If you sprinkle an appreciation of art history, camp, popular culture and fashion atop astute criticism, you get Thick Lines, one of comics’ premier podcasts, now entering its third year. Thick Lines is hosted by artists Sally Madden and Katie Skelly, who've provided takes and a tone as unique as their individual cartooning styles now for over 100 episodes and counting. Their weekly auditory offerings avoid the pitfalls and hang-ups that other comics-focused podcasts generally suffer from; Thick Lines is informative and, dare I say, inviting to non-comics readers. I sat down and talked with the two hosts about how the podcast came to be, what it has meant to them, and where it is headed in 2024.
-RJ Casey
[PLEASE NOTE: An editor of this website, Joe McCulloch, has been an occasional guest on Thick Lines.]
RJ CASEY: First of all, how did you two meet?
SALLY MADDEN: LiveJournal!
Oh, wow. Ok!
KATIE SKELLY: We were both making comics at the same time in New York. I found out that Sally was dating someone that I had dated, but we only found that out through the process of “Twenty Questions.” I was like, “Who is this cool girl?” And then they broke up immediately.
MADDEN: I’ll never forget that text where you were like, “Are you dating XYZ?” Then you helped me out. I would go visit Katie all day then go, “Bye, I’ve got to go have a date afterwards to round this out,” but then I realized that I should just date Katie. [Laughter] That’s it. That’s all I need.
I didn’t realize you both had known each other for so long before the podcast started.
SKELLY: We’ve known each other since 2008, 2009. We’ve been friends for about 15 years.
MADDEN: We just had to warm up for a while.
Then how did the podcast come about?
SKELLY: It was in quarantine. We started talking about it in 2020. It was kind of something that we’d retreat to in our minds. “When we have our podcast, we’ll be able to talk about all these things.” We’d just joke about it and walk around our houses and pretend we were doing the podcast while we were on the phone. We were loopy from being inside for so long.
MADDEN: When we would read a comic we were excited about we would already call and text each other. Katie was like, “We could have a podcast like this,” but then I’d be like, “Let’s talk more about David Boring right now.” Eventually Katie got me to do it.
SKELLY: We got microphones and then the rest is history.
MADDEN: Katie had to send me a microphone. I thought, “Sure, we could have a podcast, but how would that even work?”
What was the learning curve like on learning to do all this audio stuff? I mean, I just panicked when trying to log in to our call.
SKELLY: It’s not that bad. I had previously done Trash Twins [a podcast co-hosted with Sarah Horrocks] for a number of years so I knew the basics. But having done this for three years now, it was pretty apparent that we were going to have to step up what we were doing. I’ve been working a lot on tweaking the audio, and the editing part of it can be pretty labor-intensive. But the actual recording part of it we seem to have down now.
What’s the process of editing an episode look like?
SKELLY: It depends. If it’s one of the ones behind the [Patreon] paywall, I tend to not edit it as much. We’re a little bit more freewheeling there and people seem to enjoy that. For the public episodes I do try to put our best faces forward. It can take anywhere from three to four hours to all day depending on what the subject is. I try not to manipulate it too much, but sometimes I’ll go so off topic where it’s like, “This has to go.”
MADDEN: You’re more gracious about texture, I’d say. Both of us know now when you’re looking at the strip of audio what an “uh” or “um” looks like. Katie does most of the editing, but when I’m editing the biggest thing that I do, especially when we have guests, is just edit out them saying, “I think.” It’s a given. I like when people sound confident. Saying things like that or “maybe this” or “perhaps” is just something we do when we’re trying to give ourselves time to think. And I understand that you don’t want to sound like a blowhard, but I love it when people sound like a blowhard. [Casey laughs] I just try to trim out as much uncertainty as I can. To me that’s almost like dead air.
That’s interesting. I catch myself doing that when I’m writing things too. “I think…”
MADDEN: You know, RJ! I trust that you do. [Laughter]
SKELLY: There’s nothing worse than doing an interview and seeing it exactly transcribed as you said it.
