Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: We are back. It's been a month and a half, and these two books made Greg so sick. He couldn't podcast.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Couldn't podcast. I was down for the count. Flex Montalo. He took me out just like ba boom.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: If. If you look in my background, you can see that. That these books made me hate so common comic books so much that the spinner rack is now empty.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: He took them all out, threw them all the way, burned them in the backyard bonfire.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: True. I mean, it's like, I. I just like, you know what? Let's just get started right away on this. I cannot imagine a world. So I read this month in. I read this month when I was doing my comic book ordering.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: That this book is being reprinted in a trade.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Awesome. Buy it. Put it on.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: On, like, buy it to light it on fire. I don't recommend book burning, but I do think it is good, like material to start fires, you know, though comic book pages generally aren't because the color burns weird and the paper burns weird. So I don't think it's a good idea.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: I. I think. I mean, if somebody wants something interesting, unique, and different to read, this is a book for them.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: This is not a book for me.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: I find it humorous because you're the one that picked it. You want.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: I don't understand it. It doesn't make any sense.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: You wanted something light to read and you grabbed something heavy. It was the rye bread of. Of breads.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Well, I thought, you know, based off the original storyline in Doom Patrol, it might make some semblance of sense.
Yeah, I mean, it does tie back to his original creator, the sage person. Whatever It. Like, you know, I.
This book is so bad. It made us not like. I. Now I just want all the listeners to know that I told Greg we were just going to move on to Jimmy Olsen. Now, I don't have the physical copy of 133, but we can read it on the DC app. But I recently picked up.
Oh, yeah, I recently picked up the fourth and fifth Jack Kirby issues of Jimmy Olsen.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Very nice.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: D. And so we're going to read some Jack Kirby Jimmy Olsen. Why can't we just stop right now and do this instead?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Because we owe it to the listener listeners that we finished this epic task that you put before us to. To flex our Montalos.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: I don't have Montalos.
I have all of these comics that are good. I could be reading absolute Batman.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Dan. I think it's. It's a good book.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: I could be reading One Nation. This Kickstarter book I got, I could be reading these books that are in Dutch.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Uh huh. I think the story is good.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: It's just that I could read a book that our friend Randy Emberlin worked on right here.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I, I, I, I think there's a.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Lot of things I could be doing. Yeah.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: But I mean, I think what you get caught up in is because you're a comic book historian and this drops so much stuff in it that you're, you're constantly like getting angry at the, the use.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: I hate this.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: I, I know you're getting, you're getting angry at the use of, of, of things that are, are not real in the book. And then, and then also just that it's so heavy with ref. It's so referential that you want to dig so deep into the stuff that it is based on.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: You. I will get to rip mine open me. Because I don't have. But we can just read the Jimmy Olsen book straight from your Jack Kirby omnibus that you also own.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Why are we doing this again?
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Because we are completionists are going to continue.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: You are today. I am not. This is terrible. I don't want to.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: This is, this is why people listen. Just because this is, this is just like a, an epic road trip that Dan and I would have when we were younger.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: I, I would rather read the Simpsons Treehouse of Terror right now.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: He would, he would rather. That's, that's a good book too. I would, I would, I would also opt for that at another time. After we finish Flex here.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: I'm gonna grab a dollar book just from over here. Yeah, yeah. That I picked up. Let's see, here's one from Summer Con of last year. Still sitting here.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Still sitting there. You haven't read yet.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Stupid comics. I have.
Let's go.
Oh, look. On accident. This was totally on accident.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Look, Dark side.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: It's John Byrne, my favorite author of all time, of all time, writing Jack Kirby's characters.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: How could you not win?
[00:05:03] Speaker A: That was sarcasm. If you don't listen to the podcast. But this is. Look, isn't this like. Doesn't that look infinitely more interesting than what we're doing? Let me entice you with this.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: I mean, if you could see it. If you're just listening and you're not, and you're not watching the YouTube, then.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: I was showing you a big giant dark side head.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Not Dark Seed.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Dark Seed.
It's, that's something different.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Some people think it's supposed to be Dark Seed. I kind of make more sense if it is.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: I. I get that all the time. Whenever people look through the. The DC action figures and I hear somebody refer to Dark side as Dark Seed.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Yeah, but we heard on the cartoon that Jack Kirby worked on, on the Super Power Stars cartoons, we heard it said.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Otherwise we wouldn't know. We would be saying Dark Seed too.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: It's Dark Seed. Yes. I mean phonetically, when you read it. And if you're. If you learn phonetically, then, yes, you're correct.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: It's also really interesting that, like, Jack Kirby put his characters on, like, a children's cartoon because, like, de sad, like, tortured and murdered people. And then on the cartoon he's like the mustache twirling. Haha. Darkseid. We got him. Haha.
It's just like that cut of that cartoon, the fake commercial for the Watchmen 80s cartoon.
I don't know if you've seen that. It's funny.
Yeah. I really. I literally want to welcome back, listeners. We're covering Flex, Mentalo 3 and probably 4 because I don't want to talk about it anymore.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: It. It took a while. It took a while. I apologize for being sick. I mean, I got the crud. It took me out. That's really what happened. I got the crud. Took me out for like, literally January, February. I'm still. If you heard the cough earlier. I got the cough. I can't hit the mute button fast enough.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: It.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: It is.
Ooh, let me tell you. Fun, fun.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Well, I. I think. I think Greg is back, and I think part of what makes me ill about this. This book.
