Comics People - 85 Utzy & Dusty: The Crystal Pool - A Josh Bayer comic.

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:09][music] [music] >> Uh yeah, so it's Sunday morning. The sun is shining. Here we are on the Upper East Side, across from the Death Star.

[00:00:25]It's beautiful. We should probably go outside. You know, let's record a couple episodes and then go outside and have a little break and we can read comics in the park or something for to read them outside.

[00:00:33]>> To recharge.

[00:00:34]>> Or sit in the yard. Yeah, the yard. We can yard yard charge.

[00:00:38]>> I have a yard cuz I'm fancy boy.

[00:00:39]>> [laughter] >> I have a yard I have a yard cuz I live in old yoga studio.

[00:00:44]>> yeah, pretty much.

[00:00:45]>> [laughter] >> Uh so I thought we would talk about Josh Bayer today.

[00:00:49]Who? Who? Josh Bayer is like one of my favorite cartoonists. I think I can't say enough good things about him. In fact, if I start, it'll sound like I'm proselytizing or something.

[00:01:00]>> Mhm. I mean, let the work speak for itself. He's like, you know, I hate using religious analogies, but he's like an apostle or something. He's like a heavy hitter.

[00:01:07]>> Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah. I don't know anything about religion. That's cuz it's Sunday. No, it's cuz it's cuz I'm [laughter] reading Berserk and they have the the apostles are like some of the big powerful guys or whatever, but they're all bad guys, so that kind of makes sense. I like it though. He's a He's a scribe. He's like a holy scribe of comics.

[00:01:23]>> Yes. Right? A non-denominational ink slinger. He I I liken him to a fury because his energy is infectious and it's driven with this like chugging ferocity of like punk music, right? That I see it always with his work, right?

[00:01:42]He's always posting punk stuff, so I can't help but think of him together with punk.

[00:01:46]>> But he also embodies the spirit, I guess, of like just going and doing and like that the energy just pours out. And I think it's like I think about Josh all the time, too when I'm trying to not be so precious with whatever I'm doing. Cuz it's [ __ ] like this, the scribbles, you know, it's like he'll >> Don't brush my Don't brush my things.

[00:02:05]>> just want to show the like the cover [laughter] has all this like he'll spill coffee on a page and be like, "It's fine.

[00:02:09]It's going in the book. It's fine."

[00:02:11]>> There's actually a little sticker part of Avery right here which is like they make tape and folders and stuff. And I was like, "Yo, that's so cool that you included that." That little pop of red is beautiful.

[00:02:22]>> Yeah, and it's all of his drawings kind of feel like collages even though they're not. And like he'll he'll scribble stuff and he'll tape a piece of paper on and white stuff out. I mean, we've talked about Josh a bunch. He's been on the show. Friend of friend of the show. Yeah, and one of the kindest people in the biz. I've learned so much from Josh. I continue to go to his classes. Although I must confess not as much lately. I've been very very busy man. But every time I look at Josh's work So wait, what his class is once a week or >> His Well, he has classes every day, but the ones that are open to the public like [clears throat] I go on Thursdays and or Sundays and they're via Zoom.

[00:02:58]>> It's a Okay, it's online.

[00:03:00]>> Look at this.

[00:03:01]I [ __ ] love this book.

[00:03:03]>> I It's been a couple weeks since I read this. What is this book about? Do you remember?

[00:03:06]>> Utzi and Dusty the Crystal Pool is about these two characters, Utzi and Dusty, and Dusty, if I'm not mistaken, yes. So Utzi is the protagonist, uh a young girl, and Dusty is their dog.

[00:03:24]>> It's like Adventure Time.

[00:03:26]>> [laughter] >> It's I think it's more like if Harold Gray and an old horror movie combined with like >> [snorts] >> Poltergeist. You know what I mean?

[00:03:39]Through the like through the Harold Gray through the lens of Poltergeist.

[00:03:43]>> Spielberg. Yeah, yeah. It just has this like perfect mélange of all this There's like darkness and humor. That's one of the things I like most about Josh. He's He's very very funny. And so it has these like sci-fi themes where she's like a potential psychic, not psychic, like telekinetic.

[00:04:04]Right? She has powers of the mind. There's this great scene here uh where she's working at a Hooters and she's like clean She's like cleaning She's like the cleanup kid and then these like the the men come in, right? They're looking for her, pursuing her.

