Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Let's. Let's go. So we are on destroyer duck. Five in the. Tomorrow's five. Or is it five? It's five. There is no. Stop. I was wrong. Last podcast. There is no six. We don't get a six. We only get a five. Seven, which means. Well, no. Well, there is a six and there is a seven, but they weren't done by Steve Gerber. And we'll talk about that jumping to the end. My God, you're like, we got to talk the back matter. We got to talk about the back matter. And then immediately you start talking about it before we even start.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Anyway, you done?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: No. All right.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Ever.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: It's worse than the squeaky chair.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: I know. It covers up the squeaky chair.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: No, it doesn't. It's just annoying.
Now you have all me all distracted. I was all ready to go.
I had a fucking plan for what we're doing, and you're playing some stupid ass fucking noise maker. Sorry, listeners, I'm dropping F bombs to start the podcast. I'm not even mad at what we're reviewing yet.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I find it hilarious.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Well, I know you find it hilarious, and there's your fucking.
It's find things hilarious without squeaking your chair.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: I need it all.
Thank you.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: You are just working me into a frenzy. You're changing me from Howard to Duke as we speak. Right? Like, it's literally happening.
I'm going to go train with Special Forces just so I can sneak into your house and steal that fucking chair.
He's going to be my entire mission and throw it away.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: I love the chair.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: I don't know why. No, it's a terrible chair.
It's because you won't spend the money to buy a nice chair.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: I've looked at them.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Yeah, you've looked at them. Yes, you do.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: People weigh in. Tell me what you think. Do I need another do?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Here's what you don't need. You don't need anything out of the value bin at the goodwill surplus at all. You don't need any of those things. Just don't buy any of those things for like, two months and then buy yourself a chair.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I haven't.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Well, then you should have all the money you need for a chair.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: But it's like, I know I should have enough money to just do whatever I want, but I just keep buying these.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Well, anyway.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: The shatter of chairs.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we are into a letter from Steve Gerber to Mr. D. Mullaney that we referenced last week that was between issue four and issue five and we told you about the first page of the letter where Steve Gerber said he was probably done at the end of the storyline. So issue five is going to be a wrap up of the first story arc, and then they would actually hand off issue six to another creator named.
Yeah, and we'll talk about that at the end. So I jumped to the back matter, but he does say in the second page of the letter, my time and Jax might be better spent developing a new project or projects for eclipse. Let's talk this over seriously, objectively and unemotionally, when I get the fifth issue script completed. So he's writing this in the middle of doing the script.
We also find out at the end that there are a couple of pages in this book that he just farmed out to another writer and said, hey, I'm being really slow with the script. Can you give Jack something to do while I finish up?
Yeah, and there's some speculation that Gerber was just burnt out on the book because of the lawsuit and everything, and he was just done with ducks for a minute. And if you've seen the Howard the Duck movie, it's pretty clear he was done with Ducks after everything.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: What are you talking about? The movie is fantastic and great.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: No, the movie's awful.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Leah Thompson is awesome in it.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Like, you can put lipstick on a pig all day or a Duck bill, whatever we're going to call it, but it's a terrible movie.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
It hit at the right time.
It wasn't by any means super fantastic, but for some reason it was highly rented.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Well, that's a cult classic.
There's no doubt it's a cult classic. But I'm sorry, Howard the Duck fans. It's awful. You can agree with Greg if you want to.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: I didn't say it's like the best movie in the world. It's a.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Know I'm throwing bombs at the start of the podcast instead at the end. But I'm just going to say the Howard the Duck movie did more harm to Howard the duck than the lawsuit or Disney did.
Yeah, because we should have had an iconic character that's still. And now Howard the Duck's just a fondly remembered character that when Howard the Duck shows up, people are like, okay, that's cool. Yeah, but they should have been capitalizing off that franchise, et cetera, for years. And that movie, for whatever reason, just didn't hit. And you could argue the flip, right? That the lawsuit caused it, that Marvel's ineptitude caused it. Maybe if Howard the Duck movie comes out in 1979 instead of 1985, it was 85, right? Or was it 86?
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I think it was 86.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: But obviously if the movie comes out when the character is actually hot, then we don't have this issue. Right. So it comes out if a Howard the Duck movie comes out. Let's see, when was nine to five? Was that in 79? Yeah, I think so. If a Howard the Duck type movie kind of critiquing the corporate world comes out, I mean, look what nine to five did.
That's the movie that made Dolly Parton, right?
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
I want to say, yeah, Howard the Duck movie comes out in the reboot era of the comic book series. So they drop. Like the first original one through 31, comes out during the first couple of years, goes on hiatus, and then comes back out during the later part or mid 80s. So it catches again, but doesn't quite catch the same fire that it had before. So zeitgeist wise. Yeah. I mean, not Zeitgeist, but hitting all those things. Yeah. It probably would have caught that same kind of fire like Nine to five did. Or.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Network.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: What, network. Yeah, network. Yeah, network.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: And you look at the careers, right? Obviously, Dolly Parton already had a career, but nine to five launches Dolly Parton into Dollywood and Dolly like that. Right. And then it also launched Lily Tomlin, in my mind, Jane Fonda, I write her off in the movie like she's there, but she was already established. Right. So I don't see that movie as launching Jane Fonda anyway. But you launch Lily Tomlin's comedic movie career and really get it moving with the fame there, and you get a lot of really cool things after that, including she's still doing movies now. True. She just did that 80 for Brady movie with Jane Fonda.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, still moving.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah, she's fantastic. Lily Tomlin. Oh, yeah. I forgot about Grace and Frankie because it wasn't something that I was necessarily.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Into, but, yeah, it had vibes. It had feels of a very British comedy, like 80s comedy, like Ab Fab, kind of an American fabulous.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: It also means. Yeah, and it also means. I completely forgot about that. It ran for ten seasons or ten years.