MADDEN: Barf! Gag! I don’t need that humility, right? Also, when I’m editing an episode, I’m much more likely to cut myself out and trim myself down - and, of course, when Katie’s editing, she’s more likely to shave herself down. There’s been times when I’m like, “Oh, that anecdote she told just went away.” [Laughter] Which is totally ok.
Have you had any guests contact you afterwards and ask to have things they said edited out?
MADDEN: Oh, yeah, of course.
SKELLY: No, who did that?
MADDEN: I don’t want to say what they asked to have cut out, but we’ve had people say, “In case I start sounding stupid, don’t be afraid to trim that down.” I think that’s totally fair and I’m sure I’m going to be emailing you later, RJ. [Laughter]
SKELLY: But we haven’t had any confidential information shared with us!
How do you decide on what books or artists to cover each week?
MADDEN: It’s always great to hear what someone is passionate about, and if the only thing they’re passionate about is their own work, that’s just bone-dry. Who gives a shit? Not that we don’t want people to come on and plug their work—we’re interested in what they’re making and what they’re talking about—but it’s so much more rewarding getting someone on board talking about something that they’re passionate about. Sam Szabo came on to talk about Psychoanalysis [the 1955 EC series], which I had never heard of and I think everyone should read now. It’s a really interesting chunk of American comics history. We had Whit Taylor come on to talk about an Ulli Lust comic [How I Tried to Be a Good Person] that I had never seen and dipped me into a vein of alternative comics that I don’t know if I would have come across if she hadn’t brought it to my attention.
SKELLY: We had Vanessa Davis on to talk about Debbie Drechsler. That felt like a really important episode. I feel like we’re making an audio fanzine in a way.
Other than the episodes you just mentioned, do you have any other personal favorites? Or ones you’ve recorded that might be a good place to start for someone new to Thick Lines?
MADDEN: Every time Katie has done a solo episode with another artist has been great. I was listening to the episode you did with Alejandra [Gutierrez] and I took out my phone to hit “subscribe” to the podcast. [Laughter] You were talking about Sabrina [the Teenage Witch], which you know I’m dying to hear about. The one that you did with Gilbert Hernandez is great. The episode with Jacq Cohen - thank god she agreed to talk. That was so interesting. I have no clue what is going on behind the scenes [at Fantagraphics] and Jacq is such a dynamic talker.
SKELLY: I like the ones that feel like they shouldn’t work. We talked to Elizabeth Foley O’Connor, who is a Pamela Colman Smith expert and historian. She talked to us about the history of tarot and how Pamela’s story was sort of lost to history and what she’s doing to restore that. At the end, we had a friend who’s a professional tarot reader read our tarot. Sally, we still have to check if any of that stuff came true. We’ve had so many great guests. Gina Wynbrandt was an amazing guest. The Gutter Boys [JB Roe & Cam del Rosario] were great guests.
MADDEN: Leomi Sadler came on to talk about Noel Freibert’s book Old Ground. They’re friends, and it was great to hear someone that’s so invested in another comic talk about it. She talked about that comic like those are real characters in her life and I really enjoyed doing that. Everyone we’ve spoken to, it has never felt like it was a chore for them to talk about anything. Having John Mejias, who’s one of my favorite artists, talk about Conan the Barbarian. It’s a dumb comic from any angle, but it’s super-meaningful to a lot of people and was a pivotal moment for a lot of people growing up reading comics. It was great hearing someone who is a capital-A Artist talk about this lunkhead battling monsters.
SKELLY: I loved talking to Bhanu Pratap about Red Colored Elegy. It took a lot of coordination because we are in very different time zones.
My personal favorite was the Steven Weissman episode. I’m such a huge fan of his.
SKELLY: He’s awesome.
How many Kazuo Umezz episodes have there been?
MADDEN: We did all of Orochi, all of Drifting Classroom, one Cat-Eyed Boy. I just took a little look at the next Cat-Eyed Boy that just came out! The opening story is 100 pages long and has 100 monsters in it.
MADDEN: We’re up to nine and we’ll make it an even ten later this year.
What attracts both of you to his work so much?
SKELLY: It definitely has a camp element to it. It’s so over-the-top. It’s really hard to know how serious he’s taking it, especially when you consider that these comics, most of the time, are for young children, you know? I know Sally’s kids are attuned to manga and love to read it, but even I’m kind of like, “I don’t know if a child should be checking out Drifting Classroom necessarily.”