Yeah, the COVID is kind of cool. It's like. Got a Dark Knight Returns cover.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: I hate. I hate Dark Knight Returns.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: Why?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Well, when. So let's go on this journey. You know what we're going to. I think it's better for us to sort of tell our comic book stories while Grant Morrison tells their comic book story here, because I think ours are more interesting, quite frankly.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: And not then Grant Morrison's life story. Very different. I would rather hear their story than our story. Right. But I mean, as it's told in this book and like. So why do I hate Dark Knight Returns? I've really tried to love Dark Knight Returns. Like, I've read it a couple times. Right. Yeah, it's an okay story. I mean, obviously Frank Miller's daredevil stuff was supposedly really good, and then he comes over to D.C. and does dark Knight Returns. Right. So, yeah.
The problem with this is. I was a naive. When Dark Knight Returns came out, was that 88?
[00:08:12] Speaker B: I believe so. 88, 89. Somewhere in there.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Let's verify this for a second.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: And I get what Grant Morrison, what they're doing here. It does make sense, right? They're referencing this darker age of comics. Right. And kind of poking fun at it. So I do appreciate that in the book, I. It's just done in such an incomprehensible way. Of course, when I look up Dark Knight Returns, I get the stupid ass movie.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: So.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Hold up.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: It's not a stupid movie, dude. We went and saw it like literally.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Right after I got married, actually.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: 86, like went from wedding to the movie.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So 86. Okay. So in 1986, I was 12.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: And I was a naive 12 year old, as you were aware, growing, meeting me later. Because you didn't meet me when I was 12. But no, I met you a couple of years later and I was still a naive kid and I was still reading, happily reading my spandex superhero books and my Legion books specifically. And I was only getting one book a month at that point. I was getting Legion of Superheroes. Legion of Superheroes. And then if I scraped together back issue money, I was going to the back issue bins and buying more Legion of Superheroes. But when it comes to these pieces, right, like we're still. We're still 286 is still two years after superpowers, Right. So Super Friends are still on the air. I think superpowers was 84, wasn't it?
[00:09:45] Speaker B: I believe. Yeah.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: And just kind of looking at it, you know, I hadn't really. I mean, I knew the X Men were there.
I was super excited. I think we've talked about this before. I went to the spinner rack. This is before. So this would have been like 85, 86 right in there. I went to the spinner rack and I picked up Teen Titans. The reprint books. Well, they weren't the reprint books yet. Yeah, they were the reprint books at that point. So the Reprint Baxter series, Teen Titans. So that would have been 85. Right. That's one year after the publication. So late 85. I picked up West Coast Avengers because I was like, what is this?
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Turned out to be a smart choice, but. And then I picked up, you know, I was picking up Legion book and then I had to start going to the comic shop to get the Legion book. You know, these were all 75 cents. Superpowers was 1984 to 1985. So I'm still watching cartoons at this point and then transitioning into comics. And I did have some older friends. We have an older friend who I won't name because I don't know if it's okay to name him on the show. Only a couple years older than me, but that did read the darker books.
To give you a hint, he's a large man who sings very well.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a pretty good idea who this older friend is.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: And if we introduce him on the podcast, he's. He's extremely political too. So I don't want to say who it is without asking, but I would say, you know, so, you know, we did have exposure to some of these books. Like I had. I had another friend in high school that had all the X Men books. You and I have talked about it. Not necessarily on the podcast, but, you know, introduced me that in high school. That was later. So I didn't get to read all those at the time.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: I think that's what flowed me into it after the fact, because you guys introduced me into it and I was like, oh, wow, this is cool.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: But I think like, Dark Knight Returns was really written for the people that grew up as Marvel fans. Right. And then went over to D.C. with Frank Miller coming from Daredevil, and they get this dark, know older, broken down Batman. Right. And a new story, new Robin also. So interesting. Like when that book comes out, like Jason Todd dies two years later, right?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: So they're introducing Jason Todd at the same time they're introducing this new future Robin. But it's just not, you know, I get it. This book was designed, I think, for the people that grew up with comics. It wasn't for me. Yeah, my, my. For me, comics were later. I was still reading the Legion happily at the time, and the Legion was getting into darker themes. I mean, as it went on, like even in the Baxter run with the spandex, you know, we're still, we're looking at darker stories. The book's going to end. The book ends in 1989.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: So there's still a good three year run left. So we're around like the time. We're at the end of Crisis, right. With Dark Knight Returns coming in, we're getting like death of super, death of Supergirl, death of Superboy. In the Legion, we're getting the death of the Flash. There is a lot of change going on in dc. We've reviewed on this podcast the Wonder Woman books with George Perez that came out of Crisis, very much a different story. But I Get people say that either it was Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns is the books that made comic books grow up. Right. Whereas Marvel evolved with the readership but they hadn't quite hit the book that made comic books grow up. We were under the Jim Shooter regime at the time.
Very nice man.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Very nice man. We retract everything we ever said.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: No, we do not retract.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: We don't. We don't.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: About his writing and what he's very nice man. That doesn't. You can be a very nice man and still write very not interesting comic stories at times.
I'm sure Grant Morrison. They are a very nice person.
I'm sure.