I'll go back on my statement and we'll say nine to five launched Dolly as in Dolly. And then nine to five cemented a partnership, a comedy partnership between Fonda and Tomlin for ever. And now it's an iconic movie. And that's what Howard the Duck potentially could have been.
So I can't just blame Gerber. Right. I think everything that happened with the Disney lawsuit in 79, Marvel's just complete ineptitude of going through editor after editor after editor. And that's one thing where the Shooter article might be right.
Shooter is like, oh, yeah, I'm not responsible for any of that. Yeah, shut the fuck up. Right. But he is right that he's not responsible for the miss, if that's what he's saying, like, of Howard the duck not hitting at the right time. Marvel's complete ineptitude and turning over editor after editor is probably responsible for.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I could see that.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: And that gets us destroyer, though. We say that Jim Shooter isn't responsible. But according to the American comic book Chronicles 1980s by publishing, and we did read about this in the front matter of this book, too, Gerber was removed from Howard the Duck in 1978 for chronic Lateness by Jim Shooter.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Oh, Jim Shooter, it was your fault.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah. So Jim Shooter acting all innocent like I didn't have anything to do with the Gerber discussion.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Well, you were the reason for the Gerber discussions.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: I mean, he might have made the right decision as a comic book, whatever. Editor executive. Right.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Guiding light guru.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah, But Grim said his contract had been violated. The Grimbor. Oh, yeah, Jim Shooter, the creator of Grimbor. Jim. No, I said it wrong. Let me get this right. Jim, the creator of Grimbor Shooter. And by the way, I found out after the podcast went off last, I said Jim Shooter couldn't have possibly created Grimbor. That had to be a thing. Oh, no. Oh, no. It was very much Jim Shooter and Mike Grell. Now, if you look at the Grimbor art, it's very clearly either a Cochrane or a Grel and probably leaning toward more of the.
But that's, that's fine. It's a very Mike Grell artistic creation by far. But how know after we saw that book cover, I'm wondering how much influence Shooter actually had on the creation of Grimbor and how many instructions he gave Mike Grill there. Mike Grill was pretty young then. Jim Shooter could throw his weight around, probably.
And just noting from the American comic book Chronicles, Gerber felt his contract had been violated, and his lawyers threatened Marvel with legal action, which obviously, we know played out with a settlement in 1982. And that's why when we go back to this letter from issue Five, we get just, Gerber is just burnt out on the whole thing. Right. They did a thing. It was cool. They helped launch Eclipse Comics. And basically he goes back to Eclipse and, you know, we helped you launches. The first book launches grew, know, puts Eclipse on the map with big creators both Gerber and Kirby. And now he's just like, yeah, let me do something else.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: I feel like that fatigue sits with the movie, though, too. To me, you think it does. I mean, the dialogue in the movie and the risks the movie takes aren't nearly as creative as what we got in the comic.
You know, more. You have all the Howard the duck issues. You've read them.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Well.
And maybe they wouldn't let him take as much risks in Hollywood. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Of, I would say probably okay. Between the writing staff, between him as the creator. Right. And then also you've got people that are recreating it for the studio. So then you got your studio staff writing on it, so then they're rewriting it for then. So you got that writing room, and then you've got. Who directed the movie?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Who did direct the movie? I don't even know.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: I believe it was a Steven Spielberg movie.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Or was it.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Lucas? Wasn't it?
[00:13:20] Speaker B: It was Lucas, but it was under ambulance Entertainment, I believe. I want to mean, since we're talking about it, let's get into it, right?
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm here. No, Willard Hayek directed, but, yeah, I mean, I don't know, maybe we should do a watch through later. Probably not next week, but, yeah, I think it's worth making the comparison. Right. Just in what we're sort of seeing here, even when he was burnt out on it versus what we get. But Gerber wrote it, but the director also is a co author on it.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: There's another writer named Gloria Katz, and.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: George Lucas is executive that you've got a whole entire film writing production team on it. That's like, going to. These are. This is the stuff we need to see for film wise. This works great on comics, Gerber. This works great on your panels and stuff like that. But this is what we need to see on the screen. And that's why, I imagine that's why there's a lot of stuff that transferred over or didn't change up.
Obviously, they took something that was intended for a different type of adaptation, maybe not necessarily for film, but it was something that was written for a comic book and maybe to be done as a cartoon or something like that. But if you're doing something in that form and then jumping it into a live action film, and it's going to have a different feel altogether. Right.
It's not like those movies that we're making nowadays. Boy, oh, boy, let me tell you.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Well, and I do think one of the reasons. Comic book movies. But I don't think you have to do this with Howard. So let me back up for a second. But comic book movies took a while to work because you needed all the special effects to do a comic book movie. Right.