MADDEN: Orochi is totally fine for my children to read. They can also read Cat-Eyed Boy. Drifting Classroom absolutely gave me a migraine. The sheer amount of carnage is just overpowering. Katie, I told you this, but my children are reading a comic series called Amulet [by Kazu Kibuishi]. The final book is about to be released. My 10-year old was reading a chunk of it and she showed it to me and said, “Do you think the author got this idea from The Drifting Classroom? It seems like it.” I was like, “How do you know about that?” [Laughter] I’m trying to put those books as high on the shelf as I can, RJ. I was on a call and my five-year old was home from school and she was laughing. She pulled something down from the shelf in my office and I realized that she was reading a Johnny Ryan comic from a Kramers from a while back. I was like, “Oh, let me show you a different story in that collection that’s more suitable for you.” She was like, “No, I want to look at these funny butts!” [Laughter] Look, everyone’s going to get traumatized at some point. She can barely read. We’re all bad parents. I have to say, Katie and I are both cat owners and if you love cats, you’re going to love Umezz. He’s so precious with the way he treats felines. Dogs, sorry, they’re expendable for Umezz.
SKELLY: It’s been really fun to pick out themes that go across all the Umezz series that we’ve read. A crosswalk means somebody is going to get hit by a car. A broken watch means somebody’s life is going to get fucked up. There are bad children scenarios. A lot of deception and paranoia around the family and wealth. It’s been really nice to see all of those and how his interests are either developed or have fallen off along the way. It’s getting to know the beautiful mind of Umezz through his work.
How would you say the podcast is different now than when you started three years ago?
SKELLY: We certainly have a bigger audience now. In 2023, our listenership doubled. It feels like we have more of an obligation to put it out, but we’re also being really careful too. We don’t want to get stuck making a deluge of content because things stop having the specialness and the meaning they would have had. For me, personally, I can’t do a quality production if I’m on such a tight schedule. We record once a week now, and when we started we were a little bit more sporadic because we were just figuring out what the hell we were doing and why we were doing it. Now we have more of a formula we can stay the course with. We’re in a comfortable rhythm now and still get to do what we want to do.
MADDEN: We know what the level of work is that we have to do now too. We’re operating at a level where this is all still fun for us to do. We’ll have a meeting about once a month about what books we want to cover or discuss who we’d like to have on the show. There always ends up being like eight titles we want to talk about. When we started doing this we made a list of a few books that would probably take us a year to cover. Then the list ended up being like 120 titles long, most of which we haven’t even gone into yet. And we both have veto power - we’d never force each other to talk about books the other didn’t want to cover. I don’t want to say that we always see eye to eye. We both may love a book, but we’ll never have exactly the same take on things. Sometimes Katie and I will go out on the town and people are like, “Wow, it’s crazy you guys are friends. One of you dresses like this and the other one’s a circus clown.” [Laughter] Isn’t that more fun? Isn’t it more fun to talk to somebody who’s going to add a little something to the goddamned take you’re going to walk away with from a book?
SKELLY: We get a lot of feedback from our listeners and we started doing something called “Summer Reading,” which is when we take listener requests in June, July and August. Our listeners have pretty sharp palettes, I’d say. They don’t recommend a whole lot of duds to us. We try to stick with books that we like and can provide takes on. I’m not really interested in cultivating a negative critical sound loop for us. I’m not passionate enough about destroying comics to be able to sustain that sort of energy. I’m better when talking about something I enjoy or Sally enjoys.
You said your listenership doubled last year. What do you chalk that up to?
SKELLY: I think our consistency. We have a good back catalog of episodes and reached 100 episodes in 2023. I think people were attracted to the podcast based on the length and longevity and the frequency of posting. I feel like the algorithm sort of helped us in that way. Some of the artists we have on go out of their way to promote us. Peggy Burns at Drawn & Quarterly has been very vocal about enjoying the show.
MADDEN: D&Q been so great to us. I got to meet a lot of their team at TCAF this year. It’s so great to hear feedback from people at festivals. That was also the day I got to meet Chester Brown, and that was not long after our Paying for It episode came out.
