Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: We got a lot of people falling down a cover today.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. We do. We do.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: I mean, this is what happens when the apocalypse happens, right? Who knew that Velma was so evil?
[00:00:16] Speaker B: She is the dastardly. The most dastardly.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know if we know that yet, but.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I don't know, man. Pretty evil.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: It seems like the dialogue's leading me to believe that maybe. Well, we know she dropped nanites everywhere.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: From the first issue. First off, that was the first thing we saw. She's sitting there in Paris. She's just giving it a good old see you later.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: And we know the problem with this is that Wesley Crusher is not here to solve the nanite problem.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: He's not. And it's very depressing.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: If he was here, Wesley Crusher were done.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I know, right? He would crush it.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: What?
[00:00:54] Speaker A: That's like a Dan joke.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: I know, right?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: But that came from you. It came from me off guard. It's like something I would say, and then you said it, and it messed everything up.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: I'm so had. I had another one earlier today. Because when you're playing with Tasers, the results can be electrifying. That's great. And that also happened when I was at the shop earlier, playing with dangerous people. Don't do it.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I'm stunned right now by your admission, which I wasn't even trying to turn into a pun.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: It's totally shocking me.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Best start to a podcast ever, right here. We're talking about Tasers and stunning and electrified and puns, and we're supposed to be talking about Scooby Doo Apocalypse number two.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Well, it is an electrifying issue.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: I guess I didn't find. Actually, I think most of the electricity in the issue was off because.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Well, yeah, of course. But, I mean, it kept me on edge. Like.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: It kept you on edge. Okay, well, and that's where we're going to go. We have another cover by Jim Lee.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: What is beautiful. Beautiful.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Apparently, Jim Lee's fully committed to this concept art. We've got giffin, DeMatis, Porter, and hi fi colors again. I'm ready to go with this thing. This cover is cool.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: I like is know.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Okay, so Daphne definitely looks Jim Lee, right?
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Without explaining why, but I'm actually really impressed with the way Jim Lee drew the rest of the characters on this cover. They don't look Jim Lee. I mean, they do. It's clearly Jim Lee art. Yeah, but they're not all, like, 100% shredded and they look like people.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: I'm really impressed with this cover.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: It's kind of cool to look into know because it's what you're a neat. It's a neat way to see them all.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: I also like all the emoticons coming from Scooby that Jim Lee had to draw all those little tiny emoticons across the page. That must have been really annoying.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: I bet it's probably like, at one point, you're like, oh, this is going to be a great idea. Let's do it. Oh, this is a bad idea.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, 16 or 17 of those bubbles later.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like when you tell somebody you want chain link fence everywhere. Oh, yeah. Just put them in a chain link fence area, and then they call you and they're like, chain link fence is a very bad idea. Don't.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: That's what Zipotone's for. I learned about.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Your. If your artist is doing.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Or I guess you'd have to be on paper for that. Not the computer, too. That would be.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: I learned more about Zipotone. I read a pretty cool book, Sweet, edited by Paul Kupperberg, that collects a whole bunch of interviews that he had found on a floppy disk that were done in the late 80s, most of them for some of the direct currents and some of the DC interviews. So those interviews you'd read in the pamphlet that was at the comic store or in the back of the book, but he had the full transcripts of them.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: So not the cut down versions. So he wasn't able to save all of them. He found several of them, but we'll be citing that book tonight.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Very fun.
It's like 190 pages, and I read it in, like, two days because I'm Dan.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Commitment. Cool.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Well, it just was interesting.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, sometimes you find something like that and you just jump in and you can't help yourself.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: One. They're fun, too, because they're all, like, between five and 15 pages.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: So you're getting this kind of fun, short history from the person. Of course, the history ends in 1989, but I thought Kupperberg did a really good job putting a little. He puts a little paragraph right for each person. So if they did a lot of stuff post. When this interview happened, there was, like a four page interview with Adam Hughes. And I thought that was hilarious because I was like, what had Adam Hughes done to that point? And you're like, oh, he'd done a little bit. Yeah. But obviously, most of Adam Hughes was after 1990, I don't think Adam Hughes was nearly as. Adam Hughes wasn't Adam Hughes yet.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: He hadn't arrived.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah, he had arrived, but he hadn't arrived. He was not. Adam Hughes reviewed artist of everything that draws covers for all things.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: All things. Everything.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: So let's get into this issue.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: I do it.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: It was fun. This series continues to be fun, and I need fun in my life.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: I know this is definitely the right choice.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: All right, let's talk about not fun. The Brian Hitch. Tony S. Daniel. Justice League.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: No.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: From Rebirth. Okay. Moving forward.
