Off Panel #165: Sneak Attack with Shawn Kirkham

In this week’s episode of Off Panel, Skybound Entertainment’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, Shawn Kirkham, joins the show to discuss their stealth launch of the new comic series from Robert Kirkman, Scott Gimple, Chris Burnham, Nathan Fairbairn and Rus Wooton, Die!Die!Die!, and everything his job includes at Skybound. Kirkham discusses fancy titles, the origins of Die!Die!Die!, why they wanted to release a comic without any advance warning, the upside of doing a comic that way, trying new things in comics, Murder Falcon, The Walking Dead’s 15th anniversary blind bags, original art, Wildstorm, balancing collectability with readership, what a day at his job is like, The Megabox, Skybound Games, the secret to being good at cons, and more, before closing with five questions about Shawn Kirkham, the person.

You can find Kirkham on Twitter. Also, here’s the picture of Kirkham with Hodor (aka Kristian Nairn) we discussed on the show.

You can download the show directly here on Libsyn.

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Thanks to my patrons, including – but not limited to – Ryan Alcock, Nick Michelin, David Kelley, Robert Wilson IV, Nick Poleto, Mike D’Argenio, Dylan Campbell, Eoin McCready, Brenden Fletcher, Michael Garland, Gary Moloney, Jonathan Nilsson, Matthew Groom, Jason Nassi, Mike Gillis, Adam Bogert, Xavier Files, Maria Schweitzer, Matthew Taylor, Tyler Turner, Dan Gearino, Dan Lee, Nick Pitarra, Jacob Sareli, Ford Gilmore, David Baroldy, Evan Blasor, Brian McCray, Ira James Udaskin, Henning Ahlers, Modern Magic Stories, Nick Hall, Bruno Batista, Abraham Riesman, Bobby Angus, Bjorn Basen, Darren Neely, John Hendrick, Steve Anderson, Phil Knall, Ian Maxfield, Cliff Chiang, Benjamin Schipper, Colin McMahon, Chris Palmer, Maxwell Schmidt, Scott McGovern, Nathan Fairbairn, Cat McKenzie, Lou Iovino, Nicholas Keslake, Greg Rucka, Ryan Mayle, Adam Highfill, Nicholas Gardner, Andrew Corrigan, Fiona Staples, Chris Morris, Chris O’Hollaran, Mark Abnett, Mike Murphy, Michael Shirley, Tom Barnett, Jim Demonakos, Norbert, Nick Lowe, James Kaplan, and Mission: Comics and Art in San Francisco. You’re all the best.

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Header image is from the cover of Die!Die!Die! #1, art by Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn. Intro and outro music is Vulfpeck’s Outro from their album Vollmilch. Thanks to the band for letting me use the track.