Bestselling Jokes

On what feels like a life changing decision in making The West Hollywood Monster Squad the bestseller that it is!

I can still remember feeling like the world had ended when I found out that my favorite comic artist, Michael Turner, used background artists to assist in making his pages as magical as they were. I felt a similar way when I found out that manga was nearly never drawn by one individual; they broke responsibilities down to even smaller roles (somebody draws buildings, another for vehicles, half-tones, etc). I’m risking going into a whole diatribe about authorship and authority in comics, but that’s not the point. To avoid that entire discussion, I’ll fast forward to the part where I didn’t treat new information as a betrayal of my love of the art and realized, sometimes these decisions are what it takes to make the art the best it can be.

Okay, I can’t help myself, let me dip back in and full circle the Michael Turner thought: it wasn’t Mike’s use of background artists that truly “broke” the magic for me, I ended up learning over the years that it was different inkers that added a special juice to his work that contributed to the sauce. For me personally, nothing was better than when Joe Weems or D-Tron worked over his pencils. But also, when Peter Steigerwald did some imaginative and vibrant takes when Mike handed over penciled art and let Peter fill in the blanks with the colors. People try new things to make the art the best they can, and with West Hollywood Monster Squad, I did something that felt a little controversial, but completely necessary to make sure I was putting the best version of the book out into the world:

I worked with a joke writer.

Leslie Jones said something in her (audio*)book about “someone else may write the joke, but I make the joke.” She was giving major love and credit to her writer, and it inspired me to come out and say I did the same thing for my book. West Hollywood Monster Squad was all but written (in fact, a version of it was printed as an Advance Reader Copy aka an ARC), and I had the chance to do one more pass on the lettered art before we sent to the printer. I decided to ask my friend Eddie for an assist.

Eddie Ewing is a friend and an actual-factual joke writer for a living. Don’t ask me how he got his job, but he works with a team of writers to help some famous standup on various gigs like drafting cameo messages, speeches, roasts, specials, and more. It’s very cool, and I think he even gets insurance out of it. I knew Eddie was my kind of funny when one night years ago we were talking about which Real Housewives we like, and in discussing the first season cast of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, he said “Oh man, and the Lady Wrestler- will she ever find love?” IYKYK. He has jokes that make you chuckle and go “you stupid bitch,” which are my favorite jokes. After the first Rockstar and Softboy book, where I truly went full humor, I’d brought up the idea of working together to see if I could punch up the dialog even further. I didn’t want him to shape the story, just make the jokes hit harder against the art. Due to the insane nature of how I make the Rockstar and Softboy stories (in a crazed no-sleep haze two weeks before the deadline), our collaborating was not a possibility. West Hollywood Monster Squad, however…

I sent Eddie the complete PDF and said: “there are jokes in the book, but they could be funnier. What can you do?” I’d hit a point of looking at the book too much, and while I knew I’d left lines in there that were “Fine For Now,” I was second-guessing their quality because the lazy devil on my shoulder was like “it already got this far, and no one flagged it for improvement.”

A note: don’t rely on editors to tell you if a line is hitting hard enough. They don’t know what you’re capable of, and their goal is to get the book done without errors. In this moment of making a story, you and that editor have opposing goals because you’re being precious and they’re being pragmatic. Trust your gut. If you think something can be better, make it better. The editors will tell you if you fussed too much, which is more valuable than them quibbling over line edits.

Eddie wrote me a document with about 35 joke alternatives. I took 10-12 of those jokes, tweaked some of them, kept some of them exactly as they are, and had them implemented in the final product. He also gave me one of the funniest lines that I’m so glad is in a teen action-horror comic: “I’m a bottom who hasn’t bottomed and I’m going to die” or something like that. He helped make the cast of West Hollywood Monster Squad brighter. While 10-12 sentences in a 160 page graphic novel maybe won’t make or break the entire product, it was the touch I needed as a writer to know that I had put the best product out into the world.

Thanks Eddie, I hope you stop hiding behind the scenes and get on more stages in 2025. You’re frickin’ funny as hell.

West Hollywood Monster Squad has been out for two months now, and I’m so so so happy that it broke the USA Today Bestseller list. I truly believe it’s efforts like this that made the book land as strongly as it did. The book’s artist, Bradley Clayton, put the same level of “extra sauce” in the art, too.

We’ve done a few podcasts and interviews together, and everyone has commented on how Bradley’s character designs are amazing for giving each character their own unique silhouette, body language, and body type. That’s part of why I wanted them to draw the book: we have multiple large-bodied characters and they needed to look completely different from each other. Bradley said that they wanted to make sure that if you saw those characters from yards away, you’d be able to tell who is who. There are also a million Easter eggs Bradley snuck in that make the book rewarding on second and third readings (I only learned this AFTER it printed, hehehehe).

Just wanted to share this story with you, continue bragging about how much I love West Hollywood Monster Squad, and celebrate its wins! Please please please grab a copy if you haven’t already <3

*Everyone indulge in Leslie Jones' memoir as an audiobook. I'm told it's nothing like her book because she goes on tangents and asides that are utterly enjoyable while still getting the main beats of her life story across.