[00:04:22]And there's this part where they're like, she has so much un- untapped potential. She could generate technologies that could be responsible for changes that affect the world. He's like, oh, like Elon Musk. Yeah, I like him. Yeah, he's terrific. Yeah. Just a great [ __ ] humor on every page and this frenetic ink that is just so inspiring, I guess, for a lack of a better word, like >> I mean, it's not just not just aesthetically, but also like pros- process-wise. If you've ever watched Josh Draw, he has all these time-lapses on Instagram and stuff like that.

[00:04:53]Um it just it's a it's a it's a There's a pureness to the mark-making.

[00:04:59]There's like a It's not I think that whenever I'm drawing my sketchbook, especially, it's like my drawing's really tight. And this stuff is tight, too, but in on the other side of the spectrum. There's like a loose tight and a tight tight, I guess.

[00:05:11]Um like this is this is so refined and so stylized and clearly coming from a cumulative drawing over decades and decades and decades, but it's not Oh, I have to make everything exactly this and I have to make this go exactly here.

[00:05:23]Like it's fast and it's raw and it's dirty and the and it really supports the material.

[00:05:28]Like it's a a full syn- a full artistic synergy. A holistic artistic synergy.

[00:05:34]Yeah, and I think of it what we talk about what we like about when we watch the best part of kids drawing, right?

[00:05:41]The direct connection to the consciousness, the like mark-making that's so fervent that it like gets out of its own way.

[00:05:47]It's like everything's in place and it's just this like sophistication that comes from never disconnecting from that energy. Yeah. Right? You see kids make comics, right? With the same kind of intensity, but they don't have the hand, they don't have the craft and the practice. This is like, what if we took that same energy and married it with mature and sophisticated craft and those two things merge and create something entirely new on the page.

[00:06:14]>> Yeah, and there's an openness to exploration. So cool. And that's you know, I guess when you when you can smash that energy down into the diamond, it becomes a style, I guess, or it becomes style.

[00:06:25]Yeah, I also think it's that thing that I talk about from time to time where it's like, you're already it. There's nothing to become with your style. You just have to do enough reps where anything that isn't you falls away.

[00:06:36]Yeah. And that's that's what I see from Josh and I think that's what's so inspirational about him is he's just the repetition It's like he's doing push-ups forever.

[00:06:43]>> Mhm. Like he's just every day like Which I think he is doing. Yeah, also, he's pretty big dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:06:48]He's just like doing push-ups and I'm like, what are you doing, Josh? He's like, "Ink push-ups. Ink push-ups."

[00:06:52]Every day. Just crushing push-ups. And I'm like, that's Those are the Test brothers.

[00:06:57]>> the Test brothers. Yeah, I think that's So, there's two copies of this. This was the SPX version, I guess, and this is the Domino version. Yeah, and I think cool. Take a look.

[00:07:04]>> the back of the pin-ups, I think. Uh I have both. I have both issues and I like them both for different reasons. Uh I was lucky enough to get the Domino version from him at Bix. So, another reason I'm glad I went there. Yeah, slightly different format.

[00:07:19]>> Okay. Really lovely paper here, too.

[00:07:20]Like, I think both issues are We were talking about this just before we got on camera. Both issues are valid in a way that I think is different, right? Like, this one, the newsprint of it makes me want to like roll it up in my pocket and like just carry it around like a latchkey kid from the '50s, you know?

[00:07:37]>> [laughter] >> This is the most important pin-up of the whole thing.

[00:07:40]>> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, same. Um yeah, like your Dennis the Menace or something.

[00:07:44]Yeah, exactly. [laughter] But that's what I always think about when you know, we've probably mentioned this before.

[00:07:48]>> PENIS THE MENACE.

[00:07:50]>> [laughter] >> UH Den 15. I mean, here's the thing. If you name your kid Dennis with only one N, you're asking for it. You're asking for it.

[00:08:01]Cuz when he's six, he's going to write that D in a bunch of different ways. He hasn't fully figured out his hand dexterity yet. And you just you marked your kid for life. I mean, he's probably going to become a cartoonist. Yeah, I had a student a long time ago and she there was one day she in fifth grade where she was sitting at the desk and at the table and she just like really forlorn. She's really like happy kid, upbeat, and looked for whatever reason like kind of like concerned. Not crying or anything, but just kind of like concerned about something. And I get [laughter] and I came over and I was like, "Rashida, what's going on?" And she goes, "I don't really want to say." And I was like, "Well, is there anything you want to talk about?" And she was like, "I mean, I just realized that my name has the S word in it."