Altcover. Yay. I love this one.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: It's almost like the artist of the book draws the alt covers in this, because the alt covers all refer to what's actually happening in the story.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Maybe I should have bought all the altcovers when I bought these.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: No, I think that would have been tough, because I know when I was looking for these books in the wild, it was hard to find them in places like, I would go to three comic book shops and try to hunt them down.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Well, you should just ask me. I could have given you all of my books.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: I know you could have. But I like to hunt. As you know, you've been with me going to comic book shops.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: You could. Just. By asking me first.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: It's true. It's true.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Well, we are somewhere between. Beneath the Nevada desert.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Oh, my.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Is burning man in Nevada? I thought Burning man was in.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Well, as we find in later. It's not technically that, but, yeah, it's in the desert. It's California.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Okay, but it's in the desert.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: It's in the desert.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: I kind of imagine this being in Perrump, Nevada, underneath. Like, I guess he's dead. Art Bell. That's such a nice way to introduce somebody.
I feel like this is, like, underneath Art Bell's studio.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it totally is. But he's dead.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: I feel like Art Bell would have been talking about this.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: He would have been talking about it, and then all of a sudden, like, mall people.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: And nobody would have listened. Yeah, and nobody would have been listening. Like, Art Bell would have been interviewing.
Let's create the name of the person you would have interviewed. So it would have been like, dilapidus Fink.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: And Dilapidus Fink would have come onto Art Bell and been like, I was working in an underground lab in Nevada, and I saw everything. There were nanites and government conspiracies and people trying to pacify the world. And Art Bell would be like, yes, tell us more about that. And they would do a whole radio show about this, and no one would.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Don't. I don't know if that's true or not. I think my dad listened to.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Well, I listened to Art Bell, but for pure entertainment value. I mean, what one.
Of course, I sleep now, but when I was younger, you know, I didn't sleep at. So it, you know, I'd go to bed at what, like four, five in the morning often, and then that was good for working on debate, not so good for early morning classes.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: True.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: But it was great for Art Bell. Yeah, I used to get. Is it KSFO?
[00:08:28] Speaker B: I think that's what it was.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: From San Francisco. Yeah. The high power AM radio station. Art Bell wasn't actually on in the Pacific Northwest, but I used to, on my transistor AM radio, pick up KSFO and listen to Art Bell broadcast at night.
And this book is so Art Bell.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Oh, very.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: No, it would have been something that I'm pretty sure if my dad was still alive, he would have been like, oh, my God, this book. Have you read this book? This book is so good. It reminds me of an art Bell conversation.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: This book's outstanding.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Well, let me quit glowing about the book and get us started in here. So we've got a nice six panel grid.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: And this book is tons of dialogue. So I'm not going to try to go through all the dialogue.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: You're not going to hit every single point, just the high point.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: We're not going to read this. But I think some of the fun pieces to start out, we get a fun Scooby scene. We hear them talking behind a door, and then the gang peeks out behind the door. From behind the door.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: And I think that's a great start because in the last issue, they were down in that safe zone, and they saw everything going wrong above. And so now they're trying to get out there and sneak around like a good Scooby episode and see what's going on. And we've got this hallway beautifully drawn by Howard Porter. And then we start getting them peeking out, and they're all scared and they're trembling. It reminds me of the cartoon a lot.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Oh, totally.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Even with the different character faces, they still have that reaction.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: And that gets us to the next Splash page, where we get Scooby Apocalypse. Apocalypse right now. Keith Giffin, plot and breakdowns. JM de Mateus dialogue and more dialogue. Howard Porter, pencils and inks. So doing it all, hi fi's on color, Nick Knapps on letters and Jim Lee and Alex Sinclair did the main cover. Oh, and it was not Porter on the variant cover. It was Carlos Deanda, and Brittany Holzer is the assistant editor and jabbins editor, so. And, of course, based on a concept by Jim Lee, we don't want to forget that, which is probably why it got published, because Jim Lee had a little bit of influence at this time over DC Comics or something.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Just a little bit.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Just a little bit. Maybe not so much now, but a lot then.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: There's been a few shakeups since 2016.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: You might have heard something happened since 2016. Like, everybody was infected and turned into mutants.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, that's what we're going to talk about right now in the book.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: So now there's a big fight on this main cover, the fight over the mindless, obedient slaves and Daphne. And we're going to get a lot of thiS, I think, throughout the series. But at least initially, we got Velma and Daphne going at it. Oh, yeah.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: They're not friends.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: And Daphne is probably justified in this, I think. If you thought that this person that just met you destroyed the world, I think it's fair to say that you might go after them a little.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: She. I would say Daphne's, like, totally wanting to throw punch Velma right now, and.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: It hasn't happened yet. Can I also say Howard Porter draws dogs very well, and that's maybe why Howard Porter got this job.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah. No, his drawing of dogs is very good.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Scooby is just. Every time I see Scooby in this book, it's makes you happy, Scooby. But it's like an actual.