I wanted to bring that up.
MADDEN: A fan fav. [Laughter]
SKELLY: That was with Gina Wynbrandt, who was absolutely the right person to talk about that book with.
Were you expecting the feedback when you recorded the episode?
SKELLY: No.
MADDEN: Of course not. [Casey laughs]
SKELLY: We very rarely get feedback from the artists themselves. We don’t tag people when we review their work.
MADDEN: We’re making our recordings for readers, not the artists.
For people unfamiliar, you recorded an episode with Gina about Paying for It and then Chester Brown [on his Patreon blog] did a point-by-point rebuttal to the podcast episode almost immediately. Is that all correct?
SKELLY: Yes. I didn’t read it because it was behind his paywall and I didn’t need to.
MADDEN: People kept trying to tell us what he said and I felt like it was none of our business.
How has the podcast affected your own comic-making?
MADDEN: It really encourages me to read new works - and, of course, that makes you a more dynamic writer and illustrator.
SKELLY: I took a lot of 2023 off from drawing. I was editing this new anthology series, Viscere. I wanted to grow that and I wanted to grow this show. I was frustrated with myself and sick of what I was making. Doing all of this really did reinvigorate me, and I’m back to drawing again. I really like what I’m making. The line depth has changed, the dimension has changed, I’m paying a lot more attention to composition than I normally would. This is all from studying these things so closely. It’s been super-beneficial.
MADDEN: We’ve covered a few books that were super-collaborative, and I guess I didn’t consider that an option for a long time. I’ve now been working on a book with Stef Sadler, who was one of our guests. Talking to him made us realize we wanted to work together. I didn’t think as much about how work was made until talking to Katie about it publicly.
To piggyback off my last question—and speaking more universally—has the podcast affected your life in any way since you began?
SKELLY: It’s a big-time commitment. In the period that we started, I was working full-time and living in New York. In that time, I made the decision to move to Los Angeles and continued working remotely. In 2022, I tried freelancing so I could get more comics done, but it just ended up being even more work than having a full-time job. It was so much about chasing things down and it didn’t feel like the right method. So I went back to working full-time toward the end of 2022. I find when my mind isn’t thinking about work and comics, it’s thinking about this show. It does take up a good bit of mental real estate. But the Patreon does well for us considering what we’re doing, I think. We’ve hit a peak, maybe, with about $500 a month, which is great. That is actually enough to change your life a little bit. We split it evenly. I’m going to Philadelphia soon and we can use some of that money for a night on the town.
MADDEN: We’re going to do a live event when Katie’s in Philly.
SKELLY: There’s a mental tax that it takes. There are times when I’m like, “I don’t know if what I’m saying is good at all.” It makes me feel a lot of self-doubt, but we push through it.
MADDEN: I know what you’re saying is good so you don’t have to worry about your own opinion. I didn’t think this was going to be as much about building a community as it has been. I’m a waitress, so I’m out in public a lot of the time. It never occurred to me that there would be any crossover, but I have been having more and more people come into the restaurant and be like, “You’re Sally Madden? Let me recommend a comic to you.” It’s nice being out and about and getting recommendations from people. Daria Tessler’s Cagelessness recently got recommended to me from a listener. You know what? They’ve heard us talk a lot. Our listeners have a pretty good idea of what our tastes are like. That was right on the money. People are very, very kind to us with their feedback, which I appreciate, and I do not expect that to stop, thank you. [Laughter]
You have an ongoing Thick Lines Discord [for Patreon subscribers] too.
SKELLY: That’s been a very positive, self-sustaining community. We don’t have to go bust heads in there and I don’t want to do that. Everyone feels grown up enough.
MADDEN: People sharing their finds - that is the best. I love those “yutes” who are just discovering comics from the '90s that I’ve already forgotten about. A young woman who listens to the show posted a picture of THB.
The Paul Pope comic.
MADDEN: I don’t know if I would have been able to scrape that out of the vault if she hadn’t mentioned it. This stuff gives us a little pin, like, “Oh we could talk about that at some point.”