Comic book movies made up until the mid 90s looked lame.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: I mean, the powers look silly. I'm thinking of the old Flash TV show. I know everybody loves the Wonder Woman TV show from the 70s, but. Yeah, you have an effect where she spins around.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's cool.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: But you need extremely good writing and you need extremely good character work for those things to be pulled off. Right.
No, they did not. That's why it only lasted three.
The Wonder Woman show lasted three seasons, and the first season to the second season changed networks and they completely changed the setting for the. Like, it was not a success. I don't care what anyone says. It's a success for Linda Carter's career because Linda Carter became iconic off the show and people remembered it. But the TV series was not a success. It lasted three seasons and changed networks after the first season. That does not make a successful television show.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: I just like watching you get round up. It's fun.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Well, it's just, I love it.
It. There's so many great things about. Yeah. Like, I loved it as a four year old.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: So here's a question then. Do you think Howard the Duck would have been better as a TV show?
[00:16:51] Speaker A: I think Howard the Duck would be a great Netflix show.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Or Amazon or whatever.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Right. It would be a great streaming service show where it's like a nice seven episode show. Boom, boom, boom.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Half an hour where you can build characters. Build look. And look what they've done with some of the weird. I don't want to say weird, but offbeat. I mean, the boys is ultra fucking violent. Right.
But they can do it on Amazon because that would never go in the.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: It's because I think it's even too gross and violent for a. Right. Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Oh, they could definitely do that with Destroyer Duck.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Well, destroyer Duck could do anything, but, yeah.
I think the cool thing to think about though, too, is that's why this had to sit at the point in time too. Right. We get these five issues of Destroyer duck, and eclipse uses it to launch their lines.
Also, another independent publisher that we haven't mentioned was Pacific Comics.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: And that's where, not surprisingly, Mike Grell out of Portland. Right. Is doing his work.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: And so Grel gets fed up with DC star Slayer, the book he launched for Pacific was actually supposed to be launched by DC, kind of in a warlord esque type environment, and doesn't make the. It's. It's a counterpoint to warlord. Right. It's space adventure. But no, they don't run it because of the DC implosion in the 70s, which you mentioned on the.
It's one of those things, too. So he publishes it independently, and that launches GrEl in a long career of independent publishing, including doing John Sable for first and other things.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, John Sable is a cool book if you haven't checked it out. I know we haven't talked about on the podcast, but you and I have looked at issues before.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: We might, because now, finally, I have the entire first omnibus, and I have the second one coming from, so that's cool. We may read some John Sable. John Sable is also unique for having one of the first regular gay characters in comics.
I don't know what you're doing, but you sound like you're attacking your chair.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: I'm wrestling it. I'm telling it. Who's Boston? I'm like, oh, you chair. I'm going to give you the.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: There's literally just no way for me to cut out all the chair noise. That's.
Are you done fighting the chair? So back to the point. Yeah, we've got a lot with. Course, you know, you had Neil Adams trying to do his thing at the same time, too. So we do get a lot. But I think looking at these books, Gerber should get a lot of credit, if not for this book, just for too. And he doesn't get the credit for Gru, but it's. Gru's first appearance is in the book.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: So, yeah, Sergio wouldn't. He's, like, getting his chance to do his thing.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Well, he gets the rub from being in the fundraising book for it's. And then I don't want to say Gru takes off, but Gru is one of those books that it's almost like it never takes off, but it has massive longevity. So it did a thing where Sergio could always have a job and always keep doing what he wanted for a long time.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah. If it's not, it's one of those things where it's to. You're. You're drawing all this stuff for mad, and you're doing that, and then, oh, hey, you want to draw this epic story line for a little while? Okay, cool. Do that. Which I have to say, though, the man, he would get on an airplane and just hammer out pages from New York to mean that's just wild. And just do a book.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: I don't know. I can empathize with that because I just got back from a trip and I did a lot of writing on the plane.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: But, I mean, he would draw.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: He would draw airplane. Yeah. It is different.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: A book.
Wow. I'm just reading some of these things that he's done. I'm like, wow. Studio is just like.
And also he's.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Well, we probably should get back to. We should probably should get back to destroyer Duck. But.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Yes. Destroyer duck.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: You said you wanted to do some of the back and front matter, and so Buz Dixon actually does an interview at the end of the Destroyer duck book as well. That's the guy who took over. We can do a couple of notes from that toward the end, but I do want to cover the book as well. And we do get one more note. We get a cover concept note. And Gerber tells Jack Kirby something very horrific this time, Jack. Both as a change of pace and to emphasize what will be the very serious nature of this issue's story. But I don't want to tell you the rest because we want to cover the story.
But he told Jack Kirby to draw something very horrific. So we get to the original cover concept, and it looks like a melting logo.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: And we've got a duck with white eyes and a gun, and he is fleeing.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Yeah. It looks like everything's exploding around him.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: And then we get some cool unused panels. Because this series of books is amazing. The one I do want to highlight, because you probably know more about it than me, because I haven't gotten to Gerber's run of the Defenders. So I've read the first Defenders omnibus, and I've got the second one sitting on the shelf stacked up with all the things I need to read.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: But I didn't meet the elf with a gun yet. He hasn't appeared in my reading of Defenders. Tell me about this character, the elf with a gun.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: So he's just like a little maniacal elf that likes to just show up and just shoot people because he's an elf of the gun. It's kind of a messed up character.