It's not. It's not the cartoon dog we saw on the cartoon. It's definitely a dog.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: It's a dog you would see down the street.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Expressive. He makes Scooby so very expressive. Okay, next page. I don't want to glow over Scooby for an hour, but I will.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: But you could.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: So again, we've got some great dialogue here everywhere. And we have got a fight. So it's on. Daphne is doubting Velma. Everything Velma is saying.
Very expressive. And this is where we start to see sort of some societal breakdown pieces.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, for sure. I mean, you got a small enclave of people who don't know each other. They don't trust each other, and they're thrown into a situation that they have to, but they still don't, obviously, for all these reasons. And they're just going to continue to try to either fight or figure it out.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: And the first real fight is between Velma's motivation for choosing Daphne. So Velma goes after Daphne for leaving the Washington Post and doing this junkie TV show. And I believe it's that moronic television show. And they start really getting into the motivation of why she would choose her. And Chris Velma, in the next couple of pages, is making sure know, hey, I chose you because I know you're a quality. And. And Daphne's like, yeah, but I have to make money.
And so they get into it. I also want to do things that were right. Like, so now we get this sort of scientist highbrow versus know person that doesn't necessarily want to do highbrow journalism. I found this to be a lot of fun.
And Fred is just not smart in this. So just. He's ready to get sent to Guantanamo.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah, he's very.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: They see a guy in a corner, and he's just facing the corner. And Velma kind of freaks out. She goes to see her budy Eric, who's standing there. He must wear a trench coat. So Eric was every. Or is that a lab coat? That might be a lab coin.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: It's a lab coat.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Okay. I thought it was a trench coat for a minute. I thought he was every early 1990s high school debater. Yeah, but he's not.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: He's every lab worker.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: He's every lab worker. Which makes sense, because it's a lab. And we get to the next page and all of a sudden, Eric doesn't really have a face. He has, like, a moth. A black hole.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just a toothy grin, if you will.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: And we get a Jinkies from Velma for the first time here. And there's a lot of jinkies. Jinkies? Jinkies. Jinkies gone, right? Velma's out of here.
I think if a giant black hole Heath monster came after me, I'd probably run away too.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'd be out.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: And so now we get our first fight because the monster skill. Scooby's still very protective of Velma. So carrying over from the first issue. And Scooby, not in his finest moment as a hero here, but jumps right on the monster. And then looks on the monster and pees on him.
And Shaggy's like, hey, that's gross. But, yeah, under the circumstances, totally understandable. Which is one of my favorite lines from the book.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Totally.
I mean, when you're faced with a faceless monster just with a big old moth. What do you do? You pee in it.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: I love the expressiveness that Porter draws Scooby with too. So you get the emoticons. You get a poop emoticon.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Like, oh, shit.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Which is great. But also the expressiveness is the face. In fact, I guess this might be a criticism. So I don't want to glow over the book the whole time. When I look at the art. Scooby is so expressive that I ignore the emoticons.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Cause you're. Oh, hey, he's doing all these things. But then when you do look at the Emoticons. You pick up these little kind of Easter egg nuggets.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Exactly. But when I'm reading through the story, I don't look at the emoticons. Because Porter draws Scooby so expressive that I don't need the emoticons.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Like, the emotions are so. Like the emoticons were that gimmick with the.