SKELLY: We’ve found our listenership to be very intellectually curious. We have a good number of listeners who don’t care about comics at all.
MADDEN: That is wild! Bless those people.
Both of you are really good at contextualizing things outside of the comics world. I don’t think that’s common with comics podcasting or comics writing.
SKELLY: Maybe that’s how you get people in now.
MADDEN: There are people who have messaged us who’s previous limit of their comics reading has been what’s in the newspaper. Beautiful Darkness has been one of the most popular books that we’ve covered on the show for those readers. We got a lot of feedback from people trying that one out. That’s really worthwhile. If we’re able to get someone to look at a book that they never would have considered even opening before, that’s a huge deal to me. That makes this all worthwhile.
Katie, on a recent podcast episode, you said that you had a fear of drifting away from the show’s original intention. Could you elaborate on that statement?
SKELLY: We’ve been really lucky in that publishers want to work with us. We’ve partnered with publishers to do giveaways on the Patreon to retain membership—that’s always a challenge to keep people month-to-month—and having that as a benefit is really nice. Once you start wading into that territory I start thinking, “Can we really be objective about these works that are being brought to us by publishers?” Do we have some sort of obligation to try to push them? Are we now in the publicity machine for someone else? I think we’ve been able to navigate that pretty well, but that is something that is in the back of my mind. I don’t want Thick Lines to be a commercially driven show. I don’t want it to be a personality driven show. I’m not interested in forming parasocial relationships with people. It really is just about this core friendship that Sally and I have and this core vision that we share about comics. That’s what I want to keep the podcast as. I want to put out a good episode every week.
MADDEN: When we talk in private about, like, “Should we be doing X thing?” I don’t think we can because we just want to talk about these fucking comics. I don’t think we have enough momentum or interest in some sort of greater goal. There’s no dangling carrot of finances over a comics podcast. That pressure is not even there, don’t worry. We set out to have fun and talk about the comics that we like to see. When we’re recording we’re just having a normal conversation and we’re genuinely interested in sharing with each other what we thought of certain panels. All that stuff is so important to us. Did we read yet another comic that teaches you no moral lesson whatsoever? Great, let’s dish about it. All that is more interesting than thinking about how we could pivot this into something for some kind of imagined greater good.
What’s next for the pod? Can you share what books or artists you plan on covering?
MADDEN: We have Ayako coming up. I want to take a look at more Tezuka that we can get our hands on. The way his work reflects how he was feeling about what was going on in the history of Japan at the time is interesting to talk about. It’s so easy to read his stories and take them at face value, but there’s so much more going on underneath. I just read Milky Way [by Miguel Vila] and I asked Katie to take a look at it. That might be fun for us.
Are there any guests who you’re dying to have on?
SKELLY: I really want to talk to Rob Liefeld about May December, but I don’t want to talk to him about anything else. [Casey laughs] He tweeted that he loved it. I have not pursued this in any material way whatsoever. It’s just in my mind palace right now. We really do want to invite Peter Bagge on the show to talk about that first episode. I’ve been trying to reach out to Cathy Guisewite’s publicist for so long. They never get back to me.
MADDEN: She can only reject so many emails. There’s a limit, and we’ve just got to keep going. [Laughter] I would like to discuss Megan Kelso and Who Will Make the Pancakes.
Three years is a long time to be doing anything, but it really feels like the podcast is hitting its stride.
MADDEN: I’m grateful people are listening and I’m shocked that they’re listening. There are so many other options out there right now. To quote Scott Adams, as I love to do, “There’s a firehose of information being aimed at the teacup of your brain.” I’m grateful that people are spending a little bit of that with us.
SKELLY: Doing this show is a nice transition period for both of us. We’ve been at shows selling stuff for 15 years now. I always tell myself that I don’t want to be 40 and applying for zine shows. There’s younger people who should be there and should be developing their stuff. The podcast is another way we can get in front of people and contribute to the community or give back, even though that sounds so corny. Thick Lines is something that’s designed to carry us through this weird transition phase. We’re not young artists anymore. We’re in-the-middle artists now. This lets us stay engaged.
MADDEN: I just like talking to Katie about shit.
SKELLY: It’s always a good time.
