Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Despite the COVID here.
Oh, yeah, it's got.
It's happening, I think. Did Fred, like. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. Like, sometimes I call it, like, what is it? You know, Mad Max Thunder Road.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Mad Max Thunder Road.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: I think. Yeah. Like, can you imagine if it was just like a Bruce Spring Gustine backdrop for the whole movie?
I think it would be phenomenal.
I say it. I only bring up Mad Max because we've got a Jim Lee cover with Fred looking all Mad Max here on.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: The extremely Mad Max. Yeah, he's looking very Mad Max. Daphne looking very like, I got a fireman's not. I'm just going to do.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Daphne looks like a serial killer.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but it works. She's working it. I don't know. It's intriguing.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: She looks like Jean Grey, serial killer drawn by Jim Lee.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Gene Gray serial killer. Oh, man.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: I mean, it is a Jim Lee cover. And that is exactly how he draws Gene Gray all the time.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: This is true. This is true.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: I shouldn't say all the time. Probably not since, what, 1992, but all of the time.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, okay, let's wind it back.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: He was on there for a few years and went to draw wild Cats.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I have a bunch of those cards.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: A bunch of those comics. Yeah. Yes.
We just hide them.
Actually, I need some cards, but probably not podcast fodder, but I need the 1994 DC card set.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: The DC Universe?
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's called something special, but anyway.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Okay, I'll have to take a look. I have a bunch. Honestly, you could literally go through my box of cards in the garage and.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: I would just take them.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: I would just give them to you because it's you. Anyone else? $1 million?
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah, they're going for like $30 on eBay. Max.
There's some maxes that are more on eBay, but there's a plethora of them between 1999 and $30. It's one of those deals where you're buying stuff and lesson learned to folks.
If you're going to list something on eBay and you're going to put best offer up, then don't counter with the original price. When somebody gives you a best offer.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: But the original price was this dollar amount.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So somebody had one of these sets up for 1995. I offered 995 and they said 1995. And I'm like, and that's when you.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Come back with 1195.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: That's when I don't come back with anything because I wanted to pay 995.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: And I would have said 1195.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Check me now if they'd come back with, like, 1495. I might have bought it, but they can sit and not sell their stuff then this is true.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: And this is just the new sellers out there. There's a lot of people that I know what I got, I know what it's worth, and I've done my research. I know what this thing goes for. And it's like you're looking at what people are listing it for, not what it's sold for.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: They can keep listing it for whatever they want. I'm not going to pay for. I think it's the card set. I think it's like 90 cards. Yeah, that's it. And it's not a super popular set.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: And what's crazy is literally like a year and a half ago, we were giving this stuff away at the shop just in the sense of like, oh, hey, you like this? Tell you what, get a couple of these things and you know what? I'll break you a deal on this card set.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: $5.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: How's that sound? I mean, literally giving it away. The only cost was the. Like, I was giving people all the cards for free. The sleeves were what was costing money.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: And now people look like Daphne when you try to go after their cards. Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: And they want to kill you for sure.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: With axes or. Oh, yeah, telekinetic axes, maybe. Yeah.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Or you come out them with another price and then they hit you with that Velma face. Like, ooh. Oh, yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: I was thinking more of the constipated, shaggy face from down below.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, he's all squatted.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Down, ready to go.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: He's, like, squatted down, holding Scooby. Like, don't go, Scoob.
Oh, Scoob.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Well, we are into this. And we are into the Scooby Doo Apocalypse number three. And where we last left off, they were headed past. I think they were headed past not the burning man, but the fireman. Burning man. Whatever.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Fire man.
Yeah, whatever.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: They had escaped, if I recall. But Fred was hurt and we're not really sure how.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah, he was a little bit mangled, so we got to figure out what's going on.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: I do like the alt cover when they're in a graveyard and Scooby's just thinking about bones. Like, emojis of dog bones. Right.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: It looks really good.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: And that's probably, like, the thought of most of the eBay sellers overpricing their stuff.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: No, but in all honesty, this alt cover, I like that stylistic the way it looks. It just looks really good. So props to the artist. It just has that good, that 70s kind of comic book feel.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah, except it looks like it. I mean, am I wrong here? It looks like it's just color pencil, right?
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Possibly.
I'm not an artist. I don't know, but I definitely like it.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: It looks like the lines were inked, but it looks like the coloring was done in colored pencils. So however they washed that, it's really.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: What it looks like. One of those mystery house.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah, I really like it. Yeah, no, I really like that. I like both covers, honestly. I mean, I'm making fun of the Jim Lee cover, but Jim Lee's put out some neat covers for this so far.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I like them.
I if I found them both, I would buy them both, probably.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Well, I think the cool thing here is we get to the first page, and we've got Giffin and Dave Mateus and Howard Porter. And Howard Porter has an inker this time, Dale Eaglesham. So we've only upgraded the quality of the art even more.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
If Howard Porter wasn't enough, we'll add Dale Eaglesham. Yay.