It's almost like the Emoticons are for the people in the story, not for me.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Right.
It's for them, not for you.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Which is fine. I mean, it's kind of a cool effect. I still like the effect. It's a neat thing.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Well, now we get to the next page. And we got folks running away from. Got. We got them running away from monsters. As we do in any Scooby Doo adventure.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Uh huh. Gotta get away.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: And Daphne's starting to Grill Daphne. And now Shaggy are starting to grill Velma on what these folks are.
Or what's happened to these folks.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: What is going on?
[00:16:55] Speaker A: And now the mutants start fighting. And you're very familiar with mutants, for sure.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Mutants, man.
You got to remember they're humans inside. Right? They're just different.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Sure. Until they eat each other.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but they're hungry. And they're just acting out in raw base emotions.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: And so now we get them kind of arguing again.
But we're getting into discovery, I would say this kind of the discovery phase of the story.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: And they start talking about Eric Kramer, the person that became the mutant. And they start fighting. We get to the next page. And Daphne sort of, like, just attacking Fred. And kind of belittling him for holding a fire extinguisher.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: It's like. But it's a fire extinguisher.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: And the tensions are really building. And I think a couple of the other threads that are kind of throwing through here. We get the tension between Fred and Daphne. And Daphne kind of starting to break down.
We get the continued fight between Shaggy and Velma. Velma keeps trying to maintain this sort of air of authority by calling him Norville. And Shaggy's resistant. Like, my name's not Norville, I'm Shaggy. And she's Like, I'm your boss. And he's, you know, at this point. But didn't really challenge it. Right. So she's still trying to maintain that sort of structure. And that all starts to break down as they look at a monitor and they see an entire facility full of mutants with dead humans. I guess they're all humans but dead folks that did not become mutants being eaten by the mutants. So it's an interesting scene. And we're starting to get classes of these mutants too.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: It's like going to the worst Sizzler ever.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: It'S a bad salad bar.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: It's an interesting salad. Well, I guess some of them are salad and some of them are steak.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: And all you can eat shrimp.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: That's fair. Would be an interesting. And then we get another scene where they're just chowing down on some humans. We get a lot of Zoinks and jinkies. And Daphne's making fun of that. Zoinks. Is that anything like.
I mean, Davidus is really good at dialogue, so it's fun.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: If you've done it this long and you're working with a partner like we talked about that he's worked with before.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah. They can bounce these things and make that flow work.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: So we get into this and we find out that since they were in the safe zone they weren't affected by the transformation for whatever.
I guess.
I guess when everybody leaves the safe zone, they don't transform. I guess Velma would not have transformed, right? No, she was outside. She exposed herself to the nanites too, right? We saw her dumping them in the first issue. So everybody should have transformed.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Theoretically, I think if you weren't outside.
She says that this code has to be input. And once that code happens, then that's when the transformation begins. So if you're in the safe zone. My belief is if you're in the safe zone and the code goes off and the nanobytes get told to do their thing then they transform everything that's not in the safe zone. If you're in the safe zone, it's like a Faraday cage. You don't get no reception.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: So now the team gets some. So Velma knows where all the guns are because, of course there are Guns in the facility. Because all mad scientists facility have to have big racks full of guns that you can press a button on a wall and they open up it's very.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Night of the like, I'm like, oh, my gosh. This is so night of the comet. They got their guns or lower decks.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Yeah, because all those weapons hidden everywhere on the ship.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: Well, we get another scene, they get guns. And they kind of take a breath to start planning out their next steps. And kind of more discussion about what's talk about. We still get these comments, right? Oh, yeah, the jabs. Yeah, the jabs. And Daphne's like, hey, explore your face with my fist. And Velma's like, no need to act like a common thug. And we're still getting this sort of dialogue right back and forth. Where Velma's sort of trying to hold on to this structured reality that's no longer there. I mean, it's just clearly no longer there. Which is interesting because Velma knows more about the experiment than anybody. But is the most resistant to acting on it. Right.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Okay, this is where I'm going to say. I'm going to reference something else that I've watched for pure entertainment. And the way that this is done versus another thing.
