Join author Ryan Gutierrez as he sits down with Thomas Umstattd Jr., for an insightful conversation about storytelling, publishing trends, and literary traditions.
In this episode, we explore:
Key takeaway: “Having the courage to say ‘I’m not for everyone, but I am for this group of people’ and making something they absolutely love—if you have that creative courage, commercial success is a lot easier to find.”
Whether you’re a writer looking to improve your marketing strategy, a reader interested in literary traditions, or simply love great storytelling, this conversation offers something for everyone!
Follow Ryan Gutierrez here.
In this episode of The Big Draw, Ryan sits down with Thomas Umstattd Jr. of the Novel Marketing podcast for a sprawling, thoughtful conversation. They move from Robert E. Howard’s pulp heroes to King Arthur, from westerns to dystopias, from bedtime stories to box office strategy, and from Rome’s fall to Washington stepping down from power.
What starts as a chat about Solomon Kane and a new Arthurian comic grows into a wide-ranging exploration of archetypes, morality, and what our heroes say about us.
Key takeaways
Archetypal characters like Conan, Solomon Kane, Arthur, and King David keep resurfacing because they tap into deep, shared ideas about courage, justice, and power.Westerns and dystopias are two ends of a moral spectrum about government: can power serve the good, or is it inherently corrupt?Moral clarity in fiction is not childish. It is often more resonant and rewatchable than endlessly “gray” characters and settings.The most commercially successful stories are rarely “for everyone.” They are aimed fiercely at a specific audience who then drag everyone else to them.King Arthur, Cincinnatus, Caesar, and Washington are not just history and legend. They function as founding myths that shape how whole nations imagine leadership.Returning to clear archetypes and old heroic patterns is not regression. It can be the most radical and needed move in a disoriented culture.The Longest-Running Book Marketer In Podcasting Meets The Big Draw
Everybody, it’s me again. It’s Ryan.
This episode of The Big Draw is a special one for me. I have the wonderful Thomas Umstattd Jr. on the show. I wanted to make sure I said his last name right.
I’m a big fan of this man’s channel. He runs what I believe is the longest-running novel marketing podcast in history, Novel Marketing. I listen to his stuff a lot while I work on my own literary projects, and I think he’s brilliant. He has a great head on his shoulders, and I’m glad to have him on.
How are you doing, Thomas?
I’m doing well. Thank you for having me.
Absolutely. Do you want to address my audience with anything in particular? Maybe tell them more about yourself before we get into Solomon Kane, which I cannot wait to talk about?
It’s excellent. It’s wonderful.
We actually started getting into this topic before we hit record, and I stopped us because I wanted to save it for the show. You were talking about Solomon Kane, and I would love to know what your thoughts are about that, because you had kindly compared some of the work I do to Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane stories.
Conan, Solomon Kane, And The Archetype Of The Hammer Of God
Yeah. So Conan is of course the more famous of the Robert E. Howard stories.
Conan is a figure who stands against civilization. In a typical Conan story, civilization is evil and corrupt. The kings are corrupt. The wizards are corrupt.
Conan is not a good man in a moral sense. But he has a code of honor. It’s his code of honor that insulates him from the corruption of the society around him while he is smashing bad guys and killing demons and saving damsels.
When Robert E. Howard stopped writing Conan, he shifted mostly to this other character, Solomon Kane. Those stories take place, I think, in the 1600s. Kane is a Puritan. A warrior Puritan.
Imagine a violent Presbyterian with a big black Puritan hat who goes around fighting zombies and killing evil. He is a very righteous man.
One of the interesting things about the stories is that there is a lot of deus ex machina. He is not very pious in the conventional sense. You do not see him praying a lot. But you see him being seemingly very lucky.
As you read, you realize, “Oh, wait. God is looking after him as he fights these monsters.”
And Black Marrow, your character, seems very similar. He is fighting evil. He is rough around the edges. He is not advancing good so much as he is destroying evil, which is really fun for a protagonist.
You asked if I had known about Solomon Kane. I feel like I bring him up once a month on my YouTube channel. I am like a grandpa who starts sundowning. I talk about Solomon Kane. I talk about my time as a boxing coach. I talk about five or six key things on a loop.
Something that might shock you: anyone reading Black Marrow would think, “This guy clearly loves Robert E. Howard.” But I actually did not start reading Howard until about a year ago. Then I got really into it.
I had written Black Marrow book one before I knew much about Solomon Kane, which is really funny. When I finally read the Kane stories I was like, “Wow. This is so my taste.”
One point of confusion for me was the order of Howard’s characters. I had thought that Solomon Kane came first and Conan came after.
I could be wrong, but I believe Solomon Kane came second because he is not coming out of copyright anytime soon. Conan is.
The first Conan stories will be exiting copyright in just a few years. That means anyone can write a Conan story. By the time a writer finishes a new Conan novel, some of those early stories will actually be in the public domain.
Whereas I think Solomon Kane will take longer.
If I had to pick which of those two characters I would want to work on, it would be Solomon Kane without question. I think he is a far more interesting character personally.
Yeah. And he is an archetype.
The fact that you found your way to this kind of character on your own before discovering him is very archetypal. These patterns show up independently in different minds. That is part of what archetypes do.
Conan is also very much an archetype. And Arthur is an archetype.
