The chat on which you’re going to eavesdrop this time around is unique for multiple reasons, but the one most important to listeners is that this is the first time in the history of this podcast I broke bread with a comic book guest who did not come from my personal generation of creators. Those you’ve heard me talk to before from that particular branch of the fantastic — such as Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Don McGregor, and others — were all people I worked either with or beside during the mid-’70s and into the early ‘80s. But this episode’s guest, writer Tom King, is different. There’s no overlap to our comics careers, because his didn’t begin until long after mine had ended.

Tom started out in comics by interning for both DC and Marvel, where he was an assistant to X-Men writer Chris Claremont. After his comics-inspired debut novel A Once Crowded Sky was published in 2013, and after a stint in the CIA, he went on to write Batman and Mister Miracle for DC, The Vision for Marvel, and many other projects, which won him an Eisner Award in 2018 for Best Writer. Plus — and I only realized this while taking note of comic artist Joe Giella’s recent 93rd birthday — we’ve both written Supergirl stories — 43 years apart! But that’s not the only commonality to our comics careers, as you’ll soon hear.

We discussed the two questions no one in comics can answer, his attempt at age 11 to get a job at Archie Comics, how he goes back to the beginning when writing a classic character such as Supergirl, whether Alan Moore would have had the impetus to create Watchmen in today’s environment, our dealings with comic book censorship, the weird way Monica Lewinsky caused him not to get hired by MAD magazine, the differences we discovered early on between Marvel and DC, what he learned as an intern to the legendary Chris Claremont, the Black Knight pitch he got paid for which was never published, the way comic book people are like circus folk, why the current state of Krypto proves I could never go back to writing comics, and much more.

Here’s how you can take a seat at the table with us —

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample some of the other 149 previous episodes.

2) Use the RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss on the device of your choice.

3) Or listen using the embed below.

And here are the Balkan delicacies we nibbled during our lunch at D.C.’s Ambar restaurant —

Freshly Baked Pita Bread and Sourdough

Charcuterie Platter
sudzuk beef salami/beef prosciutto/spicy pork salami

Cheese Pie
crispy phyllo dough/aged cheese/roasted pepper cream/yogurt

Balkan Salad
tomatoes/onions/cucumbers/peppers/sherry vinaigrette/balkan cheese

Spreads
beet tzatziki/garlic dip/kajmak

Brussel Sprouts
crispy bacon / lemon-garlic yogurt

Pepper Croquette
herb-panko coated marinated piquillo pepper,
stuffed with kajmak and aged sheep cheese/cranberry chutney

Fried Chicken
24-hour marinated chicken breast/panko-almond crusted/apple-wasabi slaw

Cauliflower
parsley-tahini spread/pine nut crumble

Lamb Lasagna
marcho farms lamb/eggplant/tomato béchamel & dill

Sarma Pork Belly Stuffed Cabbage
oven-baked for eight hours with root vegetables, rice and smoked peppers

Grilled Vegetables
herb-marinaded local seasonal vegetables

Cevapi ‘Balkan Kebab’
house-made wells family farm beef sausages
served with rosted pepper & feta cheese emulsion

Grilled Shrimp
shrimp marinated with house made rub served with corn puree

Cinnamon Sweet Sourdough
served with nutella

If you enjoyed this episode and want to support my mission of breaking bread with creators of the fantastic while letting you eavesdrop, there are several ways you can help bring this podcast to the attention of potential new listeners looking for science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comics ear candy —

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Please join me two weeks from now when I’ll break bread with not one guest but three — Karen Osborne, Sarah Pinsker, and K. M. Szpara — who all published second novels this year within three months of each other. An opportunity for a roundtable discussion about that unique point in time for a writing career was too good to pass up. I hope you’ll return for what proved to be a fascinating discussion.

Thanks for listening!