Funny Book Forensics 405 Lucky 13

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Who is this on my podcast? I'm very confused. [00:00:11] Speaker B: It's Pris. [00:00:11] Speaker A: What did you do with. Oh, what did you do with Greg? [00:00:16] Speaker B: Well, I wasn't expecting that question. Well, you know, he's busy in VR being a waifu. [00:00:24] Speaker A: I see. That's. This is like when Greg disappeared at the fair, like, a year ago. On the podcast, we don't know what happens to him sometimes. Well, obviously, you can see Greg is not here this week, but Travis is here. The co author of Starlight, the author of lots of stuff, and the upcoming author of something about cyborgs or something. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Two cyborg books coming out. Yeah. That's crazy. [00:00:50] Speaker A: So are they. Are they famous for some reason? [00:00:53] Speaker B: One of them is, yeah. So I'll be taking over and doing a graphic novel with Brett Waddell for a sequel to Nemesis, the 1992 film from Albert Pugh. So, you know, we. We talked to the estate. We got permission to use some of his notes and build a graphic novel or volume, a trade volume that takes place between the first movie and the second movie. So it's like a 1.5. And so that should be coming out here in the next few months. And then as an offshoot of that, I did an entry for a book coming out called Bad Future, which is an anthology of a couple other creators who are all cyberpunk people. So they invited cyberpunk people to do it. And they're like, well, you do Nemesis. I was like, I also just do cyberpunk. That's literally my favorite genre. So. So, yeah, I'll be doing that as well. So the. I did a little piece there. It's like a 12 page, I think. [00:01:47] Speaker A: Awesome. So there's two things. And Kickstarter will be coming soon for. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, both of them. Actually, I think they both have Kickstarter pages up now, so you can follow them. One is for Bad Future, and the other one is for Albert Pune's Nemesis. [00:02:03] Speaker A: All right, so if we search for Nemesis, you should find it. We will find the best of the next generation movies. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. [00:02:16] Speaker A: You're like, wait, no, wait. What? [00:02:18] Speaker B: I mean, Tom Hardy, you know, in his groundbreaking performance. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Yes. The ground. Yeah, it's no first contact, as we're aware, but. And, yeah, you can look these up. [00:02:30] Speaker B: If you're in Kickstarter. If you just do Nemesis. It's the first project that comes up. [00:02:35] Speaker A: I bet if Travis sends me the links when I advertise this podcast, we'll get links. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Oh, that's probably really smart, huh? [00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll we'll do that. And so Greg is obviously not here this week. Greg's dealing with some family stuff, so we want you to send Greg some good vibes. Even if the family stuff is done by the time this podcast comes out, it doesn't matter. You can send post crisis good vibes, and it's okay. It still gets the good vibes out to Greg. So we want you to send those good vibes. Whether the good vibes now be good vibes later good vibes, then it doesn't matter. Just we want to take care of Greg, and that's why Travis is here with me this week. But Greg and I have been talking about inviting creators onto the podcast. And of course, Travis has been on the podcast once before when I was allowed to see Starlight number seven, before anybody else got to see it. And only Travis would do it because Greg is a miser, will never show me his work ahead of time. Only Travis could unlock the door to let me. And I wore it today. An esteemed member of the media reviewed media. Starlight number. Yes, the. The first time. But we've been talking about having some creators on, and we plan to have some more. And when we do these creator podcasts, my interest is not to say, hi, Travis, what town did you grow up in? I don't want anything I can find on Wikipedia. I also know where Travis grew up, and I don't want to talk about that town anyway, so I. Somebody called some of those areas interesting names. My old debate coach called that area the Dry Shitties. [00:04:04] Speaker B: Oh. I mean, I grew up in a lot of areas, though. Like, I'll just say it's just Walla, Yakima, Wenatchee, Wapato, Takuma. I mean, these are all places, but. [00:04:16] Speaker A: The towns are nicely named twice. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. This means it's twice as big. [00:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah. As well. Anyway. Yes. But I'm not. I'm not here to ask Travis where he grew up, and I'm not going to go through anything I could find on a potential Wikipedia page on Travis. What we want to do is get creators and find out what inspired them with comics and read comics they liked. And if you have followed Travis's work at all or you've listened to the podcast at all when I've reviewed Starlight and teased Greg about Power Pack. Well, Power Pack was the inspiration for one of Travis's big creation, Starlight. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:52] Speaker A: And we're going to talk about Power Pack today, and we're going to sprinkle in some Power Pack facts, because as I told you all last week. 80s Marvel is a huge hole for me because I was getting one comic off the newsstand. I don't even know if Travis knows this. You know how much of a Legion fan I am? So I was getting the 75 cent. So when I was nine, I got a book camping like it was a legion of superheroes 306, the Star Boy, the famous cover with the Starfield background with the Starfield suit. [00:05:20] Speaker B: I'm sorry, I don't know the comic you're talking about. [00:05:23] Speaker A: Legion of supernatural number 306. Yeah. You never heard of it. And that's because he was reading Marvel and ElfQuest and other things like that. And I was reading. I got to buy one comic book a month. So I was getting. So I got the tales and then it went direct. And my dad would drive me to O's Books in Tacoma from Puyallup and let me buy my one comic book once it went direct sales and I couldn't buy it on the spinner rack anymore. And that's what I got. And so I didn't start getting Marvel books until like 1990, 1991. And even then it was sketchy. And then when I had enough money to buy my own, when I had a job, then I was going to Spider's Web. Thank you, Kim and Todd McFarlane. Kim McFarlane and Todd McFarlane. But yeah, in Piall, that's where I. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Sold a bunch of Lady Death comics and some of the original the Gathering playtest cards. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Yep. And Kim, the owner, co owned with Topic Farland, of course, if you didn't know that, you knew that. But Kim, his brother in law, owned it with him and it was fantastic shop. And that's when I started expanding out. And then I had a wonderful friend named Jen Baker in high school who hopefully will never listen to this podcast, but she lent me like all of her X men from like 85 to like 1992. And we've got a cat visitor. We don't have a dog visitor yet, but we have a first time cat visitor on the new Juliet. [00:06:47] Speaker B: When he hears me on a call or a podcast, he has to come see what I'm doing. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Caesar is here. And so I have a huge hole there for Marvel's book, Marvel books. Because I went back and bought books around some of the DC books, right. Like bought crisis crossovers, bought things like that. But it took a long time for me to. I haven't read a lot of mid-80s Marvel, so that's a big hole for me. So Usually I'm the historian talking about stuff related to podcasts. And I might pull out one of my history books here to look up Power Pack. Travis is going to fill in some of these blanks about Power Pack because I'm going to be honest, I don't even know their powers until I read the book today. [00:07:25] Speaker B: It switches, by the way, just, just to throw you off. They're different that we're going to re review. [00:07:33] Speaker A: And so one I heard I did have my friend in high school, Chris McCafferty, who probably also is not listening to this PODC guess, but he read Power Pack and he got really upset when they made the little girl Katie, the most powerful one, a little loser. And I, I, I, I sense that this girl and her disintegration powers may be the inspiration for another hero. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Also her whole thing of she can't hurt anyone. So what happens if Katie hurts somebody? Well, she did do once. And so, yeah. [00:08:14] Speaker A: And, and so these are some of the things we're going to talk about. But we are reading the is it 20002022 series. [00:08:21] Speaker B: This one was, I think this was 19 or 2022. I don't know. I bought the run and I have the, I bought the trade too. So 19. [00:08:31] Speaker A: And Louise Simonson came back to write the book. And if you know anything about Louise Simonson and commonly referred to in the industry as Wheezy, she was, she wrote all sorts of stuff for the X universe in the mid-80s and into late 80s. And of course she was writing and editing over the Death of Superman era for dc. So, you know, she has done literally everything. And Walt Simonson as well, like them together. Probably the most powerful couple in comics. [00:09:10] Speaker B: Would you say Richard and Wendy? Yeah, Richard and Wendy Penny. I'm just being ElfQuest fanboy there for a second. [00:09:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:21] Speaker B: But yes, probably mainstream. Mainstream, definitely. [00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And you've got some other power couples out there too. But I mean this, this is one of the things that makes them great, is they were a couple, but they were also just powerful in their own right as artists and writers. Right. So, and they, they didn't always work on things together. Their work stands alone. And this is another case of Elise, why writing a book. And we'll talk about some of the other folks as we go into the podcast. But yeah, I mean, I just. So Travis, this is one of the things I'm going to ask you. Obviously I'm more familiar with her Superman triangle era work. Right. You know, Death of Superman, that era, editing, that group of books. Keeping everything together. Yeah. Getting rid of John Byrne, which everybody wants to get rid of. [00:10:15] Speaker B: Fun story. John Byrne might actually taught me to. May have actually taught me to write comic books. [00:10:22] Speaker A: Well, see, there you go. And so now, did he teach you that Superboy doesn't exist? And if he did, I'm still mad. [00:10:33] Speaker B: I. No, no. That's a weird story, because I can't confirm if that was John Byrne on DC Comics Chat on AOL teaching me how to script and how comic books work. [00:10:44] Speaker A: Okay. [00:10:44] Speaker B: But whoever went by the handle John BYRNE in the D.C. chat room, the official one on AOL.com because they see these little chat rooms that John Byrne, whoever that was, if that was really him, that's the guy taught me how comic books work for stories and narratives. So I. I know a lot of people have some problems with John Byrne. I understand. But I don't want to take away from. He was a fairly knowledgeable person in writing, and he literally. If that was him, he got. He taught me well enough to. Where I still use the rules. He taught me that during that time. [00:11:16] Speaker A: Well, my. My problems with John Byrne are all. All Legion of Superheroes. Nope. They're all Legion of Superheroes related, because eliminating Superboy eliminates the purpose for the Legion of Superheroes in the DC universe and the dance they had to do. The joke on one of my favorite Legion podcasts, Legion of Substitute Podcasters, is that the biggest enemy of the Legion of Superheroes is DC Editorial. [00:11:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. [00:11:43] Speaker A: And John Byrne was kind of the kickoff for that in, you know, you take one of the most popular books and you take away the inspiration for the story. That's why I'm always hung up with John Byrne. But I also think it's really cool you participated in those chats. You know, Portland writer Carl Kiesel was a big part of those chats too. Right. [00:12:00] Speaker B: I did not. I don't remember running into Carl Kiesel then, but I talked to Carl Kiesel now, so I should ask him and be like, do you remember me in. [00:12:08] Speaker A: There talking to John Byrne and in the chats. Yeah. And by the way, Shameless plug follow Carl's Impossible Jones work when it pops up on Kickstarter. That is fantastic stuff. So do I. [00:12:23] Speaker B: Bunch of bruised stuff. [00:12:24] Speaker A: It's funny because you and I, you and I grew up reading such different books, but our Kickstarter purchases converge often. [00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's because both of you and I, we don't like buying books that aren't interesting. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Yes. Like. And that's fun. Well, sometimes I buy old books. I've got a stack of old adventure comics next to me. I just got. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Oh, nice. [00:12:50] Speaker A: The. The. Yeah. So. Well, we probably should get into this Power Pack book. First off, we've got Louise Simonson writing. June Brigman is penciling this one, inking by Roy Richardson, coloring Nolan Woodward. Travis Lanham lettered this one. And we got two editors on this one, Sarah Brunstad and Alana Smith. And we've got a cover. And now it's an interesting cover, because I know at some point, at least, Greg explained to me, Power Pack moved to the Northwest. Right. [00:13:27] Speaker B: They live on Bainbridge. [00:13:30] Speaker A: They live on Bainbridge. [00:13:31] Speaker B: But not just a note. [00:13:32] Speaker A: But not in this, right? [00:13:34] Speaker B: No, they're in New York. [00:13:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So this. This book goes back to the 80s version of power Pack. Right. So this book is set right in the middle of, I assume, the end of their first run of their comic book. [00:13:47] Speaker B: It's gonna. Yeah, So I wanted to bring that up. I thought we'd bring up during the story, which is. The book's timeline's a little strange, because as characters and placement, they're in the time period that they would have been at the very end of their original run. But it's happening in today's time. But the characters they run into are in that character zone that they were in at that time of their original run. So it's like they took the original run, they tore all the characters out of the book, made a new book, and pasted them into a modern era. So they're back in New York. Yeah, everybody's the right age for what they should have been for that end run. They're just in modern New York, modern times. [00:14:32] Speaker A: Okay. So they kind of updated the art, but it gives you that. I feel like it really does give you that feel of, like, that. That, you know, 1983. 1984 era, Marvel Comics in this book. [00:14:42] Speaker B: I get that from the characters, but not from, like, the backgrounds, locations in the art. You know what I'm saying? It's really strange even how they're talking. I'll go into that when we're going through. There's some things I want to point out that were kind of interesting, uh, because of Luis's writing. Um, which, by the way, I'm just gonna give credit where credit's due. Uh, I went back after we finished Starlight, uh. Cause I originally wouldn't read Power Pack again when I was working on Starlight because I didn't want to lift anything on accident, you Know what I'm saying? I wanna, I don't wanna do the old man thing where like, hey, I'm in my 50s now, so I'm just gonna write the book that I think I should write, you know, like my own work. I wanted to go do my own thing. But I thought, you know, after I got done, I'd go back. Because the only thing I can remember about Power Pack in my head were cameos. Books. Big on cameos, right? Because it's kind of Marvel's introduction to kids. Like, hey kids, you're eight or nine years old, you want to get in the comic books. But you probably shouldn't read X Men right now because there's some stuff happening you're not going to understand. But here's Wolverine, here's Storm, here's, you know, here's blah, blah, blah. And in that sense though, when I was rereading the series, first of all, I was surprised how much I still must have been embedded in me. And second, it was a cool reminder that Power Pack goes off the freaking rails. Just saying. Just like there's a reason why as a kid, this was originally the only Marvel book I was reading for a while. And it goes off the rails. This book I haven't gotten that far in, but the original run has one of the craziest stories and most confusing and mind bending stuff I could have read as a nine year old. [00:16:23] Speaker A: There you go. And I think it's interesting too. There was really two books at the time geared at kids, right? You had Power Pack. Well, not. Sorry, that weren't Marvel kids books. So you did have the Star line right around the time of Power Pack. So like the Strawberry Shortcake esque books, right? So there was a Star Comics, those were Marvel, right? And then you had. So you did have kids specific books in Marvel, right? But for introductions to try to buy into that teenage audience. Where the top two books in 1982 for D.C. were new teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes. So you had two groups full of mature teenagers, right? And then with Teen Titans, of course, you're getting more into early 20s people, right? They're getting married, you know, things like that. Legion sort of the same had evolved at that point. Those are top two books for dc. Marvel in Claremont decides he's going to bring in new mutants, right? And that's going to be the answer to losing your group over there doing Teen Titans, right? So you lose George Perez. George Perez goes over to dc, he's now drawing amazing things, right? You lose Marv Wolfman. He's doing a new Teen Titans book over there. You lose Keith Giffen, he's over there drawing some crazy stuff in Omega Men, but also doing Legion. Right. And Omega Men was a little bit later, but, you know, same idea. Right. He hadn't gone off the rails yet with his art. So still very line. Still very appealing art to, you know, somebody just picking it up off the newsstand here. Here. Over in Marvel, X Men are off the rails. Right? [00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:06] Speaker A: You've got. [00:18:07] Speaker B: Period. [00:18:07] Speaker A: It's going X Men. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Easy, man. [00:18:10] Speaker A: You're right next to Sage. Sage Perilous. Right. Or say Siege. Sorry, Siege Perilous. Why did I say Sage Perilous? That would be a whole different comic. That'd be like a shitty version of the Flash. But, you know, so you're kind of. Chris Claremont's sort of trying to reset the. The X universe at that time after he'd been on the book for over 10 years. Right. Because what else are you going to do and. Yeah, I mean, what else? Well, and he stays on the book until, what, 1991. [00:18:38] Speaker B: I'm gonna be honest, man, during that period. [00:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:40] Speaker B: Of X Men, I was not that interested in the X Men because the Blue and Gold team stuff hadn't started yet because we're talking 80s, right. And so that period, I would say, in my opinion, as a young kid who's also reading Robotech and Elfquest, I would say in Marvel at that time, I was reading a lot of Alpha Flight. The Alpha Flight run during that period was great. It's when what's her name took over the team. And. Dang it, it's hard to remember now. [00:19:12] Speaker A: Gladiator. [00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I kind of wanted to go back and reread those recently. I thought about going, buying. Buying the. The 80s run, an alpha Flight. So Marvel was doing really good with Alpha Flight during that period. And that's the only thing I can remember are you read the X Men, but most everyone I knew was reading Teen Titans. Honestly, there was a lot of Teen Titans. Even as a kid. Teen Titans was big one. [00:19:38] Speaker A: It was. I mean, Teen Titans. And I think, you know, Greg and I have talked about it often because I like to brag about the Legion being the number two selling book too. Right. But you had Teen Titans, you had Legion and Power Pack. I just looked it up. No, issue one was cover date August 84. So release date May 1, 1984. And that's when. That's right around the time DC did their. What I would argue one of their major miscues. As far as competing with Marvel, because they took New Teen. They took their top two selling books, and they made them direct sales only, and then they printed reprints. Now, you did get in New Teen Titans in Tales of Teen Titans. That's where you got the. The Judas Contract. They were still writing good stories in there. Right. And a questionable story. Now, if you go back and read Judas Contract, there's some questionable rapey, pedophilia things in that story. [00:20:29] Speaker B: There's a bit of that in 80s comics. Like just. Just, whoa. We're like, how many of those girl characters are barely 16? [00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And an 80s thing. But in contrast here, right in the middle of all this, you get Power Pack, which is a kids book with kids and interesting. First issue of Power Pack has the. So it's right around the time of Secret wars, because I see black costume Spider man down in the corner of the COVID of the first issue of Power Pack. [00:20:58] Speaker B: Oh, the very first. [00:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you got August 84, and guess who wrote it? [00:21:06] Speaker B: Travis Webb. [00:21:08] Speaker A: Louise Simons. Yeah. So I say it's their same art team, same writer and Bentzler that are in this book. So we go back to it, but like you said, drastic. Now, I'm curious. Not that I look up facts in the middle of the podcast, but now I'm curious when New Mutants number one came out too, because I'm thinking it's got to be right around the same period. Right. [00:21:29] Speaker B: I'm not. It seems like it would have been. It seems like 88, though. Like, it was a little longer. [00:21:34] Speaker A: 83, really. [00:21:36] Speaker B: I never liked new means. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Last month of 80, I was not. [00:21:39] Speaker B: A New Mutants fan. Never was. [00:21:41] Speaker A: I think a lot of people weren't New Mutants fans. I think that's why people celebrated it so much when it became, you know, X Force. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:48] Speaker A: Even though there were no feed. [00:21:50] Speaker B: I didn't like X Force either. [00:21:53] Speaker A: You didn't. You weren't a cable fan? [00:21:54] Speaker B: No, a Cable ruined Marvel for me, man. I'm gonna be honest. [00:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah. You weren't the scratchy art fan. [00:22:00] Speaker B: No, it wasn't the scratchy art. Look, I'll just be blunt, man. Cable breaks Marvel for me. The character Cable at that time. I cannot give you details now because it's been, what, 30 years? 40 years? Anyways. But, like, I remember that the introduction of Cable made me stop reading Marvel. I just. He was popping up everywhere, and he was, like, tying into people retroactively, and he didn't make any sense. He was way too overpowered. Op. And suddenly, like, he was the most powerful of all mutants. And he was actually like, I. I could have this wrong, but he was like, he was Wolverine's grandfather, son or grandfather. And he was also Cyclops. Yeah. And then he was also like, related this other person. And then through time differentials, he was made more power. And I was like, dude, I like, weird, but this feels like somebody self inserting themselves into a story. Like, same problem I have of a cable I had with Dash Rendar. I'm just saying, if anyone knows that deep cut there. I have the same problem cable that I have with Dash run dark. [00:23:09] Speaker A: Well, and you're not wrong. You are remembering correctly, as in, I think a lot of people forget that cable was their big character that came out of that area. A lot of people think it was Deadpool, because Deadpool so much later. Yeah, Deadpool come. Deadpool came out right at the same time as cable. [00:23:25] Speaker B: It wasn't very interesting. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Deadpool wasn't. Yeah, Deadpool wasn't in everything until, like, was it 94, 95. [00:23:32] Speaker B: All of a sudden, Deadpool just explodes right at the end of high school. But he'd been around because nobody cared, right. [00:23:40] Speaker A: It's all because he broke the fourth wall and he wasn't a female because they already had she Hulk to do that. Yeah, but different. You know, it's. They could do more things with the character. But yeah. So back to Power Pack. And so we're back to Power Pack, so we get you a book. And like you said, I didn't know this, but I like your. Your take on this and introduction to the Marvel Universe for people, for kids to bring them in and what a good idea. Like, have a book. I was at the start. No kids wanted the fucking Star comics, right? No, nobody wanted the Strawberry Shortcake comics. Like, that shit was lame. [00:24:17] Speaker B: I mean, there was whiz kids. Deep cut. Deep cut. Someone's gonna catch that. [00:24:22] Speaker A: That is a deep cut. And yeah, no, I don't even remember what was in the Star line. I always remember Strawberry. [00:24:29] Speaker B: There were Archie books as well. Like, if you were a kid, you pick up Archie books at the. At if you want Archie books, right? Or you'd pick up Starline books, which were just not very interesting. There were. So Transformers actually in GI Joe were fairly popular with my friends, but that's it for kids. Because people may not realize this. The. The. The version of transformers and GI Joe from the 80s are written for 80s kids. They're not written like. They're written. [00:25:00] Speaker A: And the GI Joe books were not kids. I Know, but as they went on. Not at all. [00:25:06] Speaker B: Baroness. Man, it's too hot. It's too hot. I can't handle that. [00:25:10] Speaker A: Especially around issue, what, 50, when they kill Cobra Commander and Serpentor. And they did that for the. To match the cartoon. [00:25:18] Speaker B: I thought that was fun. [00:25:19] Speaker A: They did it to match the cartoon, but it got really like. Well, we can ask listener Jason to chime in on that one too, because he can give us the history of the. Of G.I. joe. [00:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I just remember as a kid. I'm remembering from nostalgia glasses that the comics that you read as a kid were the Archies. If mom and dad would buy them at the. At the. At the register. Cause they weren't on the ra. They weren't on the spinner. [00:25:43] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:25:44] Speaker B: Archies were always at the register on the spinner. You could pick up Power Pack as a kid. Mom would be okay with it. You could pick up any of those Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Bright or whatever those were. Those were around. I think the Harvey books were still available at that point. [00:26:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I remember getting Hiver Harvey books a little bit earlier, but I think they were around. [00:26:08] Speaker B: I think Harvey's were still around because you could still pick up, I think, Sabrina and Casper when I was a kid, off the rack. But they were like the Sabrina and Archie book. I thought she was a Harvey. No, no, not Sabrina. The Other Witch. The Harvey Witch. [00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:23] Speaker B: The other one. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Well, here's your star comics titles that they had throughout time. So this is not what was in 84. Here are the Marvel only ones. So I did speak too soon. There was an amazing one that I can't believe I forgot about. Misty Planet, Terry Gross, Royal Roy, Top Dog, Wally the Wizard. I'm going to give you the good one here. Yeah. So, yeah, you pick Top Dog. Don't forget Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider Ham, because. Yeah, well, you know, Greg is not on the podcast. We have to honor him by talking about. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, they had a little bit of everything. They had an Animax book. They had Rocky and Bullwinkle. They had Flintstone Kids. Chuck. They had a Chuck Norris comic that lasted four issues. They had Masters of the Universe. [00:27:11] Speaker B: None of those books brought you into the Marvel ecosystem, though. [00:27:14] Speaker A: No, these are all the licensed titles I'm kind of going through. And. Yeah, and they didn't. The only one that could probably link you to the Marvel Universe would be the Spectacular Spider Ham. In a small way. [00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't remember that existing. [00:27:31] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they do reference it in. They reference it in the first Miles Morales. [00:27:37] Speaker B: I know what it is. I just don't remember ever seeing that on Iraq. So there's the period when you're introduced as a kid in the 80s to comic books because they're at 711 on Iraq or the Piggly Wiggly on a rack. Then there's you get a little older and your dad takes you to Lady Jane and not. Okay, damn. Just saying. You freaking losers. [00:28:00] Speaker A: Look, Book world. Book World in Kent. Okay? I mean if we're going to go back through history, let's. Let's do it. [00:28:05] Speaker B: But Lady Jane's on the north end. Anyways. But yeah, somebody takes. [00:28:09] Speaker A: I didn't live on the north end. [00:28:10] Speaker B: Well, there was the Lady Jane on the south end at the railroad station. Anyways. No. So like I never got to go to L's by the way. So side to. I just remember their bags because my cousin went to L's. Anyways, no, when you went into the stores, I wonder if that ham. If a spider ham. Sorry, was. Was something you would have got if you went into a shop versus off the rack. [00:28:35] Speaker A: No, those were the star comics were rack books. So intentionally capital. They weren't direct. A lot of them weren't direct sales. Only maybe they did later. But I remember a spectacular spider ham being advertised in books. So. Yeah, and these are books I got later. But yeah, I've seen the advertisements for it. Well, let's. [00:28:57] Speaker B: Well let's. [00:28:57] Speaker A: Let's jump into Power Pack because I've danced around. We've given you a lot of Power Pack history. Well, not even Power Pack history. We're giving you a lot of comics history. [00:29:05] Speaker B: Well, weird 80s kids comics, to be honest. Like, who is kids? [00:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:09] Speaker B: Richie Rich. [00:29:13] Speaker A: Oh God. Yeah. Did they ever do like a. What was that? Why am I blanking on the TV show. What was the TV show? That was Richie Rich. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Richie Rich? [00:29:22] Speaker A: Not Richie Rich. No, no, the Richie Rich Hour TV show. Silver Spoons. [00:29:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That was weird. [00:29:28] Speaker A: That sounds like it's comic book fodder to me. No, you're like. No, you're like. That was. [00:29:34] Speaker B: The only thing cool about that is like what's her name from. I remember as a kid being really excited because the lady from Buck Rogers was on it. [00:29:45] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Lieutenant Dearing. [00:29:49] Speaker B: Aaron something. [00:29:50] Speaker A: What was her name? Aaron. Aaron Gray. Yeah. [00:29:52] Speaker B: When you're a little kid, you're like, oh, that's a girl from. From Buck. Roger. And then she does nothing related to Buck Rogers. She's just this assistant or something that the dad Falls in love with Buck. [00:30:02] Speaker A: Rogers was the best. [00:30:03] Speaker B: Season one. Let's never talk about season two. [00:30:08] Speaker A: You don't like Twiggy? [00:30:09] Speaker B: I. I have a hard time with season two. [00:30:13] Speaker A: Well, Power Pack, into the storm, we've got. It looks like I've got four heroes. Five heroes. [00:30:21] Speaker B: Well, okay, in this first issue, you're gonna have four heroes. But we must remember that Franklin is a member of Power Pack. He's not Franklin Richards. Yeah, and you brought up something earlier, and it all ties together. That's Katie's little boyfriend, yo. You can't be messing with tattletail. [00:30:48] Speaker A: Franklin Richards, the greatest character Marvel ever created. [00:30:53] Speaker B: Behind cable. [00:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah, just like cable. Oh, God. [00:30:59] Speaker B: At least Franklin should exist. [00:31:01] Speaker A: At least. [00:31:01] Speaker B: I'm sorry. [00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, at least. No, Franklin should exist. It's just what they like. It was the two. The two characters abused by Marvel Comics the most to me as far as, like, characters like Franklin Richards and Legion. Obviously not the Legion of Superhero, but, I mean, I feel like they. You know, it's. I'm just gonna tell you, right? As a gay man taking mutants and then making them insane. Pisses me the off. Like, just to make them insane. Like, it just one of those. I didn't realize because you're different. Why it was making me so. [00:31:40] Speaker B: Obviously because you're different, you have to be insane, right? [00:31:44] Speaker A: And I think those two characters. It just. [00:31:50] Speaker B: Did you see me go off about Mutina? [00:31:54] Speaker A: No, I did not. [00:31:55] Speaker B: I lost my temper. I love Gail. I like the character design, but the character was painful to read. [00:32:04] Speaker A: I. I'm not. I'm actually a little bit behind on Uncanny, too. About 10 issues behind, actually. [00:32:10] Speaker B: I'm hoping she has a plan, but we'll move on. We're talking about. [00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, Alex. We're talking about Power Pack. We could talk about Neil Simone all day because she's amazing. [00:32:19] Speaker B: She is. I've just got my feelings hurt. We're going on. [00:32:23] Speaker A: All right, so we get into Power Pack, and we already went through the credits. So we will jump in here and we got two short stories here. And we start out. And I'm super excited now. I didn't know what all the black squares all over and I don't know the names of it, everybody. So we can learn right along with me in this book. But what I did know is that the singer that was famous for being the singer they needed in the X Men books because they didn't have Dazzler anymore. And her former employee, Strong Guy, everybody's favorite mutant. I like Strong Guy, actually. Nobody else liked him. Remember from X Factor? [00:33:12] Speaker B: No. Oh, wait, wait. [00:33:13] Speaker A: With the glasses Guido? Yeah. [00:33:15] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was usually X Factor. Took me a second. I was like, oh, yeah, he was. [00:33:20] Speaker A: He was Lila Chaney's like roadie. Right. Or bodyguard. [00:33:23] Speaker B: I did not follow that originally. [00:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's. I'm just giving you my links to the book. So that's what I'm seeing right away. But I knew who Lila Chaney was, so we were good here. And that's all I knew on this first page, except I knew these kids were Power Pack kids because obviously I'd seen the covers and stuff in the past. So we get a. We get the front page here and we got a big title called Growing Pains. Fortunately, there will be nobody from the Cameron related family entering anywhere near this book. [00:33:54] Speaker B: But it's another good nod to 80s, because that was a term that we used in the 80s a lot. [00:34:01] Speaker A: And so you're gonna have to help me with names because. Well, they have actually. Or you don't, because. Oh, they do. They call him Alex, so. Oh, I presume this is Alex on the front. [00:34:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is Alex when he becomes G. Is he G during this period? So, okay. It's really hard to follow. I have to go back and look. But Alex becomes G. MassMaster is Jack, Katie is Energizer, and Julie is, at this point, lightspeed. [00:34:38] Speaker A: Okay. So. And we're gonna learn right along with everybody. Because, you know, if you're reading this book for the first time, you don't know they're like me. You don't know their powers at all. Right. And I don't know their names or anything. They haven't introduced any of that yet. And so we flip to the next page and it seems like the kids are pretty angry at Alex. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Well, I mean, they're always going to be mad at Alex. He's older than them. So this is where the family dynamic, which plays a lot into what Power Pack is, right. Is that it's not so much just that they're kids superheroes. They're kids superheroes that reflect a family of four. So the younger ones are getting ticked off at Alex. It's Alex's birthday. Alex is the star of today, you know, so like this is very classic family drama. [00:35:31] Speaker A: And the only thing we do find out is that Katie burns a hole in her shirt. [00:35:35] Speaker B: Energizer. Yes. Yes. [00:35:39] Speaker A: And I was excited because I was like, oh, triple Travis. This is like some character you wrote. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah, my character melts things. [00:35:51] Speaker A: It's different. [00:35:52] Speaker B: McDonald's not McDonald's, Mac Donald's. I have a big Mick. Okay? It's a big mick. Gosh dang it. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Now, one of the things about Starlight, if you're a listener to this podcast, you, you know already, is Travis actually wrote a Power Pack script, right? [00:36:11] Speaker B: Yeah. In 2001. [00:36:15] Speaker A: That was not picked up. [00:36:16] Speaker B: No. [00:36:17] Speaker A: And then you noodled on that for a Good, you know, 15, 16 years to get to Starlight, right? [00:36:23] Speaker B: No, I did not. Yeah, I wrote it. I got my letter. Back then, Marvel really gave really good feedback. I don't know how it is now, but you would get this envelope, and that wasn't my only submission. I would get told by someone, I won't say who on the podcast, to protect the innocent and the guilty, but they would say, hey, this is a good script. This is what you do. This is this form you fill out. You know, they give me, show me how to do this stuff, and I would ship it out and they'd come back. And basically that one, they told me a couple of structural issues that helped me out a lot as a writer, by the way, that, like, was important, but basically the end, all of it was, no one's messing with Power Pack. [00:37:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:37:06] Speaker B: You're especially not going to have Power Pack doing drugs and being teenagers. So that was the end of that. But. But the feedback. Even with that, though, again, one of the most intelligent and helpful lessons I ever got were those Marvel Denial letters. Declines rejections. [00:37:25] Speaker A: See these? These are the cool thing we should do, like, in the future, we should grab one of the letters and do, like, a podcast around it. [00:37:33] Speaker B: I have the envelopes, though. I kept the envelopes, but not the letters. [00:37:37] Speaker A: You kept the envelopes, but not the letters? I mean, how fun would that be, though, to grab just another book that you liked as a kid and just analyze the hell out of it in the same way they analyzed your script. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Well, you know, the thing is, at the time I was on this, like, I really thought I was going to be a great writer phase of my life. And so what I thought was, I have really bad memory. So I would write down their advice, right? And, like, category, categorize that, but I didn't want to remember who gave it to me in case I was offended or upset by it. I also was always afraid that if I met him up at Comic Con or at Emerald or something like that, at the time was a way so long ago. It was just the Seattle Comic Car Con at the Flag Pavilion, I think. Anyways, I. I didn't want To, I didn't want to run into them and be like, oh, yeah, you rejected my letter. So I would purposely burn the letters and lose that information. That was my brilliant idea. But now that I'm older, I don't know if that was a good idea or not. Like, I've never been able to identify who the heck wrote these letters to me, if it was the same person even anymore, you know, like, I don't know. But great letter. [00:38:38] Speaker A: You would have had like a pile of history. [00:38:39] Speaker B: But it's great. You mean you'd get them like, even the, the, the envelope itself was handwritten by whoever the editor was that took on the, the assignment to break it down. They obviously read the entire thing page for page, because they broke it down. [00:38:54] Speaker A: That's really awesome though. I mean, what a fun job too, to get all these submissions and get to look at all these young creators. Like, really cool ideas. [00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it would be. [00:39:05] Speaker A: I mean, that sounds like a kind of a fun job. [00:39:07] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. The job of an assistant. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, well, sure. But an assistant editor in that sense. I mean, especially if you're learning to be an editor. Here you go. You get to give feedback on this stuff and really detailed feedback. And that's bridging you into the game as well though too. [00:39:23] Speaker B: I'm just thinking to myself how go back and learn how it was Kevin Feige. You know, we're like the same age. [00:39:32] Speaker A: You did. [00:39:33] Speaker B: You're just like, you're stupid. No. [00:39:37] Speaker A: Well, I mean, we just got done doing Jim Shooter books, you know, since he just recently passed. And think about that. He was writing when he was what, 13, 14 years old? [00:39:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. [00:39:48] Speaker A: And having, you know, 40 year old editors writing back to you and yelling at him and that's kind of crazy. Well, anyway, I flipped the page and we've got the family drama going on. Alex floats out of the window. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:02] Speaker A: And he hasn't his little brother. [00:40:04] Speaker B: So that makes me think that if I was, this isn't probably too off, far off. When Alex is first getting control of gravity. [00:40:13] Speaker A: Okay, so he's Starboy. You know how happy that makes Dan? [00:40:21] Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good. Sounds good. [00:40:23] Speaker A: You're like, I don't know who that is. It's a Legion. [00:40:25] Speaker B: That's a Legion character. [00:40:26] Speaker A: I, I, I already referenced him. [00:40:28] Speaker B: I, I do kind of remember this Legion character named Star. There a Star girl too. Right. [00:40:36] Speaker A: That's a, not allegiance. [00:40:37] Speaker B: But there is, she's, she's in the other group. [00:40:41] Speaker A: She's in jsa. [00:40:42] Speaker B: Yeah, There we go. I got It. See, I'm an expert. [00:40:44] Speaker A: She. She said she came. She came after the Star man series. The. So, yeah, I mean, let's not go down. So let's not go down that road, because I could all stray off. But it looks like little bro is, uh, protecting big bro outside. [00:41:02] Speaker B: Mm. [00:41:04] Speaker A: And they're all excited to go to the Lila Chaney concert. And who wouldn't be, right? I mean, Lila was the Marvel Comics replacement for concerts for Dazzler. Right. So once Dazzler was no longer cool because they cut her hair and took away her roller skates. [00:41:23] Speaker B: Dazzler will always be cool. [00:41:26] Speaker A: You had Lila. Yeah. [00:41:28] Speaker B: So again, this is placing it in the time period. [00:41:34] Speaker A: And Katie, right, The youngest, she has a Lila doll, but she gets very offended because it is a Lila action. [00:41:42] Speaker B: That's her first trope for the power pack Tropes. [00:41:48] Speaker A: Is that a pretty standard power pack? [00:41:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Katie's gonna get mad. They're gonna call her a baby at the beginning with a little bit of family drama. We will come back to this by the end of the book. So this is the. The bookends, right? The bookends are we're setting up a family drama at the beginning. We'll conclude the family drama after the action packed finale. And it's always something, something with Katie and Katie trying to prove she's a big girl. [00:42:12] Speaker A: I would tell you where to find this in the book by indicating the page number. But, like Starlight, there are no page numbers in this book. And so it's very difficult, Brett, to tell people where things are in the book when you're doing a podcast to direct people to the right things. [00:42:30] Speaker B: You know, I have the floppies of these somewhere. I wonder if the floppies had page numbers. I think the floppies did. I think they might have removed them for the book build. That's not uncommon. [00:42:39] Speaker A: Ah, but you did the opposite. I get page numbers when I get the Starlight graphic novel. [00:42:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm writing them in. [00:42:50] Speaker A: It shows that being loud and whiny works sometimes. So we flip the page and, yeah, we get the ultimate family drama. So here are mom and dad, and we're getting a whole picnic going on to go see Lila. And it's Alex's birthday, and Alex's friends come, and it looks like he is smitten for a girl. [00:43:12] Speaker B: Waste 13 now. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Well, when you turn 13, you automatically become in love with girls, right? [00:43:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a rule. [00:43:25] Speaker A: For. For some people. [00:43:26] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's also like, remember, we're dealing with family drama, right? So like, it is really common when the eldest gets their first crush and you're a family unit to the rest of the family, you get a little jealous. Jealous because you're breaking up the little team that you've always been. [00:43:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And Big bro is going out on his own. [00:43:48] Speaker B: He's actually. [00:43:48] Speaker A: He's more independent. [00:43:49] Speaker B: Side note, he's 12 at this moment in the book. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Yeah. He's not 13. That's not until two days from now. [00:43:56] Speaker B: That's page 19. [00:43:59] Speaker A: Oh, do you have page numbers and I don't. Sorry. Well, I flipped the page, and all of a sudden, cat space pirates appear and trans. Oh, wait, no, wrong book. Sorry. We get a. Some of the things, like, you read as a kid now and were inspirations for things that you did later. It's so cool to see. Right. [00:44:27] Speaker B: Even when I was. When I went back and reread the original run of Power Pack, I was like, oh, crap. So much of this is my. My storytelling type style. [00:44:37] Speaker A: You know, I. I think that's okay, though. I mean, it's good to acknowledge where your storytelling style is also. There's no new story out there. Right. And there. No new story exists. Everybody's storytelling style comes from a compilation of everything they've. [00:44:52] Speaker B: They're space whales, man. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:56] Speaker B: Side note, I had space whales in the original 2001 script. [00:45:02] Speaker A: Did you? In the. You had the space whales in there? [00:45:04] Speaker B: They didn't make it in the Starlight, but in the original Power Pack run, I referenced space whales. [00:45:09] Speaker A: Well, there we go. And see. Well, you know, you got space whales. Lobo has space dolphins. Right. Like, you got this kind of space things going on around Marvel and DC and. Well, we've got a horse guy. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Oh, that's coffee. [00:45:25] Speaker A: You probably know who this guy's name. [00:45:26] Speaker B: Is, but I don't know. That's coffee. He is a little bit older than the rest of the team. He is from the. What is the horse race called? I think they say it in here. They say it in here somewhere. It's hard to remember all these things. So, yeah, Power Pack gets their powers from Whitey, who was a horse guy who was running from the Snarks. I think they were chasing him, and he broke up all four of his powers. He's basically like a super, like, Green Lantern. Right? [00:46:03] Speaker A: Okay. [00:46:03] Speaker B: So, you know, oh, no, I gotta get away. I cracked on Earth, Right? Except that there's. There's not an adult to hand the powers off to. But he knows things are coming, so he gives all four kids. He breaks his powers up so they can handle him to four different people. Side note, this is not referenced very much in this first issue, and you can't see it, but one of the things that was appealing in the 1980s of power pack was their moon boots. Because you may not know this, but this was the boot to have in 1984 and 85. [00:46:37] Speaker A: And I do remember their moon boot art. Now, I did have a question for you. When they got their powers, did they start singing, look what's just happened to me. I can't believe it myself. [00:46:51] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:46:53] Speaker A: Suddenly I'm up on top of the world. No, it could have been somebody else. [00:46:57] Speaker B: No, but, you know, I need to go back, check the original one, because I do think. Yeah, believe it or not, I do want to go back and check the original books. I could have sworn as a child. And I don't remember running into. When I redid the reread, but I thought their powers came from them putting on the boots. But I. You know, memory's not correct. [00:47:20] Speaker A: Yeah, one. It's interesting, I mean, because first, as soon as you start telling me, I mean, I got the Green Lantern reference, but as soon as you start telling me weird alien, something drops on Earth, gives people powers, I. Greatest American Hero, around the same time period, just grabbed it. It ran from 81 to 83. [00:47:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, every. Can I just point something out? Any book that's not a. A mutant or a metahuman book in this time period is I got my powers from an alien. [00:47:47] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:48] Speaker B: That's why that reference is happening in the Greatest American Hero, because that is a known trope for that time period. So. [00:47:56] Speaker A: And then. Yeah, I mean, this is Travis. This is fun. [00:47:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:00] Speaker A: Like. [00:48:00] Speaker B: Well, this ship here, I just want to point out, this is Friday. [00:48:05] Speaker A: The ship. That's their ship, right? [00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, no, it's. Right now it's coffee ship. He. He. I think Data was crashed or destroyed. So Friday is a living ship, but not like the ship. Who's saying living, but like. Like a living intelligence that's born into intelligence as a machine, but she's sentient and real and part of a race of starships kind of thing. Anyways. And Friday. [00:48:29] Speaker A: Well, yeah. Oh, no, go ahead. [00:48:32] Speaker B: Is it is. I learned this later. Not recently. This is a couple years ago, but gets her name from his Girl Friday. And her original dialogue always kind of sounds like his Girl Friday. You know, anytime I listen to her in my head, when I would read her in my head, I'd read her with that. Was it North Atlantic accent. [00:48:54] Speaker A: Okay. [00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So whenever you're reading Power Pack and you're reading Friday, speaking reader with a North Atlantic accent. Side note, just real quick. Friday is also the name of the AI from the MCU that is in Peter Parker's suit in the first Spider man movie. [00:49:18] Speaker A: And see, I would have missed that completely because I didn't know this. [00:49:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And I've always wondered if that's a reference to them saying Friday because they don't have Power Pack movies. So if that's how Friday gets into the mcu. Side note, Friday is not in the second or the third Spider man movies. And it makes me sad because she is voiced by one of my favorite favorite women. [00:49:39] Speaker A: So, anyways, well, I did grab the first issue of Power Pack, and it said it was the first appearance of Power Pack uniforms. Yeah. And so it says each member of Power Pack was given a costume based on chameleon. So is that the horse race? Whitey's race clothing constructed from unstable molecules by the smart ship Friday, which you were just telling us. [00:50:02] Speaker B: So. [00:50:03] Speaker A: And Franklin Richards got one later, so. [00:50:05] Speaker B: Yep. Title two. [00:50:10] Speaker A: See, like, I feel like that's a version of Franklin Richards. I would like. [00:50:15] Speaker B: You would? Franklin Richard in Power Pack representation is amazing. I also want to point out, because he's like the. What are they called when we were a kid, the neighborhood kid that keeps showing up with your family that seems like one of your extra kids, you know, like, just walks in and sits down at the dinner table, like he lives there, you know, and then runs off and you're like, is he here or is he at his. Who are his parents? So real quick, too, while we're in the depth of things, did you notice the very classic approach to the Marvel way of writing a comic book? [00:50:51] Speaker A: So, no, I didn't. I missed it completely. [00:50:54] Speaker B: All the exposition that's happening these first few pages gets you caught up on who the characters are, where they come in, the timeline, how things got here, who is who, what their names are and where they belong. [00:51:07] Speaker A: So literally, there's a One of the things. [00:51:09] Speaker B: Huh? [00:51:10] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead, Charles. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Well, one of the things is coffee right here. Literally takes a moment to explain who he is without saying straight out who I am. Right. And explains who Fry is, that she's the ship. Right. And who his uncle is and how he'd be disappointed and what he's doing. Just like when you're setting up the kids. Right. Almost everyone references who they are in the family, you know, so it's just one of those interesting things to see. Again, because it's something just since we keep bringing up Starlight, we took out of Starlight because we always knew that starlight was going to end up becoming a trade. And that was something that, you know, we decided to pull out because it's not very modern. We don't really do this anymore. But, man, was it appreciated when I was going back through this because it brought back those nostalgia feels. [00:51:59] Speaker A: Well. And I, I didn't pick up the Marvel style of writing, but what I did pick up was this feeling that I was dropping into the middle of a story, but I felt like. I felt like I belonged. [00:52:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Every book, the first three pages should catch you up. [00:52:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what also, I assume you've watched the Superman movie, the new one. [00:52:19] Speaker B: Yeah. They do that. [00:52:21] Speaker A: They did that there. [00:52:22] Speaker B: Yeah. People didn't understand it. They're like, it's all over the place. I'm like, no, man, they're getting you caught up. [00:52:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's. It was perfect because we didn't have to hear another origin story. Right. Like, we just dropped. They put you into Superman's universe and you're there and then they give you enough information as you go to learn about these characters without doing a 20 minute side story in origin. And I feel like James Gunn learned that from the Suicide Squad, the second Suicide Squad movie that he did, because that movie could have been 30 minutes less without and still been amazing without all that origin retelling. Right. We didn't need to know, like the Rat Catchers, like, whole dad story. Like we could have just gotten, oh, Rat Catcher had a dad. It was scary. I grew up in this awful place. Move on. Right. We could have just had a reference like they did here. And I felt like they did it with Superman. And right here we're getting a brilliant. So. And you've identified the style for me now. And I appreciate that. And that's, that's what this is. [00:53:23] Speaker B: You're going to notice that as we get to the. [00:53:26] Speaker A: In the introduction of the scary ships here, we're going to get the same thing as well. I'm going to learn really quickly that these are the brood. I don't have to know a lot about the brood to know that they're bad guys because they drive scary looking ships and they're trying to hurt the space whales. [00:53:43] Speaker B: Yep. You know, it's funny, I just realized I learned that from that damn letter. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, sorry. [00:53:56] Speaker A: Well, you know Jonathan Frickman. [00:53:59] Speaker B: No. [00:54:00] Speaker A: The writer? [00:54:01] Speaker B: No. [00:54:03] Speaker A: Okay. [00:54:04] Speaker B: But go ahead. [00:54:04] Speaker A: You're like, no. Anyway, well, for some more complex books, he started. They call it. Started calling him Frickman Tags because he would put little tag boxes in the corners, too. [00:54:14] Speaker B: Yeah, those are great. I didn't recognize who that. I didn't recognize it was a specific person who started that. So. [00:54:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's lots of people that started it. I mean, but had done it. [00:54:24] Speaker B: But see, x men number 289. [00:54:28] Speaker A: No, not those boxes. Little, like, character boxes that explain stuff. [00:54:32] Speaker B: Oh, like in Livewires. [00:54:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And in. In more recent Legion stories, too, because, you know, Legion has, like, 5 billion characters, right? [00:54:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it would be helpful, you know? [00:54:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:46] Speaker B: So Encyclopedia Allegiance. [00:54:49] Speaker A: Yeah. But anyway. Yeah, Well, I loved that when they were Encyclopedia Galactica in the corners that explained, like, the planet. That was my favorite growing up. That was my favorite. Like, they go to a new planet, it would say encyclopedia Galactica in the corner, and it would say, this is the planet. Blah, blah, blah. It's known for. And you're like, oh, that's awesome. [00:55:11] Speaker B: Super helpful. [00:55:13] Speaker A: And anyway, we get some mean brood guys here, and Friday is trying to. Kofi and Friday are trying to move away from the brood. The brood are not very cool because they try to capture them. I was getting some cat space pirate vibe here. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I got that, too. Again, I had no idea how influenced I was by this stuff, you know. [00:55:41] Speaker A: And. But you had not read this. [00:55:42] Speaker B: This didn't even exist yet. But we were already into Starlight. Good. Two years before this came out. [00:55:48] Speaker A: And. And then we get. After we see they go through a little vortex, and we get a flashback to Earth, and we find out there's going to be. I love this setup, too, because like you said with the story, we get all the setup. We know action's gonna happen, but we flip to a scene where there's very little action, but they leave you in suspense for the action to come. [00:56:13] Speaker B: Right. And I just want to point out, like, think about this real quick. I just want to double check I'm right about this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it is set correctly. So we have these just. So that's a really great page. Use of the page in the medium. [00:56:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:56:34] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying? Right? It's just. It's great. Now. Now, the other way to do that, of course, would have been have the action on. On the even and flip to the odd. But there's a reason why they do that here. In a second. This is actually just really great storytelling and using the medium properly, because what Happens in the next page turn. We'll get there in a second. But we just ran into a couple more Power Pack tropes. I want to back off there. [00:57:01] Speaker A: Okay. [00:57:01] Speaker B: This has a lot of power packages. [00:57:04] Speaker A: And I'm glad you have the book because I'm reading it one page at a time, so I don't get the page spread with the content. [00:57:08] Speaker B: What I hate about digital books, you know, like, there's no way they'll do it. Like, I'm like, how do I make a splash? And they're like, you can't. You know, I mean, the splash paint is so frustrating because it's so important how the page turn works for the medium. And there's just no way to properly replicate it in digital format. You're taking a whole and the sad part meet part of the storytelling narrative away from us. Sorry, go ahead. [00:57:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And Travis and I decided on this book yesterday, so I did not literally get. Have time to get the book to me. But next time we. When we do number two, issue two out of this, I'll have either the floppy or I'll have the graphic, because I want. Well, I did the. The cheater free way to get this the legal way. [00:57:59] Speaker B: The Marvel app. [00:58:01] Speaker A: No, I. This time I did the Comixology sign. [00:58:04] Speaker B: Up for 30 days. [00:58:05] Speaker A: But yeah, so, by the way, actually, I don't want to advertise for Comixology because it's messed up a lot of things. But at the same time, 5.99amonth to get Marvel and DC Books and indie books. Yeah, it's kind of epic. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Reminds me of email. Anyways, all right, so. [00:58:22] Speaker A: But anyway, let me do them. We're at the concert. [00:58:25] Speaker B: Well, actually, let's look at the first trope we run into. Right. The first trope is coffee or the Criminal Empire. And somehow, yeah, there's a whole different thing going on. And they get into trouble, and right off the bat, Friday gets hurt. I'm just saying. [00:58:43] Speaker A: So every time, Friday always gets hurt. [00:58:45] Speaker B: So that's our first trope we're running into. Right? That's the normal setup. Now we're going to go to the concert. We're going to immediately run into the second trope. And something else to point out. We have to set up our issues. Cameo. [00:59:00] Speaker A: Right, so first cameo. [00:59:02] Speaker B: Yeah, the first of two cameos in this one. Sometimes you get two, sometimes you get one. But there's a reason we're getting two cameos. And it goes back to the thing I was saying before, where this book, as modern as everything looks Right. It's taking place in their timeline, as if their timeline had shifted years into our timeline, but they were still stuck in their timeline because that's Kitty Pryde looking about 16, 17 years old. [00:59:27] Speaker A: Well, that Mohawk is very 80s. [00:59:30] Speaker B: That's not Kitty Pryde. [00:59:32] Speaker A: I know. I'm just saying the Mohawk up there. [00:59:35] Speaker B: Yeah, but. But. Right, but beside the mohawk, you have some type of, like, I don't know, Lolly freaking punk. [00:59:44] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I believe Kitty Pryde's hair looked like this when Storm had the mohawk. [00:59:49] Speaker B: Let's see. Anyways. No spoilers. [00:59:53] Speaker A: Wow. Wow. Didn't like that. All right, so, well, anyway, everybody's excited about seeing Kitty Pride, but Alex just wants to be left alone with his. His girlfriend. Right. And boom. In the sky, we have fireworks. [01:00:14] Speaker B: Yep. [01:00:14] Speaker A: And the fireworks conveniently disguise Friday and the brood launching into the atmosphere. Right. [01:00:23] Speaker B: And Friday's crashing like always. I mean, how many times Friday crashes off? Yeah, you're always crashing Friday. And this is the only thing I. It didn't. I. I need to go back and look, because I don't want to say anything bad, but Friday's dialogue here doesn't feel like Friday as a. When I was a kid, the dialogue doesn't feel snappy. You know, Friday just feels like a spaceship that talks. And that was something I was kind of saddened by. But that could be my nostalgia speaking and not reality. [01:00:57] Speaker A: We'll have to go back and see if the author changed her mind as time went on or if she just. [01:01:01] Speaker B: Writes her differently now because it's been 30 years. [01:01:06] Speaker A: That's fair. [01:01:07] Speaker B: You know, and that happens sometimes. Characters lose their voice for you, and you don't rhyme the same. I do want to point out the paneling on this left page here. On the odd page, even page. Anyways. [01:01:21] Speaker A: It's hard to tell without page numbers, you know? [01:01:23] Speaker B: Well, you should be able to tell by the way books are. But anyways. But I love this paneling. I like the coloring on it. I like how even it is. There's a. Definitely a color theme happening. And when you look to the page, to the next page, the color theming is happening again correctly. I really like that. [01:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think the story moves on. The rest of the kids try to get Alex to realize that Friday is crashing. Alex is having nothing of it because Alex wants to pay attention to his girlfriend. [01:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:55] Speaker A: He's 13. And I believe. Oh, wait, do I get to call the trope out? I believe the trope's gonna happen. [01:02:00] Speaker B: Okay. [01:02:00] Speaker A: I'm excited. [01:02:00] Speaker B: All right. [01:02:01] Speaker A: Because we. [01:02:02] Speaker B: Turning the page, Katie. [01:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I turn the page. The. The. The two middle kids. [01:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:09] Speaker A: Are going to mom and dad and they're like, katie has to go to the bathroom. [01:02:12] Speaker B: That is a trope. [01:02:14] Speaker A: Which means we're gonna disappear. [01:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Katie