I have some thoughts on Arthur and your King Arthur book, if you want to talk about that. We can keep going on Kane too, but I have a lot of Arthur thoughts.
Anything you want to talk about. I keep the format of the show pretty loose. You guide the conversation. I am here to enjoy your company.
King Arthur, King David, And The Westernization Of The Old Testament
The Arthur stories are very archetypal and they are very much inspired by the biblical story of King David and his mighty men.
And if you look at the story of David and where it fits in the Old Testament, you see something else fascinating.
The Old Testament follows a single people group through basically every epoch of civilization:
To tell that whole story, you need about 1500 years. You see all these different “ages” in the life of one people.
There are seasons where the story feels very much like a western. David is very much a sheriff in the Wild West, trying to bring civilization, fighting off the Philistines.
That is very much like Arthur fighting the Saxons. He is trying to establish a government and use government as a force for good. All you really need is a tumbleweed blowing between David and Goliath. It is the same kind of showdown.
Then there are other seasons that feel like dystopian stories, where the government itself is evil and corrupt, and the protagonist is a seemingly powerless outsider who has to stand up against it.
You see that with Elijah facing King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.
I feel like you can place most stories on this continuum:
The big question along that spectrum is:
Is the government good and can its power be used for good,
or is government power being used to do evil?
Arthur is interesting because he is not just a warrior. He is a king.
Arthur stories read almost like political thrillers. He is trying to create a government that can survive in a world of giants, wizards, invading tribes from the north, and everything else.
That is an angle I am really interested in.
The conflict between what makes a great leader and what makes a hero. Those do not always align.
Especially with the ideals of a medieval king:
Those can collide. Sometimes what a king must do to preserve his kingdom is in tension with what a saint would do to preserve his soul.
That conflict inside a character fascinates me.
And I love something else you did: you just made a connection I often think about. The way you tied the American western to European fantasy.
I have often called the western a kind of distant cousin or grandchild of European fantasy. They tap into similar things.
I think it is helpful to clarify what we mean by “western,” because there are two kinds.
Cowboy hats, boots, pistols, dusty towns.
You can slap that aesthetic onto the opposite kind of story.Cowboy BebopFireflyFirefly looks like a western. But it is actually very dystopian. They are not creating civilization. They are just trying to survive in a corrupt empire while wearing big hats.
That is what we have been talking about.
The sheriff trying to bring law and order to a lawless world.
Because the world is so lawless, he must also be a warrior. He cannot just be a politician. He has to be willing to pull out his six-shooter and shoot the bad guy.I just watched Tombstone this week with some friends, and there is a great line where one of the Cowboys defects from the outlaw gang. He says, “There has to be some law.”
That line is the core of the narrative western:
Are we going to be men of laws,
or are we going to live in a world where the strong do what they will
and the weak suffer what they must?
And the character who says that in Tombstone is interesting. He is not even a core member of the gang. He is more of a hanger-on. A sycophant who idolized them. You watch him realize, “I have been worshiping the wrong people.”
That turn in his character is powerful.
Tombstone is one of the best movies ever made. You can find almost anything you want in it:
I feel bad it took me this long to watch it. It was my first time. And I realized, “Wow. Westerns can be good.”
I am guessing you were not really a western guy most of your life.
I had not watched many. I grew up with The Alamo with John Wayne. But that is more of a historical military film that wears western clothes.
It is western in its aesthetic. In a sense, it is also western in that it is about building a civilization. But that story is very much a conversation about civilization and government.
The Mexican troops in that film are shown to be very honorable. They follow just war norms. They show mercy to women. They respect flags of truce. They negotiate.
It is less a clash of civilizations and more a clash of governments. Two kinds of republics in tension inside the same civilization.
I remember that movie, and I remember thinking at the time that, if not for the government conflict, these two groups of men would probably be friends.
Yeah. Historically, that is true to some degree.
Stephen F. Austin, in the real story, was actually in Mexico negotiating for Texas to become a state of Mexico.
At that time, Texas was a Mexican territory. The Texans wanted full statehood with all the rights and responsibilities that came with that.
Then the Mexican government came for their guns. And the Texans said, “This is a deal breaker.”
Yeah. That is one of those points of contention that goes beyond what people outside Texas often expect.
Lonesome Dove, Tombstone, And The Elemental Western
People in the chat are suggesting westerns you should watch. Gigi just asked if you have seen Lonesome Dove. She and I are good friends and we have never discussed it, which is funny because it might be my favorite movie of all time.
Technically it is a miniseries. And look at this cast:
It is an ensemble cast in a six-hour miniseries, and it feels like an epic tome. Not just vignettes, but a sweeping story about different people’s lives in the West.
The novel is one of my favorite books ever, but the series is also a masterpiece.
Robert Duvall has said that the character he plays there is still his favorite role of his whole career.
The premise: two former Texas Rangers want to start a cattle ranch in Montana. They are all the way down at the border with Mexico. They have to take several hundred head of cattle across the entire country.
There is danger, romance, heartbreak.
It is just incredible. I watch it every year.
My only hesitation in recommending it to you is this: after you watch it, other westerns will feel flat. It is like starting anime with a masterpiece. Everything else struggles in comparison.
But Lonesome Dove is free on YouTube as a full miniseries. I think it is in the public domain or close.