Loving that. We got Nick Politano on letters, hi fi on colors again, and we've got the covers. Jim Lee and Alex Sinclair on the main cover, and it's John Paul Leon on the variant cover, so it may have just been colored pencil. Just got one artist there.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Oh, wow. That's cool.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Okay, well, I'm curious. Maybe I should have done my research before the podcast and found out perhaps.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Perhaps the mystery machine's looking like it just, like, ran through a hot dog stand. It has a bunch of mustard and ketchup on it.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: That's mustard and ketchup, right? I mean, it looks like bug blood.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Or is it mutant?
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Mutant blood blood.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. They ran over all the mutants.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: We don't know that yet.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Oh, man. It looks like it could be. I don't know.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, they're up overlooking the Burning Man. Right? But there's some vultures everywhere. Somewhere in the Nevada desert.
There's vultures everywhere. This page is such a nice touch to start out. I love the splash. They haven't all been this way. I mean, they've all been really nice. But I like the way the splash starts here with kind of these nice Easter eggs. Right. With the vultures kind of circling around.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Right?
[00:08:07] Speaker A: And they're asking Velma how she's doing, and they're all kind of chatting. We already get the chattiness already, and Velma's ready to throw up. So that's where we're at.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: She's not doing too.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: You know, Velma seems to have some issues with pretty much everything.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Well, we're on to the next page. And we're back to our six panel grids. The creative six panel grids that Porter's been doing so well. And again, this has got to be a combination. It's a combination of all three storytellers. Right. We've got giffin doing the layouts. Porter drawing the beautiful layouts. And Damita scripting. And it's, again, beautiful. And we're continuing that trend. The pattern is the. I like how he angles the panels for action. Even when there's not action. But I think when it angles like this. It always makes me feel anxious to keep going to the next page.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Right.
And also, too, I've noticed. And I'm not sure if you've noticed. But the first panel and the last panel are not. They don't have boxing around it.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Just all the other four panels. And usually, like, three panels are one color. And one panel is not the same.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Well, and we start off here. And Fred's still hurt. And they're headed out.
And we get Daphne thanking Velma for helping Fred out. But Fred's not looking good. I do love the nice touchdown there in the corner panel. How they've put in a nice X band ditch over his bicep, though.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Make sure that that'll take care of.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, of course.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Torn bicep. You just put a couple piece of tape over it, rub some dirt on it. YOu're good.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Well, is it that kind of. That kinetic tape that holds it tight so when it moves?
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Kinetic tape?
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Is that what it's called?
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Kinetic tape?
[00:10:01] Speaker B: I don't know.
Is that what it's called?
[00:10:05] Speaker A: Kinesiology tape or kinesiology tape.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Kinetic tape, whatever. I don't know, man.
I'm not a master of all these things. I just know when my hamstrings hurt, I throw it on and I feel it's.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: It is kinesiology tape. I just want to make sure I'm right. I was right. But there is kinetic tape at Amazon. Apparently because we sell everything.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Is it a real thing?
[00:10:34] Speaker A: What's kinetic kinesiology tape? It's people mistyping it. It says tape kinetics. Premium kinesiology tape. So there is a company called Tape Kinetics. That sells premium kinesiology tape.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Okay.
They knew that people would mess it up. And they.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Named their company Kinetics.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: That is smart. See, it's kinesiology kinetic tape. That goes over Fred's owie. That makes him feel better. And they put it on his face. Hopefully they'll make it better too.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Right? Well, that. Sure.
I'm just going to roll with that.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: We get to the other page, of course, with it angling back the other direction. And now Daphne is in one of her moods because she's flipping again on Velma. First she's apologetic, then she's mad. Then she goes and yells at Scooby, which is not okay because you never yell at dogs. No, people that yell at dogs really make me angry.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of messed up.
What can dog do?
[00:11:39] Speaker A: You can raise your voice to a dog. Right. If I need to get my dog to not go in traffic, for example, I'm going to say, Juliet, if I have another dog walking by like I did this morning. And she kind of randomly because this is OD for her. I mean, she does bark when people knock on the door. But she barked at another dog this morning in the dark, which you've met my dog. That's kind of OD for her. You've also seen her do that. Well, you've seen her do that in a knocking situation, right. Where she just worked. Uh, but usually weird. But I just said. I didn't say like that. I said, Juliet, sit.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: And she sat. You just never need to really yell at.
They don't. And I yelled at a dog the other day. He jumped up on. Yeah, and I always felt bad because when you're training them, right, you don't really need to yell at them. But there's Daphne yelling at Scooby, calls him Flea ridden. And he's like, rewritten.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: I'm not.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: I know. If I had.
Anyway, then she apologized to Scooby. And Velma's all jealous because Scooby's getting a big hug.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: So then they flash back and they're at the complex. 5 hours. Finally. We're finally getting the story where they get into the van. So we left off before when they couldn't get into the mystery machine.