The way that the breakdown happens in this. And with the discussion and stuff like that. This seems more realistic, even though it's in comic and pages and stuff like that. With this type of discussion, we've all been in stressful situations with people. And had these types of breakdowns and stuff like that. I've seen forced stuff in certain TV shows where you've got people put into situations. Lost did a pretty good job in it. But I'm watching the show Labrea. And purely just because I want to know if what I think is going to happen is going to happen by this one episode. And I'm watching the breakdown on certain things. And it is OD. That's the best way I could describe it. It just feels odd. This does not feel OD.
And they have a lot more time on their clock to do that on versus this in a comic book where it's in so well.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: And I think that know, you bring up an important point. And so I grabbed the book to read from Keith Giffin himself. On how Keith Giffin does these Keith's. And this is why I think the team works together. And why you get such realistic dialogue when the two work together. So Keith Giffin says, I plot a little differently than most people. In that I don't write up a plot, type out anything out. I cannot type. I do not like machines. I don't have a computer in my house. I draw it up like a little comic book, Little thumbnail sketches. Writer Mike Barron does it like that. Harvey Kutzman. It dates back, way back to Harvey Kutzman, who used to do it on his EC War books. It's not that I think I'm such a great storyteller that people should follow my breakdowns. It's just that this way, I know that the information I want to get across will fit on that page. It's just easier for me to see. I do get a kick out of it. I like plotting what I call seat of the pants plotting, which is where you just plunge on in, and there you see where the story goes. The two Justice League books reflect that, so leaving that, and I think this is very reflective of when you get into the partnership, too. And, of course, in the Justice League books, he was partnered with J. M. De Mateus. So he's laying out the pages. And I know when you've been talking to me about layouts, you do it the opposite way, right? Like, you have a script, and then you lay out the pages based on the script, whereas he's laying out the pages, getting the visual representation of where he wants people to be. And then Damateus is writing the scripting into where Giffin imagined the people would be, which I think gives them that room to have that realistic dialogue, because Giffen can lay out a pause point like this, and then we immediately can flip to the next page, and there's Becky attacking.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: I I definitely can see where that type of the way that he does that makes it work in that way. And I'm going to kind of, like, I guess, shed some light. Travis and I've tried to do that a bit with the last issue of Starlight because it works. Sometimes we give Bret the rough. Like, this is all the stuff that we're doing. We want it to look like this, and then we go back through, and we have the dialogue kind of already there. We already know what it's going to be like, but then we kind of trash, so to fit.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: And this would almost be like. I mean, it's kind of. I guess we'll call it a modified Marvel method, right? So if Giffin's doing the breakdowns and the plot, and then Porter's probably drawing. Right? And then Damontaeus is probably writing the dialogue, maybe wrote it on the side. Right, but writing the dialogue into the visuals. Right. Which is the same thing Stan Lee used to do with Kirby, except he'd have Kirby plot it. So Kirby would do both. Right. Kirby would plot it and draw it, and then Lee would write in the.
Yeah, I feel it's similar to that, too. But I think it's neat to get into Giffin, too, as an artist, because Keith Giffin started.
I mean, he's a storyteller, right? I will say to so much of reading in this book, I get the insight of how people consider themselves to be storytellers, which makes sense, right? Hey, maybe my art was my first thing that broke me in, or maybe my writing was my thing that broke me in. But ultimately, I'm a storyteller, and I can do it all, and that's what I like to do. So whether I'm collaborating with somebody else or I'm doing it by myself, I am a storyteller. And I have admittedly, okay, so I don't want to get too much into Keith Giffin here, but I have seen this work really well with this plotter. Right. But then I liked it. But there was a same book he was doing around this time. The Legion, or not of the Scooby book, but around the Justice League books. The Legion of Superheroes, that five year gap. Legion of superheroes, dark stories. Well, Keith Giffin was drawing it, right? So he was plotting it and penciling it. And then the scripters that were with him, who I won't say right now because we'll probably cover it someday, and I'll get to talk about their strengths and weaknesses, but maybe weren't as good at Damateus at doing this. And so sometimes a lot of plot threads fell flat or the story didn't seem to move along as well. So I can see where you have to have a good partner to make this work. Otherwise it's going to be bad. And this is another book where I'm reading it, and I'm not looking at the clock. I'm just enjoying the book.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah, enjoying the book, definitely, because you're thoroughly enjoying the dialogue, the art, everything. And sometimes you're going back and rereading a page because you're like, oh, I read all the dialogue. I want to go back and enjoy the art. Or I just looked at all the art and I want to go back and reread a couple of those things to make sure that I picked up everything that I did. I know that that's what I did the other day. I was reading this, I keep saying yesterday, but when I was reading this, I just kept going back because I was like, oh, man, it's so enjoyable.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Well, and comics are a visual medium, and I think, I don't know, we've spent some time talking about this. But the approach of doing the breakdowns first. Right. With the plot and breakdowns allows the visual medium to drive the storytelling.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Which is, again, it's a comic book. So I say interesting approach, but the approach makes sense.