I have it on my list now.
So I want to go back to what you said about King Arthur and King David, because that really grabbed me.
How familiar are you with the pre‑Christian Arthur, the Arthur that existed in Welsh and Celtic tales before Britain became fully Christian?
Pre‑Christian Arthur, Blood-Drenched Kings, And Conan’s Freedom Fantasy
I am not that familiar with him, no.
There is some debate about how long Britain has been Christian. There is a school of thought that says Britain was Christianized before all the apostles had even died.
Later, in the 450s, the pope sent a delegation to Christianize the island. When that delegation arrived, they found Christians already there. They had been Christians for a long time. They had monasteries.
They did not have Bibles. They had belief in Christ and they would tell the gospel story with colored beads on bracelets.
If you ever did Vacation Bible School and made those little bracelets where each color represents part of the gospel, that practice is actually ancient. It goes back to what one writer called “the misty dawn of the British Isles.”
We do not have good written records because the Saxons burnt so many of them. So some of it is tradition and speculation.
There is a tradition that Pontius Pilate ended up serving as a governor in Britain and brought the gospel, converting and bringing the Grail.
That is one reason the Grail stories are connected to Britain. In that tradition, Christians brought the Grail to Britain right away.
So the idea is that the Grail was smuggled out of Rome to Britain. That is fascinating.
It makes sense that Britain might have been Christian that early, especially if it was an outpost of Roman administration.
What I had picked up from scholars talking about the pre‑Christian Arthur was that the early stories were Welsh. And the morality of Arthur in those tales is totally different.
You described Arthur as hero and king, and that is right for the later stories. But the pre‑Christian oral stories portray him more as a conqueror.
He is closer to Conan the Barbarian. Not a good man going out to do the right thing, but a blood-drenched conqueror you admire for his strength.
That is very much a Conan character. Conan becomes king in the stories. He loses his kingdom and has to get it back.
It is a very David-like shape, but extremely violent. And David himself was blood-drenched. That is why God did not allow him to build the temple.
David paid a bride price of 200 Philistine foreskins. That is not exactly the biography of a man of peace.
And Conan, to me, is built around something different than moral heroism.
The core fantasy of Conan is untethered freedom.
The fact that he often opposes truly wicked men is almost incidental. That is part of what happens when you are an adventurer. But he is not out to destroy evil or create a just world.
That makes him fun to read in some ways. He is a kind of chaotic force. I would probably place him as chaotic neutral rather than chaotic good.
One of the frustrating things about Conan entering the public domain is Christians saying, “We should make a Christian Conan.”
But Christianity is a religion of building. It is about a kingdom with a king. It is a religion of order.
Conan, at his core, is a non‑Christian archetype, like pre‑Christian Arthur. He is not building. He is destroying or taking.
A lot of the Conan stories are not about rescuing a princess. They are about him robbing a palace.
He is not there to kill evil. He is there to rob the place. It just so happens the palace is evil. He kills bad men along the way, but he leaves at the end with treasure.
I just finished one of the stories where Conan raids the ruins of a lost civilization. The people there are trying to sacrifice a woman to a giant snake. Conan rescues her, but the whole time he is thinking about how beautiful she is.
That is his motivation. Not “No one should be devoured by a giant snake,” but “Maybe if I rescue her she will sleep with me.”
There is a blunt joy to that instinct‑driven character.
Then you read Solomon Kane and it feels like Robert E. Howard is arguing with himself about what he wants in a hero.
Kane’s moral certitude is my favorite device in those stories. It makes him:
He sees himself as the hammer of God made flesh. But he also has to wrestle with things like Nolonga, the African witch doctor who becomes his friend.
Kane has to confront his prejudices. He has to reconcile his Puritan faith with magic staffs and witch‑doctor lore that seem to work.
So you see this tension between:
I have to admit, I have not read all the Solomon Kane stories yet, so I am not fully up on the ethos.
But characters like him are interesting because in some ways they function as the angel of death from the Exodus story.
A lot of people grow up with a VeggieTales picture of God from children’s Sunday school. Be nice. Do not hurt feelings.
That is not the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible sends an angel of death to massacre the firstborn of Egypt. He sends fire from heaven. People are swallowed by the earth or devoured by worms. Evil is sometimes destroyed violently.
Those bits are often edited out of children’s versions of the stories. They do not make VeggieTales episodes about that.
We rarely see the angel of death archetype in modern fiction:
“I have been sent by God to destroy evil.”
There is so much to explore there.
Solomon Kane is not quite that. If anything, I think your character Black Marrow is closer.
Black Marrow is like the hammer of God. There is no negotiation. No mercy.
The time for pleading has passed. Judgment has come.
That is a terrifying character, even when you are on the right side of the story.
Anyone with that personality is intimidating, even to allies. That is why I wanted Black Marrow to look somewhat monstrous.
I see two main superhero archetypes, and they are defined really well by Superman and Batman:
One inspires by virtue. The other terrifies by representing what happens when you stray.
Both can be effective. One is aspirational. The other is punitive.
That pattern is very old.
In Exodus, Israel is taken to two mountains. One is the mountain of blessings. The other is the mountain of curses.
On one mountain, they hear all the blessings for obeying God. On the other, they hear the curses for disobedience.