Well, they weren't there yet. They'd identified it. And here we go. And there's a big kind of looking like.
I guess blockbuster is a ripoff of the Hulk, but it's looking like blockbuster from DC Comics. Okay. With the yellow or orangeish yellow and apparently mindless. So we get that. And you're going to get a lot of references today because I started reading all over 1000 pages of my who's who omnibus this week.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Oh, no.
I am so in for a treat.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: You are in for a treat as I continue to read this because I'm getting, like, the whole state of the DC Universe from 1984 to 1986.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Okay, a listener. Because I know we only have one and if we don't have just one, please let us know because, boy, oh, boy, we're just pandering to that one person that we think listens to us still. Oh, gosh, I hope he hope they still. Listener Dan wanted to do the who's who instead of Scooby Doo. I beg of you.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: I don't think we should have done the who's who because it's a lot. I've only made it to, like, 100 pages. I've made it through three issues of the who's who so far.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: We wouldn't have gotten there. We wouldn't have gotten very far.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: For those of you that don't know, was a series put out by DC Comics from 1984 to 1986 and then later. Well, anyway. But yeah, for those of you that.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Don'T know, how often did they put out the who's who's?
[00:14:31] Speaker A: I think the first one is 26 issues. I could be off. They were going to try to go, I think, for less than that. And then they needed a couple more issues. And then they did an update after Crisis where they put in updated entries for, like, blue Beetle, booster gold, some other characters. But those would be the two biggies coming out of crisis, I think.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: And who's who is essentially kind of like a yearbook, right? Or like a encyclopedia.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: That's a better word. Nobody knows what that is, though, anymore. I think it's like a Wikipedia or.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Like, Facebook for DC.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: It's like a Wikipedia on paper.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. How quaint. They did this in the 1980s, and.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Then they did it toward the end of the 80s. When did the loose Leafs come out? Was that early? Ninety s. That was 90s, right?
[00:15:22] Speaker B: The 19 hundreds. Yes. I remember them so well.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: But later they did, like, a loose leaf version where you could rearrange them. You could pull them out and put them in a binder and rearrange them. It's really cool. It was a really cool concept. I believe Marvel started it, actually.
DC did. This is around the same time they were really trying to catalog things. I would like to point out, though, I just got to the entry on Captain Marvel.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Not Shazam.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: It's in the seas under Captain Marvel.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: We have this conversation quite often between.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: I'd like to point that out. Yes. But I'm correct, because it's in the seas under Captain Marvel, I can send you a picture.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: You already sent it to me. Look, it's right here in the seas.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: You mean I already sent that.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Okay, yes, you've already sent it once or twice.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Social media who's who at this point, though, is such a great historical piece that I wanted to grab them and read them. And there's a second omnibus coming out in the spring, so I wanted to start reading this one before I get that. Because the second omnibus is going to contain not only the who's who loose leafs, but all the seven issue who's who in the Legion of superheroes.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Which, just side note, the Legion of superheroes are so vast that they needed seven issues of a comic just to catalog the characters.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: SeVen issues?
[00:16:56] Speaker A: 730 page issues with characters on a page. Sometimes multiple characters on a shape page. Yeah, so it's fun. They did one for Star Trek, too. I don't know if that one's going to be included or not, though. I did not see it on the list.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: But it's pretty cool if you're a big history nerd. So anyway, sometimes I like to dig into people writing about comics, but in this case, this was fun. They hired get this too. I know we're distracted from Scooby. That's okay for a second. But they hired somebody, I forget the person's name. To read all of the DC Comics catalog from, like, the beginning of time. Yeah, that was their job for two years.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: No way.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: I want that job. Can we do another who's who? I am available.
I can read all of the DC Comics from the beginning of time. I'm fine with that.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: That's a lot of reading. I am sure it is a lot of reading.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: But your job is to literally read comics.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: I mean, that would be a good job. You know, what they need to do is they need to come out with another follow up book called what's what where it puts everything together and into perspective. It's a who's who.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah, they've tried that several times. History of the DC Universe. Crisis. Zero hour crisis. Crisis. Infinite Crisis. Infinite Crisis. Extreme Infinite Crisis. Extreme crisis. Death metal. That's the new one.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: But have they put it into an encyclopedia?
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Well, the history of the DC Universe. Actually, all joking aside, they did put it out for Crisis to try to rewrite the history of the DC Universe post crisis. Right. When they combined the multiverse into one, it was an attempt to explain what happened in the crisis story, I guess. Yeah, because that. I mean, Crisis is remembered well, but if you read it now or if you read it then, yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: It was.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Kind of like a pro wrestling show where the whole show was just them bringing out new people to get you excited. But then no storylines actually happened.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: It's so funny because when you talk about it, I'm like, oh, it wasn't that long ago. And then I think about it, I'm.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Like, wow, it was actually pretty 1984 to 1986.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
But it's like, oh. And then every time they've done one of these things, it's like, it wasn't.