It's just not everybody does it this way and it's okay. People can do it. Whatever works best for them. Obviously, I'm not going to do it this way if I'm writing because I shouldn't say I couldn't do it this way. I probably could, but I don't think for me would be the best method because my plot breakdowns would be a nightmare because I have the visual talent of like a slug. Right.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
Some people are spiral.
Like, they spiral into the story. Right. Yeah.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Let's not bring up spiral again, please.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: No, but I know as soon as I said it, I was like, oh, no, but they spiral into the story when they're telling the story and they get there while they're working it out through all those different things and then it all kind of unfolds. And some people need a definitive, linear storytelling process and they break it out. That.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Interesting because. Yeah, and we've had different approaches to the storytelling.
And it's interesting because when we were looking at that Harlan Ellison script on that city on the Edge of Forever episode we did back, I should know the episode number off the top of my head, but I don't. But Harlan Ellison wrote that giant script. Right. And expected it all to fit into one television show and got mad when they cut it down.
The danger of doing it that other way, too, where you go word crazy and you write out a script. Yeah. It may have been a great script, but it was like a three hour movie and they had to get it into a 50 minutes television episode.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: And then he was mad. Right. Well, you didn't do my script justice. And it's like, well.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: I think one of the advantages of this is by the time it gets to John Mark, he knows exactly where the dialogue is going to go. There's no question. So he can fill in. And then it looks know there's a lot of word bubbles here. So when John Mark wants more dialogue, he puts it.
So there we go. So Becky attacks. Oh, Becky attacks and knocks Fred out. Perfect.
Goes after Shaggy. So Becky is not a big fan of the guys here. And then gets knocked out, Pistol whipped, I guess, by Velma, which is interesting.
But I do like this, too. Here's one of the fun things about these breakdowns in the art, Velma Pistol whips Becky and then gets tossed away because Velma's a tiny little person.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Tiny.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: And that makes sense. Yeah.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: I'm going to say. And I love that this whole entire.
There's, like, one dialogue bubble on this page. One sound effect. Everything else is pure action. And it is so intense, all the way from panel two to panel six.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: The intensity just builds the consistency of the character outfits to one. Obviously, Scooby defends Velma again. So consistent storytelling in the breakdowns. And then we get. I love the end where you just see the green gloved hand, so we automatically know that's Daphne.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: So there's no distinguishing in, but.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: And as soon as I saw that, when I got to that panel, I was, like, the chill.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Of, like, oh, man, dude. She just went, like, the switch flipped in her, and she's like, boom. I'm no longer the journalist that you think that, you know.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm now an embedded.
And then. And then we get the next page where she shoots Becky through the throat, saves Scooby. And this is the first time when we're getting decisions made between who lives and who.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Hmm. And everybody is kind of like, whoa. What did you just do?
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Jackie immediately goes off, that was my coworker. You killed her. Fred's just looking and finally speaks up and says, that wasn't her. And, of course, says the wrong thing at the wrong time, like he always has in these stories. And then Daphne just starts ripping into Fred.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: And then we get a next page, and then all of a sudden, Velma pops up, like, you had no choice, kind of saying the same thing. And Daphne does punch Velma at that point and knocks off her glasses. And we get the star.
I love to how Porter rotates between the realism and the cartoon nature of the story because we get the stars.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: And it's so smart because it was a cartoon.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: But we get better faces, more realistic faces in the sense, like, Shaggy has wrinkles and has lived a life. Right.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: A little sunbaked.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Yeah. A little sun baked. I like your choice words there.