Definitely one of those just an OD things that you're.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Just. Is it just me, or did Jack Kirby draw him to look like Gerber?
[00:23:13] Speaker B: It kind of does have a very Gerber esque look.
He does have a Gerber esque look to him. And that's. That is funny.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: It would have been funny if, in the story, if they really wanted to end the run and I know they decided not to. They decided to release a couple more issues with different creative team, but he just comes in and kills Duke Duck at the end.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it would have been very meta, as they say today.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Because it would be Gerber killing his own creation as another one of his other creations that is actually doing more that he's working on in the current time frame. Because that's what he leaves this basically to go do is to continue his work with the Defenders, which, odly enough, I got into a whole entire Defenders conversation, which I've read a bunch of Defender stuff, but not as much as this customer at the shop. And I was like, tell me more.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: You are. Well, I'm going to have to read some more defenders to catch up. I think the fascinating thing, again, I don't want to get sidetracked on Defenders. I don't remember if I mentioned this on the podcast or to you in passing, but I discovered, like, Defenders. I've read the first few three issues of Avengers. Now, I feel like I said this on the podcast, so I'll keep it short, but Defenders, like the original Avengers charter, sort of was to fight outer space threads.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: And then they become a different thing. And so Defenders comes, and that's their job.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: That's their job.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I didn't know. Right. I just never read it.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: And then it's funny because then you've got, then all of a sudden they start fighting outer space stuff, but then it becomes more mystical and more earthbound. Like a good mix. But then all of a sudden, then who fights the outer space stuff? The first family, of course.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Right.
Well, I always thought though, like, if I was classifying, if the Fantastic Four weren't fighting villains on Earth, they were fighting under the Earth or other.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Other dimensions of.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: But anyway, we could get lost onto this. What we have is Duke Duck, though, flying on an airplane, and he looks fucking pissed.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: He's angry. He's mad. And I mean, I would be too, if I was flying on a plane with a drunk pilot.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: I'll also say too, I think you're right. Like the Kirby art, there was a reference in the front matter of the Tomorrow's publishing, the Graphite edition, that Kirby's art was. He was getting a little tired by this point and the delays, and he was older. Right. It was just harder for him to. I do the faces for the duck do get rounder in this.
Um, and the pencils are a bit looser than they were in the first four issues.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah. The first couple of issues are super tight, and this issue is very.
The curvy art in the first couple of issues is just so wild. And in this issue, it's like, oh, I'm drawing a face. Okay, here you go. Face. 1234 faces.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: And part of that was Kirby, just older and waiting. And he was also doing a lot of cartoon work at the time too, so he's probably just tired.
They do change. Kirby changes the tagline at the top. So you'll remember we had the manslaying Mallard before at the top, but now we get destroyer, duck feathered, furry, in the heat of the Holocaust, which should give you an implication about what's going to happen in the issue. If you remember that Godcorp was making a nuclear bomb for.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Well, anyway, we get a first page, and we're back to having Cherry and Brad who? Brad make. I think this is his line in the whole book, right? The wind up to pitch the yaw, and that's it. I don't know what he's referencing.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: I don't know if that's him or if that's the pilot up in the front.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Oh, that's the Brad isn't. I don't think that Brad says anything.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Brad is a limp noodle.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: He's a loose end that Gerber didn't need to tie.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Like, we watched this movie the other day where there was an extra kid in the family, and it was like, why did you write another kid in this family? You could have done fine with just one child.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Hey, in the story I'm writing, you told me to cut out a whole.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I will. You have extra characters. Like, Brad could have just disappeared into the background in the last issue, and we didn't need to bring him along to hook.
I think. I think, honestly, sometimes there are sometimes where extra characters are just too.
If they don't give us any reason, they don't move the story along, then why are they there?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Well, the whole point of the first three pages here is for Duke to speculate on whether or not the little guy is still alive.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: What if he's alive?
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. And they do talk. And to remind us that Cherry Jubilee is still worried about the whole company and how it interacts with things, but in her sister. But that's it. I mean, cool action, though. I don't want to just discount the pages.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: We get cool art, some cool. I like the nose down aircraft flying down into the ground.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the third page I was about to get to. I think the faces have suffered a little bit, but I think the background art and everything that's going on. And of course, we'll get some Kirby crackle later. So never fear, never fear, it will happen. Well, Pablo, the drunk pilot, has got the plane in a nosedive. And then as that plane is in a nosedive, we're going to flash to a rather alive general Abuk, who I really thought was shot and killed last.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: I thought so too.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that surprised me. Everything or else around him is dead. He was the first one shot, so maybe he's just injured. He is on the ground and he's screaming at Pakmani from the Hokum Liberation Front. And I want to tell you right now that I'm going to spend more time talking about this, because until now it wasn't clarified, but in this issue, they very clearly make this an analog for Iran in the. It is not related at all in their storytelling to what's going on in the Middle east currently. Not at all. Not at all. But I danced around that until it was clarified here, and it was very much clarified in the story. So I will drop some knowledge bombs about Jimmy Carter and the Shaw as we go through this, too. So we'll get into.