It really was, because every time I picked it up, it's been ten years.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: There was a really cool piece that happened last year, though, called the Other history of the DC Universe where they took characters of color and explained their story in the history of the universe, which was really cool. Some of them I knew a lot about and some didn't. Like the black Lightning one I knew a lot about. But then the Mal Duncan and Bumblebee one, not as much, even though I felt like I read new Teen Titans. Right. So I didn't get a lot of Mal Duncan. Right. Mal Duncan was in the original Teen Titans toward the end and Bumblebee. So even though you see them in media now and on the show, on Young justice, of course, they've showed up several times.
So there were some things I didn't know. They did one on Katana.
They were really cool. So some of these pieces are a lot of fun, but, yeah. Anyway, maybe I should get back to Scooby Doo. I got us super distracted by talking about Blockbuster and see where that went on book forensics. When I start forensic sizing it.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Forensics.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: We're off. Well, so we're back in.
Blockbuster is attacking. We get a. Yeah, exactly.
Zoinks. Jeepers. Rutro Jinkies. And we better shut up. That's what Fred says, so maybe he's talking to you.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I think he says split up. But I mean, shut up is.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: He does say split up. It does kind of look like shut up, though.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: That's okay. Just kill them all.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Split up. What is that going to do?
I do like, yeah, it is split up. Because that would ruin the whole joke, right, of it being the show. Because they always would split up on the show.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: So now they start heading out, and of course, we know what happens if you split up on a DND campaign.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Terrible things.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Not necessarily. They did not split up here. And still terrible things start happening. So we get an X page. Scooby's down, diving out. Velma gets grabbed by Monster Monster kills it and then freaks out because he shot a human, he thinks. And then there's a big thing slobbering all over.
And of course, Shaggy was a Buddhist in high school for six months. Completely appropriate. Yeah, that was while he was growing out his mustache and his beard.
What do you think? His latte of know.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: I'm going to say probably.
It's probably like a chai, really. A chai latte?
[00:22:17] Speaker A: I was going to think lates were beyond him. And he just sits there and sips dark black coffee.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Oh, no. I'm thinking he likes the different spices and stuff like that. So he's a chai chai late.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: See, I thought he is above lates natural.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: He goes, chai latte, double shot espresso sunk in there.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Sounds like the most disgusting thing you've ever talked about.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Have you ever had one, Dan?
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Well, I don't like coffee.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: They're freaking amazing.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: And I don't drink caffeine.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Oh, my.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Mean, I do like chai lates.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you gotta throw that double shot espresso in there or go quad shot. You don't even know until you try it.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Okay. Well, I thought you were going Chris Farley, and then you suddenly switched to Macho Man.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: No, I didn't quite get to Macho Man.
When you said Chris Farley, I was totally there at the high school, in front of it, playing football in a.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Van down by the river.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I was about to tear a jacket.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Well, we get to the next page and Shaggy and Fred are still continuing to discuss whether they should actually kill the zombies. While everybody else actually is attacking zombies. We've got Velma trying to get into the mystery machine. We've got Daphne tearing a hole through everything. Yeah, we've got. Daphne's trying to tear a hole through everything.
Scooby is tearing clothes off of zombie blockbuster.
And then Daphne starts to freak out because she thinks they're people all of a sudden. Cause Daphne has well established herself through two issues and a few pages that she is mentally unstable.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Ish.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Well, she's definitely going through some stuff right now.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: I think she was going through some stuff before with her bottoming television show. And it's just showing up here in a.
Again, you know? Get help, Daphne. Get help. And I understand why it's difficult. Right. You know, the interesting thing is, too, I was like, she's suffering from this sort of mental health crisis right now. This hits a little bit harder when you read it now than when it came out. For obvious reasons.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Honestly, we've all been here.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
And as she's going through all these things, it's like, oh, my gosh.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: No. When you start to spiral out and you realize that there's everyone around you. One, you don't trust. Two, people you're angry at a dog, for whatever reason. And the one friend you have, you're just angry at them too. So, yeah, everything's falling apart. And, oh, yeah, there's mutants.
Sort of terrible thing happening.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: I don't want to be necessarily a public service message but there's a ton of resources out there. So if you're feeling still crazy in this crisis, use them.
Get help.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: There's a lot of places you can turn to and there's a lot of people that are there to hear, listen and help out. So utilize them.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: And with that said, I do think they do a good job in the writing here. They do it in a humorous way at times. But I think they do a really good job too illustrating what it looks like when you were struggling. But then all of a sudden, you're thrust into this super stressful situation.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You're thrust into this terrible. Then, you know, sometimes the people around you even if you don't want the help are willing to help you out. Like, we can see with Daphne.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Not.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: She's like, I'm done.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: I'm done.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: And Shaggy's like, no, you're not.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Get in the.