I don't know that I haven't met Grant Morrison. But assumption. Very nice person probably. But I don't have to like everything they do.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Fair. Fair.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: And I think that's where. And Frank Miller. I have no idea if Frank Miller is a very nice person.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: I mean same can go for, you know, like any. Anybody out there. It's like. I mean I read. I. Yeah. A lot of different stuff and I'm sure that there are. There. There's mantest people out there. But their. Their books might not be for me.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: And I went back, I did read Doom Patrol. Like I didn't hate it when you know. But I hate this.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: You hate this?
[00:14:49] Speaker A: I really do. I hate this. It's just. It's not interesting. It's not comprehensible.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: How could you say this? This issue is not interesting. This issue we're about to jump into is not interesting.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Well, prove me wrong then. You know, listeners read the book and come back and tell me how much of an idiot I am because I don't get it.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Go get that new release of the. That. That whole entire compendium and tell us what you think. I mean, I'm not telling you to do it. I mean, I am telling you to do it, but I'm not telling you.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: I'm glad I didn't buy this when it was new because I would have been so angry that I spent $2.50 on this book and I would have gotten this when I was in college. So it would have been shipped from the spider's web and I would have gotten it or not. I think my dad would have picked it up and mailed them to me. But whatever. I would have pre purchased this, right? And then I would have got it and I would have been like, what is this garbage?
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Like, literally this would have been. It would have been the choice of am I eating packs of Ramen this week or am I having hot dogs with buns and cheese? Yeah, it is a big choice at that time.
And damn it, ramen.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, anyway, we're here.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: We're here.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Oh, and we're. We're in this. This miniseries.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank God it's only four issues. All right. So I'm not going to go through page by page on this. I'm going to do some summaries because just. Wow. All right. We start out with the man who was the detective, I believe. Right?
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: And he's with his wife.
And there are a couple of things I want to highlight. He notes he doesn't believe in superheroes.
There are no superheroes. So they are speaking to like that Dark Knight returns. Sort of like angsty. Like, let's not have superheroes. I mean, comic books are cyclical, right? In the comic industry. Burnt out superheroes in the late 40s, early 50s started running Western and crime and horror comics and police comics and different things.
Batman and Superman and. Well, not in that order. Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman survive. Right. And we still have their comics rolling through. But you really, you know, you get the Marvel revival later. You do have some superhero comics, but they're. They're just not. It's not the same. Right. They're running these other comics and, you know, things go away. Then it's sort of cyclical again, too. It's. Superhero comics are at an all time high in the early 90s. Right. But then we have the comic book bust of the 90s, because they're just trying, you know, by 96, we're in pretty big trouble with the comic book industry. Right. Like, they had been releasing issues with millions of, you know, millions of issues.
All the top art talent had been at image now for a while. Image burned out the audience really badly with pretty terrible writing in a lot of the books. And I think we've talked about this many times before, but I just want to give us a time and place here and what's being critiqued. Right. So it does make sense. So he's like, I hate. You know, I don't believe in superheroes. And I get that we're sort of trying to say that we're moving thing. He's taking care of his wife, right. And he's talking about replacing his goldfish named Peter over and over again. I don't know about you, but I felt like that was an allusion to like them trying to recreate spider man over and over again. Maybe especially at the time, because Spider man had gone through a lot of changes.
You're coming a few years off of Todd McFarlane leaving Spider man and going over to Image. And then our good friend Randy Emberlin got to ink Spider man later on.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Show some changes.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: But Carnage. And then of course, is this. I don't know if we're pointing fingers at the spider clones yet right now, but maybe a little bit like making fun of it. Just.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Just in there. Yeah.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Which is fine because that was not a great story either.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: So how could you not like this?
[00:19:15] Speaker A: There's a lot of ums right now.
Yeah. Harry, did you feed Peter?
I think maybe. And this lady looks like Aunt May too.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: She does.
She's got an ammunition.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: And it even says I was scared because he looked a little sick a day or two ago, but now he seems fine. She was always in the early Spider man talking about Peter being sickly in the early comics.
That's very on point.
But he's deluding himself and her by just continuing to replace the fish.
And it scares me like on one level, like that level of just whether that's his mom or his wife, I can't really tell. But that level of distrust in a relationship is kind of freaky.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: And then we get on and he says he believes in all but one superhero. Oh, there's. They were all gone but one. And we get Flex Manalo with a trench coat on.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And his boots.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: You know what would make this even better is if he had like some pockets. And extra pockets.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: And extra pockets.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: You. Pouches and pockets.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: You know what though? He doesn't need them.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You know where he sticks his gear?
[00:20:53] Speaker B: In his front pocket or in his back pocket.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: He. He doesn't have any pockets, Greg.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: In his people pocket.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Oh, maybe.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's possible in his people pocket.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Well, we're back to presumably the creator of this universe here. And he's still on his drug induced coma.
Yay.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Still.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: He's still to say about these pages.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: No, I mean they're interesting, but they're. It's. It's just a lot of like, it's.
It's a lot to unpack about Dead yet.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: The Frighteners.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: The Frighteners. The movie. The Frighteners.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, that's the Adam looking at, right?
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah, It's a good one.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Would you rather watch that right now? If we stopped right now and we started watching the Frighteners, would you rather do that than finish reading this book?
[00:22:00] Speaker B: It's been a while since I've seen it. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: We're now the Frighteners podcast. Everybody. We're gonna go check this movie out. If you haven't seen it, fantastic film, the Frighteners.
All right, Everybody, strap in. July 19th. That's right. Coming live to you, the Frighteners.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It's Robert Zemeckis and Michael J. Fox's best effort together.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: It is fantastic.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Because they did nothing else together.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Nothing.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Nothing.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: No other good films.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Nothing. No other good.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: And another more interesting thing than this comic book. Sam Goody is advertising.