Yeah. I wonder where he's going to find. Well, anyway, I wonder if they'll get out of the story later. Have to find something to cope with this world. And so I've got to quit glowing over it. And just here. The bad part is I'm just like, this is great storytelling, but it is great storytelling. And I love the consistency of these six panel layouts too. We do get some four panel layouts, but there's a lot of six panel layouts. And then when we do get an action scene, like when Becky appeared, he just transforms those top four panels into one splash. And then you still get the two at the Bottom.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Boom.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of consistency here. And then I like when the panel layouts change. That means something important is happening. It doesn't mean important stuff's not happening on the other pages. But he's able to continue to flow through the story. And a lot of this, of course, has to be the cooperation between Keith Giffin and Howard Porter. Right. Because Keith Giffen is doing the breakdowns, and then Porter is doing the art. So either choosing or not choosing to stick to those breakdowns. Right.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Well, now we advance the story. They decide to go through a shaft. Because that's what you do when you're trapped in a mad scientist building. You run out through a shaft. Because that's what happens in every science fiction story ever.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: You always got to get out through the air vents. That's the way. It's the only way.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: And, of course, you have to have a big baddie that encourages you. Go to the air vents. So there's Fred shooting up the big baddie after he got beat up a little bit. And Fred's not doing so well. But they're all headed out the shafts. And they get to a point, and they see lots of mutants outside. And it's not okay.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: No, not okay.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: And then my favorite. So we get to Velma and talks about. Not to worry. I have an idactic memory. And this is.
I call it idioactic memory. Because my roommate actually always reminds me that he has an idactic memory. And I just call it an idiotic memory. It drives me nuts. Because my roommate can memorize every film he watches. So I misquote films all the time. Like I'm just goofing around. I can't memorize lines at all. That's been one of my weaknesses. When I act, I turn the character into me. And he can memorize everything. And so it drives me nuts.
But this is one of those things here where she's reminding them, hey, I called you. I know what's going on. But we're starting to get the stark realization. Where there's a great deal of fear in Velma. And I think it's sinking in now. Not just the fear of having a one off, but the fear of that her world is collapsing. Right. Or finally get that look.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, things are not right.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: And the last character to come. Mean, I guess Scooby would technically be the last character to come around because he's still protecting.
And still he's up front protecting Velma. Even in the next picture where they get to see Krebs experimental vehicle.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: That just happens to be called the mystery Machine.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Because it's a mystery and it's a machine.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Which makes sense. But it's definitely. And it does have a happy face sticker on it. So at least we get a little bit.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: It's a very different.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: It's like an armored vehicle, basically.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: It's like an armor military vehicle.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: Yeah. That he's been working on. And then we find Krebs, which it didn't go well for Krebs.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: No, it did not.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: So now they are coming to the fact with they're stealing Dr. Krebs's vehicle.
And now we get some more humanizing pieces by Shaggy. Whereas Velma, sort of with the exception of the one person that she seemed to maybe be in love with at the beginning of the story that she ran away from.
Now we get Shaggy telling the story of another coworker who just got back from sick leave and got a pacemaker to save his life and is now dead. So we get more of that. Fred's like, hey, y'all, it's nice that we're having this conversation, but maybe we should mourn the friend when we get in the van and we're getting away from people.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: And they look up and there are these. I don't know, what are these kind of bat creatures, maybe. I don't see wings.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: They are something. And they look scary.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Raptor creatures.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Raptor creatures.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: And as we head out of issue two and we start to put a wrap on this one. Yeah. Jeepers.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Jinkies.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Zoinks. Rutro. And they're saying, we're only dying. Kill them all. So we leave off on issue two. Will they make it to the mystery machine in time? What will happen? We don't know because it's the end of issue two. But we're going to find out on the next episode of Funny Book Forensics. But before we say anything about that, your closing thoughts on this one. I know we stopped in the middle, and we did a lot of the closing thoughts in the middle with Keith Giffen.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Quote, my closing, like, I joked earlier about it being electrifying, but it really was. It was fast paced, moving like a roller coaster episode of so much going on. Like, the intensity and the feeling of they did such a good job in making you want to make sure wanting the characters to get out from that door that they were in down that hall and get to safety. And they do such a good job at getting them from point A to point B, but they're not really safe. Right.