They throw. And then all of a sudden, Shaggy's looking for Scooby Doo. And we get the page turn and we don't know where Scooby Doo is because all of a sudden, we're back to now, have we seen Scooby Doo yet?
[00:26:26] Speaker B: No.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: In now time.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Not yet.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Looking back to the first page. Yeah, we do see Scooby Doo. He was watching Fred. He was watching Fred at the beginning so we don't have to worry about Scooby dying. I thought they were leaving it too suspenseful for me. Like, they didn't show Scooby in the teaser. But we're back to now and Daphne wakes up and nobody's there.
Which I liked that touch, right?
To go from her completely stressing out to nobody being there. And then she's about to have another meltdown and she steps outside and there is everybody. And then she goes and hugs Fred. And then Fred, of course, asks her if she'll marry him again. And she's like, no, we're not getting married. How long is this going to a. Is this going to be like a Wharf and Judzia Dax type thing here?
Or is it going to be a Kira and Odo type thing? Oh, because that lasted longer.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that could be Odo.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: That took forever, for God's sake. Was it six seasons before they got together?
[00:27:35] Speaker B: I believe six seasons.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: I believe Jim and Pam were together faster.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, Jim and Pam are not.
That's not a goal.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: And that show basically ended when they got married.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not a goal.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Jim and Pam are not the goal. They're the destination.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah, they're the destination. They're not the goal.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: They should have been the destination. Or when. Oh, shoot. See, I'm too old for this. Drew Carey. And who was the female character when they started dating? That show was.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Oh, Mimi.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That show was over when they started dating. Was it?
[00:28:18] Speaker B: I know, but, yeah, there's a lot of shows where.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: So I'm wondering how long this tension goes and if they actually get together, do we decide that the series is over at that point?
[00:28:29] Speaker B: That's why they can't ever. And that's the great thing about cartoons.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Well, this is 36 issues and we can get through one issue, a podcast. So I don't know that we'll find out necessarily. I think it is 36 issues.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
In a year.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: How many months in a year? I don't think it came out weekly. Have you seen the Arc?
[00:28:51] Speaker B: No. For Arc podcast is how many weeks in a year?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it would be a bit. It'd be a while. I mean, we could keep going, but it would be a while.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Oh, we should.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: So we've got their back and they're outside and they're looking down at a town and they're trying to assess the situation.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a big old fire pit.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: I like how they have route us six. Six six. That's clever. It is on fire and it's the fire festival.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Yes, the fire festival. I will say this panel reminds me a lot of another apocalyptic book.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Oh, do you tell?
[00:29:32] Speaker B: They have striking similar came out before.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: This one did it?
[00:29:35] Speaker B: No.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's in Greenwash. Yeah, well, no, Greenwash came out before this. Blue Wash didn't.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but we had that sketch.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: If you're wondering what I'm talking about. Greenwash and Blue Wash. It's junior braids of the Apocalypse. Book one and two. Book one is done in Greenwash and Book two is done in Blue Wash. It's completely beautiful art. And I know the writers.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: Could not be anybody that, you know.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Anyway, we are back in and we're getting one of those nice panels where we get the conversation, but it's still moving the story. We get the angular panels that make you feel into the story. And you get this realization. Finally, on the second page here is Ravelma's back to. Oh, my gosh, what have. So it's interesting how she vacillates between sort of defending herself against Daphne, but then having these quiet realization moments about the fact that she was clearly a part of.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Part. She's one of six people who caused this.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Well, and then we get a nice flashback again. So we're back to them getting into the mystery machine. And again, the writing on this. I feel like I'm just a shill for the writing, but I like how the story moves. I'm actually not a super huge fan of these flashback flash forward type things. In general.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: In general.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: In general. I think here they do it masterfully. Right. And the transitions are all good. And so you see that moment of reflection and you see her reflecting. And Howard Porter and Daily Wilsham draw her there, reflecting at the panel. And then all of a sudden, you get to the flashback where she's screaming, Drive. Drive.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: I will tell you one of the things. When I started, it's easy to do flashbacks in film and television. It's hard to do flashbacks well in comics because of these types of things. But they did a great job on this page with the way it's laid out and the work on the edges and stuff like that for the panels. That makes it definitely step out and stand out so well because it makes you go, oh, okay. This is definitely different than everything else that was on the page before. So obviously, this is a different point in time. A lot of times you see flashbacks that don't really line up that way. And it makes it difficult to. It takes you out of the story because you have to kind of mentally recatalog and calibrate because.
Am I looking at a flashback?
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we'll pontificate on this a little bit more because in junior Braves of the apocalypse, book two, you don't have a lot of flashbacks, but you do a lot of simultaneous storytelling, which does result in flashbacks to a point. Right. Because one story advances and then you have to go back a little bit and tell the other person's story. Right.