[00:08:38]Oh.

[00:08:39]>> Rashida with a T. Oh, no. That poor girl.

[00:08:42]>> she just realized that her name has the word [ __ ] right in the middle of it.

[00:08:45]Wow. And but she had to get old enough to know the word before she had that experience.

[00:08:50]>> And you were there for that moment?

[00:08:51]>> there for the moment. I was there for the moment. She had just written it on her paper and I don't know if she wrote it like she spaced something differently or something, but it just in that moment occurred to her and she was like, "Oh, no." But that's the that's the Denice realization. Like she's that kid is definitely going to write penis on her paper.

[00:09:06]>> Denice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:09:07]>> Or like if your name ends in AS and then your last initial is S, you're you're writing like ass all the time.

[00:09:13]>> Yeah. Or like what if your name is like Nick Forker? It rhymes with a lot of stuff and right around fifth grade when everyone starts rhyming, your life gets impossibly hard out of nowhere. That really builds character. Here's the thing.

[00:09:25]>> I was Mike Gay for several years. Yeah, right. Of course. That's why you're a cartoonist.

[00:09:30]I mean, well, here's the thing. You can hold yourself hostage blaming your parents for all these things that happened to you, or you can gather up all of your stuff, put it in a case like the trophies that they are that create a [ __ ] champion. That's what's up.

[00:09:46]>> how you fight Mike gay? You just draw dicks all the time. That's [laughter] how you do it. You learn how to draw an awesome dick, and then you just do that all the time, and no one will bother you anymore.

[00:09:54]>> Yeah, that's the thing. It's like I tell the kids all the time. I go, "Whatever they say to you, it doesn't matter. It's not about you. It's about them. They're the ones struggling. Anything they project onto you, that's that's their own stuff in their head. Yeah. I'm like, "Every accusation is an admission."

[00:10:11]Totally. And so, giving the kids that power that early on, I'm like, "I wish someone would have told me this, you know?" And that it's not, you know, these words are not inherently pejorative. Like Right. They don't mean anything.

[00:10:22]>> And then they say, "Gay." And they're like, "You're oh my gay, you're gay."

[00:10:24]Like That doesn't mean anything at all.

[00:10:26]>> It doesn't mean anything.

[00:10:27]>> Once you take that power away from them, it just becomes like a They're They're the ones feeling stupid about it.

[00:10:32]>> I will say that was harder to be on the receiving end of that in the '90s than it is now. Yeah, but kids still say it, though. Of course. But if you were that kid now saying it in the 2020s, I've seen kids band together and be like, "You Dude, you can't say that. That's not cool."

[00:10:47]>> Totally. And like that's amazing that we've come that far, because it wasn't always that way. I was punching off bullies like left, right, and center when I was a kid, you know? But I I look like the [ __ ] mascot from Notre Dame football, you know what [laughter] I mean? I was like this with the weird Was it Derek that was saying the punching >> fighting style. He has a better fighting style. It's like, "Sweep the leg, bro.

[00:11:07]You're going down."

[00:11:09]>> [snorts] >> This [clears throat] book is amazing. Uh another banger from Josh Bayer. And he just turned this out in like a in a couple weeks when he was in Kentucky.

[00:11:18]This is in between his other big projects. He's got another massive graphic novel coming that I can't wait for. Yes. And he's so restless and so full of energy that he's like, "I'm going to put out I'm just going to drop a 100-pager on you while you're waiting.

[00:11:33]>> SPX last year and he was like, "I have a new book premiering." I assumed it would be a quarter this size and like 12 pages. He's a [ __ ] beast. I was like, "This is the thing? You just made this?

[00:11:44]What the [ __ ] dude?"

[00:11:44]>> He's a [ __ ] beast and honestly between him and Austin, I am never want for inspiration.