is always the excuse. [01:02:21] Speaker A: And is dad. Dad has this. Is that Steve from Family? What was Family Ties, dad? Was it Steve? [01:02:30] Speaker B: I don't know, but he does have that family size look. [01:02:32] Speaker A: Steve and Elise, right? Yeah, he has the very Steve vibe, doesn't he? [01:02:37] Speaker B: I don't know. It kind of looks like me drinking some wine on Bainbridge Island. There's a great winery on Bainbridge. Just. Just the low. You know, the same. [01:02:45] Speaker A: Well, I also got the Family Ties tie back, too, when you mentioned the kid that always shows up. Because remember Skippy? [01:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Doesn't Skippy commit suicide, though? Can we not talk about that. [01:02:56] Speaker A: In the show? [01:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah, doesn't Skippy die or commit suicide? [01:03:00] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know. I don't know. [01:03:02] Speaker B: It was a very special episode. [01:03:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, well, those very special episodes. Yeah, Well, I will certainly avoid that now. I'm. Now you have me curious, though, so. Yeah. But anyway. Whoa. I don't know what happens. I'm actually looking it up. But let me focus on the book. We're going to run this podcast way out of time. [01:03:27] Speaker B: Oh, sorry. [01:03:27] Speaker A: On the series, Skippy, desperately desperate to find something he's good at, joins the army. Oh, you should talk more. Okay. He goes. He goes AWOL from the army. Oh, that's what happens. Back to the Keaton's house. [01:03:47] Speaker B: Anyways. [01:03:48] Speaker A: Okay, well, anyway, so we've got. They let her go to the restroom is good. The kids head out. They run into Kitty and let her know what's going on so she can come because she's like, that's a brood ship. And of course she knows that because thanks to not John Byrne, but Dave Cockrum, we had the entire X Men galaxy space universe created. I don't know why I pick on John Byrne so much. Do you know what Jim Shooter told Greg and I when I said that Dave Cockrum should get the credit for, like, the, you know, relaunch of the X Men's costumes? And I felt like John Byrne got too much credit. Jim Shooter looks up and said, yeah, those were Dave's. John gets enough credit for the rest of his work. [01:04:38] Speaker B: That's awesome. [01:04:38] Speaker A: And, yeah, and I was like. I was like. I. I was right all along. Like, you know, it's one of those things where I really want to be Right. I know John Byrne did a lot of the costume reworks later, but that. That Dave Cockrum x Men 70s costumes were amazing. And I think with Kitty Pride, though, that's a. Kitty Pride was a John Byrne in. In Claremont creation, right? [01:05:02] Speaker B: Yes. And then she gets replaced the next time they need Wolverine to have an underage girl that hasn't grown out of it. Oh, she shuts up. [01:05:11] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. You know. You know, Jubilee is like, hey, Jubilee's had a great run in. In Uncanny with. With. With Gail, so I love Jubilee, but the kids. The kids and the other kid. And, you know, it's another. Another callback, too. I know you didn't like New Mutants, but do you remember when Kitty Pryde was forced to be part of the New Mutants and she's like, why do I have to go to the baby X Men? I feel like we have just another kind of clawback to that here. [01:05:46] Speaker B: That's why I didn't like to know Mutants, because Kitty says, yeah, sorry, this pops in my head. Maybe that was the first time I was introduced to. Anyways. [01:05:58] Speaker A: Hey, were you a Kitty Pride fan? [01:06:00] Speaker B: I was a huge Kitty Pride friend. I was heartbroken when she went off to the UK and y. Yeah. And then they brought in Jubilee and I was like. [01:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I also thought, like, too. [01:06:14] Speaker B: They. [01:06:14] Speaker A: I mean, I know they were trying to get the book over, but, I mean, to move Nightcrawler and Kitty Pride out to Excalibur to me was silly. [01:06:22] Speaker B: I mean, those are. Those are good books. There's nothing wrong with them, man. But it was weird not to have Kitty. So it's a nostalgia thing, right? Because it's. It's the one that you get first. It's like the whole thing about when you go to buy a car and you end up always buying the first car you look at, you know, so Kitty Pryde's the first, like, teenage character in the X Men that I can relate to as a little kid, you know, and so because she seems like my babysitter and she looks like somebody from my neighborhood, you know, and then they take her away and they give you another kid who doesn't look like they're from your neighborhood. [01:07:00] Speaker A: Yep. [01:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. But. [01:07:01] Speaker A: And same. Same thing for me with Legion books. Right. And, you know, the space, the future, teenagers. Right. Like, it was the reason those books hit me so well when they were first bought from me. Same reason you're talking about. Right, right, right. The same reason we're in Power Pack. You know, I think everybody's favorite comic is the first relatable. You know, I have some. I have some like, 79 era Hulk books, but, you know, I was five. [01:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:28] Speaker A: When I got those. And so I still have them all torn up. And I was running through my comics just. Just to brag about myself. I got a bunch of the four drawer lateral file cabinets, and that's where all my comics are now. So next time you come up here, Travis, you're going to be able to access all my comics just by pulling a file drawer open. [01:07:46] Speaker B: That sounds crazy. [01:07:46] Speaker A: Pretty freaking cool. I highly recommend this for everyone, but in doing that and moving some stuff around, I saw some of those old Hulk books. And, you know, outside of a couple of key stories, like, you know, it was one of the first appearance of, like, not first appearance, but like, Sabra appears, obviously. And, you know, Jewish superhero. Very weird at that time. Right. For Marvel to have a random female Jewish superhero. So I remember that story like it was just not. The Jewish superheroes are weird. But it was weird in the context of the book. Like, it's just this character shows up, the u. Foes appeared there. You foes. I didn't pick on that. I didn't pick up on that clever piece when I was six. It took me a few years, but those books didn't hit me. It wasn't until I got that, you know, future teenagers. Right. That hit me. And you're saying the same thing with Kitty Pride, I think, and this book here, too. Yeah, not this book, but the. The power pack, the links. I think anytime they can build a character that doesn't pander to kids, but brings kids in, you're going to be successful. And I almost felt like, even though I like Jubilee too, actually I'm kind of a Jubilee apologist, I did feel like Jubilee in the mall thing was a little bit of pandering. [01:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly what it felt like to me because, you know, I didn't grow up in a place that had malls, but. [01:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah, but Kitty Pride just seemed like, you know, she just wanted to be what all of us would want to be. Right. You have powers and you just wanted to be part of the team. [01:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah. You want to belong, huh? Sorry, I just checked something. Okay. We should get into the story because this is going to be your longest podcast ever. [01:09:34] Speaker A: Oh, no, it's. It's definitely not. [01:09:35] Speaker B: Oh, good. [01:09:35] Speaker A: But yeah, we. We should finish the story. So let me stay on track because we've gotten a lot of the history stuff, so we got a lot of fighting scenes, so we can kind of go quick through the pages, but I think we're going to run into some more tropes so that we are going to make sure I don't pass over. But the kids get into their costumes. And I don't see any moon boots, though. Oh, yeah, I do. I see moon boots. [01:09:58] Speaker B: Moon boots everywhere. [01:10:00] Speaker A: We got moon boots everywhere. [01:10:01] Speaker B: I just point out that June draws horses. Amazing. [01:10:07] Speaker A: I mean, I kind of think June draws power back. Amazing. [01:10:10] Speaker B: She does horses and cats. She's really good at drawing horses, though. Probably because she loves horses. But. [01:10:20] Speaker A: I think also, though. Yeah, we haven't talked about the art enough in this book. I think you talk about the dynamic of the kids in the family. She draws kids. Well, they don't look like adults in kid bodies. They look like kids. [01:10:39] Speaker B: I saw an interview with her once somewhere on YouTube probably. She had to draw kids working at a theme park as a summer job. And not goofy stuff. So they don't look like that classic meme of. Of Scarlet Witches. Two kids in the bathtub looking like old man faces. They actually look like kids. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Yes. [01:11:04] Speaker B: You know, that's important because, like, how are you going to relate to a comic book about kids if they don't look like kids? You know? And I remember that being important to me as a kid. That was one of the things that drew me to power packs, is they look like kids. [01:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:17] Speaker B: From school. You know, Also, June's just really good. Sorry. Just stereo. [01:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:25] Speaker B: I love this panel work. Every. I don't know if you've noticed it so far, but on almost every page, there's at least one panel bleed. Yeah. [01:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:34] Speaker B: She just knows. That's just such a beautiful thing. Yeah. [01:11:41] Speaker A: And they float over. And I was gonna say I was looking up something. Does Kitty Pride not doing her best. Elizabeth Shoe impersonation right here. [01:11:51] Speaker B: Where? At what page? [01:11:54] Speaker A: Just anywhere. Like, just the. Just the appearance. Yeah. Yeah. [01:11:56] Speaker B: She does look a little bit Elizabeth Shoe. But she also looks like every kid from my freshman sophomore. Every girl that everybody thought was cool my freshman sophomore year of high school. You know, that's for. Yeah. Right down to the little necklace and everything. [01:12:10] Speaker A: The panel where they switch costumes and she's standing in the background. I just went straight to adventures and babysitting in my brain. [01:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, because she's the right age for that. For this group. She is Kitty Pride, babysitting age. [01:12:23] Speaker A: Well, we find the Crash Landed Friday and Kofi, and all of a sudden, brood attack. And this is where it gets a little bit scary for me. I'm not a Big fan of the brood because, number one alien. Never been a big fan of beings that impregnate other beings or zap their stuff into them. That. That. That scares me a lot. You said it's a kids book, and now I'm. [01:12:49] Speaker B: I. I'm like the rails. Like, if you read the original run, this thing goes so. This thing goes so off the rails, it's crazy. Sorry. [01:13:02] Speaker A: So while we get some off the rails, we've got some scary scenes where brood are grabbing Kofi, grabbing the kids. We have some disintegration of brood arms or some melting. I mean, you know, just getting. Taking care of business there. I kind of felt like the kids are a little bit op ed right now, but they don't know how to use their powers. [01:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah. What's one of the problems with the pack? I also want to point out that Kitty using her powers correctly makes me happy. [01:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, here's the problem with Kitty in this book, though. You've got two characters, basically the same power set right in the same scene. You've got molecular density with her. Right. [01:13:52] Speaker B: And yeah, Kitty does. Is a lot more like, I don't know her. She just drag things in. Into the. In the matter and out matter and stuff, and it's just cool as heck. Phasing. Such a cool thing. And the thing is, is oftentimes when you see writers use her, they use her improperly in combat, you know, and this here is just brilliant. It's like just drag the thing with you, you know, like, just push things into things and let go, you know? [01:14:24] Speaker A: But you do have Jack using his density power, and they point it out right on the next page. [01:14:28] Speaker B: Yep. [01:14:29] Speaker A: Dropping there and again, too. Back to the. Back to what you were saying about the Marvel writing method, too. Now, they did. I loved. And who was it that was writing. Was that Carl Kiesel, who writing Superboy jacket? Superboy? [01:14:49] Speaker B: I don't remember. You're going to have to look that one up. [01:14:51] Speaker A: When he would always. When he would always announce his. His power set, his tactile telekinesis, he would always every. They started to make it a trope in that book. Every time he get into a fight, he would be, oh, use my tactile telekinesis to blah, blah, blah. I feel like they're doing that a little bit here, but I think it's what you were saying earlier with the scripting