When you're writing that, you're talking about how they set up the art here. So it's a clear change of scene. And there's clearly delineations of the scene. How do you approach that with the. You what are you telling Zach when you want to set up that? Like, how are you communicating that?
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Basically, we tell him, all right, we're going to split the story. We're going to tell these two aspects of it, but side by side. And we want to tree it off this way for a little bit with this portion happening and then this portion happening over here. And these kids are going to be doing this adventure, and this group of kids are going to be doing this thing over here. And then he's kind of got to one either figure out what works best for him as a visual storyteller to make that all line up and be able to break that out to make it so it does line up. So sometimes you can tell the story side by side in a couple of panels, and you get a little bit of this in column A and a little bit of this in column B, if you will, on the page. A couple of panels and a couple of panels. And we've seen that. We've seen him do it that way, and then we've also seen him do it where we've done a text box and it says the time. Right. And then has everything play out. And then we text box with the time, and everything is playing out with the different group of people. So we kind of lay it out that way so you can see it in those two different things. You'll see something else play out very differently in the next book because he's taking a different approach to a similar theme.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Similar theme, but a different approach.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: I do think it's interesting, too.
I briefly brought up Junior Braves last time, but I think when you're looking at these two books, there are some similarities that I think I should probably drop Junior braves into the show notes for this one, just not to show Greg's book. So you can see the similarities and differences in the storytelling on a similar theme. Right.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Where people are dealing with an apocalyptic situation going from this is life as we know it, and, oh, hey, the world has kind of fallen off his axis.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: And mutants.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: And there's mutants. And how do we deal with this? Because we are not the best equipped at dealing with all these things because of these things that we have going on in our normal lives.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Now, one thing I really do like about this book is how they tell Scooby's story.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: And we're into this, too. We're into the flashback. And in the cartoon, Scooby Doo is always portrayed as this cowardly dog that's always running away from everything. And I have a very cowardly dog. She's literally scared of everything.
She is the small version of Scooby Doo. Right. She's a 28 pound shepherd lab mix. And she is literally scared of everything.
Except if somebody comes near her owner.
And so if somebody touches my roommate in any way, she will try to get in between them. No, she's not as aggressive as Scooby is here. Biting. But I think if she perceived a threat. And it's hilarious because I've seen him do jujitsu training in the garage during COVID Right. When couldn't go to gyms.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: And if I let her out to the garage, she would try to get between my roommate and who he was training with.
I don't know what she thought. Yeah. I don't know what she thought was she was going to accomplish. But I do write how Scooby can still be kind of a scaredy dog. Right. Which they've established in the story. But here we've got the mutant attacking Velma again. And he just, like he did earlier, he goes and bites the arm. Like, he's hyper aggressive to protect the people he's with. And I like in Velma so far. Right. And we've seen him guarding Fred in this issue now too. So he's starting to adopt the pack. But I think this is really neat storytelling. And I like the approach that they do. And this is a lot. I know it's plotted. Obviously, it's three people working on it together. Right. But a lot of the plotting and layouts. But I like how Porter does the art here and the aggressiveness of Scooby in these situations. But then showing the passivity before. Right. Literally right before this. Scooby is just kind of passively like being a dog looking out the window. I'm going for a.
Then, you know, attacking the mutant. And you get to the next page. And Scooby's still holding onto that arm until Velma can get away. They have to basically knock Scooby out of the.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: And it's neat. And so then Fred steps up with the, uh oh, the gun's not working.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: That's not good.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not good. I thought it jammed at first, but apparently it was out of ammo.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: He's out of. Oh, yeah.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Which is appropriate because, you know, with Fred's intelligence level so far in the.
Yeah, he. He would not realize his gun was out of. Yeah. Seems appropriate.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: He would have fired everything and have run dinner. Suck your bones.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Yep. Here we. And that's. It's interesting. Too. Some of the mutants are talking, and some of them aren't.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Feast on your flesh.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: He's focused.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: So Velma hits the mutant with the first aid kit.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: And it looks so cool. That effect. That artifact is so awesome. It's, like, got that blur on, honestly, I was like, oh, my gosh, it's moving.
I really enjoy the action in this book.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Or you thought it was one of those lenticular covers from the.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: My gosh. Yes. Totally.
I was excited. I thought they put a little lenticular. Well, I mean, Jim Lee is in this. Of course.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: That's fair.
But then there'd be 18 covers.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: 18 covers.
And half of them would be lenticular.
Two of them, foil pressed.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Oh, jeez.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: This one's foil.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Foil special.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: And, well, we come with the trading card.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: Daphne freaks out again. They killed Fred. I'm like, Fred, yet they just hurt.
And Velma's like, he's not dead. And she's still calling Daphne Miss Blake and moving through. Yeah. So now Shaggy's job to get them out of there. And we have a classic chase, zombie chase scene where the zombies, in this case the mutants, are all over the car and they've got to drive out. These are some of my favorite movie. You know, there's a lot of dialogue here, but basically, it's Shaggy driving the thing through a big, heavy door and them smashing out.