Beck.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: And good album. Hayden.
This sounds like a. Like a. Create a character. WWE tag team.
Aiden and Beck. They're coming to get you.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: They're coming to get you. All right, everybody. And over here got Hayden and Beck. Odalie.
Peel out, kids. It's gonna get nuts.
Yum, yum. Eat em.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Our detective friend's wife dies of cancer. Awesome. We love that.
I'm big supporter of cancer in storytelling. It's very good since some of my favorite cancer movies are, like, Beaches. Very good. Yeah.
Is that the only cancer movie? Pretty much.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: No, there's a. There's a few.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Oh, you mean, like, there's a few. Oh, well, they're all sad, and it's not all fun.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: I don't want to go through the whole entire listing and naming of each, so.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: We'll just.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: I was gonna say Deadpool. Deadpool 2. Deadpool 3.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah, there's those. Not necessarily sad, but.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: They can be. They're sad when they show, like, certain scenes.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. There's some sadness.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Like when Shatterstar just gets electrocuted.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: It's not very sad in the movie because you don't know who he is. It's actually kind of funny.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Couple minutes of screen time.
What, three minutes total?
Not even 90 seconds. Said even three minutes.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it wasn't much. Shatterstar. Yeah. I mean, it kind of reflects his history in the comics, really.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: So much potential.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Our detective friend goes to see the hoaxer.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: The hoaxer.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: And he's like, reading a National Geographic magazine and he uses his hoaxer thing.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: To hoax it up.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And change the landscape.
And they talk about cancer.
This is fun. I'm having fun. Yeah, you're having even more fun. I'm sure. This is the topic. Oh, yeah.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: So, you know, that's why I'm like, let me just jump through these pages. Yeah.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: That's why I'm covering it for you. We're moving on.
So we. We get nanomite and Is it little miss?
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: And we get our.
I read on the Internet this guy's name might be Sage, the author guy.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: And his girlfriend's like yelling at him and he's talking about going, okay, here's something I finally relate to.
He goes to like a pamphlet bookstore.
His dad used to take him to those. Remember that? It's still there, isn't it? Like Left Bank Books in Seattle. Oh, yeah, right on pike or down. Yeah, it's on. Right.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Right by the market.
Very different scene than when we were growing up. But we used to go in there for debate stuff.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: And they always had all these pamphlets out front.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Pamphlets? Pamphlets. All sorts of pamphlets.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder what kind of pamphlets they have now. We'll have to go there and check it out.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: All sorts of really interesting and strange ones. I'm sure.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: I'm sure they're all like focused on one orange guy right now.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Probably.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Speaking of which, they're gonna date. Our podcast probably is gonna come out like a few days after we record here. But man, I was watching Jon Stewart last night.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: And he just eviscerated the efforts of the Democratic Party right now.
And then the senator comes on right after he's done.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: From the Democratic Party and has to like do the interview with him after he just like eviscerated them.
And I was like, man, did they not tell this guy what Jon Stewart was going to say before he agreed to come on?
And when I say eviscerated the Democratic Party, we're talking like just eviscerated them for their absolute fecklessness in the budget fight.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: And you've only got.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: I'm using big words today.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: When you've only got four people making a voice and there's. And they're not actually there and two of them aren't acting members of what's going on.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. Well, anyway, our artist here gets in trouble for drawing fleshless.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Oh my.
Yeah.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: And he's out sweltering, reading comics, dreaming and drawing. I mean, I don't know why he's so whiny. Like this sounds like. That sounds awesome. Like, what is his problem?
I would like that.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: And then we get another advertisement for the Frighteners.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Again with the Frighteners.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: They really want to see the Frighteners being. Being particularly a particularly like, financial success for the theater.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: I, you know, I, I think it was more of an after it hit the theaters with their lenticular VHS covers. And it's massive play on. On all the. The HBOs and Cinemax and everything else, but it was a.
It was a lot more.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Does the Frighteners have a more cohesive plot than this story that we're reading?
[00:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. Guy wants to see.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: How about the other movie they're advertising here now on pay per view? Ace Ventura. When Nature Calls.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: O, that's a. I mean of the.
It was on pay per view.
It was the more.
Less offensive movie of the two.
Of not of the. Of the two movie choices. Of the two Ace Ventura movies.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Well, since I would be the one mostly offended by the movie.
Yeah, but. I mean.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but this was less offensive.
Unless you're a rhinoceros.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: I don't think I've seen the second one.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Oh, my. There was, there was. There is some offensiveness in this movie too. I mean, it's the. The late 90s, early 2000s.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Well, we get back to our poor sad artist here.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Complaining about hot nights and days and nights in jail. Drawing Thunder Girl with her breasts hanging out. These are the words of the comic, not my words. Of her top or supernova masturbating with the light up end of her solar scepter.
Wow.
I'm glad we didn't have to see that drawing.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: I'm telling you, man, this is such an interesting comic, Dan.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm really good. I'm really enjoying getting the inner workings of this. This young adult mind.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: You picked it. You picked it.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: I mean, look, I mean, I told you we could stop, right? I had a safe word and I used it multiple times and you ignored it.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: I true.
You're putting it on me like that. Wow. But we're.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: The more important thing here is basically we're just recounting Adam Hughes early career in comics.
Or is that his current career?
