Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: All right, we're back because Dan can't use the equipment correctly.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Okay, but seriously, you just told me you were gonna go right back where we were. So I started talking as if we had not stopped to save you face. And then you announced that there's an end.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, that's how now no one knows.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I called my mom and told her about your air.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Well, my hair is fantastic.
It always has been. It's as good as Franklin Richards hair.
I mean, we were just talking about tracers. So you know.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Issue five, Jason Meeks, Jeremy Clark.
Clark Spring in the weight of the ink.
Dick Spring, One of the greatest anchors I ever used.
You laughing at Dick Spring.
This is laughing at Dick spray.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Dick Spring has the best name ever.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: You realize like this is like a podcast for, you know, 13 year old.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Boys, all three of them.
Palmer's kids were just doing this for Palmer's kids.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yeah, that's we're on. Well, they're all old now, so.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Oh, God, your audience is graduated.
Yeah, move my head so you can't see Toby.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: It's all good. Well, anyway, page two.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: The are amazing. I just want some quick shout out.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: You gotta look it up. That's the best part, the best research.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: You'Re saying now you're gonna get really mad.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Hold on.
You just hate him, sir.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Hey, look, friend of the podcast, Ron Randall is a great inker. We love him.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Roy Richardson.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah, well, there you go.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: See, look, see what he does to the inks? See what he does? Look at the weight he brings. Look at, look at Jack's arm.
That, my friend, is what an inker brings.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: That's some weighty inking also.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Ah, man. Why, why you gotta bring Ron into this?
[00:02:33] Speaker A: We, like I said Ron Randall, and I meant to say Randy Emberlin, so. All right, I'll take both though. Ron. Ron did.
Ron Randall was less of an inker a lot of the time than he was a penciler.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Every time I. Ron Randall story.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: I don't know, but can I tell you mine really quick?
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Go ahead. We get Ron. Come to the Ron Randall.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Ron Randall cast. Well, Ron Randall, I think I've told this on the podcast before, but my friend Paul, my roommate, the. The jiu jitsu lawyer, Paul, we just grabbed something random to have Ron sign for him and it was that. It was one of the deconstructo covers with Justice League International, written by somebody we won't talk about, but drawn by Ron.
And Ron was inked by Murphy Anderson on that book.
And Ron was just like, we're just told to sat there at the con and told us a whole story about, you know, he. He thought he would have been pretty. You know, he would have loved inking Murphy Anderson. Right. And here, the. One of the greatest inkers was inking his stuff, and he thought it was the biggest honor in the world just going off about that. So I'll redeem myself by saying joke. Doing the tracer joke. You know, there's Ron talking about the importance of. Of having a great inker and having one of his idols ink one of his covers and books. I thought it was a really fun story.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Personally, I. I never talk trash about anchors because I see the value they bring. I. Honest to God, there are so many people who, when they pencil their lines are there, and they're like, that's how it should be. And they pretty much just photocopy or use this.
They keep my joke. Oh, yeah. Anyways. But. But really, they. They add so much weight and definition to the characters that a lot of pencilers don't always understand. You know what I'm saying? Like, they can draw well, but the inker will find stuff in there and find the contrast there to really make it great.
Okay, Ron Randall story stuff. Ready?
So first, I've known Ron for ever. Right. And so me and my friend.
Oh, my God, for us.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: You forgot it was in the story. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Which Zach. Zack Fisher.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Who tables with.
We just told Roman comic a long time ago. No one likes, but, man, we're moving ahead of the time with the Roman futuristic Roman armor that Wonder Woman picked up later. Anyways, Ron Randall used to table with us. He's been, like, a major part in helping me become more.
I'll one up to you if you want. I have everything.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Bronze.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: I have a whole stuff.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Oh, I. I do, too. I have a whole. I do too.
This is where we have this in common. Yeah.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Ron is actually the one who helped us get on Kickstarter. He's the one who taught us how to do Kickstarter and everything. So he was, you know, kept me calm when I didn't want to do it.