And it looks like when they spin out past the door, it looks like. I don't know what that is on the front, but it looks like his energy drink is falling off the dash.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Which I thought is even.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: They, uh. They ran over a lot of.
They.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: They ran over a lot of things. And somehow Fred still managed to stay on the bed unstrapped down in the back. So that's good news.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: He's a little jacked up.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Scooby's taking care of Shaggy.
They're chatting. I love that. I love the breaks. And pauses in the book too, like this. He's, like, raggy. Hey, I'm hanging in there. How about you, buddy? Ranging. Know.
They're nice touches, though.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: Of the interaction.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: And I love, it's, like, we know from the cartoon that Scooby and Shaggy talked, but with this modulator and the eye thing. And, like, it actually is kind of like a weirdly, odly, scientifically weird, believable type thing. Right. And it makes me kind of wish that I could listen to my dogs talk and have conversations with them then also, I don't want to hear them tell me that they want more of whatever. I want the thing you're eating. Because that's what they would say. I want the thing you're eating.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: I do like, though, again, the art. Thinking about, I guess, this podcast, I'm just going to be super focused on the way they're drawing Scooby. But I like how Scooby pokes his head around here, like a dog would do to check on somebody that kind of hesitant, like something bad just happened. I'm just going to poke my head around to see what happened. Right?
[00:41:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And then I'm going to also point out there's so much chaos going on. And they do such a great job with these panels. Every one of these panels is off in a way. Like, it's tilted, it's turned. They're all not the same. You've got a circle panel, you've got squares. And everything is just in dismay because it's a lot of chaos going on.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Until you get to the round, classic 1970s picture frame picture of Scooby and Shaggy being best friends.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: Yeah, true.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Which again, to your point, they do a really good job highlighting key pieces here. And I'm guessing I could be wrong, but I'm guessing when we get that circular focus on these two, I bet we're ending this scene. Whoa.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: I think you're correct.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Okay.
No, they didn't. There's one more page, but it was the end of that scene. Now they're looking down at the Blazing Man Festival.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Blazing Man?
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not wrong, but it did lead to a scene transition.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: That thing looks like. It looks like an alternate Heman bad guy.
This thing looks like it could be from the Masters of the universe. Just a lot of toy line. Yeah, it's just a lot of teeth, actually.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: A lot of these teeth creatures. So Giffin did a character called Vicros in the Legion that never really took off. He was a vampire, and this is basically what he looked like when he would eat people.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: Oh, so you think Vicros has made his way back?
[00:43:37] Speaker A: I don't think Vicros has made his way back, but I think that maybe Howard Porter is tributing that.
Yeah. Or Keith SketcheD it out right in his rough plotting sketches. And then Porter's, like, bringing it to life. But, yeah, it was a vampire, but basically his whole face would just become a mouth. Right.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: It's like a really muscular leech. Yeah, I want a muscular leech. Give me a leech face with a heman body. Done.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: So now we're back. Now we're to. Now.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Now we're to now.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: Now. We're to now? After they give you the gravity of the situation.
Cold drinks, ice and snacks. All right. And Daphne and Velma are talking. They're having their moment, finally, where Daphne's like, hey, maybe I should talk to Velma. Like she's a human.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: That's always good when you're in know to actually have a conversation with those around you. Like a human.
[00:44:42] Speaker A: They're both doing a little bit of sharing. But Velma's still guarded right when she says, I'm not a gregarious person by nature. In fact, I find most soil interactions not directly related. Yeah, no kidding. Like, everybody already knows that. So it's Daphne starting to sort of open up. But Velma's sort of still sharing the things that people already know about her.
[00:45:00] Speaker B: Well, I mean, that's typical.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: They already know about her. I mean, it's not a secret that she's socially awkward. Yeah, she's been socially awkward the entire story.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: This is true. She has been. Except for when she was in Paris and she was like, be free. She was having a good time. That was, like, totally what anybody would do in Paris, right?
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Be free. Toss viruses. Toss nanites into the world.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Well, she didn't know she was causing trouble, man.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Yes, she did.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: I don't know. We'll find out.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: Well, okay, yeah, we can argue about that. We'll keep speculating or we can tell the story. So the guys are all in inside shop and Shaggy finds some Mrs. Hotchberg Saturn pies, boxes of them. It's apparently what nobody wanted to raid. So there you.
Fred's. Fred's doing his calorie count there. He's like, oh, geez. Or his carb count. He's like, oh, no. And Scooby's just looking at all the food they've got. And he's like, yum, yum.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: I love food.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: I like food. I like all of these get. Then they flash back to the dialogue between Velma and Daphne. And we get a little bit more disclosure.
