If you've been a part of the poker community for any substantial period of time, you know who Joe Stapleton is. Whether you've listened to him on the Poker in the Ears podcast or laughed at his well-polished shtick with James Hartigan during European Poker Tour streams, you've heard him somewhere.
Stapleton has worn many hats throughout his nearly 20 years in the poker industry. In addition to his work as a poker commentator, Stapleton performs as a stand-up comic and, most recently, delved into a different comic world altogether – the comic book.
Together with Neil Gibson and his team of collaborators at Twisted Comics, Stapleton has channeled all those years in and around poker – and on the stand-up circuit – into a poker-centric graphic novel, Trapped.
PokerOrg sat down with Stapleton to hear about his journey in poker and how Trapped came together. You can watch the whole interview above or read the highlights below.
How are you, Joe? What's going on?
Man, I am great, but it is busy. I mean, look, it's better to be busy than not busy. We've got the NAPT and I just did the Poker in the Ears podcast this morning. After NAPT, we've got the Brazilian Series of Poker, UKIPT Nottingham is coming up, EPT Prague is coming up. My flight to Las Vegas is 23 hours from now. We've got the Big Game on Tour happening, the $5K NAPT Main Event, there's a RunGood event happening now at NAPT. Mixed Games Festival. Big Game auditions. It's nuts – things are crazy.
That's a much longer answer than you wanted. Do we have any time left?
James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton lead the commentary team for PokerStars' The Big Game on Tour. You've got a packed schedule; that's crazy.
It's good to be wanted, right? It's good that I've got PokerOrg wanting to talk to me. It's good that I have random fans writing to me with their poker screenplays and asking me to read them, which I begrudgingly agree to do on occasion because I think it's good to give back a little bit to the people. It's good, yeah, it's good.
Before we get into Trapped, I wanted to touch on your poker timeline. Where did it all start for you?
Well, I've been working in poker since 2005 and I would say that it wasn't really a passion of mine so much as it was just an escape. We were poor guys living in Los Angeles and I wouldn't say struggling, like nobody was starving, but we didn't have any money and we were all working bottom-tier jobs in the entertainment industry.
Poker was just a way for us to get together and blow off steam. We were playing $5 buy-in home games, but one of the things I love about poker is when you put your $5 in, you get a full stack of chips. You're rich. It's kind of like LARPing a little bit. As a poker player, you can do that at any level.
We would sit there and do the whole rub the chin thing, calculate how many outs we had, and yell at people for not playing right. You've got the one guy who asks five hours into the game how much a chip is worth and it's like, 'We've been playing since 7pm and it's midnight; how do you not know how much a green chip is worth?'
It was a way to do things with friends and that's never really changed for me. That's still my main goal at the poker table: to have fun, hang out with people, and disconnect from everything else for a little bit.
Joe Stapleton sporting a Trapped t-shirt at the poker table. How often do you find yourself at the poker table these days?
Man, not often. I'm trying to think about the last time I played poker.
With a schedule like that I'm not sure where you fit in a session.
I play when I go to the RunGood stops. I don't think I've done a home game since before the pandemic. I do end up playing when I go to London for work; I'll play a little bit.
How did Trapped come about?
There's a phrase my mom has reminded me of: 'It takes ten years to become an overnight sensation.' I've been in the poker industry for almost 20 years now and slowly these opportunities are coming my way. With this comic book, these guys came to me and said, 'Hey, we're a comic book company. Do you have any ideas for a comic book?'
Long story short, they liked one of the ideas and we wrote it.
It draws on a lot of my experiences in the poker world and, if not things I've experienced, certainly people that I know have experienced. I really wanted to do a story that people can relate to in terms of being on the outskirts of a particular group. I'm in the poker world, but I'm not a poker player. I'm not one of these people that plays for these huge sums of money. I think a lot of people can relate to being broke. I think a lot of people can relate to wanting a little bit more than what they have already in life.
I think ideally what this character goes through – it's me, but a much better-looking, much more handsome version of me, better shape, that's for sure – is that when you go through something difficult, you realize just how lucky you were for all that stuff you already had in the first place.
I didn't realize they came to you asking for pitches, that must have been a pretty cool feeling to be the one they wanted to guide them in this realm.
Yeah, it was cool. I had pitched them like four or five ideas, and they had picked one, but I said, 'Let me pitch you one more idea – it's loosely based on my life. Let's say there's a poker commentator and he's got a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because he thought that he should be on like real TV, but he's not. He's poker famous. He's kind of obnoxious about it and then he loses that. And his only option now is to play poker. He's gonna take all the skills he's learned and play poker, but he's gonna do it in Hollywood home games. He's gonna try to rise the ranks of the private, underground Hollywood scene and he gets wrapped up with the wrong people.'
And they go, 'Alright, this is the idea, this is the one we're doing.'
So, we started writing that and it was super hard work because they're in England and I live here in Los Angeles. It was also during the pandemic when PokerStars had me broadcasting most days of the week and the broadcast would start at seven or eight in the morning. So, I was getting up at 3am to write with these guys from four to seven and then do my broadcasting job.
It was really a labor of love. It's the first time I ever committed to anything at heart. I have a dozen screenplays that I wrote the title page of. I have six different pilots that I wrote the first scene to and left behind. This is the first thing that I've ever actually finished, so even if the comic was a complete flop – which I don't think it is, I think the few people who have read it so far are pretty happy about it. But even it was a complete flop, I would be proud for having finally f***ing finished something.
Yeah, you have a finished product to hold in your hands and see your name on it, that's pretty cool. It looks amazing.
The cover is amazing, the art is fantastic. The guy I co-wrote it with, Neil Gibson, he's a very accomplished, very experienced comic book writer. Even more than that, he's good at story. I'm pretty good at dialogue, I'm pretty good at characters. He's really, really good at story. We got along really well in the areas I was not good at and inexperienced in. He really walked me through every step of this process.
Trapped is available now at Twisted Comics. Use the code LOVETRAPPED for an exclusive 10% off.