[00:11:50]>> Mhm. I look to Austin for all his facilitating, his art making, his craft, like everything he does for the community, same for Josh, and then just seeing what they dropped together is really cool. Yeah. I mean the two of them together are huge inspiration for me. I was going to say earlier you were talking about staying in your back pocket. I I feel like that's that's what I want the future of comics to be. Like in in Japan my understanding is that people going to work are reading manga on the subway partly cuz it fits in your jacket pocket. Like it's a small format, it's a little thing. Like my dream still is that, you know, there's the the coffee shop nearby has like a little a bunch of these things in it and so someone at a on their way to work can be like, "Oh, my phone's dead." or whatever. Or they don't want to use their phone. Yeah, if they don't want to use their phone anymore. Like get a little thing to read on the way to work.

[00:12:35]You can read it in 20 minutes or half hour. Maybe you have to read it twice cuz you have extra time or you get stuck or something like that. But these the idea of the portable sort of disposable thing that was the initial genesis of the comic roll.

[00:12:47]>> Yeah. I couldn't agree more and when you look at this, this is printed by >> pre-beat up.

[00:12:52]>> It's pre-beat up for you. It comes off the rolls and the paper buckles on those giant rolls. So when they print it, this is coming from a newspaper printer with huge offset printing processes. So when they print it, it already comes with all this like boxing. I guess that's the term. Is that the term? I don't know.

[00:13:06]Anyway, whatever the term is for when it comes wrinkled off the roll like that.

[00:13:10]So what that means to me is like this is ephemeral and like I'm just like, "Oh, great. I'm going to take it with me on the subway."

[00:13:16]>> Yeah. And like I throw it in my bag and you're right. I want to make a book like this, 100 pages on newsprint, printed like this in a way where it's affordable but also that people aren't precious with it because, you know, I've read this way more than I read this version.

[00:13:31]This version I immediately put on my shelf and was like, oh yeah, that fits right there nicely between two other perfect bound books. This one in my bag for like a week and I've been taking everywhere with me. And when when I sit down at a place, I try not to look at this page in public, but every other page Yeah, no, I they can't tell what it is. They glance at it. They don't look again.

[00:13:50]>> Look, comic books now, were you a child?

[00:13:51]>> exactly. Oh, I don't read comic books. I once had Didn't you hear comics are for kids again?

[00:13:57]>> [laughter] >> I once had a bookmaker, like a fellow cartoonist that was like, oh, I don't read anything in black and white. Oh, that's cool. Cool guy alert. What?

[00:14:05]>> Cool guy alert.

[00:14:05]>> I was like, excuse me? No, you're just missing out. Like that's I read I've I've never read manga before in my whole life.

[00:14:11]>> Yeah, what? Like my head was like, huh?

[00:14:14]I was like, oh?

[00:14:15]Anyway, this book was Also the the Domino um like is it comic art and some of those other like the Tin Foil Anthologies and stuff are also in this sort of format and they're just great.

[00:14:26]Like >> Yeah, they're so good.

[00:14:27]>> It It serves the form, you know, it maybe a Chris Ware comic looks weird on on newsprint or something, but I don't know, maybe it doesn't. But it for someone like Josh, it's the perfect vehicle for this like beautiful kind of open, messy, explorative >> Yeah, a magazine, right? Like this like thick, wonderfully bound, beautifully printed, black and white explosion.

[00:14:46]>> Yeah. Anyway, I can't say enough good things about it. If you couldn't tell already, I'm a huge fan. Check out Josh Bayer's classes. Check out his other works. He's got, you know, probably 20 more books or 30 more that we haven't even talked about on the channel.

[00:15:01]>> Every time I think I've read a significant portion of them, there's more of He's like also in like a like a musician or a band that has a bunch of side projects or something. It's like It's like getting into uh I don't know, a psychedelic band and then all the members have other albums, like the Josh Bayer whole goes deep.

[00:15:17]>> Yeah, yeah, I was just look putting a playlist together and I was like, oh, let me check out some Frog Eyes and I'm like, oh, and Frog Eyes connects to new pornographers and I'm like, And and Wolf Parade And Swan Lake and Wolf Parade and then Sunset Rub Down and I was like going through that Canadian hole and I was like this is awesome like all these people would like the same stuff and they all get together and make cool [ __ ] I'm like, like can we do that here in New York?

[00:15:41]Corey Mercer is that Frog Eyes guy I think. I'm terrible with names, but anyway >> Eyes a long time ago. [ __ ] amazing.

[00:15:47]You heard it here. Check out Josh Bay's stuff and we'll see you next time, okay?

[00:15:52]See you. Goodbye.

[00:15:57]>> [music]