Those are your two heroes: Superman and Batman. The angel of blessing and the angel of death.
There is a season for each.
Elemental Westerns, Moral Clarity, And The Fatigue Of Endless Gray
Black Marrow, for me, does not just represent that Batman‑type hero. He represents an entire genre of western.
I think of two broad kinds of westerns:
Black Marrow fits into that second category.
You see that kind of thing in Pale Rider. A ghostly gunslinger arrives in a corrupt town, calling himself a preacher, and just takes apart the system. He kills his way through local officials who genuinely deserve it.
For some reason, in the last few decades, we stopped making elemental westerns. We kept making the modern, morally gray kind.
I think the decline of the western is less about the setting and more about the audience getting tired of:
“Everybody is a dirtbag. There are no real heroes. There is no one to root for.”
The early westerns had very overt moral clarity.
The good guys wore white hats. The bad guys wore black hats.
It was exciting at first. “Wow, it is so realistic and gritty.” But it lacks:
In visual art, a drawing like the ones you do, a lot of the meaning comes from contrast:
You could do that in black and white, but you cannot do it if everything is gray.
When every character is morally gray, there is no interesting contrast. It is all camouflage.
You need a clearly good character if only to make the evil characters look more evil. You need the evil character to make the good character look good.
But for that to work, the writer needs to believe that good and evil exist.
If the writer has bought into a worldview where everything reduces to power and there is no real right and wrong, just oppressors and oppressed, then:
Part of what makes Black Marrow interesting is his morality. Part of what makes Solomon Kane interesting is his morality.
Once you have a morality, you can wrestle with two great questions:
If you deny that morality exists, those questions stop being useful. And the answers stop being interesting.
I run into this all the time. Writers say they want to avoid cliché by making everything morally gray.
At this point, moral grayness is the cliché.
Do you think the main function of traditional stories has been to carry moral context across generations?
Bedtime Stories, Sir George, And How Parents Smuggle Wisdom Into Fiction
There are different kinds of stories. But I think the most fundamental is the bedtime story a parent makes up for a child.
Now that I am a dad, I tell my kids bedtime stories. I have two little “universes” I draw from:
I use those two streams for two slightly different purposes.
Her father, the king, sends her to spend a day with a cow rancher to learn how to milk cows and how dairy production works. Another day she might learn where leather comes from, or how thatched roofs are made.
Those stories let me smuggle in:
A lot of kids now have no idea where things come from. That is not really taught in school.
By setting it in a medieval world, I can tell versions of these stories that I actually understand. I could not tell you how to manufacture asphalt shingles step by step. But I can describe thatching a roof with straw.
And of course, they are also meant to be fun and to help the kids fall asleep. Though I am honestly not great at the “make them sleepy” part.
I do not know if stories have one single purpose. But I do think what I am doing with my kids is ancient.
Parents have probably always told:
When scholars collect old folklore, they often find many different versions of the same story, because oral storytelling is extremely audience‑adapted.
In some ways, it is like a role‑playing game. The game master is telling a story, but the players influence it:
“No, Daddy, he did not do that. He did this.”
I think telling bedtime stories is good practice for any storyteller. Many authors I have interviewed, especially dads, tell their kids stories. I do not know if that used to be more of a mother’s role generations ago, but right now a lot of fathers I know do it.
Listen to Jordan Peterson break down classic fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel. He can preach a whole sermon off a single old folk story.
There is a lot of truth embedded in those tales.
I think I know the lecture you are talking about.
He has a way of unpacking symbols and pulling out coherent meaning that is really impressive.
Who Are Stories For? Superman, Adults, And The Strange Problem Of Growing Up
There is something else I want to ask, because it connects to nerd culture and to what you just said about stories and kids.
There is a trend I do not like. People have lost the thread on who the target audience of certain stories is supposed to be.
Have you seen the new Superman trailer? The James Gunn one with the dog.
I saw the teaser and I think I have seen most of the full trailer.
After that trailer, I had friends and even my brothers say things like, “It just looks like a little kid thing,” as if that is disappointing. As if it being for children is a flaw.
We were children when we fell in love with the character. Superman was designed to be:
And yet, there is this insistence that the character needs to grow darker and more mature at the same rate as our lives did.
Life got harder, we discovered more darkness, so now we want the man in the red cape to be full of angst and existential despair.
There is something selfish about that.
I am not saying adults cannot love Superman. I do. But there is a difference between:
I know families whose kids did not like Man of Steel because it terrified them. It is a bleak world.
I heard a toy collector on YouTube, RetroBlasting, say something that stuck with me. He is a man in his forties who loves action figures. He is very clear about the fact that:
“I understand this is primarily for children. I just love it too.”
He wants Star Wars and Superman to remain things kids can enjoy. Because once you pull them entirely out of that context and only make them for adults, they become something else. A kind of Frankenstein creation.
Do you see that dynamic in writing and marketing?
Find Your Timothy: Why Stories For “Everyone” Sell To No One
Yes. This is incredibly important for writers, and it is rarely taught in any serious way in writing programs, especially if the teacher is very postmodern.
You must adapt your art to your audience.
Most authors do not think about their reader until after the book is finished.
Then they start worrying about marketing. They listen to my podcast. And at that point the book is often not shaped for any particular reader at all.