And there are a couple of things that made more sense to me as I went back and read them, too. So I'll try to. Don't let me forget to mention a couple of those things as we go through. But basically we have a discussion and the general is very upset and he doesn't know about the Cogburns. And so he gets to find out about them from Ned and Jewel, cherry and Vanilla's mom.
Should I say Biol and Opal?
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Biol and Opal.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: And anyway, the general sees for the first time the spine coming out of one of the Cogburns. They learn all about it. And we get just clarification on the whole situation, because Juul's asking all these questions now about it, and they remind us, no, Juul, it's corporate creativity. The same creativity that turned your daughter's glandular secretions into a billion dollar market. This is referring to creating the Cogburns marketing concept when things look bleakest. Jewel. Have faith in God Corp. This company is capable of anything that's coming as from Ned Backer. So there we.
It's have faith in God Corp and everything will be okay.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Now, the book does take a turn here, because they don't have any more of the Kirby pencil photocopies. So now we go to the inked pages, but they still look cool.
I actually like it when we get a little bit of this transcript transition, historically, too, to kind of see the loose pencils and then see how they're.
And plus, we get some more creepy Wobblina later.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Creepy wobbly.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: So now we get to Switzerland and we're all talking and we're back to. Was it upwind? I messed up his name upwind. And we find out, and they basically pack up the nuclear bomb and put it on a plane. And Wablina's starting to turn the corner on this, what she's working for. He's gotten mad. He's willing to blow off an entire export market for short term gain. Basically, they want to blow up the entire. And that's her reaction, by the way, to learning that they might blow up Hocomb on accident. It's not. We're going to kill a bunch of people.
He's gone insane. He's not managing the company properly. That's her reaction.
Yeah. Freaking fantastic. Well, we've got this crew headed off to Hocom with the nuclear bomb and. Yeah, there we go. So they're about to bring a bomb to a general. And then we're back in the Bowery in New York. Oh, lo and behold, our friend, the lawyer. Destroyer. Lawyer.
Destroyer lawyer is here. I'm very excited.
He apparently had an ejector seat in his car when the Cogburns blew it up.
And so the Cogburn says, you, but how? He says, object. Question is vague. And then he says, but off the record, the law mobile was equipped with an ejector seat. And then Cogburn says, I'll eject your ass for that, shyster. And the destroyer lawyer says, object. Irrelevant. Argument. Argumentative. Assumes facts not in evidence. And possibly slanderous. I ought to slap you with an ejection. But this will do for now. And then he hits the Cogburn. He says, how? Does my boot have to interlineate your face? Or did I get some answers? These were the two pages that Buz Dixon did. And he was very proud of his cheesy lawyer.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Is it is funny.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: And that wraps up our friend. The lawyers at least arc in this story. So he's alive and everything's okay. And he took out the Cogburn that was left in New York. So, meanwhile, on air Parangus, we're flying out of the sky very rapidly, but they manage to get us close to Pakmani. And we're about to get introduced to Pakmani, who's holding a very scared looking. Vanilla cupcake. Yeah. And he starts talking about all of his hatred for capitalism and the infidels and everything, and she says, golly wogs. Hi, Mr. Pakmani. I'm happy to meet you.
And then we meet Pakmani, and it is, well, Pac man with a turban.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: This was messed up and disturbing.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Was it, though?
[00:35:16] Speaker A: It really was not what I was mean.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Was it? Was it not what you were expecting?
[00:35:22] Speaker A: No.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: You didn't get Mr. Pakmani from.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: No.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: That's who he'd be when they introduced him early on?
[00:35:31] Speaker A: No, I did not.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: And the ghost face masks that they were wearing?
[00:35:35] Speaker A: I did not. No. I thought it was.
I'm too much of a historical nerd. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking pop culture. I was thinking of the classic fighting units from, like.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Overlaid it with a little pop culture references here and there to give you what we have in front of us. Mr. Pakmani and his ghost units.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Well, I will highlight a couple of things on this page because we do get the direct link to what was going on in Iran in the 70s. So he says, you see, I know your country well. My father, Ayatollah Yaso, chief religious counsel to the hated Shah of Hokum, arranged for me to be educated there in the United States he's referencing. But to my father's chagrin, I align myself not with America's oppressive establishment, but with its plighted minorities and with its students who rebelled against their government's imperialist warmongering policies. So he is there during the Vietnam War, and he doesn't like what America is doing, so he's trying to stick up for his country, supposedly, is what his argument is. And down with the imperialists. And before we get into the next really disturbing page, if you didn't know. So, in the 70s, Iran was ruled by a king, so to speak. Right, the Shah. So it was a monarchy. And the Shah got sick with cancer and could not hold established rule in the government. As the Shah got sick, the students in Iran started protesting and the Shah was not able to hold power. So the Shah had to leave the country. I believe in 77. But as far as this is concerned, getting the exact dates aren't as important. And that's how the Ayatollah came to power. And you had the new regime in Iran that overthrew the monarchy. So one of the things about that is Western countries were supporting the Shah because they wanted to maintain their rights to their oil imports. Right?
And so that's where you get a situation where the entire country of Iran say, like, hates the United States and is protesting in the embassy. And just one more piece to this, and I'll pick it up. So, 1979, you have the Iranian hostage Cris, right? Where the hostages are held.