So we're tabling next to like, oh, man, it must have been 15 years ago. We're actually. We have his. It was his island. He did the periscope island back then. And what would happen is people would drop out and he'd call up Zach and me, and we could go get a table with him when we couldn't get a table because we weren't Big enough, you know, the con pretty much always had us on a waiting list and we never would get anything. And Zach had interned under intern under, under Ron. Zach went on to do a bunch of work. Like whenever you see that really high end World of Warcraft crossover cosplay from like Jessica and stuff, a lot of those designs are from Zach Fisher. So this is back before all that. Zach and I are doing this table and I start trying to explain to Zach how important Teen Titans are.
Right. Because he's talking trash about the Teen Titans.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: And I'm like, man, I don't think you understand. You know, I wasn't a Teen Titans fan, but I lived through that era and they were everywhere. Like you. They were huge. Like, no, those only got like that after the cartoon. No, man. Like you couldn't go to the library and get Teen Titans comics.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Check out the comics bestselling DC book from 82 to 84.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: And Zach starts talking about how that's revisionist history.
And Ron looks over to us because he's like eight feet away, goes, no, Zach, hang on, starts flipping through some originals of his work. Pulls out a Teen Titans cover that he did during the eighth run and goes, they were huge. It was a huge deal for me to work on them.
Teen Titans was one of the best selling comics of all time. And Zach's like, oh, okay.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: No, that's the. Yeah, that's, that's the whole thing. I, I don't want to spend too much time on it because I talked about it a couple podcasts ago and I've talked about it with Greg a lot when we did the whole Legion run. But like their best. Two best selling books were New Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes. And I mentioned it a couple podcasts ago, their two best selling books were Present X Men and Future X Men.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: I'm just gonna say Legion and then sounds like revisionist history.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: That is not revisionist history. I can get the numbers for you cover and then I think the struggle with that and I. And it's interesting too because I am going to tie this back to this book that we're reading right now.
One of the ways they hurt sales there is they took their top two selling books and made them direct sales only.
Well, at the time that was new.
Yeah, they were buying back the newsstand Power pack dies when it gets taken Direct sale only.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: So they went the direct sales after the closure of capital, right?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yes, that's when that happened.
Transitioned six books. Well, they closed in six books in 84.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: I just remember it was like the 90s is for, for, for the power packing things.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Now Power pack I think went out. I'll have to look it up. Power pack I thought went a little bit earlier because I saw a power pack book. So I have, I actually looked in my collection. I have three, five, three power pack books I picked up at the last con I was at in a dollar bin. I picked up issue four and five refine the best ones and then I picked, I think I had like an issue 38 or something and it had the $25 cover on it.
So it had to be direct sales because you weren't paying $1.25 at that point.
If it wasn't direct sale, you're still paying 75 cents.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: I feel like a wiki, a wiki art will help us.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's possible. Or I could just ask AI.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah, listen, don't do it. It's never right.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah, of course it lies. But, but this issue we should talk about because that's what we were talking about. But yeah, I think, I think some of the things too though I think it's fun to explore in these. Only in these podcasts is. I'm going to. I think I want to answer that next time I want to get back into the book here. But yeah, I think some of the, the struggles with some of these properties in the 80s that were really good, that were selling great is they weren't Superman, Batman, Spider Man, Avengers. Right.
And then you got them out there in front of people on the newsstand, but all of a sudden they disappeared and then they weren't there to grab, but Superman was still there to grab. Spider man was still there to grab because they weren't going to take Superman and make it direct sale only they experimented on direct sale. And like from a business standpoint, why do you take some of your top selling titles and make them direct sale?
[00:10:22] Speaker B: You know, it's weird because when you say that I remember struggling suddenly to get powder packages as a kid because it was always at 7:11 first and then like I remember not seeing it for a long time and I started finding it in other places and started reviving it again later.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: And I had the same issue with Legion when they. Because with Legion and Teen Titans they did reprints.
So the stories were a year behind.
So they did 12 issues of. They did 12 months of two issues a month where you had a direct sale book and a newsstand book and then the newsstand book went into reprints.
So that's how they handled that with those. With this with their top two selling books, and they did that with Batman and the Outsiders as well.
So not as familiar with what Marvel did. I don't recall Marvel doing anything like that.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: I just remember capital going under and Marvel. I think that's when Marvel with the jerk sales.
But I might have it reversed because it was longer than I can remember, and I haven't worked at a comic.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Book store since then, but here we are. And so kind of tracking some of these books, too. It's interesting on page two and three. Well, page three is where Franklin has the goatee. So, you know. You noticed it, right?