“That book you wrote before you learned marketing?
Put it away. Do not publish it yet.
Come back in five years.
Meanwhile, write a new book for a specific reader.”
The key is not just to have a loose target demographic, but to have a target person.
I call it finding your Timothy, based on the books of 1 and 2 Timothy in the Bible. Those letters were written to one individual.
In the New Testament, you see a surprising amount of writing that is:
And when you look at great authors’ lives, you find something similar.
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for one person: Christopher Tolkien, his son.
“If I can thrill Christopher, the book will be a success.”
My name is not Christopher Tolkien, but I loved The Hobbit. Millions of others did too.
They outperform them in sales.
I pulled up some 2025 box office numbers before this. Compare:
Which do you think sold more tickets?
Not only has Minecraft done better, it has done roughly twice as well at the time we are speaking, and it still has weeks of theater life left. Captain America: Brave New World is basically done.
This seems counterintuitive. People assume:
“If I make a story for everyone, I will sell more.”
That is not how it works in a world with:
People will only choose the very best thing for them at that moment.
The Minecraft movie is for:
At least half the ticket sales are hate‑watchers. Parents dragged to the theater.
They hate the movie. They rate it poorly. But their kid is standing up during the show, yelling “chicken jockey” and throwing popcorn.
That is commercial success. If you can thrill that 12‑year‑old boy enough, you sell:
He will drag her to the theater.
That was the secret of Harry Potter too. It targeted 12‑year‑old boys. Hollywood for a long time had an entire engine aimed at that demographic, because if you can win them, they pull in:
So the trick is not to quietly please everybody. It is to fanatically thrill a narrow group so much that they will not shut up about your story.
“Fan” is short for fanatic. If someone simply likes your story, they are not a fan.
People pointed to the Barbie movie as a good example of this.
I have no interest in it personally. But that movie knew exactly who its audience was and went hard for them.
Everything is pink. Every line of marketing is aimed at:
Meanwhile Oppenheimer came out the same weekend. That is more my thing. History, Nolan, atomic bombs. But Nolan is such a brand now that he could make almost anything and it would be a big event.
And speaking of Nolan, what do you think about him doing The Odyssey?
Barbie, Marvel, The Odyssey, And Why You Must Please Your Own Tribe First
I think Christopher Nolan could do a good job with the Odyssey.
The key, though, is exactly what we just talked about.
Barbie succeeded because it was:
A Barbie movie for people who love Barbie.
Hollywood, for years now, has been obsessed with making:
X for people who do not like X.
A Star Wars movie for people who do not like Star Wars.
A Marvel movie for people who do not like superhero films.
They think this will “expand the audience.”
So they make The Marvels for women who do not like Marvel. Those women still do not go see it.
If someone does not like your genre, they are not suddenly going to love your genre because you changed the casting.
You must be successful first with the people who already love your thing.
Include the in‑jokes. Include the deep cuts. Give the fan an opportunity to turn to the person they dragged to the theater and say:
“Okay, that guy, that line, that symbol, let me explain that to you…”
Those conversations after the movie are free marketing.
Take the early Marvel films. Spotting Stan Lee in cameos was a running joke:
“See that old guy? He created Spider‑Man.”
It was fun. It made fans feel like they were in on something.
With the Odyssey, you have:
Western civilization is a blending of:
Those two streams hold up a lot of our ideas. You have to be respectful of that.
You cannot just make Odysseus a woman and expect it to land.
Is that what they are doing?
There are rumors and early chatter about a female Odysseus. If they do that, they are not making the Odyssey for people who love Homer. They are making it for people who want to see the Odyssey deconstructed.
It is similar to the rumors about the new Chronicles of Narnia adaptation. The same woman who made Barbie is attached to it.
That is such a strange pairing.
It suggests she is going to deconstruct Lewis rather than honor him. I doubt she sees eye to eye with his worldview.
Even putting aside my personal beliefs, that seems like a bad business move.
You are not going to make anyone truly happy.
From a purely financial standpoint, there are so many directors who would kill to adapt Narnia with reverence.
Part of the reason Peter Jackson did such a good job with The Lord of the Rings was that he:
A Lord of the Rings movie for Lord of the Rings fans.
He was not trying to expand the audience. He was trying to thrill the existing one.
If you thrill the base, they bring friends.
If you make them angry, they tell their friends not to watch.
Word‑of‑mouth is still the strongest metric there is.
Sometimes movies pick up in their second or third weekend simply because the word on the street is, “This is way better than we expected.”
That is much more likely with a narrowly targeted film.
Look at the box office right now. A film like The King of Kings, or Skinners at number three, is doing well and holding steady. Neither aims at everyone. You can look at the poster and know:
“Oh, this is for that tribe.”
They had the courage to say:
“We are not for everyone.
We are for these people,
and we will make something they absolutely love.”
Creative courage like that makes commercial success easier.
Red Dead Redemption 2, Doom, And The Hunger For Virtuous Power Fantasy
Another angle on this: I find a lot of media assumes we all want to play or watch villain fantasy.
Have you played Red Dead Redemption 2?
I tried. Technically, that game is a masterpiece. It is gorgeous. It simulates everything, down to your beard growth and how much you eat.
But you are forced to play as an outlaw, and I did not enjoy that.