What are you saying? He draws really big, you know.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, this is all I'm motioning.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: If you're not on video. Yeah, he's motioning and people love his stuff. You know, the books go for a lot of money, the old ones.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: But I think next time you do a kid's book, you should ask Adam Hughes to draw it.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: Just think of the Adam Hughes version of.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: What?
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Just. Just the fact that I have to try to. Don't even say just the fact that when people come up and start asking questions about Starlight, which is about a brother and sister superhero duo and then they're like, are they ever gonna fall in love? And it's like, it's a Brother and sister. What is your malfunction?
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Well, also, one of them is kind of, you know.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, spoiler. But one of them is spoiler.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: The books have been out for, like, two years.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Yeah, one of them.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Three years.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: One of them is probably spoiler.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Spoiler.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Yeah, spoiler.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Well, anyway, you know, I messaged our friend Travis and he didn't respond back. I was very disappointed. I sent him the COVID The same cover you didn't respond back to. I got a new book.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah?
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Called Working with Ditko.
I'm excited to start reading. In fact, a few episodes from now, we're gonna cover some Jimmy Olsen books, Jack Kirby. But we're going to cover one of the worst comics ever made, and we're going to do it with a smile. Yeah.
And it's a crazy because Steve Ditko worked on it. Mark.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: John Mark DeMatt. Mark DeMattez worked on it.
I believe that George Perez did the COVID And it's one of the worst comics I've ever read.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: Got a Grand Slam team on it.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Yeah, some, sometimes.
But at least the comic, I think, has a plot. Well, anyway, we get back to this sewer man.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Sewer man in the sewer. Doing with sewer.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: He's saying he couldn't get a discrete. That. That distress signal from the Legion of Legions.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Now the Legion legions can't get him.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: In the sewer and he can't find him. Well, we've lost the Legion of Legions. Now if Grant Morrison right here. If they are taking a shot at D.C. editorial and the darkness of comics and ruining my favorite comic book, sort of.
Okay.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I'm down.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: He's down with it. He's okay with it, folks.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Dan is okay with it, but we've got. We basically get. We run back into the. Who are these guys again? Faculty X.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: Faculty X. Where would you put Faculty X and the Pantheon on Pantheon of X books.
So is it. Is this like.
Kind of like. You know how they had, like, Gotham.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: And then they've had, like. During Civil War, they had, like, the. This. I forget the name of the series. It was about all the people around the city during Civil War and Marvel Universe. Do you remember the name of it? Was it Civil War punchline?
[00:35:04] Speaker B: I'm not sure, but I have an idea what you're talking about, but I don't know.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Well, it was a book about the people that were being impacted by the story. Right. Like, it was that. That's what it was all about.
I feel like Faculty X would Be like the faculty that we never see at Xavier School for Gifted youngsters.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: All the people that help out and make it happen.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And they're like. Also, they're out, like, drinking wine together and complaining about their students and whining. I met a lot of faculty when I taught college like that. That didn't really like teaching college. I actually like teaching college and coaching debaters. But there was a lot of faculty that really liked just being faculty more than they liked actually, like, teaching people.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: What if these are all, like. These are all X Men type people? They're all mutants who just couldn't cut it and get out of the danger room. They weren't good enough to be. They got to put on. They got sidelined. They couldn't put on the actual suits and go out and do any of the stuff. So, you know, they ended up just becoming the faculty.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: So are you saying that if you're a teacher, you're not good at things?
[00:36:17] Speaker B: No, no, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying they had.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: I mean, it says everything about our podcast.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but.
Yeah, but. I mean, come on, Dan.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Well, we. We get.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: You're like, skip.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: We get. Well, I made the joke about myself and then skipped. Like.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: I know.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Magic power. Yeah. Magic power of the music in me. I'm young now. I'm wild now. I'm free.
I've got the magic power. What? So I just want to say at work, and I'm going to. Out where I work.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: No, you can't. You can't.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: I can't. But there's a building in Seattle called Triumph, and I kept sending people songs from the band Triumph while they were in this building. And they didn't understand what I was doing.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: No.
Oh, my gosh.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: And I was like. I was very sad by this. I was like, this is. This is great humor, and we're getting literally nothing from it here.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: Oh, it's a meta joke, but people just don't get it.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: No. And people don't like comics that are meta jokes. And I get it. Because unless you get the meta joke, it doesn't make any sense.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Oh, and that would explain this comic. Oh, my gosh.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Well, we flipped the page, and he's going to a show for adult superheroes only called the Knight K N I G H T. Oh, it's a Batman Dark Knight reference again. All right, club.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. You can't get on board with this.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: Part of the book, Dan.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: It's a crazy club. He's going to, man.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: No, I can't, because I'm gonna turn the couple pages and just see it, and it's gonna skip, skip, skip.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: I don't want to see this.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: I mean, this is not something I want to see while I'm talking to you.
This is the kind of thing, like maybe I want to see somewhere else, but not here.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: It's a lot of action, people. It's the unseen hand, if you will.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Well, we flipped the page, and he's got a girl in his hand, and then she becomes his girlfriend, and then she's yelling at him again, and he's all sad again.
Then we flip the page and we've got lived any good books lately? After this, we get an advertisement for the rest of the collection. Of course, we have some books we can't read anymore.
We do have Hellblazer. Sandman Theater was not done by said person, so we're good.
It's been a couple months now, so I've actually read up on what happened. So I'm now talking about people. Yeah. So I won't make that mistake again. Preachers in here. Has Garth Ennis done anything to piss people off?