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Double chin. Because he's a child, sir.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Okay. Well, June does draw amazing children, as we've commented on.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Get this anger face.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And I actually think she does Franklin really well.
He doesn't look as old as the other kids, which is also just impressive. Like, the striations of age are really good. Yeah. But Franklin's back.
Saw these two pages. He finds his body, and he finds the brood, talking about how they're gonna get rid of that larva and go back and get the chameleon. Right?
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: And so they wrap Franklin up in some fluorescent wiring or something.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: It is a net thing out of the.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Franklin body. Franklin's body. But.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: But Neurofiber.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: But ghost Franklin dream. Franklin is still floating around.
So he goes back to Earth, and.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: What do you got? Color themes.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Too. You got your paragraph changes. Yep. Based on the coloring.
And he goes back to Earth, and there's Storm, who just abandoned Franklin. Last issue was like, oh, I'll go find Wolverine and Kitty Pryde.
And he goes back and is like, oh, Storm's there. And she's like, oh, yeah.
Well, you know, Franklin, I just left you alone before, but, you know, I'll go back with you now.
Oh, you're saying this world is made of a storm? Ah, I'm Storm. Of course. I'll go.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: So we're finding the title.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Yes.
So in. In the 80s, though, this would have totally been like a Power Pack Storm miniseries. Right?
[00:13:31] Speaker B: That's what they all were in a lot of ways.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I.
It's just fun. So we go back, we flip the page, and we've got the giant ugly fish brood ship.
And they. A note. They met this ship back in the first book we read.
Thank you, editors.
And they all start to get ready. Katie powers up.
She's ready to take these guys out.
Until they get in and they see Franklin all wrapped up, and they are not excited, but we've got a brood queen and I'm just not a fan of this brood queen. Really?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: I like the design.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: All right. It's not the brood queen. Sorry. This is the. Jenna's sister.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Working for the Brood.
This is Marad. Yes.
Not mayhem, not mischief.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Just real quick digital poison. Not a cool design feature.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: These windows here.
Right. Wait for the camera. There are also here.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Oh, the windows of the ship.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Just the little details, man.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Are you saying June Brigman is a good artist?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Those Sanga Wong are clean.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: On speed dial. So now we've got.
Now we've got Power Pack facing off against the Brood ship. And we meet the Brood Queen. I was just a page too early.
And the Brood Queen's like. I was told you were intelligent and overstatement. Since you fell into my obvious trap.
Was too.
Was your prowess too exaggerated?
You know, I love overconfident villains.
They make me happy even if it comes.
And yeah, you need. You need villains like this sometimes, you know, not. Not everything needs to be not. Not every wrestling match should be on the main card.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Sometimes I need the villain I know is going to get beat. I don't think she's a jobber, but I'm pretty sure she's losing.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: So I just want to make. You're saying she's a rowdy Roddy Piper.
It seems like she should win, but she'll go like 600 lose losses in a row.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Well, and I was kind of thinking. I was thinking like the Miz. Like the Miz.
No, no, no.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Overcome the fit. Always thinks they're gonna win. Fix everybody else's trash.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: And loses every match and all week gets to be champion because of a.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Bunch of weird and mid card. Yeah. Now she can be the miss a mid card.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Always trying to.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: A punch above his weight. Yeah.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Mid card.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: That works for me.
That does work for me.
Definitely not the Honky Tonk man. Because he always won.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: I had hated hockey's hunk growing up.
I literally would turn off wrestling for a little while the first match to get over and look for other things on tv.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: I love.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Every freaking time.
Every freaking time. It wasn't because I just thought he was bad. I just thought he was the greatest.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Intercontinental champion of all time.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: He's the only intercontinental champion of all time. I swear to God. That belt only was made to make him happy.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Well, it was also.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: What's continental?
The intercontinental.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Well, it's between the continents.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Five feet.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: It's Like Atlantis.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: He's got the Atlantis belt.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: I think it's between the continents, technically.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: I just. I just remember. Just remember always as a kid going, what does the name.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Well, they really made that belt for. Let's see, they put it on, they introduced the belt. It was supposed to be a mid card title, but then they remember, they gave it to Randy Savage for a long time. And it was like the worker belt.
