The Odds Pod (or how we became accidental podcasters).

The first thing you learn about making comics is that they take time.

The second thing you learn is patience.

Chances are your favourite creator owned book started life as a doodle in a notebook or a self sent 3am text years before the finished product was released. I know The Odds did - I woke up one morning in 2017 to a message the way more fun night-before-Dave sent me that read “Social Media plague called The Influence kills everyone with a post”.

It was probably one of those nights where I was JUST DONE with twitter, but there was definitely something to it, so I slowly set about developing it.

Those intervening years are fraught with danger though.

For starters you’re really proud of your idea but you don’t want to overshare - what if it enters the zeitgeist, gets picked up on the idea wire and translated via someone else’s brain into something similar but different and perish the thought, better!

Quick reality check - ideas in themselves no matter how much you love them are just ideas, the real art is in the execution.

So you’ve got this idea you love, if you’re lucky you’ve got a collaborator who’s work elevates that beyond your wildest imaginings into something exponentially better.

And then you pitch…

And you pitch….

And you pitch….

The Odds was myself and Ben's third big swing together - hopefully one day the other two books we pitched will make it out there - and if truth be told, would have more than likely been our last but fate had other plans.

Just as the world was headed into lockdown we got a mail that broke our streak.

The book’s been picked up!

Great!

Now what….

We were lucky in so far as our publisher was and is pretty comprehensive when it came to laying out the process.

We were assigned an editor in the great Joshua Malkin (check out his book Unikorn - it’s brilliant) and away we went.

Joshua was and is a dream to work with and ensured that not one line was drawn before all 5 scripts were locked down. Any notes he had only ever enhanced the work and he continues to be incredibly supportive of us pair of Irish eejits. To this day we’ve never once felt under pressure to make changes or deliver on irrational deadlines, everything we’ve done has been in collaboration with him and in consultation with us.

He’s a great editor. And great editors make all the difference.

So once we got working on the actual pages of the book we thought it’d be good to set ourselves up with a little branding exercise. We weren’t particularly sure what to do but we knew it had to appeal to prospective readers, grab attention quickly and maintain their interest in an effort to establish a tone with a market that would to all intents and purposes be viewing us as complete newcomers (in comics there’s no end of overnight successes 20-30 years in the making).

We kicked some ideas around, from the offensive for the sake of it (pop up human butcher store anyone?) to the pedestrian (bookmarks), but if we wanted to introduce the market to the book’s tone, which is ultimately our tone, then something more personally involved would be required.

When writing the book I’d Natalie Holt’s Loki Season 1 soundtrack on repeat - it’s a fantastic score all urgent and worrying, a bit like The Odds. In listening to it I was reminded of a scene early on in the show where Loki deliberately travels to Pompeii just before Vesuvius destroys the city. Growing up I was a student of classical history and Pompeii featured heavily in the curriculum, it was my first exposure to a real apocalypse (the demise of Cybertron was the first but not real, doesn’t count). An apocalypse that if I was pressed on it I’d have to admit to being my favourite - although the dancing plague of 1518 is a close second.

In weighing up these various cataclysms I’d made an unexpected connection, The Odds our favourite apocalypse story was on track to be shared with the world, so why not ask the world what their favourite apocalypse story was.

Now, fair enough, “the world’s” a big ask, we don’t have that kind of reach, but we could ask people in our world of genre media and comic books about it. And there’s really only one way to do it and so The Odds Pod was born.

The initial idea was to produce a one off season of 6 episodes, an intro explaining who we are and why we’re doing what we’re doing and then one episode to mirror each of the issues of The Odds.  We picked up a producer in the great Adrian Carty and we were off, or so we thought.

Remember that thing I said about comics being full of overnight successes 20 or 30 years in the making…

Just as we’re starting out on the book and the podcast Ben gets a huge opportunity to develop and draw a brand new fantasy book at Vault Comics. The book Godfell is a genius concept and it was way too good an opportunity for Ben to pass up so we delayed production on The Odds and Ben set off traversing the body of a giant dead god (check it out wherever you get your comics).

But - we’d set the podcast wheels in motion and had lined up our first guests, which if you’ve been keeping up we had hoped to record and release along with each issue of The Odds.

With that delayed should we cancel the recordings and bring them back when we were in production?

Nah, let’s just go for it.

So just over a year ago we recorded our first episode, with the erudite, handsome and sickeningly talented Wassel brothers, founders and editors at Vault Comics. Both Ben and I loved the whole process and it’s safe to say we took to it, maybe not like ducks - more like slightly physically challenged land mammals - to water. We did have Ado at the side of the pond shouting encouragement.

We wanted to do more and more we did. Since then we’ve recorded 40 episodes, spoken with friends and legends in comics and beyond and even got to produce a Last Of Us companion show - for which Ben created some amazing bespoke podcast tiles per episode.

So our little plan to produce a 6 episode season is way in the rear view mirror now and we’re taking our next steps in podcasting with our first ever LIVE episode at ThoughtBubble in Harrowgate this coming November.

We’re not terrified, honest!

Season 4 is being planned right now and we’ll be transitioning the show from audio only to video as well, not because we think you want to see our ugly mugs but because so much of the show discusses some great art which we really want to share with our audience.

And that’s how me and Ben ended up accidental podcasters and very deliberate (and patient) co-creators.

The Odds Pod is available wherever you get your podcasts, you don't have to tell us your favourite apocalypses in the comments but we'd sure like it if you did.