And Daphne goes back into this plague of yours, this colleague. Value thousands of lives. And then Velma's like, it's not my plague. So she's still defending that and she's still denying it. And then they get into the nanites. And of course, Daphne asks if it can be reversed. And Velma kind of starts slinking off. Then we get a flashback to the store and Fred doesn't look like he's so keen on this. He's got Nacho crisp and choco cookie snack. Cakes, by the way. Chocos. So there's another Easter egg for you by the.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Ah, yes, Chocos.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Do you remember who ate the Chocos? Martian Manhunter ate the Chocos in Justice League International. Yeah. So outstanding. I love that Chocos show up other places, too. When the Martian Manhunter appeared in Smallville, they showed some chocos on the ground.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: I remember watching Fantastic and freaking out because they're like, oh, my gosh.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: I knew exactly who was going to be there.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Yeah, they did the whole entire et thing.
It was kind of humorous.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: And it's nice to see that Chocos have lived on in the Scooby Doo Apocalypse universe. And so there we go. Fred's carrying the Chocos.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: Well, they're delicious, dude.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: And they've got a whole load. Apparently, Fred's going to check out. He's walking toward the check stand.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: I'm going to leave a little something for somebody.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: Oh, I think I spoke too soon about Vicros.
I don't think this is Vicros, but this is looking pretty vampirey.
Well, it's changed, all right, but not the way we.
And we get next issue, fur and fangs.
And that's the end. We get an advertisement for All Star Batman number one, written by Scott Snyder, one of the nicest people in comics. Yeah, man. You know what?
Looking at the art and author lineup, you want to guess? Let me give you one guess of whether I bought this book or not.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: You did.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Do you see the artistes?
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah. You did not.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: That's a big no.
Okay. And we get a DC Rebirth checklist, which is we're. We're done. We're done. So what'd you final thoughts.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: Where? I like how it toggled back and forth between. I really like how they did the whole entire this is happening now and this is why it's happening. And then going back and doing that flashback, the flashback sequence and how they did it, I thought that was really well done. And as a reader, it didn't take me out of the story, didn't take me out of the book, and it kept me engaged. And that's one of the biggest fears as a writer, as a creator, when you do things like that, will the reader enjoy it? Will they get taken out and will they stay with the story and not lose what's going on? Definitely not the case here. Just kept trucking along and it didn't even feel like a beat was missing. I thoroughly enjoyed everything from point A to point B.
As always, everything happens when it's necessary.
And it didn't feel like any moments were lost or any moments were overused. So great use of page space. Great use of. Yes. Even though it's very text heavy. Great use of text. Because it didn't feel like it.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: Right. Yes.
[00:50:15] Speaker B: They maximized it to the point where it was like, okay, this is as much as the reader will read.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: I really like how the book moves along. Right. But it's not a five minute book read. Right. It's not one of those action books where there's so little text. You're done in five minutes.
When I sit down and read these, if I read these too close to the start of podcast time, I get worried that I won't be able to finish it.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: It's a good half an hour read.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And it moves the story and builds the characters. Like, I know a lot about these characters. I also like how they've continued, established, even going into the last couple of pages, the way they set up these scenes.
When Velma slinks off, I know something bad's going to happen. And then we get back and they've set up their newest, biggest bad, which looks like some sort of vampire, right. But we get this. Is it reversible? And Velma Slinks off without saying anything. She starts to walk away from the conVersation, which means, you know, something bad's going to happen.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Something bad. Can't help it. It's happening. Sorry.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: And then even on that last page, the nice touches of the art, right? We've got Shazam Cola. It looks like in there, we've got little mice watching the scene.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: There's so many nice touches throughout. Yeah. We're probably missing a billion of these Easter eggs. Right? But the Choco cookies, I couldn't miss.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: You could go back and probably read this over. Sorry. I had a yawn. I apologize. You could go back and read this twice, three times, and still be picking.
[00:51:53] Speaker A: Up Easter eggs, which makes it fun. It's fun, Art.
Well, on that note, I think we're getting close to our hour here, so we could probably wrap this one up.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: All right. Well, it was a fun time, man. Good pick again.
[00:52:12] Speaker A: Well, that was you who picked.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Myself on the back. Oh, my goodness. Thank you, Greg.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: Greg forgets that he picked it because I picked the comics so often.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: But that there, I didn't forget. I just wanted to tell myself I did a good job.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: It's self affirmation here on funny book forensics.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: It's very rare anybody ever told me, wow.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: We were talking about that therapy earlier, and perhaps. I know it's something you might want to consider. So if you really need somebody to tell you you're doing a good job all the time.
[00:52:49] Speaker B: No, I don't need that.
I just needed a pat on the back for a moment.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: Well, on that note. Well, on that note, Greg has his pat on the back, and it looks like we're probably finishing up. I don't need a pat on the back this week, so probably is going to be a wrap on this episode of Funny book Forensics.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: Till next time.