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Well, that. No, I'm just joking.
Just books.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: I need to read more. Yeah, I, I. Well, yeah.
And then we get an advert. Hey, hey.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: What?
[00:39:31] Speaker A: We get an advertisement for the unseen hand. No idea what this is.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: That was my reference.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks like Andy Parks inked it, so. Yeah, we like Andy Parks.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: We do.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: That's good news. Yeah. All right.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: I think he's got another movie coming out.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Does he?
[00:39:51] Speaker B: I gotta check the release schedule and see when the next.
If they're. They're actually putting that into production. But it looked like the.
The sequel to that movie series is off of his original book. Yeah.
See you, dad. Yeah, see you, dad. Which they turned into. I'm trying to think of the actual Extraction movie series. They did Extraction one and two, and then it looks like a third one is coming out.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Signed by.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Yeah, signed by Andy Parks. He's a nice dude. He's really nice.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: I got to do. We did. When we went to Omaha a couple years ago, we did see it out as an episode. We did all this as episodes a while back a couple years ago. He was great. I got to do a panel with him and Phil Hester. They were the nicest folks I've ever met in comics, so.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Well, anyway, speaking of nice, we get his little version of our artist in a boat. Looks really cool. There's some really cool Art here on.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: This page, it looks so good.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: It's like we find out that. That Mr. Quietly can actually draw.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: That was mean. I don't know.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: That was too mean.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: I don't think this is his art style. Is not my art style. But, man, do I like that splash page with the boat and the water and the tornado.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: It was pretty sweet.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: And it makes me want more of that. This is the problem. It's not like the other art's that bad. I just want more of that when I see it, it's beautiful.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: He's like, give me more of this and make this. Make the whole book like that. You'll get that in book four.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: We go back to the questioner or the hoaxer or whatever.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: The hoaxer. He's hoaxing it up. He's got a jar of pickles and. Wait, they're not pickles. It's goldfish.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: They're still looking for Flex. Mentalo.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Yeah. It's got a light bulb. Yeah.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we are still looking for Flex. Well, we know it comes in. And they. They make him check his coat.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Yeah, get him.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: And he's meeting all the. He's meeting all of the Legion of superhero tryout rejects, and they're all hanging.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: Out in the nightclub, which is more like a.
It's a sex fantasy club. Sexy. I was gonna say fantasy club, but.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Well, we might call this a.
A members only club.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's definitely. You have to have a card of some sort to get in. No photos are allowed. And you don't talk about what you did there.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Now we've got some ladies. We have. We have some ladies. There's some other nondescript folks. There's some twinks down here in the corner.
Look like they were left over from the sidekicks that we met a couple issues ago. Yeah. Got some tentacles going on. We've got some massages going on.
I've got somebody like. We've got some bondage going on. There's. There's a lot of things going on. There's like a bird in a cage with some canaries maybe around it. I don't know. Anyway, our narrator gets in here. I don't know if he's even our narrator, but he's talking about everything he sees. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he just says, frederick Wortham was right. Was right.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Side. Did everybody audibly hear me sigh? I really hope so.
This was probably my least favorite moment of the narrative.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Huh?
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Because one, I don't want to eat. Yeah, I get the Joke. But I'm bump. But like, I never want to see Frederick Wertham's name anywhere near books I'm reading.
He was a fraud. His research was made up. He was a complete piece of.
And here. His name is here. And I don't know if his research had been proven as made up at this point in 96, but. And I get what they are doing. What. What Grant Morrison is doing in the writing here. It makes sense, basically saying that the comics went so far way that it made Frederick rhythm. Right?
But yeah. No, no, no.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: If you. If you push him, if you push the comics, that way he will be right.
But if you don't let him get that far, he won't be right. You don't have to let them get that far, so he doesn't have to be right.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:42] Speaker A: All I have to say is the next page with the blue blonde is not okay. And creepy. I don't. It's not okay. It's just. I don't like it.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: It's creepy.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: And then we meet some more folks. We see some more. But the gold kind of mobbing.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: The gold thing is okay.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: No, it is what it is.
Hey, we get another advertisement for Cyberella by Howard Chaykin. Hey, I heard that guy's narratives are always spot on too.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: I like most of them, but they're not always coherent.
Oh, boy. All right.
You know, I'm reading this Grant Morrison book, and somebody. I was. Somebody was noting that they went back and reread, like, his Seven Soldiers of Victory stuff and everything and that it made sense to them in Multiversity. And I'm like, I don't remember if those made sense to me either.
Maybe I just don't have the attention span to pay attention to these books long enough for them to make sense. Probably not.
This could be, like a mental thing. Maybe I should be tested for something. I don't know.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Maybe. Maybe.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: Or. Flipping through the page, we meet like a skeleton world Multiverse is colliding.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: He's back with his girlfriend. He's looking for the universe where he's happy when the worlds collide. He's blinded. Nuclear explosions. He's throwing his drugs up again. He's in a. He's in vomit. And we finally find.
It's not the question. What was his name with the eye on his head?
Oh, is it the guy they're looking for?
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah, the guy they're looking for. The.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: You've forgotten?
[00:46:36] Speaker B: I've forgotten. It's the answer.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: No, the answer I'm not the answer. I'm the question, the problem.
Yeah, well, all right. Well, that's it. That's this book feedback, sir.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: It's a lot.
