Clay Adams is the "CO-FRY-COOK-IN-CHIEF" at Fried Comics, proud purveyors of offbeat, irreverent pulp fiction since 2013. Clay is best known as a voice actor, with lead roles on TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: FAST FORWARD, YU-GI-OH GX, 5Ds and ARC-V. His directorial debut, THE BOY SCOUT, was nominated for Best Short at the Golden Egg Film Festival in Los Angeles, and his feature script, THE ECLIPSE, placed second in the horror category of the FADEIn Awards. He has written and directed for television and holds a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU.
Nate: Great. Hello, introduce yourself, sir.
Clay Adams: Hey, I'm Clay Adams. I am a voice actor and a writer with friedcomics.com.
Nate: Welcome to Comic Book Curious. Okay. Clay, who is your favorite superhero and why?
Clay Adams: Absolutely. It would have to be Batman just because he's rad. And one of the first comics I bought was the "Batman Year One"
Clay Adams: Well, I like I got into comics right when that started and that made a huge impression. So I will I'll read anything with Batman in it.
Nate: I love it. Great. Can you do anything quirky? Voices, impressions, any type of sounds, anything?
Clay Adams: Yeah, sure.
Clay Adams: Well, so, so I did some voices on a cartoon called Yu-Gi-Oh and so, one was a character named Jesse and he kind of talked like this, like way up here, kind of like an, almost like an Owen Wilson type guy, but maybe a little higher.
Clay Adams: And he'd say things like Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger. And then then I'd also play a guy named Crow and he'd kind of talk like this. He was like a really gravelly voiced guy.
Nate: Love it. Awesome. That's great. Okay. What -what is one superhero power that you would get if you could, what's the one that you want?
Clay Adams: So I always wanted to have the ability to stop time, like freeze time, but like, I could still walk around like normal so I could do whatever I wanted to do. Take a nap, go for a walk, you know, get away from a situation if I just needed a moment. And then just like, you know, be able to snap my fingers and have everything go back to normal.
Clay Adams: So that would be my superpower.
Nate: That's a great one,I love that. Okay. What is your superhero power now?
Clay Adams: My superhero power right now is the ability to just keep talking when I don't have a really good answer for something, because I don't, I don't have, I don't have a good superpower right now. I don't know, but, but I, I think sort of life is improv.
Clay Adams: And so you just kind of have to take that attitude and just give an answer even if you don't have one. So maybe that's my super, super power taking life as improv.
Nate: Yeah, but you are wildly creative man. And funny. So I got to shout you out on that. For sure who would win in a fight, Marvel or DC?
Clay Adams: Ooh, that's tough.
Clay Adams: Like, like all the heroes on one side fighting all the superheroes on the other side. Ooh that's tough because like DC has got Superman and guys like that who are super strong, but then like you go to Marvel and you've got Thor, like he's the God of Thunder, right? And you've got the Hulk. Ah, I might have to go.
Clay Adams: I might have to go Marvel. I'd go Marvel.
Nate: Good answer. Any real life superheroes that, you know, presently, not your parents.
Clay Adams: Super real life, super heroes that I know, not my parents.
Clay Adams: Honestly, like this is going to sound like a cliche right now, but I can't think of a better answer. So I'm going to go with the cliche, but like, everything that's going on right now, like I'm just in awe of anybody that goes to work in a hospital.
Clay Adams: You know, working with very sick people and putting themselves at risk to do something like that. I mean, and any like any first responder of fire- firefighters, you know, policemen and women, nurses and- and teachers, man having to go like. I got two kids. I can't imagine having 30 every day.
Clay Adams: You know what I mean?
Nate: Yes. Let's shoutout to teachers and the first responders. Any people that you admire as far as in the acting or like. Well, the people that you don't know, like you probably know some first responders, but anybody that you're like, oh man, I really admire that human for what they're doing.
Clay Adams: Yeah. I mean, there, yeah, there's, there are loads of them. I, you know, I, I, I admire people like Michael J. Fox, you know, just, first of all, I, you know, I- I dug his work as a kid, watching them on Family Ties and Back to the Future and Teen Wolf. But- but how he's dealt with adversity and you know, I- I saw him speak one time.
Clay Adams: Just he had a book that came out, kind of a Memoir, and just listening to him speak was very uplifting. Just how he's- how he's handled adversity and- and fighting for better research.