In Bethesda games, you can choose:
But Red Dead Redemption 2 is too much on rails for me. It advertises choice, but from the first mission you are beating a man in front of his wife for money.
I do not want that power fantasy.
For some people, that is exactly what they want. They want to live out an evil path in a game like Fallout.
But if you want to live out a virtuous fantasy, there is not much for you right now.
Arthur, as a good and virtuous king, is rare.
Hollywood does not give us many heroes like that anymore. Everything is so morally gray.
Even the good men we rooted for as kids have been deconstructed.
Luke Skywalker, once the archetype of a hopeful hero, is now:
There have not been many new heroes built to replace what was torn down.
We can bemoan this, but it is actually a huge opportunity.
Those new archetypal heroes are waiting to be written.
Resetting Arthur: Once And Future Myths, Not Renaissance Fanfiction
There has not been a really good Arthur story told in a long time, partly because the people writing Arthurian tales do not understand Arthur as a character.
You cannot understand Arthur if you do not understand David. You cannot understand Merlin if you do not understand Samuel.
You cannot understand Lancelot if you do not understand Joab, David’s second in command.
You have to look at what the authors of the Middle Ages were reading and absorbing.
It is like the founding fathers. You cannot understand the Constitution just by reading the Constitution. You have to read:
You have to go one layer back.
For whichever author is willing to dig that deep and really understand Arthur, the field is wide open.
“Which part of the Arthurian story resonates in the current zeitgeist?”
Right now, I do not think it is Le Morte d’Arthur. I do not think the betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere is the main note we need.
The resonant part is Arthur at the very beginning:
In a world where many people feel crushed between chaos and tyranny, that is the story we are starving for.
When I first started developing my Arthur graphic novel, I had a co‑writer. We plotted together at the beginning before his first child was born and he became time‑poor.
We agreed on something crucial:
How we were going to handle Lancelot.
If we did not agree on that, we could not have collaborated.
We wanted to acknowledge that Renaissance cheating plotline, but treat it for what it is in the larger history:
In the oldest tales, Sir Gawain is the main knight. Lancelot does not exist yet.
He appears later, as a sort of self‑insert. A knight invented by a particular writer who wanted to:
Over time, public memory of Arthur got warped. Many modern people know him mainly as:
“The guy whose wife cheated on him with his best friend.”
Which might be the least interesting thing about him.
So my mission statement with this comic is:
“Let’s go back behind the fanfiction.
Let’s tell the story as someone in the 14th century,
with a fervent Christian imagination,
might have wanted to see it.”
Not literally historically accurate in style, but:
I want every page to feel like it could be a Sabaton album cover. Heavy metal plus bombastic Christian certainty.
That is the vibe guiding me.
With Black Marrow, the vibe is:
I had a mild fight with my editor when it was at a publisher. He insisted it was horror.
To me it is like Doom the video game. Doom is not horror.
In horror, the agency is with the evil. The protagonists flee.
You are not trapped in hell with demons.
The demons are trapped in hell with you.
Black Marrow is very much that. He is not being hunted by the dark. He is hunting it.
Exactly. It is not horror.
And your vision of Arthur aligns with something I think is historically important.
Founding Myths: Arthur, Caesar, And The Long Shadow Of Our Heroes
Arthur is not just a character. He is a founding myth.
He has haunted the kings of England for over a thousand years.
There is this mythical, good, and just king hanging over every English monarch’s head. The standard they are compared against is not an actual historical king. It is Arthur.
England has never had a historical King Arthur. The United States has had a President Arthur, but England has never had a King Arthur.
It is not for lack of trying. Every time a royal child is named Arthur, something happens. He does not become king.
Arthur functions as the ideal in the English imagination.
Who is their founding myth?
Their rulers called themselves Tsars, which comes from Caesar.
They modeled themselves after Julius Caesar.
“Created a desert and called it peace.”
He destroyed the nation in order to “save” it.
The Russians did not model themselves on Augustus, who tried to restore older virtues. They modeled themselves on Julius. They did not call themselves Augustines. They called themselves Tsars.
When Vladimir Putin might honestly be one of the better leaders you have had in 500 years, you have had some awful ones.
If your measuring stick for leadership is Julius Caesar, then:
become almost normalized.
Founding myths matter. They shape what a people think is possible and acceptable.
The English are blessed that their defining mythical king is:
That is a powerful founding myth.
We have to fight to preserve it.
If you do not have Arthur, you default to Caesar. And Caesar is worse in every way.
Your retention of history is insane to me. I read history and then recall it like a half‑remembered dream.
It is also encouraging to me as I work on this Arthur book.
Glastonbury Abbey, A Giant’s Skeleton, And Redesigning Arthur As A Tempest
I want to tell you a story I stumbled onto in my research that changed how I am drawing Arthur.
Are you familiar with the legend of Glastonbury Abbey?
You are going to love this.
You just described how Arthur’s myth hangs over English kings. At one point, a king who was not a native Englishman became obsessed with the Arthur legend. He might have been Norman.
“A superhero king. The once and future king.”
But he did not like that the people said Arthur would return. That made him feel like a mere steward, a placeholder.
“I love Arthur. I want to honor your culture.
I will find where he is buried and give him a heroic, public resting place.”