So you had Hulk Hogan on top, who just goes in and does a leg drop. And you had Macho Man.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: He Hulks out. He Hulks out.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Well, he eventually Hulks out, but he had those great match matches with Ricky Steamboat, right? And that was because Ricky Steam. That was. That was the times. Because if you went down south, you had Ric Flair on top, and all he was doing is working 60 minutes every night, like doing these crazy long matches. And they had nothing like that in New York, so they had to match it up. This wrestling history moment was brought to you by the 1980s and power pack southpaw wrestling. Also, if you want some wrestling action figures, you can go to the retro emporium in Kent, Washington.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: All right, we're back.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: War.
We've got some overconfident brood queens. We've got.
We've got Jack. I. I kind of love, like. So you were mentioning Jack last time and how Jack always makes the most sense, right?
And the kids all kind of go crazy. They're going to fright the brood. Jack just goes up and smacks her in the head.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Just Jack Har.
I like, screw.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm thinking you're right. Like, all the other kids are all angsty about everything. Oh, no, we gotta. They're like, forget fighting Jack. We gotta fix Franklin and we gotta solve this. And Jack's like, yeah, no, I'll take care of business right here.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: He's like, I can't shoot anything.
Let's be like, I have to get Tay help. Katie.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Thumbs. Yep.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: What are you guys doing over.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: I kind of like Jack is a smart little brother. You know, it's makes me happy. Yeah.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Oh, wait, wait, wait. Let me go back to my favorite picture of Jack in Soul College real fast.
Freaking teenagers.
This is my favorite image in the history of Power Pack is this book now, which is that one right there. We wait for it. Yeah.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Are all teenagers stupid? Of course they are.
We're just growing up teenagers.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: So good.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Well, we start a little battle with the brood. And stopping.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: If you're online, you can't. You can't see this. If you're listening to the podcast. But if you catch the video, you.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Can see Jack, you got it.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Being the only one making that. Somebody does something.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Yep. And. And with a whack.
We got likes of wax and pals and coams.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Who's the letter of this in this?
[00:20:18] Speaker A: We could do a drinking game with all these Batman 60 Batman 66 like noises here.
But anyway, they get to Jenna out of the clutches of the brood.
Katie's blasting some brood to get it leave her friends alone.
The ship comes in and yikes. And they're coming back with the ship. Oh, yeah. So is that Friday?
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Oh, with the Thorn.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Sorry, yeah.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yes, of course that's Friday.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: And Friday is going to crash. I'm sure, because you taught me that in every episode.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I think we've already had the Fragate crash.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Oh, that was on Earth.
Yeah, I think that was. Well, that was interesting.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: They should not be crashing anytime soon.
Have the.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Katie's. One of Katie's power balls hits Friday and the Brood Queen's had enough. She throws a net over everybody. I don't know how she gets the net over Jack because can't he just become like Misty?
But anyway, Bonita Bazaar knocks out the bugaloos with her hairdryer.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: What?
[00:21:39] Speaker A: I mean, the brood queen drops a net on power pack.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: What the heck are you doing?
Also, the purple black light lookingness of the stuff and colors standpoint.
Every time these come suck, man. You got control today, sir.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, look, if we don't have every pop culture reference in here, at least the bad ones, we. We've done something wrong.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Just look at the signature.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: All right, Pull out.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Well, we are all trapped. And we've got to figure out how to get out of this trap. It looks like the Brood Queen's about to some put some blood embryos in these children.
She's very proud of it.
She's going to. She's going to turn them all alien.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: And stuff instead of home world where they'll begin to spawn and make more brood.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we love making brood Alien. So creeps me out, the movie.
I can barely watch it, honestly.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: The first one.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Any of them. They're. Well, the first one. Yeah. I mean, it's a good movie. It just creeps me out.
But yeah, I mean, they're. They're. The first couple are good movies. Yeah. Like, they just creep me out.
I don't like things exploding out of people's stomachs, I think. I mean, I like the Weeping. Weeping Angels from Doctor who Less those scare the out of me.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: You gonna Beat that.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: The what?
[00:23:20] Speaker B: I'm growing.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Well, I. Storm. Storm standing. I got Storm standing with Franklin. Yeah, there we are.