Nate: Yeah, man. He's awesome. Yeah, that's a great answer. All right. In three or four sentences, what's your passion?
Clay Adams: My passion is telling stories. I just, I love-- I like entertaining people and I like I like just making up a story, whole cloth and seeing, you know, like, Eddie Van Halen always talked about playing a guitar solo is like falling down the stairs and landing on your feet. And that's sort of how I feel about telling a story- that I just liked that ability to just start making something up and you stick the landing and then yeah, you might, you might redraft and make it better as you go along.
Clay Adams: But I just liked that sense of like, okay. Yeah. Are we going to land on our feet? Let's do it.
Nate: That's a great answer. Okay. That's great. Okay. Speed. Round. Yeah. Fly or Teleport?
Clay Adams: Teleport.
Nate: Are you an introvert or extrovert?
Clay Adams: I, you know what?I-I think I can present as both, but I feel like I'm a guy that I like-
Clay Adams: I'm a homebody. I like being at home. I just read if I could. That's all I do.
Nate: Would you choose Wolverine or Cyclops?
Clay Adams: Wolverine.
Nate: Sweet or salty?
Nate: Sweet.
Nate: Batman or Ironman?
Clay Adams: Now Batman easy. Yeah.
Nate: Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel?
Clay Adams: Wonder Woman. Yeah.
Nate: Super strength or super smart?
Clay Adams: Super strength. Cause I'm not very strong.
Nate: Cool. Favorite illustrator?
Clay Adams: Favorite illustrator? You know what? I love the work of George Perez. I, his stuff just captured me when I was a kid and it just blew me away and I could look at his stuff all day long.
Nate: Awesome. Favorite writer?
Clay Adams: Favorite writer, Alan Moore hands Down. Yeah.
Nate: All right.
Nate: Anything else that you want to share about comics that now has come up in this conversation? Anything else?
Clay Adams: Just that I think that we're kind of living in a Golden Age of comics where, and not necessarily in the, in the big two sense, but just in the sense that for indie comics, I think it's a great time.
Clay Adams: All the exciting stuff that's happening in crowdfunding with Kickstarter and Indiegogo. There's no barrier to entry, which means like, if you want to make a comic, you can make a comic. It means there's a lot of stuff out there that- that, you know, maybe isn't up to the level of what you might see from a DC or a Marvel.
Clay Adams: But at the same time, there's a lot of great stuff out there that like might not get published cause a gatekeeper doesn't think it fits in whatever way or another, but it's very highly professional and well done. And I just, I love what's happening in indie comics right now.
Nate: Yeah. Do you want to shout out to any five indie comic makers out there that we can then talk to after this?
Clay Adams: Oh, yeah. Indie comics makers. There are so many good ones. So there's a guy named Charlie Stickney, who does a book called "White Ash" which is a, it started on Kickstarter.
Clay Adams: It's now being published by Scout Comics. There's another Kickstarter comic that is being published by Scout right now, which is called "Tart" by Kevin Joseph. So Kevin Joseph would be a good guy to talk to. Let's see, there's a guy named John Edingfield the Second, who does a book called Rancidville for- for kids?
Clay Adams: Colin Devonshire is a writer and also an ER doctor. So he is, he's currently saving lives and making good comics. And he- he has a book called "By The Time I Got to Dallas" and let's see, who else? There is Melody Pena- is a creator who, she has a book called "The Veligent" and her art is incredible, but she's also a sculptor.
Clay Adams: And so she makes little dragon figurines, which are super cool. So you like the dragons and some other characters that feature in her comic and she does extremely well on Kickstarter because people can't get enough of her sculptures, but- but I also think her comic is pretty great too.
Nate: Awesome. Yeah, that's great.
Nate: What a- what a cool isn't it cool how you get to know somebody so quickly in this interview?
Clay Adams: Absolutely, yeah.
Nate: Yeah, man. Thanks for doing it. And thanks for all your help with with the course that we're taking, but by Jim Higgins right now, thanks for that.
Nate: Absolutely
Clay Adams: man.
Nate: And we met with Andy Schmidt who is killing it over at Comics Experience.
Clay Adams: That's right.
Nate: Both of those guys.
Clay Adams: Yeah. We'll have to, we'll have to take another class together soon, somewhere else!
Nate: Yes, right. That's right. Let's keep on keeping on.
Clay Adams: Let's do it.
Nate: All right, man. Thanks so much.
Clay Adams: Thanks dude.
Nate: Have a good one.