It was a lot. And it was definitely not what I was expecting when I opened it up that. That first time. And then also going back and rereading it again, I was like, why am I doing this to myself again? Because I had to refresh myself. And there are. For the. For the small amount of.
It's. It's crazy because there's a lot of really interesting storytelling going on and there's a lot of really cool art and there's a lot of really cool other stuff going on. There's a lot of really cool stuff, but it's also very confusing.
[00:47:35] Speaker A: Well, and then they have the back matter here. That fills in some of the gaps again.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: But it's also. That's very angering.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Yeah, but here's a piece of it that does make some sense in relation to what we're reading, in fact. Wallace sage died in 1982. A broken, penniless wretch. His talent destroyed by drink and drugs. His once desirable features nod into a bloody ruin of tertiary syphilis and face cancer. He was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
Man, that is just the person I want to be reading a whole story about.
And it says, Flex Metallo haunted limbo. Over 20 years present by implications alone in every other superhero title published in that period. Then in 1990, a radical postmodern or dark age version of Flex appeared in the DC's Doom Patrol title. This Flex was used to challenge the ontological categories of the hypothetical DC universe. And his success led to various imitate imitators both here and in other lands where the people are quite different characters with names like Stress Psycho Mind Wrestler and Brute Braino Psychic weightlifter. Now, I think I would read that last one. Are selling millions and offering eager readers the chance to face their deepest fears and insecurities on a monthly basis.
All right, yeah, yeah, I'm done. I'm done with this. Do we have any more?
[00:49:13] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's your call if you want to be done. Dan, I force you to read this one. The third issue if you don't want to do the last one.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Oh, no, we're doing last issue now because.
Yeah, I was reading from the last issue, so I was already screwing up.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: Oh, I see.
Are you. Are you done with the day? Are you done for the day? Is that it?
[00:49:38] Speaker A: Done this part?
[00:49:39] Speaker B: You're done with this? You're like, I'm.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: We're done with this part. So tell me, Tell me. Great. We're done with issue three. What do you do?
[00:49:46] Speaker B: What do you do? Who am I in this, in this issue?
[00:49:50] Speaker A: Who am I in life?
[00:49:53] Speaker B: In life?
[00:49:54] Speaker A: Your Greg, author of great comic books. Like, yeah.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: Like, Absolute Zeros, Camp Launchpad, Gina.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Braves of the Apocalypse, drawn by Hughes.
[00:50:05] Speaker B: What?
[00:50:06] Speaker A: That'd be Absolute Zeros. No, you're gonna have a new Adam Hughes.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Okay, but your lead character, drawn by Adam Hughes would be different.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:50:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:29] Speaker B: I say no.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: They don't go to the nightclub.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: No.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: They don't sneak out of camp.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: No, no. None of that.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: None of that. None of those.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: You know, I waited 40, 50 minutes to say that.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: I realize this. I do not like your jokes, your tomfoolery, Dan.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: Do not like it.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Anyway, Absolute Zeros Camp Launch Pad, Junior Braves of the Apocalypse, Starlight, among other fine books.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: And you can also be found at the Retro Emporium in Kent, Washington.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: That is true.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Many days.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: Many days.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: I can be found nowhere these days. I am, Dan. I am here. Eventually, Greg and I will go to a comic show again, but we don't. So maybe someday when Greg's not coughing up along, probably this summer, we'll. We'll go to Summer Con again.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: That was like, people kept asking, are you coming to Emerald City? And I was like, I am sick. I'm not going. I'm not. I'm. I, I, I am not.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: Why would we go to Admiral City anyway?
[00:51:32] Speaker B: I mean, like, I just.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Did you, did you read the. What was happening there?
[00:51:37] Speaker B: I, I heard a lot.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: Miserable.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: I heard a lot. I heard a lot. I, I mean, I had a lot of friends that. I had a lot of friends that were tabling and that wanted to, you know, just visit and stuff like that. And I, it would have been nice to see people that I haven't seen in a long time.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: But, but the people that went as, like, people that paid for tickets.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. People that paid. People that paid good money to go to what used to be a great show. And I mean, I could personally, I, if, if people that work for Reed Pop listen to our podcast, that is fine, because you know what? They don't, as a.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Don't worry.
[00:52:14] Speaker B: Put it out there. I, I was just going to put it out there. As a comic book creator who lives in the Seattle area that hasn't been able to get a table at his local big comic book convention for the last Several years.
You know, that is fine.
I don't care. Because there's a lot of great shows out there that I would rather spend a weekend at and go to and take time away from everything else that I do in my life to go there than to go to that show.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: Where I want that show to be run better, too. Like, I don't. Lines. I don't want to deal with, like, what's going on. I don't want to deal with all the celebrities and everybody bitching about getting an autograph. That's all the. It's. All their posts were. It's like they didn't handle it right. So, yeah, it was disappointing. But we'll go to Summer Con again. We'll go to some other shows. So.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I mean, and the crazy thing is, is as a. As a person who had attended that show for like, 20 years prior, or not 20 years, but like, 20 in the. In the last, like, 15 years. And even when it was just a small, like, you know, held at the sales center and stuff like that, and it was like, you know, just like, doing all. All this stuff and then just being, like, the person that would go and just be excited to go to a show and then being a comic book creator, and it's like, you see it from both sides, and it's. It's frustrating. And to see, like, to. To go and have to stand in a line, to get into another line, to get into another line, to get through the door to get into a line, to get to a line to get. Get to a table so you can set up your stuff. That just.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds fun.