And Storm finds a Storm planet and is like, I'm gonna take all these people out.
And she says, as Wolverine would say, I'm the best there is at what I do, especially on a planet that seems especially created for me to wield as a weapon.
And so we flip the page and the brood are going to take out coffee. And Katie, the other kids are under the energy net now, awake, going, no, can you say it? Can you say it better than me? Like, no.
Oh, not that kind of no.
And then all of a sudden, the ship is blasted by Storm.
Alex is like, what's happening? The web is dissolving and Katie needs help. But then her power comes back.
Alex does what he always does and grabs Katie, Julie grabs Alex and they start running away as they should because they were about to get infected.
Caesar is all about them running away. And then that's Caesar, the cat, by the way, in the background. Not Caesar in the comments.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: You can hear him good.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, he's like, I'm right here. You know, I'm a cat and you should pay attention to me. That's how cats are. Until you want to pay attention to them. And then they're like, screw you, I'm a cat. You're trying to pay attention to me. Yeah, it's. Except my old cat was. Well, anyway, let's not go off about my old cat. So the kids are escaping, Storm is attacking.
We've got all sorts of transition pages, too. This is fantastic. We're just getting battle after battle. Now you've been mentioning. Mentioning the panels. I'm going to call out some panels. I love the horizontal and vertical paneling on this two page spread.
Yeah, flip the page.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Oh, I really love this one. Sorry, I'm still over. Considering how good the action on this.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Oh, oh, that is a view.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah. See, now we're at the same spot. And you get one scene where Storm is cracking and blasting everybody.
And.
And then Franklin pops in, is like, storm got you guys free. Follow me.
And they're asking Frank where his body is.
And Storm is just going off with a croom. So we had a crack room and a croom.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: So I'm just going to point out inner outer panel on the verticals are bleeds. Center panel is paneled.
See, this is brilliant.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: And then we get the next page where you're going to like the paneling even more.
Storm standing up at the top and.
And they're like, no, Storm, stop. Don't crash the ship. Dejin is still on it. They're like, storm, no, don't. Storm is not having any of that. She just blasts the living hell out of that ship.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: I mean, she is Mohawk Storm.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: And everybody's floating down.
And now come. Coffee is distressed. He's like, I promise to keep her safe. I've got to save her.
They need Friday back.
Frank needs to find his body.
So Franklin and Kofi go off. Or Kofi, Franklin and Coffee go off to take care of that business.
They're like, wait. He's like, no, I'm going. I'm taking care of this. Storm looks distressed. The kids are like, don't do it.
We split at the party.
Which you never do.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: You do in every X Men comic.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Anyone's going, franklin and Franklin and Coffee run into Murad.
It's looking bad.
And we don't know what's going to happen next.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Wait, what?
[00:27:37] Speaker A: It's looking not good.
Is Coffee at the in trouble at the end of every issue?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Oh, it is.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: It's not looking good.
And we get an alternative cover for Power Pack. Grow up. Number one.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: No.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: And we're in trouble.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: That's just two.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's Murad.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: What?
Or say, this is Mar.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: She's holding Coffee's hair.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: That's.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Nah, it's Marad.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Oh, Marad.
Okay. Oh, my God.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Is captured somewhere in there. Did you just capture somewhere in there?
[00:28:21] Speaker B: I got everything mixed up again. Oh, I do that.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: It's okay.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: They read my books. They have the same problem.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: It's okay.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Well, this is the cool art for the family.
You know, I love again that we're dealing with period of the X Men. That's familiar with this. And that's something I was going to bring up on this. This podcast on a notice this time.
This. This run, right? The run that I read is Akin felt like it was targeted to me, right?
And it's how I got into other things like this.
You know, I'll be honest there. I read Power Pack before, and it didn't really have that. But this run feels like it's still written to me, right? Because it's giving me the X Men. I know it's giving me the characters. I know it's giving. Giving me them the powers that I know. You know what I'm saying? And I think it's an interesting take because are there kids buying Power Pack at the store or is it just dads, you know, going, oh, yeah, I remember what it was like to read kids superheroes.