There was a long‑running story that Arthur’s body had been hidden after his death because of Saxon invasions.
The monks at Glastonbury Abbey eventually claimed that they had found his tomb beneath their abbey.
What I love is that the way they told it has just enough plausibility to be tantalizing.
If it were a bad fiction, they would have “stumbled” onto a tomb lined with gold while angel choirs sang.
Instead, it goes like this:
The monks say his forearm is as long as the shin bone of a normal man.
Their tallest monk stands next to it and looks small by comparison.
They assume it is Arthur and Guinevere.
They say Arthur was basically a giant.
They reburied the remains with honor. Glastonbury became a pilgrimage site.
Whether any of that is true is almost secondary to how evocative it is.
Because as an artist, I read that and thought:
“Arthur is not just a king. He is a tempest.
He should feel like a half‑giant on the page.”
According to some historians I have read, Excalibur did not start as a magic relic. It was originally just a word meaning “sword” or “steel.”
It may be that over centuries, people misread a description of Arthur himself as “great steel” or “great strength,” and turned that into a weapon.
Saying someone wields a mighty sword might just mean they are mighty.
That gave me permission to do this:
Not because I want him to be literally a fantasy giant, but because I want to capture that mythic exaggeration those monks were pointing at.
That does give him a bit of a King Saul energy.
Saul is described as head and shoulders taller than everyone else. He is physically imposing.
He starts out good and virtuous, fighting enemies, bringing peace. Then he falls into egotism and disobedience.
He becomes a tragic figure. His line could have lasted forever. Instead, his sin cuts his dynasty off.
What caused Saul’s downfall again?
Saul, Samuel, And Merlin As A Biblical Prophet
Saul was powerful and effective in war. He did a terrible job at trusting God.
In Israel’s constitution, the roles were divided:
That was a three‑branch system. Not identical to the US system, but recognizably similar.
Kings were not allowed to offer sacrifices. That was a priestly duty.
There is a moment when Saul is under pressure. Samuel, the prophet, is late. The army is jittery. The enemy is near.
Saul decides to offer the sacrifice himself to keep the troops calm.
Samuel arrives and basically says:
“You violated your office. You disobeyed God.”
That act of self‑will and impatience becomes the hinge of his story.
There is a famous line that comes out of that confrontation:
“Obedience is better than sacrifice.”
As a father, I feel this. I will be trying to get one of my kids dressed for an outing. We are late. I need them to lie down on the changing table so I can change them quick.
Instead of obeying, they give me a big hug.
I love the hug. But in that moment, I do not want sacrifice. I want obedience.
That gave me a new lens on that biblical scene.
Saul thinks his sacrifice will please God. What God wanted was simple trust and obedience.
That is a great parallel.
And that makes Merlin make more sense too in Arthur’s world.
Merlin is not really a priest. He is closer to a prophet.
He is outside the formal power structure. He rebukes. He warns. He does miracles.
He is essentially Samuel with a staff and a robe.
Priests in the Old Testament do not do many miracles. Prophets do.
Merlin dresses and acts like an Old Testament prophet.
That is why it makes sense in the later Christianized Arthur stories to frame him that way rather than as a druid.
Pagan Druids, Christian Wizards, And Arthur As Bridge Culture
The funny thing is Merlin’s origin changes along with the story’s religious transformation.
In the earlier Celtic or druidic version, Merlin is:
That is very druidic. Magic in that frame is about:
Then the story passes into Christian hands. Christians do not really have room for that kind of magic.
Anything paranormal that is not directly God is, in that worldview, demonic.
So the later version says:
He ends up a man who is half in the dark, half in the light.
I like both versions. But I realized something:
If Merlin has lived for as long as he seems to have lived in the legends,
he might not even remember which origin story is true.
Maybe some of that confusion can be woven into the narrative.
I want my graphic novel to acknowledge:
Arthur himself can be the bridge:
I like the idea that the knights, as serious Christians, distrust Merlin.
Over time, they see that:
You can imagine a 14th‑century Christian eventually reaching a place where they say:
“If God moves through all of us,
perhaps He moves even through a strange, liminal man like Merlin.”
In my head, Arthur represents the fusion of:
Merlin stands at the border between ages.
Rome’s Collapse, Britain’s Abandonment, And The Birth Of a Heroic Need
Another thing I came to appreciate while researching Arthur is how much people miss about cause and effect in history.
But a lot of people never connect the dots that the Middle Ages exist because Rome collapsed.
Britain was not just some island. It was a Roman outpost.
When the empire pulled back, they pulled back their troops. They abandoned their infrastructure. The economy collapsed.
Britain was left naked to invaders.
Out of that vulnerability comes the need for a heroic myth like Arthur.
He is the story Britons tell themselves about:
That is so compelling to me.
Britain had been a beacon of stability as a Roman province.
They were insulated from many of the worst Roman civil wars because they were an outpost.
Then that Roman general realized Rome had smashed itself so badly with internal conflict that he could:
That is exactly what he did.
And Britain was left alone.
The Saxons arrive and say, “Nice island you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.”
The Britons write to Rome: “Come protect us.”
Rome replies, “We are busy in the Middle East. Figure it out.”
The historical record goes dark. It is in that darkness that Arthur may have lived, or where his myth took form.
