Public Domain Comic Theater

This started out as a ‘proof of concept’ exercise.  When our cast for Book One solidified around me, I thought it would be a good idea to work out the kinks by doing something short and fast.  Given that the troupe finally came together early in September, it became a natural to suggest something Halloween themed.

I am as big a fan of the comic book medium as I am of audio drama.  I have a particular fondness for the Golden Age of Comics and the Pre-Code Age that followed it.  So it was a natural for us to produce two short horror stories for the spookiest time of the year.  I read through a number of pre-code horror comics available at comicbookplus.com (and I recommend you visit this website and support it, as it’s a repository for a part of comic book history that could easily get forgotten!) and chose two stories--'Flee The Phantoms’ from Ghosts #1 and ‘The Monster of The Bayous’ from The Hand of Fate #8.*  I adapted them...not quite as tightly as I did Terry Moore’s work...and added the character of The Horror Host, played by our Sultan of Sound Design, Chris Honeywell.

And here’s the thing...we had fun recording both those stories and the episodes of SiP:Book One.  It seemed like this project was creating a real collective of people who loved the medium of audio drama, shared a lot of the same interests, and worked well together.  So hearing the joy we were having, and realizing how well we worked together, I figured these two specials could become an ongoing series that maybe could be used to earn us all a little money.

(And I mean a little; none of us here at 8TW look forward to retiring from the workforce and rolling around on a pile of dollar bills...but I’m sure it would be nice to put in all this effort and get enough to buy ourselves a cup of coffee and a nice meal or two...)

Public Domain Comics Theater will present pre-code comics in what we’ve discovered is the 8TW style of humor and enlivened by Chris’ epic Sound Design.  Our tongues may be in cheek, but we’re presenting these stories with affection in the hopes of exposing our audience to some gems that have been overlooked by time.  And each episode will be properly attributed to give acknowledgement of some of the great artists who worked on the original story.

I had branded these things Public Domain Comics Theater consciously.  While the productions under this banner are horror-based so far, I wanted to leave the door open to adapting comics in other genres.  We came up with the ‘box set’ concept, where a number of productions would be broken down into ‘seasons’ with some episodes would be available for free at The Two True Freaks Network and others available as incentives, bonus and exclusives only accessible as part of that season’s collected set.  The intention is for the box sets to also contain some suprises and extra features.  Our first box set, Public Domain Comic Theater Comics For Your Ears #1: Horror, will be available December 2020 for $5.

Future seasons will include ‘curated sets’ where popular and knowledgeable YouTubers and Podcasters will handpick a number of public domain comic stories, starting with Season Two’s selections from FizzFop of Lost Heroes of The Golden Age.

*--a production that ended up creating our first ‘original’ production, Eileen Thorne: Freelance Lab Assistant!