Going to my own numbers for Starlight, you know, we sell a large chunk to 35 plus males and the rest is to teenage girls. Honestly, that's how weird. We have a lot of like 13 to 18 year old teenage girl buyers.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Well, you have a, you have a strong female lead, you've got rave culture, you've got. But you know, I think with this too, you think about the audience for comics, right? In this age. This is totally a nostalgia book. We're going back to the 80s. I mean this is a straight upstair book.
Yeah, it's a Gen Xer book. I mean it's straight up Stranger things. Right? Like we are.
Yeah, I mean this is the thing, right? Like, you know, the book I'm working on is set in the 80s, right. Like, I mean there's reasons for that. I think, you know, you're hitting a market that bought comics, is used to holding comics. You know, I was talking to somebody, you may be of the same perspective now, but I was Talking to a 28 year old comic fan a couple months ago and he mentioned to me, well, I don't buy floppies, I just buy graphic novels because it's cheaper.
And first off, I didn't break down the math for him because I wanted to really badly and explain that it's the same price. But that aside, I, you know, people read comics in a very different way and I find myself doing it too.
I probably need to switch, but I've been still buying my comics from a shop where I get them mailed to me months, a month.
And so I've gotten way behind on my comics. So now I find myself grabbing like 10 issues of the same comic, you know, and reading it instead of reading everything once a month. Right.
And it's a different experience.
I feel like I need to switch back to a local comic shop so I can interact with more people who read comics.
Because I think that's what gets you into. I think that's what gets you into. I think that's what gets you into the, to the spirit of everything. Right? And so, you know, it's different. And then somebody says, oh, read this. And then you go, try this. Or you read this, you go try this.
I miss that interaction. That's what I get on the show. But I think, you know, it is a different environment. So now you take something like this.
It's written in the old school style. This is clearly written to be read monthly.
Oh yeah, the recaps at the beginning and everything.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: It's very traditional.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Louise writes it as a traditional comic story. And I think, you know, that's exactly it. You're hitting these notes and why not, right? It's fun.
And, you know, maybe it's not written for the attention span. You know, I. I cannot.
You're. By the time you listen to this, Peacemaker will be way out for a few episodes now.
But, you know, I. I knew they were going to do it to me, but I'm still pissed. Like they're doing one episode a week. I hate that. I just. We just let. Wish they would release the whole thing, you know, I don't know why. You know, streaming has this notion that it's better to release something one week at a time.
You just give me the book, give me the movie, you know, give me the story, and then let me digest it in the order I want to. That's why I pay for streaming. Right.
And this book does not do that. It's a callback to reading one issue at a time and doing it in a monthly format. I'm not saying it's a bad read all at once. I read it all at once and I enjoyed it.
But they are definitely going a different direction there.
But what I find often is you take something like the Peacemaker series or some of the long extended series, and they're not written in a way that needs to be watched once a week, but they're still forcing it into weekly episodes.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: I haven't watched any of the Peacemaker. That's what. That's what you from all that?
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. You haven't watched any of the Peacemaker?
[00:33:40] Speaker B: No, I watched the first season a little bit.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Well, the new season just started and I haven't watched the first episode yet.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Oh. So I watched that.
I don't go down that rabbit hole, but it's fine.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: It's fun. But it didn't need to be watched weekly. Right. Like, you could have just sat down and watched all the episodes at once.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: That's what I did.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And.
And, you know, I see shows try to do it. I mean, I've seen, you know, I really liked. You can laugh at me because I feel like I'm an old man now. But I really like the Kathy Bates Matlock series that just came out.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: I knew it existed.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you didn't watch it, I think you would enjoy it as well. It's. It. The first episode takes you on a Travis turn really quickly in the episode.
It kind of reminds me of your. Your and Greg's writing.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Well. Okay, so I'll ask you about later when you're writing.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: When you're writing with. When you're writing with Greg, how you'll take the story in a way, and then Greg will tie it up.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: And it will flip and not give you what you expected. Like the whole notion of. Greg talks about a lot of putting a character in an environment where you don't expect them to be. Yeah, yeah. And so it takes one of those kind of twists in the first episode. I actually think you'd really like the show.
But that's one where I felt like it came out weekly, but I felt like they wrote it to come out weekly.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: So what you're saying is if a show's written to come out weekly, it's better than a show that's not written to come out weekly, but then they make it weekly?
