Joe Stapleton is Trapped! and We’re Delighted About It

Stand-up comedian and poker commentator Joe Stapleton loves poker. He is one of the two-man dream team who present the coverage from PokerStars events around the world. He knows the game inside out. Some of his closest friends play the game. Hell, he even plays it himself. But as this week’s release of his brand-new poker comic book Trapped! explores, maybe he hates poker too… and the results are hilarious.

A Long Time Coming

“When we hit that first hurdle I was like Guys, I have one more idea. It’s sort of based on my life…”

Trapped!, released this week on Kickstarter is the semi-autobiographical story of Joe himself as he travels from poker commentary gig to the felt itself. Except – and this is where the plot takes one of many exciting leaps forward, Stapes’ world starts to spiral. Suddenly, everything is on the line and he’s playing for his life – the highest stakes of all!

We caught up with the man himself to find out how he, Neil Gibson and Kenny Diack among others put the project in the frame.

“When the guys from Twisted Comics (formerly TPub) approached me, I pitched them a few ideas,” says Joe. “We decided we were going to write one that was basically Die Hard at the WSOP, but on the first day of writing, I admitted I didn’t really know how we could include much poker because it felt like once the heist started people would likely not be playing all that much poker.  So, when we hit that first hurdle I was like ‘Guys…I have one more idea.  It’s sort of based on my life…’ and when they heard it, they were like ‘This is the idea we’re doing.’”

Putting together a comic story is so much about the art matching the words and even enhancing them, so how were those first developmental stages with Kenny and Neil?

“You hit the nail on the head. It only took about 6-8 months to write this, but the production took close to three years! I had no idea that as a comic book writer (or co-writer in my case), it’s not like writing a screenplay where the writer has very little say once they hand it off to the director. Then, the director has wardrobe and props and set dressers and all kinds of people to make smaller decisions. When it came to the comic book, I thought writing it would be the last phase, but nope. ‘What does this character look like? What was she wearing? What art was on the walls? What did the house look like? What else was in the drawer?’ It was pretty exhausting!  And that was before having to explain how to draw the poker scenes.’

Real Life or Fantasy?

“A lot of what you see in the book are things that more or less have happened to me.”

Readers are encouraged to assume that many of the stories in the 161 pages of Trapped! – it’s a good value bang for your buck – are true to Joe’s real-life. So how much was ‘Man, that happened?’ and how much was make-believe…starting with that opening scene where Joe loses a monster pot to a wheelchair-bound female player.

“That particular story I borrowed from someone else, but I thought it was such a great story and a perfect way to set this main character on a path that punishes his many flaws: hubris, cockiness, ungratefulness, and misplaced pity toward others to name a few. The bad beat story was an exaggerated version of something that really happened, but a lot of what you see in the book are things that more or less have happened to me. For legal reasons, we can draw the line at the things where the law is broken.”

I’m not uncommon among the poker fraternity in having been for a cold drink with Joe in real life and any excursion always seems to create a story. Joe seems to attract an exciting narrative to a night out.

“You’re not wrong, Paul.” Joe laughs. “This was but a few of the stories I’ve accrued over the years.  I’ve got a lot more in there and hopefully this thing is a hit in one way or another, I’ll get the chance to tell more of them, whether in comic book form or if it’s in the form of this particular character on a screen somewhere.”

It’s exciting stuff for poker fans, as is the action in the book. Some scenes are smoking hot, and the colorful, propulsive storyline jumps off the page. Think Deadpool but with an ace up each sleeve… and a gun to his head.

“This is where having a co-writer was hugely important,” admits Joe. “They’ve been kind enough to let me call this ‘my’ comic book, but make no mistake, I did not do this alone.  Neil Gibson is a terrifically talented writer and especially horror comic book writer. I’ve got the skills, I’d like to think, but don’t have the experience or the discipline, especially when it comes to story.”

Joe explains that while he was never at a loss for clever ways to write situations or come up with jokes or dialogue, he was often totally stuck when it came to how to advance the story or finding a good reason why a character would need to do the thing he wanted them to do.

“Neil was brilliant in all these situations and basically was there with a wrench every time I broke down by the side of the road,” says Joe. “When it came to action, he was also pretty quick to mention that even though it didn’t need to have the traditional action of horror or Sci-Fi or superhero fare, but there need to be some action and he always had a keen eye for when things needed to pick up a little bit.”

Behind the Poker Curtain

“We haven’t even touched on Vegas yet. I’ve probably got four or five dozen more stories I could draw on.”

One of the many nuggets of behind-the-scenes information we find out in the book is to do with how poker tournaments really come together. Joe’s tricks of the trade are brought to life in Trapped! and we learned that the TV trick of stacks of cash being flung around tables such as High Stakes Poker are rigged – two single $100 bills are the bread in a $1 sandwich packed with stacks of cheaper bills.

“To my knowledge, this is how they used to do it on the WPT. I’m not sure if that’s what we’re seeing at the WSOP these days or not but being able to include this little piece of trivia [was fun].”

The semi-autobiographical nature of the tale is huge fun – it feels like you’re reading the comic book they tried to stop you reading at school because it was too funny. We also loved the more sensitive moments in Trapped! where Joe and his co-creators hit on timeless but touching content too such as Joe’s frenemy-ship with Alex, and her explanation of why things are very different between the sexes. It’s really hard to pitch the tone of writing just right, but they did it, so how?

“Luckily Neil is a guy that doesn’t really care about ‘woke’ stuff at all – it’s something that’s incredibly important to me. Ultimately, we both agreed that people are flawed. People are prejudiced. People are selfish. Just because those features rear their ugly heads sometimes doesn’t mean they’re bad people and it doesn’t mean the people writing about them are bad people either. If you’re saying it was pitched correctly, I accept that, but I’m not going to lie – writing a book where the first scene is a farce starring a quadriplegic, the second lead wants to use her influence to have transactional sex with beautiful women, and the main villains are Latino drug dealers… you really hope people don’t focus on those things too myopically.”

The story builds to a really satisfying conclusion in Trapped! and without spoiling it for readers, it all comes together like a Shane Black movie. Perhaps that’s where the Joe of the comic book might end up.

“The publisher’s entire business model is about creating successful IPs [intellectual properties] that they can eventually turn into movies and television. They’ve already signed some development deals with other projects I’m not allowed to mention yet, but they’re all pretty confident we’re about to be taking some meetings about Trapped! in the same arena.”

Joe has some ideas for sequels and admits he’d be inclined to stick with this winning formula. Art imitating the real life of Joe Stapleton, this might include a trip to London, or maybe even Europe.

“One [idea] is a Knives Out-style murder mystery that happens in a mansion poker game,” he tells us. “We haven’t even touched on Vegas yet. I’ve probably got four or five dozen more stories I could draw on to continue these, but I’m not going to lie: being able to have a writing staff and a director and a props department makes it all a lot more appealing.”

Watch this frame. Just like in the comic book exploits of Joe Stapleton in Trapped!, things are about to get very exciting.