Carter tries to send some helicopters in to rescue them. They're shot, captured. The students captured the embassy. Right. The American embassy. So everybody in the embassy was being held hostage. Carter tries to rescue them with a military assault, it fails, and now you're plunged in negotiations. And one of the reasons that they were so frustrated with the United States is the Shaw went several different places. But Jimmy Carter let the Shah come to the United States for his late stage cancer treatment, which from a political standpoint was a very big mistake because the folks of Iran saw us as holding their oppressor and letting him come here. So that is one of the things that sparked the outrage and the taking of the embassy. And if you followed US politics, you know that the day Reagan comes into office is the day they release the hostages.
Not the day he's elected, but the day he assumes office. So they were not going to do anything that Jimmy Carter wanted. Between Carter's decision to let the Shaw come to the United States for treatment and obviously the military assault that was botched.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: And so I do want to bring this up. I bring it all up just to tie this.
Got a. I love it because I have a bigger historical link here. Now, what goes on in the next page, I've got no fucking idea. What do you mean him eating the human body pellets because he's.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Pacman. Pac. Manny. But I was going to say with the whole destroying of all the arcade machines and stuff like that, that is a throwback to the time because they were definitely in that country at the time when they were destroying all Western things in the late 70s, early 80s.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Well, they specifically. And I would Say destroying all Western things, I would say from relation the West. Right?
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So things like this.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And in this case, in this world, the Shah and the Ayatollah, his father are murdered by him. And he eats.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: And he has his cooks grind up the meat and he eats human meatballs.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Literally in a mace to devour the culture. Right. The corrupt culture. So like, to your point, that is a complete.
But. And it was more of a distancing. I mean, oil comes into play too, right? When you look at the oil trade that happened in the original setting, you've got also control of. Right. So you have British imperial power coming in and messing with the whole Middle Eastern region. Right. And after World War II, we literally just drew lines through the Middle East. Even before that. Right. After World War II, but literally World War I, to be more specific. Yeah, I said World War II, but after World War I, when you have the breakup of the Persian Empire and they're just literally drawing lines.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: Otoman.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Yeah, or the Otoman Empire, but they're literally drawing lines in the lines. I almost said lines in the sand, which sounds almost incredibly racist. Right. But they're literally drawing lines and arbitrary.
There's other things that are consequences. This, too. Right.
I'm going to talk about Armenian genocide right now and things like that. So I don't want to get too far off into the weeds, but.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: I.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Just want to emphasize it was more than just Jimmy Carter bringing the shot to the United States that led to the hatred, but that was like the cherry on. It's like here we are separating ourselves, taking back our own land, our oil, et cetera, and then you're going to allow our oppressor to come to your country.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: Pakmani was on his hands and knees. He traveled the halls praising to eat and bring new Order.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: What we do get is Steve Gerber just going nuts with the storyline and having Pakmani eat a meat maze.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: And we get the ghosts putting. The ghosts are actually putting out the pellets, which is funny.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Do you see that they're the ghost from the game.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Oh, I do now. Yeah, it makes sense.
It's on page 131, by the way, of where they're laying out the mage. You know, in a book that has page numbers, it's really easy to let the listeners know where to go to find things.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: One of the things that we delight our readers with in the Starlight series is that you get to enjoy finding where those pages are on your own.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: I see.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Well, it's one of the things that Travis and I have given to the readers.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: That is definitely one way to look at it after we find out the origin of Pacmani.
And I guess the other point, too, that Gerber drives home is he's immune to the influence of vanilla cupcake.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Because he's a Pacmani.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Well, because Vanilla cupcake represents the west in.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Does it. He's pushed that away. He's refused it. He's refuted.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Have any. There's not a part of him for her pheromones to influence to get him.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: He also has no nose.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: Right. He also has no nose, but no.
He has his human meat pellets to consume. So he doesn't need to consume things from the West. Right? He's destroying things from the west, like you said, and then eating those. He's not interested in consumption and thus is immune to her superpower.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: He's three children in a trench coat with a Pac man head with a turban.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: And then we get creepy when he's.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: On the ground and it's just like naked arm, body, hands and feet, and then just human body stuff.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: And then it's a lot creepy.
He's eating human hamburger or meatballs. It's super creepy.
It's really gross.
That's why I wanted to sprinkle in a little bit of the history context for people, too. But hey, you can keep focusing on the gross, that's fine, I get it.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Well, sorry. Why are you apologizing? You're focusing on what you like is human meatballs. And in fact, if you order.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: No, you put that away. You stop that. There's no human meatballs.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: I'll stop. So we get the crew with the nuclear bomb landing in Hocombe, and they turn it over to the general and we find out. And Wabalina continues to question what's going on.
Yeah, StranGle it. Yeah. And Ms. Strangle eggs. Yes. And she finds out that the bomb is ten times more powerful than they thought it was. And they're turning it over to basically a dictator.
Well, a dictator. Yeah. So there we go. And she is concerned, she says, so this is where it all leads. Grab it all, drain it all and die. Someone has to stop this madness before upwind destroys God Corp and all of us with.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: She's.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: She's got a conscious while air Parangus has landed and some ghosts are going down. Duke's not super impressed with the ghost troops. And they get inside the mosque very quickly. That would be Cherry and Duke. And they're ready to take out some Pakmani. Then we get to the next page and all of a sudden, Ms. Strange Wablina Stranglegs, has gone against the company now, and she starts attacking everybody on the plane, trying to secure the nuclear weapon.