It leaves you with a pit in your gut. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's such a good issue. But they did such a great job with their storytelling.
Again, the art.
I literally probably read this book twice prior to go through everything and just pick it all up.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's fun. I'll just say that one more time. It's fun. It's a fun book. And sometimes books should be fun.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah, they should be fun. They should be enjoyable. And it should make you think, like, oh, okay, cool.
Whatever is going on in my world is not even comparable to what's going on for the Scooby Doo crew because they are definitely not living a life of Riley right now.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: It's also interesting, too. I think there's a balance here. I've read a lot of criticisms of modern books, modern age books, where there's a lot of art and action, but very little dialogue that advances the story. Like, you would do something like this and it would take four issues to do what was done here. And I think this shows how you can have a nice balance of action and good scripted dialogue to advance characters, develop them and make you care about them.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you care about them. And you also understand kind of a little bit of not all of their motivations and all of their kind of idiosyncrasies, but you definitely get an idea of some of them and what makes them who they are a little bit more so than what you did prior. And even if you had an idea of what these characters were based off of the cartoon, they're different characters. Right. So you have to go into it with those fresh eyes, and they did such a great job in this issue and kind of laying it up for you. And Shaggy, obviously, he's kind of like an empath, right? He cares. He's very caring about all the different stuff, but he definitely doesn't want to be told what to do.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Poor Fred. Fred's just Fred, though.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: Well, Fred is Fred because he's special.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: We'll find out more about Fred later, I'm sure. What do you mean? I know you gushed a lot during the book, but during the podcast. But what was your favorite thing?
[00:42:08] Speaker A: My favorite thing is I think I gushed about it a lot, but my favorite thing was the slow realization of Velma coming to grips with the world that's around her, to building, to that last page where she says, jinkies.
Right? So we got jinkies at the beginning, but it's just sort of that sink in. And I like how Porter almost draws her face up. There's no expression.
She's not ghostly white, but it's that expressionless face at the end. And I like the build there because everybody else realizes what's going on, except, like, she knows what's going on. She's getting guns, things like that. But there's not that stark realization that her reality has completely changed. And now, by the end of the story, you can tell by the character that it's there. And I love that build in the.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Story because she's got a different perception as to what this reality is supposed to be like. And it is not that.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: And of course, we get a play on words for the title of the next book story, Terror Incognito instead of Terra Incognito, which is a lot of fun.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Yes, I like it. I'm excited. I can't wait till we cover the next one.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: Well, you just have to wait. Well, hopefully, if I post these the way I'm supposed to, one week, and you can learn more about issue three. So you're all in on Scooby for a bit. So probably do a few issues of this until we get bored of it. Or mostly you won't get bored of it, but until I get bored of it and want to talk about something else, Because I'm not going to get bored of this. How could I get bored of this? Well, I'm not going to get bored of the story, but I may want to throw some things in there. So we'll keep Scooby out as a thread. But sometimes I might want to just talk with you about something else once in a while. I suppose it can happen. We can talk about other things and still keep talking about Scooby.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Some other comic book might come up that we have to discuss.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Yeah, like Starlight.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: No, not Starlight.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: It could happen.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: It could happen.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Maybe I should read issue three.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: You should read issue three.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: But I'm still in.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Ah. Why? Because of the COVID You didn't get the. I will talk to Travis and I will tell him. Send Dan the book.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not going to read until I have all my covers.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Which one didn't you get?
[00:44:29] Speaker A: The alT.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: The alt cover?
[00:44:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Which Altcover?
[00:44:35] Speaker A: I'll have to look at my Kickstarter.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: And I'll let you know.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: You've let me know, and I'll tell that Travis. Damn you, Travis.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
But, yeah. Anyway, it won't be starlight, you're saying, but, yeah, I do need to read issue three. And on that note, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on, but I think we probably should put a wrap on this one.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah. All right.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, why not? I think we did a fun. I had a fun time talking about the book with you today.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Me, too.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Put a wrap on this and get on next time while we'll probably do issue three next time.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: Issue three it is. All right. Till next time.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: All right. Thanks for listening to another episode of Funny book Forensics.