I love the comparison you made earlier, of late Rome to the later seasons of The Office.
Rome’s imperial core is melting down. The provinces are getting “You guys just manage yourselves for a while. We have money problems.”
They had runs of years where they had three emperors in one year.
The job was a death sentence. I do not know why anyone still wanted it.
One emperor, Diocletian, stands out.
He ruled relatively successfully for a while. And then he had this idea:
“The crowning act of my reign will be that I voluntarily step down like Cincinnatus.”
The empire almost immediately went back into chaos. People begged him to return.
He basically said, “Have you seen the turnips I am growing? I hate that job. I am not going back.”
He was probably the wisest one of the whole bunch.
Cincinnatus, Washington, And The American Founding Myth
That is a perfect bridge into something you mentioned before that I think is huge.
You talked about how Arthur is the founding myth for England, but he is not ours.
For us, the father figure is George Washington.
But Washington himself had a model.
He and the other founders loved a Roman called Cincinnatus.
Short version of Cincinnatus’s story:
Rome, at that time, was still a republic. They were terrified of kings.
They had two consuls who shared power for one year, then rotated out. Former consuls could not run again for ten years.
They were so wary of “supreme executive power” lodging in one man that they built this carousel of leadership.
But they also knew emergencies happen. So they had a constitutional provision for a dictator.
No dictator was supposed to rule longer than that.
One day, Rome was in trouble.
Neighboring tribes had smashed the consular army. That enemy was now marching on Rome.
There was a poor but highly respected soldier‑farmer named Cincinnatus. He had been bankrupted by his sons’ poor behavior. He was too broke to live in the city. He was out working his field.
Everyone knew he was the man who could save them.
So the Senate sent a delegation to his farm with a purple toga, the garment only a dictator could wear.
They put it on him in the field and basically said, “You are dictator now. Save us.”
Instead, after two weeks, he resigned and went back to his farm.
He did not abuse the office. He did his duty and walked away.
That is the model Washington was thinking about when he stepped down from the presidency.
Everyone expected him to stay for life.
They practically offered him a kingship.
He retired to Mount Vernon.
If Washington had remained:
We might have turned into a typical “strongman democracy” and burned out by the mid‑1800s.
I knew the story of Cincinnatus, but I did not know Washington was consciously following him.
That is a powerful connection.
Arthur As England’s Conscience, Caesar As Russia’s Shadow, And What Our Heroes Say About Us
This goes back to Arthur in a big way.
Arthur functions for England the way Cincinnatus functions for America. He is the figure everyone in power is quietly compared to.
And then you have rulers like Napoleon explicitly modeling themselves on Caesar.
He wore the myth he admired.
Leaders copy the heroes in their heads.
Today, some leaders might model themselves on Churchill. I do not know who Churchill modeled himself on.
He was such a student of history that I think he drew from the whole tapestry.
You can tell a lot about a man by who his heroes are.
You can tell a lot about a people by who their collective heroes are.
There will always be many heroes, but a few sit at the top and shape a culture’s imagination of what a human can be.
Arthur has defined the English.
We Americans gravitate toward Washington and Cincinnatus.
Russia gravitates toward Caesar.
The myths you honor are choices. They are not trivial.
Churchill, Language, And Drafting Words For War
Speaking of Churchill, I have to mention one more thing.
There is a story, maybe apocryphal, from early in World War II.
Some English leaders were already talking about terms of surrender to the Nazis. This was before America entered the war.
Churchill is supposed to have said something like:
“We will talk about surrender when every man in this room has choked on his own blood.”
Whether he actually said it or not, it feels perfectly in‑character.
He had no illusions about the Nazis. He knew surrender was not a way to go back to normal. It was a way to have:
There is another line about Churchill I love. I will paraphrase it.
“He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”
He is perhaps unique among top‑tier leaders for being:
Most of those archetypes do not overlap.
Napoleon was not famous for his oratory. Arthur is not famous for speeches. George Washington’s greatest speech was leaving office.
Churchill is almost his own archetype.
Wrapping Up: Archetypes, Culture, And Why Clear Heroes Still Matter
I know you have to get back to your family. I do not want your wife to resent me for keeping reinforcements from her.
I want to say this before you go:
This has been a total pleasure.
I feel like I could listen to you talk for twelve hours straight. It is like history ambience for artists.
So before we wind down, please tell people where they can find you and your shows.
There are three shows, plus my site.
If you want more of my cultural and narrative commentary, look for the Crafted Culture playlist on YouTube. Those are the episodes where I really dig into:
And my personal website is thomasumstattd.com. If you can spell Umstattd, you can get there.
This was wonderful. I had a great time and hope you can come on again.
This was fun. Thanks for having me.
Aftermath: Chat Reactions, English Class, And The Work Still To Do
Well, all right, everybody.
I probably missed a lot in the chat during that conversation.
What I can tell you is this:
He actually came on specifically because he wanted to talk King Arthur.
I want to pick his brain more, especially as I keep working on the Knights of Camelot graphic novel and the next volumes of Black Marrow.
I have some paid client work to do now. It is all under NDA, so I cannot show you yet.
I will post this episode on Patreon and in the Discord. Maybe I will do an uncut version there, because I will probably tighten the public version a bit and cut some of my stair‑tumble rambles.