She says, I got a dance.
[00:46:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I love it.
I love this panel. It's such a good panel.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: It's creepy. Yeah, to say the least.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: That's why I like it.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And Wobblyna dances her way right into launching a bullet through the fuselage.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: And plane's going to go down now. It's been depressurized.
Well, now we get back to the fight with Cherry and Duke going in after Pakmani. And they seem to have no problem dispatching the mighty ghost army who are making up the meatballs. And Pakmani is about to make some vanilla cupcake meatballs, but they put a stop to that and kill everybody.
Save cupcake. And she says, buryl, is that you? And now we start going by Opal and Buryl pretty much for the rest of the story, they change from Cherry and vanilla to their names for the most part, which I also find fascinating because Pakmani was trying to destroy Western culture, right? But in liberating vanilla from that, now she's gone back to Opal and her sister. Sort of pulls them out of Western capitalist culture. It's a weird sort of like you, the argument of who's doing it. Guess maybe.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: I mean, clearly we don't want head.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Chopper off guy to win, but at the same, it's. It's.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: Yeah, but Duke's gonna hold Pakmani at gunpoint, so, yeah, there's a lot of violence to get here. I'm not sure who is right, but basically he held Pakmani hostage, tells his troops he'll blow his head off. And there we go. Well, just a moment later, we have the plane flying at the same time, I should say. The plane is flying. And 20 miles east, the jet streaks on a collision course with the city's tallest building, which could really mess some things up. But we find out the general has actually already detonated the bomb and boom. The capital city, Hocomb, is gone. It's gone.
We get some Kirby crackle and clouds and we don't have a city anymore.
[00:49:25] Speaker B: It's wild.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: We have some burnt up Cogburns.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
Heads flying through the sky.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: And we get the comment in under a minute. Hocomb has been reduced to something less than ruins. And fortunately, during that sequence, the Duke and Cherry or Duke and Barill and Opal and Pablo and I assume and Brad's there too. Hey.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: Brad's still around.
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Wow. Brad's laying down on the plane. He's just chilling out.
Have made it back to the plane and we get sort of the interaction now that the resolution between Opal and. But slash Opal says Mama was in the city. Bury and pook face, I guess. Poopface. Pookface. I don't know. Clark Parker, too.
Does that mean they're dead? And Burl says, probably. And she's really dead forever. And she's like, I didn't want Mama to die. I hated her and all. And I wish she was dead, but not like, really know, just sort of dead.
What am I going to do now, will they put me in an orphanage or what? And Brill says, well, she'll take care of her without the TM. So she's basically making the argument, your contract with Godcorp has been terminated. So she's liberating her from. So we had a country that was trying to liberate itself from the. Yeah, but she's trying to liberate her from the company. And this is the whole end of the story arc. Right. So Gerber has won his lawsuit. I don't know that the creator of Strawberry shortcake had won her lawsuit yet, but it's about the right time frame for it.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: About the right time.
I think she's in one of those situations where if you search her out and you go find her on Facebook and you find her on the Internet, go buy something from her, because she.
[00:51:32] Speaker A: But she had won the rights. Not won the right portion. She didn't win the rights, but she won the proceeds.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: At this point, it was a payment because the way that it was worded, some sort of payment for the production of stuff, but not anywhere near what it should have been.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: Right.
But the liberation of her nonetheless, too. So it's the argument in the story at.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: And so now we get flash the last page. Several days later, upwind, packer strangle eggs, all dead. They were all aboard the plane that carried the bomb, Duke, and so was Mrs. Mudge, and so we know that. And then our destroyer lawyer is back. I'm probably calling him the wrong thing, but I like Destroyer lawyer.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Destroyer lawyer.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: The board of directors is dismantling the conglomerate, liquefying the assets to raise the cash, and Duke says then it's going to be practically impossible to track down. The answer I need is the little guy alive or not? And that's where we leave it. So we get one story arc ends, and they offer the next one. Zombies in Paradise. Don't miss Destroyer duck number six. And that's where we get the afterwards with Buzz Dixon, who mentions he got to write six and seven. But we don't have six and seven because we just have the ones that Gerber and Kirby did. So I said we were going to do an issue six, but we're not. We're going to stop issue five.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Dan's a liar, but that just means move on to other stuff.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: I am normally a liar. No, you should just never trust me.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: I don't trust trusted. I haven't trusted you since we were young boys, Dan.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: Well, that sounds creepy, as.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: Haven'T.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: I haven't trusted.
We're done with the grab it. I'm just moving on from that. So we're done with the grab it all, own it all, drain it all storyline, and we're done with the Packers.
Yeah. That's what happens when you go down weird Places that you shouldn't. So we're all good. And this was a lot of fun.
[00:53:52] Speaker B: Duck is awesome.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it fits best.
Obviously, it would need some changing, but I'd rather watch a destroyer Duck movie than a Howard the Duck movie.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: If, in all honesty, if they decided they were going to, hey, we have decided that we are going to make this thing a thing. I would be right there. Like whatever streaming service, if I had to go and rebuy something or re up a subscription or whatever. I mean, for this. Yeah, I would do it if it was like, oh, hey, if this movie is coming out, I would buy a ticket. Whatever. Because honestly, it's a fun book. It's a fun story. It's an interesting idea.