is they're letting us know the powers because we don't know the characters. [01:15:16] Speaker B: Right, right. Because we're coming back and they're hoping kids buy this book that didn't buy it then, you know, like they're, they're trying to get kids to buy this thing. [01:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's good the way they're doing it. And so it's, it's, it's interesting to me the way it goes. And I like it. You know, I like being reminded of what Jack's powers are and learning his name again. I like being reminded I can't disintegrate it. And now is that because she can't hurt things? [01:15:49] Speaker B: She, she. [01:15:49] Speaker A: For Katie. [01:15:50] Speaker B: Katie can hurt things. Her whole thing is she doesn't want to hurt things. And so, so yeah, we'll get into that a little bit more as we get going forward. I'm double checking something real fast. [01:16:04] Speaker A: Okay. And, and then Julie's light speed, right? [01:16:11] Speaker B: Julie is light speed or so she's getting light speed. [01:16:16] Speaker A: Not light speed. That's a different character. [01:16:19] Speaker B: No, it's nice because you said something. I'm gonna have to look it up real fast. [01:16:27] Speaker A: But she's getting. Using her powers to try to get everybody out of there, but it's not working. Katie's captured. It's looking bleak. It. It's looking like the brood are going to inject their like little scary egg things into people and start taking over power pack and controlling them. I don't like this at all. Dangerous battle. I love it, by the way. I'm just. But scaring me a little bit. And then Alex, the teenager at the concert becomes aware, like, wait a minute. I heard something about Friday. Oh, crap. That was Friday. I'm a teenager now. I'm supposed to be responsible. Oh crap. I gotta go back and find my friends or my kid. My family. Not his friends. His family. What? What happened? Alex uses the bathroom. Okay. And Alex uses the bathroom trick. And he runs off down the trail leaving. [01:17:22] Speaker B: Leaving the date behind. [01:17:25] Speaker A: Yep. And who's perfect. [01:17:27] Speaker B: They keep repeating that. [01:17:31] Speaker A: And my stupid comic just went into individual panel mode. [01:17:35] Speaker B: That's the best mode. [01:17:38] Speaker A: No. [01:17:38] Speaker B: Oh yeah, everyone has that. [01:17:41] Speaker A: Who? Who says that? [01:17:42] Speaker B: Everyone. Everyone knows that. [01:17:45] Speaker A: No, that's the worst mode. Like how do you see the full art on the page? That's. Well, whoever says that is wrong. And I can't figure out how to get back out of it because I'm dumb. [01:17:59] Speaker B: Close the book and reopen it. [01:18:03] Speaker A: Try that. Well, anyway, ah, I can do it this way. So we get, we get another cameo, right? [01:18:15] Speaker B: Yes. [01:18:15] Speaker A: As Alex heads to rescue his family. And there is a very non threatening, peaceful, relaxed, not smoking not drinking. Wolvie. Friendly Wolvie. [01:18:39] Speaker B: I know you say he's not smoking, but is he putting a rock in his mouth or is this a joint? [01:18:44] Speaker A: Anyways, I think it's long bottom leaf. [01:18:48] Speaker B: That's probably is. [01:18:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So. [01:18:54] Speaker B: But again, we're right in the era. Look how young he looks. Look how he looks like he's short. He's got that stock from him. Like, again, this is the era of Kitty Pride and Wolverine. [01:19:04] Speaker A: Yeah. He just fought a billion people in Japan and lost his. Wow. [01:19:08] Speaker B: No. [01:19:09] Speaker A: Then his wife was murdered. [01:19:11] Speaker B: No, no. He looks. Him and Kitty Pryde do those. The whole series of adventures together. Geez. [01:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:19] Speaker B: Sir. All right. But. Yes, but here we are. We're for our second, you know, appearance. So now we have both of our guest stars for this issue. [01:19:32] Speaker A: And Big Bro comes in, even though he has maybe the weakest power set of the group, comes in for the inspiration to save the day. [01:19:43] Speaker B: No. [01:19:43] Speaker A: And as soon as he comes in. [01:19:45] Speaker B: Are you seeing Alex? [01:19:48] Speaker A: Well, what's his power set right now? [01:19:50] Speaker B: Gravity. He's just not. [01:19:53] Speaker A: There's a lot of gravity. [01:19:53] Speaker B: He's not using it well. Right. Okay. But he's not using it well yet. Look, look, at one point, Alex gets all the mutant powers. I'm just saying. [01:20:03] Speaker A: Well, for now. [01:20:04] Speaker B: Because you know who Alex Powers becomes, right? [01:20:08] Speaker A: No. [01:20:08] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Alex. Oh, my. He led the New Mutants for a while. Oh, wait, no. X Force. Shoot. It's hard to tell those two teams apart. I remember being upset about this because Julie goes on to join the Runaways. [01:20:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:31] Speaker B: And Alex goes on, I think, to join X Force. And at some point, he gets, like, all the powers of all the X Men or something like that, because he gets, like, a setup of superpower where it's like, mutant powers to gain all mutant powers at once. I don't remember. It was weird. [01:20:47] Speaker A: New Warriors. [01:20:48] Speaker B: New Warriors. That's what it was. New Warriors. No one read New Warriors. No one. No one read that. [01:20:55] Speaker A: No, they. They read the New warriors that launched Civil War, I think, but not this version. [01:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:21:00] Speaker A: Well, anyway. Yeah, well. Sorry, I didn't know. I apologize for not reading that New Order. [01:21:06] Speaker B: It's okay. I haven't known half the things you said. I just nodded my head. [01:21:10] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it happens. Yeah. I don't really know what's going on either, most of the time. I mean, that's what Greg does, so he just smiles. That's why he presses the button. And I am the esteemed member of the media, so, you know, it happens. All right. So we will get through this book, I promise. So we get a battle scene again so we can go a couple more quickly through these pages. But Wolverine jumps in. No stabby, stabby. Oh, wait, a little bit of stabby. [01:21:37] Speaker B: It's a little sticky. Snappy. [01:21:38] Speaker A: Stabby goes away. [01:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Snippety snip. [01:21:41] Speaker A: We beat up some brood. The brooder on the retreat, and. Yeah, perfect. And then the brood fly away because we can't kill people and. But Alex wants Katie to hurt the blue brood, right? So that's kind of a. Is this a trope, too? [01:22:04] Speaker B: I don't remember this being so much a trope. I do remember Katie being afraid to hurt anything, and she's the reason they don't end up doing anything bad, ever. She's literally their heart and their conscious. Because I can remember, like, even when the in everyone. I can remember Katie's being the one to talk him out of doing things that are mean. In fact, the old Wolverine original cameo, she talks Wolverine to not doing something. [01:22:31] Speaker A: And so in this case, Alex wants her to use her powers to hurt the brood, because they hurt the baby whales. And Katie's like, no, I can't hurt people with my powers. [01:22:41] Speaker B: Yep. No matter what. [01:22:41] Speaker A: And Alex is like, it's your power, your rules. Just don't let them get away. [01:22:45] Speaker B: They do make the reference. They make a call back to something that happened in the previous story. So kind of places where the story is again, which is Katie's hurt somebody before, but she's five. And, man, that trauma is going to weigh on for life. And she's going to grow up and become a raver anyways. [01:23:02] Speaker A: Ah. And only be able to use her powers when she's on drugs. [01:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:23:08] Speaker A: Until she figures out a better way. Well, anyway, they do capture the Brood. Wolverine and Kitty Pride are tying them up. [01:23:15] Speaker B: I love June's Wolverine. He looks Canadian. [01:23:21] Speaker A: He looks short, a Canadian. [01:23:23] Speaker B: I just love him to death right now. [01:23:27] Speaker A: And we get some comments from Friday again. Finally, my nano repair bots are at work, Julie. I'll submerge in the lake until repairs are complete. I'll soon be fine. So, easy way to write Friday out of the story here. [01:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:23:47] Speaker A: And we're getting the falling action here. So they have a little conversation with Kofi. This coin, I assume, is something from the past, too? Yeah, they reference it from the past. [01:23:59] Speaker B: Yep, that's how you call the horse people Billions. [01:24:05] Speaker A: Sorry. And they. I think horse people works. I mean, I call your folks cat space pirates and so never have the right name. [01:24:15] Speaker B: If it makes you feel any better? The other day when we were trying to fix some stuff in the. The graphic novel, Greg and I both had to, like, figure out what we named the book. [01:24:30] Speaker A: And we flip the page and brood are taken care of, you know, Kind of freaked me out because there's one look here, and I'm looking at it again. Alex's pose when he's on top the brood ship with wol. That doesn't, like, look like June's art. [01:24:55] Speaker B: That looks fine. I'll point something else out later. I'll point something else out later. But I do want to point out. [01:25:02] Speaker A: Don't you think it. It looks a little Madman X esque? That look right there? [01:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it looks like you. That one's fine. [01:25:14] Speaker A: Okay, but, like, that's fine. [01:25:16] Speaker B: I was going to point, so. [01:25:19] Speaker A: Oh, man, I missed more falling action. Did you miss some of the following? [01:25:23] Speaker B: No. [01:25:23] Speaker A: Am I skipping too much? [01:25:24] Speaker B: No, no. I missed something. Way back at the beginning of the book, I really wanted to bring up which is one of the best panels in history. It is on the. Remember I was pointing out, like, the. The way the. The proper use of the pages here. [01:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:37] Speaker B: Right. I just want to point out there's a little panel down here. I'd give you the page number, but there's no page numbers. But right here, there's a little picture of Jack and he kind of talking to himself. He says, are all 13 year olds worthless? And he's got his hands out like. And I'm just like, chef's Kiss on that panel. Chef's Kiss. It says everything. [01:25:59] Speaker A: Well, I do like the Wolverine panel underneath the one we were just talking about. [01:26:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. [01:26:03] Speaker A: Where he's just kind of looking like the happiest Wolverine ever. [01:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Looking Canadian as hell. [01:26:10] Speaker A: He's like. But you corrected that pretty quick. You chose to come. He's counseling Alex, Right? Yeah. Even when it cost you. I'd say you're heading in the right direction. Nod, wink. Oh, look at the council from the X Men. And Katie gets to talk to Kitty Pride a little bit. [01:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that usually happens. This kind of trophy, too, that the cameos in on Katie. [01:26:37] Speaker A: And then we venture off and the kids go back with the family, and there go Kofi and wol. [01:26:43] Speaker B: And down at the bottom, they address. [01:26:45] Speaker A: One of the tropes of this page on the bathroom. [01:26:50] Speaker B: Yep. They literally address. I'm really. She's like, I'm really tired of being the excuse. Next time, it's kind of your turn, and I'm like, yeah, yeah. [01:26:59] Speaker A: But Alex says I did the same thing. So. [01:27:03] Speaker B: So then we're going to get to this next page. Now this is. This. This throws me off. Now, what you said earlier, this looks like Guruhiru. [01:27:15] Speaker A: It kind of does. Yeah. [01:27:16] Speaker B: And Giro Hero did a Power Pack run. And I didn't see any credit for Gear Hero on this book. And I've never known June to draw like this before. And I own a lot of June's work. It's a little creepy, I know, but I ran into her. [01:27:32] Speaker A: Was this technically in the first issue too? Because I did read the gift, so I did read that second because I thought that was. [01:27:38] Speaker B: I have the first issue on. The next time we do one of these, I'll grab it and I'll take a look because this is definitely looking like that 2005 run of power Pack. [01:27:51] Speaker A: Well, I'm flipping the page. Yeah. It's weird because the Marvel Database page doesn't reference the backup story. [01:27:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:02] Speaker A: But yeah, we get a short, little cute wrap up to the story for later that night. [01:28:07] Speaker B: This is actually my favorite part of the book, this issue. [01:28:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I love this. They get back together. You like the family stuff. [01:28:16] Speaker B: I do. I'll explain that when we get done. [01:28:21] Speaker A: And they're back together for Alex's birthday in. They're all excited about they missed Lila's concert, but they know