned that you would suggest as a great starting point or a way forward?

John Dunning (40:38.472) Definitely. Look, all of mine, obviously. But I'm just trying to think about one of the things that would be useful to do. I mean, for me, a really, really good universal place to start would be to get Daniel Klaus, which is C -L -O -W -E -S, Ghost World.

Garrick (40:40.16) Other than yours, of course.

John Dunning (41:07.25) you know, a of grown -up, as a grown -up book, you know, it's, you know, that's something that a teenager would love, but as an adult, you know, it's a serious piece of literature. And I think what's so impressive about him is that he, he draws as well as writes it. So he's a kind of great writer and he's a great artist. So that's kind of amazing. You know, if you're feeling that you're

into comics but you you're into politics then maybe it's something like Mouse you know which you know which is in all the bookshops and is absolutely fabulous you know and that I think is a great one to convert people who you know who are you don't think they're into comics you know into comics there's another one which is a Incull which is I N C A L which is just so astonishingly comic -sy

It's science fiction, know, people would argue that a lot of Star Wars was based on it. You know, it was very inspired by Dune, you know, the books, obviously, and it's really its own absolutely mad science fiction on the level of mastery you just can't believe. The artist, Mobius, is one of the great comic book artists of all time. Yeah, and then Hodorowski, obviously, is great filmmaker and he wrote it, and he wrote a whole series of comics on it.

Garrick (42:21.229) movies.

John Dunning (42:32.486) So that's it, but I mean, if you want to get sleazy, and you're just like unabashed, you're like, I'm going to get sleazy and I'm going to just read some comics. One of my absolute favorites is She -Hulk. There's a little volume of She -Hulk by a guy called Charles Stuhl, S -O -U -L -E, with an artist called Javier Pulido. And it is the most joyous comics you've ever seen. It's just proper.

power band, WAP, beautiful pop art, really funny, really moving and incredible. And my last volume would be, there's a volume series called Hawkeye, which is like hawk and eye is one word, and it's by an artist called David Arger, A -J -A, and that's absolutely incredible as well. It's of Marvel superheroes, but it is unbelievably clever. I mean, one issue,

is just from the perspective of his dog and the whole thing is done with little images of what he smells and what that means in his brain. And then the architecture of the building they live in. there's these kind of, it almost looks like a sort of architectural layout with these scents that you follow through to see what this dog is thinking. It's absolutely incredible. So, but you know, that's just my mad little list really. I think the best thing you could do is my comic book shop that I use, cause I'm in London is called Gosh.

And I go there often even with my knowledge and the stuff that I know about comics because I'm obsessive and I'll still ask them and they'll still give me something which I don't know anything about. So I really, really recommend that. Just go to your local comic book shop. Yabra way to the person at the counter. They'll always be delighted to suggest stuff to you and that's always a great way.

Garrick (44:10.988) Mm.

Garrick (44:23.694) community is a way in. If there's one thing to leave us with and to leave all of our listeners with John, what would it

John Dunning (44:32.636) read more comics. Seriously, I mean that. As I say, even I go through phases where I'm like, I'm feeling a bit burnt out on comics, whatever. And then I go back in and there's just another whole universe of material, whether it's Japanese, whether it's European, whether it's South American, whether it's Filipino. mean, there are comics everywhere of the most incredible traditions. There is so much material.

Garrick (44:37.272) You

John Dunning (45:02.194) I also think they're so good for us in this modern age because I think we struggle with concentration and I just mean that not just because of smartphones and stuff, I just mean in terms of our lifestyles. We're running around, we work hard, it's busy, we're travelling. There's something about comics which is very focusing and very calming because it's not moving image. So it's image and it's words but it's still...

and it's not passive, you are actively unraveling it and it's very relaxing. for comics lovers, buy more comics, but for people who don't think they love comics, go and try some and just see what you think because I've never had a bad experience, I've turned so many people onto them and they're a delight even as a grown up, especially as a grown

Garrick (45:54.51) read more comics. Thank you so much for joining us, John. That has been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate your views. mean, an amazing conversation. An amazing conversation about comics, the visual. You're welcome. The graphic monsters and their role in society and the subterfuge and the role of comics in kind of keeping our

John Dunning (46:01.992) For

John Dunning (46:08.946) Thank you,

Garrick (46:25.44) ideals open or keeping things open and not allowing us to, I'm gonna say that again, an amazing, comics and their amazing ability to disrupt us and keep things open. We've been talking to John Harris Dunning, who's the author of many graphic novels and comic series, including Summer Shadows. He has given us a great list of people that you should.

encounter and get into it read more comics is is what he says to us. This series is about how individuals and organizations use the power of curiosity to drive success in their lives and businesses, especially in the context of our new digital reality. It brings to life the latest understandings from neuroscience, anthropology, history, art, business, behaviorism, but curiosity and makes these useful for everyone.

You've been listening to the Curious Advantage podcast. We're curious to hear from you. If you think there was something useful or valuable from this conversation, we encourage you to write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel, saying why this was so and what have you learned. We've also always appreciated hearing your thoughts and having a curious conversation. Join today, hashtag curious advantage. The Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon worldwide from great bookstops.

audio physical digital audio copybook now to further explore the seven seas model for being more curious. Subscribe to the podcast today and follow the curious advantage on LinkedIn and Instagram and other major channels. Keep exploring curiously. See you next