It's a neat look at how businesses do things and when you get angry enough people, how their responses, and I.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Think, you know, it's a nice way for Gerber to tell his story in a weird sort of way through somebody else's story. Right. He focuses more on the strawberry shortcake story than he does his own.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: It's a good critique and it's a nice way to throw a couple of things out there that are socially, culturally relevant.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: I was going to say. And that about wraps up this. So next week you'll get some Alpha Dogs or next episode, next week, whatever. You'll get some Alpha dogs. Number four. So we'll go back to that and then we'll decide what we're going to do from there. And I'm excited to branch out and learn some more stuff. I've got a couple ideas, but Dan has ideas.
[00:55:46] Speaker B: Be careful.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: Does have ideas. Well, this will come out. You'll be listening to this.
Let's see, the 13th. That would mean it looks like on the 20th you'll get some Alpha dogs. So maybe we'll do a Christmas something that releases on the 27th.
[00:56:06] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:56:08] Speaker A: It could happen.
[00:56:11] Speaker B: There's too many different Christmas books out there.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Well, maybe it'll just be us talking in the Retro Emporium, opening Christmas presents and talking about a Christmas book, of course.
What is your grumpiness about?
Okay, well, but that's fine.
Let's wrap this up. So next week, Alpha dogs, the week after some sort of Christmas thing, and we will move on from there. Of course, as you'll know, as you know, on March something. Greg has a book coming out with Little Brown Publishing, a subsidiary of Heschette, who's a subsidiary of.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: Our PR team is the Ironhorn Epic Productions and Company. And yeah, Mike Tanner and I have the absolute Zeros camp launch pad.
[00:57:18] Speaker A: Do we know if people can order this for comic shops yet?
[00:57:22] Speaker B: So I believe when I say when, I reached out to some places, because it's still a little early. I don't think they can actually put a preorder in for bookstores or comic shops until the end of this month. Okay, so December. End of December.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: Do we know what list it will be on or anything like that?
[00:57:43] Speaker B: I don't know.
The cool list? It's going to be on the cool list.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: I have a link for you in the show notes, and I've been putting a link in our post. So if you want to preorder that bad boy, you will preorder that book. And of course, with every copy comes an MXPX CD. And they all smell like vanilla cupcakes.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: Yeah, they do. We got a really nice review. Somebody, I'm pretty sure once our PR team, we're meeting with them next week, but they kicked us over this really nice review that we had submitted. So I was like, oh, wow, that's very nice.
[00:58:24] Speaker A: So why haven't I gotten a pre copy so I can write a nice review?
[00:58:29] Speaker B: Because you're not on their list. I don't have any control over it.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: Dude, you're killing me with our one listener. We are clearly members of the esteemed comic book media.
[00:58:43] Speaker B: Considering the fact that I couldn't talk about this book series for five years, that's fair. And the double irony is, like, when people are like, I've just been waiting for Junior Braves three to come out, now you're just giving me a whole entire other book series. I'm sorry, people. I have no control over how things work in publishing. It's just like, I have ideas. I put them out there and.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: Both are written.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: Both are written. It's just a matter of when publishers put them out.
I have no control over it.
[00:59:18] Speaker A: Well, good news is, like we said, you can pre order Absolute Zeros Camp Launchpad, and there'll be a link in the media, in the show notes if you want to get one more Tanner and Smith Special or Smith and Tanner Special.
[00:59:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:59:37] Speaker A: However that works, and you'll appreciate it. It'll be fun. So cool. And I don't have anything else to promote. I don't think except maybe like the Retro Emporium in Kent, Washington.
And you could also obviously frequent certified martial arts if you're in the Tacoma area and you want to learn to be as powerful as strangle legs.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: Oh yeah, strangle. I bet you she does know Jiu jitsu.
[01:00:06] Speaker A: She might. And however, Paul Bedreau, the jiu jitsu lawyer, would help you understand how to take out strangle legs because he specializes in reaping, which is grabbing people's legs and neutralizing them. So watch out.
Yeah, he would tell you to fear the Reaper. In addition, I think that's all of our big promos right now. So we will say things are coming as far as the realignment of the network. But like I said, our feed is not going in here. But we may be trying to link some different podcasts together and I look forward to sharing that with you as it happens in the future. But I have no updates for you now. But look out, if you listen to our podcast and you like us, we may have some other folks to share with you. Whoa, podcast that Greg is on, what's that?
I'm not going to say what it is right now. I just told the listeners this is why people like you more than me. For first off, I just told them I'm not going to talk about it right now. And then you're like, oh, aren't you going to tell them what the name is? No, I am not, because we're going to share this after we confirm things, what we're talking about, about contracts and confirmations and stuff, plus anticipation. Come back next week and find out. You just try to give it all away at once. And that's why people love you.
[01:01:34] Speaker B: That's right.
Because I try to be the sun Ra of things. I can't help my itself.
[01:01:40] Speaker A: Well, that's it done. I can't top that. We're gone.
[01:01:45] Speaker B: It's over.
[01:01:45] Speaker A: Podcast over. We will see you next week with some Alpha dogs. Bye.