[00:54:04] Speaker B: Sounds fun. Sounds great.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: Now, I did read a post that talked about how wonderful Nathan Fillion was.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: He's your favorite. You'll love that, Guy.
[00:54:19] Speaker A: And if you're not sensing the sarcasm here, it says.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: I mean, he was just channeling Guy Gardner, Dan.
[00:54:25] Speaker A: That's it. He was method acting.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: He was method acting. He was being guard, gardener. He was Guy Gardnering it up for everybody. He wanted everybody to know. He really felt like he wanted to give people what they were expecting. If they were. If they were expecting Castle or anybody.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: Else, they weren't getting that. They were getting Guy Gardner.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: They're getting Guy Gardner.
[00:54:50] Speaker A: All of mental abuse and relational abuse and everything.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: You are not getting your captain from Firefly. You're not getting your rookie. You're not getting any of your lovable, likable characters. You're getting Guy Gardner.
[00:55:07] Speaker A: You're not getting the tdk.
[00:55:09] Speaker B: You're not. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, honestly, I've.
I've heard he's actually an alien from another planet. From another planet.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: Butterfly in his head and.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: No, no, no. And. And part of his whole entire thing is that, you know, he's just trying to. He's trying to take over the world.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: One interaction at a time. I heard this on a podcast and I. I listened to. I listened to the podcast, and it was one about, like, how most of the famous people out there are aliens and we have to watch out for them.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: Well, this is a good transition off of Re Pop. Very good job. So we. We hate Re Pop. And I don't hate Re Pop.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: I just. I. I find it. Well, I will tell you, I find it so interesting.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Comic show.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: I find it so interesting I can get a table at New York, Chicago or Florida, but I can't get one.
Well, no, no, no, no. Re Pop shows or. But I can't get one in Seattle.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: Here.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: Here in. In my. My local vicinity.
I don't understand.
[00:56:21] Speaker A: Well, you like Re Pop. I don't. I didn't say. Well, I was ruined. A show that I used to fly to.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you used to travel when you lived on the other side of the country to come back here to go to Reed Pop shows or not to read pop shows, but to Emerald City.
Because Re Pop took good.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: I can't imagine if I'd flown out to these shows and. And attended them, like, I would have been so frustrated.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you remember, like, Henry and I would get. We'd get into a hotel and, like, crash out, you know, I mean, this.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: Show is only doable if you have a table now where you can, like, go sit behind that table.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: For a couple hours and then rest, because it's just exhausting. And I understand, like, they're making people queue up to go see things now. Like, I mean, we used to cheat the system, and if we wanted to see something, we'd go sit in the room and wait, you know, see the panel before or whatever, and then go see. Not just for you, but I don't, you know, other friends. I do have other friends besides Greg. We used to do this as well. Apparently now there's like they're forcing force exiting people and queuing people and giving priority access, and you're paying for that and you're doing this and it's like.
I mean, it's like it's become a celebrity money grab instead of a show about comics, which that's fine if that's where you want to go? Sweet. But I'd rather, you know, if I was going to specialize in something like that, like, I'd rather go to Crypticon or whatever the gaming one is called or. Yeah, one of the smaller comic shows like we have in Tacoma. Whatever they're calling it now. Grizzly. Is it Grit City now?
[00:57:49] Speaker B: Yeah. What I mean, what's crazy is, like, you know, people are always like, oh, hey, it's just getting as big as San Diego as sdcc. But the crazy thing, it's not a selling point. But. No, no, no. The thing is, is when San Diego still is about comics, I mean, it's as much as about entertainment as it is about the other half of stuff. You could still go there and do comic stuff, see comics.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: But I guess what I'll say, though, getting that big is also not necessarily a selling point.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, it's wild.
[00:58:26] Speaker A: They're just churning people through and it's not fun, right?
[00:58:31] Speaker B: Well, yeah, no, like the last time that you, Mike and I went, like, just the line to get into a line to get our badge, the whole entire process was just like.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Yep. I mean, the best thing going is hanging out with, like, colleagues and fans and not. And yeah, I used to be able to sneak in there on a Thursday and meet a lot of creators, but I don't even think you could necessarily get that done anymore.
Well, anyway, enough of Repop, enough of Emerald City, we didn't go. So if you went to Emerald City and you enjoyed it, hey, give us some feedback. Let us us know what you liked about it. Yeah, maybe you have somebody on the inside and can hook Greg up with a table in his own town, you.
[00:59:14] Speaker B: Know, or if not, come see me at any of the other shows that I go to.
[00:59:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So, all right. When I go to shows up, Greg does stuff. Dan is doesn't do stuff. But you can. You can occasionally, every other week, see me ON Abs at 50.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: Abs at 50. Oh, my God. I'm coughing and snorting. What is that, Dan?
[00:59:34] Speaker A: Well, that is a podcast about my journey to get abs at 50. So what? Yeah, it's possible.
[00:59:40] Speaker B: It's doable.
[00:59:41] Speaker A: When I started the podcast, I weighed 211 pounds, and now I weigh 185 pounds.
[00:59:46] Speaker B: Get out of town.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: Yeah, so Paul, Jiu Jitsu lawyer Paul and I do that podcast every couple weeks, so you can go check that out if you want to check it out.
Other than that, we're done. So I'm going to log off this thing and we're out. Issue three. Flex Mentalo. Can't wait for issue four.
Issue four.
Bye.