Lila's amazing. And they've got a bunch of gifts out for Alex's birthday. And Katie's shaming them because she's like, you all shouldn't be using your powers in here. [01:28:43] Speaker B: Yeah. But really. [01:28:46] Speaker A: And then. [01:28:46] Speaker B: Okay. [01:28:48] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead. [01:28:49] Speaker B: I think I. I don't want to break down every page here because this is such a good little story, but this is the way that I remember Power Pack the most. And I was thinking about this when I was reading the book. I got a little emotional reading this, but I remember the family stuff the most. And I remember relating to the. Well, I need to just restate that. I remember wanting to relate to the kids a lot during these family moments. And so this is really my favorite little spot here because Katie's going through something that I think all kids go through where they're. They're dealing with the, you know, I want something, but I gotta get my family members something. And I'm going to rationalize it, but then I'm going to lose my rationalization. And I could relate to that. And as an adult re reading, not rereading, but reading this, I had the. That moment of remember being A kid and being Katie in this sense, you know, and going through this emotional, like, dilemma that she goes through. [01:29:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:52] Speaker B: There's a whole machina that happens here, but. [01:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well. And it's. [01:29:59] Speaker B: It's. [01:30:00] Speaker A: I thought it was. I thought it was just fun reading it, too. [01:30:03] Speaker B: Yeah. This is my favorite part of the story. [01:30:06] Speaker A: And we get the. Without breaking down, all of it. The kids are all hanging out together. They're ribbing each other a little bit. Katie's in the background, like you described, just kind of being morose. [01:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:21] Speaker A: And we get a little flashback with Katie, and she's picking out a Lila doll, but it's an action figure. [01:30:32] Speaker B: Collectible. Collectible action figure, sir. [01:30:35] Speaker A: Babies. Collectible. Because babies play with dolls. Right. She's not a baby. Yeah. And the other. The other siblings are picking out CDs. [01:30:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:48] Speaker A: I feel like they should have been picking out tapes, you know. [01:30:52] Speaker B: Well, they modernized it. [01:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, they did say mom and dad are getting Alex a CD player, so there's that, too. [01:30:59] Speaker B: That's probably why. [01:31:00] Speaker A: And. And, yeah. In this whole inner monologue she's having, you know, about Kitty taking her doll and she calls it her doll when nobody else is around, when she's thinking, which I thought was cute, and she gets the action. Then it switches to an action figure. I got my action figure signed. And she's going off to bed, and the sisters are talking, and she's like. Julie is like the older sister, and she gave him a geeky, awful T shirt. He loved it. And they're talking about his girlfriend. Right. And they're gearing up, and this is where she's thinking about it. And Kitty brings the doll back. Right. All signed. So Kitty Pryde shows back up. And now is that part you were talking about where Katie is just torn. Right. About Whether she should get to keep this or not. And she's like, no, this will be the coolest. It's the very best present ever. And kitty shares. House 13 is a really important year. I love this kind of mentor piece, too. [01:32:16] Speaker B: That's really common. [01:32:17] Speaker A: It's a lot of fun. [01:32:18] Speaker B: It's actually. I really like that Kitty's in this book. I'd love to see Kitty with the kids more often in that mentor state. State. You know, like the. Like the sixth member of Power Pack. [01:32:33] Speaker A: You keep adding more. Power Pack. [01:32:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:32:36] Speaker A: And wasn't Franklin enough? [01:32:38] Speaker B: Telltletale and Phasor. [01:32:43] Speaker A: But the. Well, we get to Alex's birthday breakfast. There are a lot of pancakes there. I'm a big fan of that. Yes, I used to. I used to, in fact, my, you know, Palmer's boys, my. I call them my fake nephews, but I used to make them pancakes on Christmas and they called them Dan cakes because I would add chocolate chips and. And vanilla in there. Right. And make them basically like chocolate chip cookie pancakes. And yeah, those are my fondest memories. And so the. Anyway, the doll ends up in Alex's hand, which is, I think, great. And they get really upset because he says, katie, what is this your Lila doll? And she's like, it's not a doll. I told you. It's a collectible action figure. We're back to it and it's signed and Alex, like pauses, like, that's really amazing. And I think this is the point you're talking about because Katie is so happy when she sees how happy Alex is and amazed that she's no longer torn about whether or not she should keep this. Right? [01:33:55] Speaker B: Yep. [01:33:57] Speaker A: Because she's seen the genuine amazement and happiness of her brother. And that is a big thing growing up. Right. Especially a six year old. Kind of changing that mindset about it to mine, mine, mine. To making others happy. I thought that was cute too. I'm with you. [01:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah. As weird as power packing. Get that little ending there, that little book closure. The end. Book closure, end piece, bookend. [01:34:28] Speaker A: Sorry. [01:34:29] Speaker B: Really makes things wonderful for me. I kind of want to turn this light. [01:34:35] Speaker A: Here's the thing. Yeah, well, here's the thing. Well, we're about to wrap this thing up. We've been on a while. We've got. I think we did a lot of plugs at the beginning, but this was fun. Travis, probably going to read the rest of this. So if we do another one of these, we can do issue two or issue three and we can space these out as much as we want because this book's not going anywhere. [01:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's already done too. You know, I just wanted to add something real quick that, like why this book was so important, I think to some kids. You know, somebody I know just wrote a really interesting article about like divorce in the 90s and the 80s and a lot of shows being about that. That was Kelly sue. And you know, when you're a kid, I. I could see kids who grew up in environments that the power kids are growing up in and like not being able to easily relate to them because it just seems too familiar. It might be boring to them. [01:35:34] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [01:35:35] Speaker B: But when you grow up like in a place like, you know, Yakima, and you live in a van most of your Youth, you know, and you know, you don't see that kind of family. Like these kids are wearing house coats to bed, you know, like that's like the dream when you're a kid, you know, like that's what you think family's supposed to be. And if you don't have that, you know, Power Pack was a good escape. The other person I knew that read Power Pack then was my best friend who also got me an Alpha flight. We both came from like section 8 housing and trailers and just, just complete, absolutely poor. And Power Pack just seemed like the ultimate dream childhood, you know. And so it wasn't just like, for us, it wasn't just the superpowers. It was the idea of having siblings and having, you know, families and, you know, struggling with being able to buy them presents because they exist. But second, you know, having the ability to do something like that or go to concerts with your family, you know, or do things like that, you know. So like, for us it was, it was a multiple fold thing. And I was thinking about that when I was reading to it, reading it today, to reread it this afternoon and couldn't put it down. But like, I just had a lot of the emotions I had as a kid and just being like, man, it'd be so cool to live in a family like that. You know, superpowers aside, like, they're wearing freaking housecoats, man. And pajamas. They have pajamas? [01:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:16] Speaker B: You know, like, do kids actually have pajamas? Normal kids? Because we didn't, you know, like, you slept in your Underoos. You know, if you can afford under, you know, one of my coats when I was a kid had duct tape all over it. So, yeah, I just, just thought about that when I was reading it. Like a lot of kids and a lot of us read it in the library. Like, I can remember Power Pack being very popular in the local library in Tacoma, the South Tacoma branch, the one built into the fire station there on 56. [01:37:47] Speaker A: There you go. So, yeah, I mean, I love that and I don't want to get into all the escapism because Greg and I have talked about, you know, for my books too. But it, you know, same kind of thing where I had with Legion. I'm not going to explain it again right now, but same thing. The short explanation is bright, shiny future that you could escape to. Right? Yeah, that was utopia and the good guys always won. And. Yeah, and I know, I know when they change that in that book, that that was very jarring for me. And I imagine some of the Changes in the Power Pack book, too, as it went kind of off the rails, were probably jarring to you too. [01:38:26] Speaker B: We know it never lost family, and I think that's why it was so good to me as a kid, you know, because I could see what a family was supposed to be like. Good example, family ties. I watched a lot of that growing up. So, you know, the ideal family concepts were escapes for me. So. So Power Pack's just an amazing book if you. If you haven't read it. And I know it comes off as a kid's books, but, man, does it go off the rails. Like, it gets so crazy. All the books do, except for maybe that 2005 run. Doesn't get that far off the rails, but the original run's crazy good, you know, so just wanted to point all that out. [01:39:06] Speaker A: Well, I can tell you a couple things as we end this. This. Wrap this up. Number one, Travis loved this book so much that he has an entire comic series that's almost an homage to Power Pack, co authored by Greg Smith and art by Brett Weddell, and beautiful book, Starlight. I've read every issue. I've talked about every issue, and I'll keep talking about them because it's a great story. And I saw. I saw online you were soliciting ideas. [01:39:39] Speaker B: Oh, for. [01:39:40] Speaker A: Does that mean that. Does that mean Sarah is talking to you again? [01:39:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:39:44] Speaker A: So does that mean Sarah is talking to you again? [01:39:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:39:47] Speaker A: Gonna see more? [01:39:49] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe. Greg's been bugging me, and we were at San Diego partying, and maybe, Maybe. [01:40:02] Speaker A: Maybe more. [01:40:04] Speaker B: I got these other books I gotta finish. I have, like, four books that I have scheduled right now, and one of them just got. I just sold another book, so I'll tell you about it after the call, actually. But. But yeah, so let me see where those books are, because Greg's got some ideas. But when I was out there at Comic Con, I talked to someone, they pointed something out to me, and all of a sudden, Sarah lit up in my head. So it doesn't have to be about trauma anymore. It can be about fun and adventures and crazy and exciting. And that character just got reinvigorated with her best friend Aaron. [01:40:44] Speaker A: There we go. [01:40:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:46] Speaker A: So there. There probably will be more. We also look at Kickstarter for Nemesis. [01:40:51] Speaker B: Right now and Bad Future. [01:40:53] Speaker A: And you can. And Bad Future. And also, of course, we have a couple of obligatory plugs. Number one, because I wasn't talking to Greg. We didn't mention Jiu Jitsu lawyer Paul at all. But if you want a lawyer who can tap out his opponents on the mat or in court. You can find Jiu Jitsu lawyer Paul on Jackson slash Bridgeport and 27th, and you can go check him out. It's kind of like going to everybody's favorite New Mexico lawyer. You don't go through a nail shop, though. That's actually right next door. You can go through the gym to talk to him in the office. I guess technically you go through the nail shop too. So if you want somebody to protect you, look especially for employment law. Having trouble with that employer didn't treat you right. Go find Paul and he'll help you out. Also, if you want to relive your childhood, you can find Greg and Ann at the Retro Emporium on Meeker street in Kent, Washington. You walk in there, it smells like Froot Loops. And if you do, if you are feeling up to it, go say hi to Greg. He could use the. He could use. He could use the greeting right now. So check out an as well. So go say hi to them and check out the store. Anything else you want to plug? Travis going out of here? [01:42:02] Speaker B: Oh, no, I'm good. Bad feature in Nemesis. [01:42:06] Speaker A: You can follow the and I'm living in the basement. And jujitsu lawyer Paul is just entering the house, so it's a great time to wrap up. So that and Juliet barking. We're out later.