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think you, you know, if you're not writing it to come out weekly, just give me the graphic novel is what I'm saying. Give me it all at once. If you're writing it to come out weekly, then do that. And I think this successfully, you know, is packaged in a format. Obviously, everything shaped her graphic novels right now, like every story arc's five fucking issues or six fucking issues. It's so fucking annoying.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Ow. I feel, I feel personally checked.
You know why it's that way, right? I told you this before.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I know it's that way because you want to put everything in book form so you can sell it at a bookstore.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Well, no, no, the six issue thing is because it translates into a screenplay very well.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: It's, it's.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: That was the thing they always told us, put it in six issues.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: One of my favorite. You mentioned Teen Titans. Right? One of my favorite things about Teen Titans and X Men and Claremont. Claremont and Wolkman was that they would do a string of issues that tied together, but then they would do like a breather issue that spotlighted somebody or just looked at what somebody. Or looked what they did during the day.
Like Wolfman would throw an issue in there. Look at the Teen Titans, how they live in the tower one day. And then you go back to the heavy story. Right, Chris? Because Claremont would throw those kind of spotlight issues in. Paul Levitz was good at that.
I think a lot of team book writers, you do that to cleanse the palate and then, you know, also introduce your characters.
When you put it. Always put it in graphic novel format, you lose that.
And I hate that. Right. Like, you know, they're not fighting all the time. You're not just always going from one fight to one fight. These are characters you learn to love because you're following them and their struggle and what they do.
And sometimes I hate the graphic novel format in the sense that I think it eliminates that anyway.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: You know, say I just remember something important.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: Okay, well, Travis is doing something important, but we can wrap this up because.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Well, I just want to come out and say there was a Teen Titans Go run.
That was amazing.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: The night begins to shine.
Everything you just told me reminded me that that existed.
Go watch it after.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Well, there you go.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: See, it was the best damn cartoon. People complain about Teen Titans Go all the time because they're like, it's for babies. But, man, I watched it because I go to conventions a lot, and a lot of times it'll be playing like, in a bar or something on repeat or something. You know, like, somebody will have a DVD of it. I saw the Night Be to Shine while I was trapped in the bar because the person had freaking dining dash on me. And so I was stuck there trying to find someone to bring me my wallet.
And I watched the entire Night Begins to Shine series. And I just thought, this is the best thing they've done with the Teen Titans ever. I'm sorry. I do like the original Teen Titans series. It's fine.
But the Teen Titans Go is just fine, too. It's really. Actually, it's hilarious. The movie they did where they ran into each other. Oh, my God, I was dying.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: I have. I'm up and down on it because I don't really like the art style that much.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah. I can let that go. And if you're that funny, the joke's gotta go.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: You know, I can't be, because. Oops, just knocked the other one.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: You gotta pull out a freaking.
Yeah.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: Because everything had to be that art style afterwards. And the Legion looked like in that art style.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: That was the weirdest thing. Actually. I.
I watched that series. I didn't really.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Like, wasn't. It wasn't super great. Like, I mean, it was. It was.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Didn't they do that right after. They did a really great another series right before that, and I thought that was going to be a continuation of it, and then it wasn't.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah. They just. Well. Oh. So in. In.
In Justice League Unlimited, they send Supergirl to the future to be in the Legion of Superheroes and then they don't follow up on that.
So, yeah, if I would have gotten the Bruce Timm Art Legion. Oh, My God, that would have been amazing. Right?
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah. If you went from Justice League Unlimited to Legion of Superheroes, that would have made so much sense.
Big cast, like.
But they didn't do that.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: Or they messed up what's her name's hair.
And everybody had a meltdown.
The. The other Green Lantern that I can never remember because she's new, but they. Bruce Tim gave her short hair and everybody had a I can't have sex with her moment.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: He's a girl. For your letter.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Jessica Cruz.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yes. Oh, what was her movie?
[00:40:03] Speaker A: It's a recent thing.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Hang on.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Okay, well, anyway, some cutter hair.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: The Internet, my Facebook lit up like it was the most woke history, and I was just like, you can't make just a different drawing. It's easier to draw.
I mean, also, they just mistake her as Wonder Woman if they kept her with his dial.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: I don't, I don't look at Jessica Cruz as a sex object, so I don't get it.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: It's just so weird how they react like that.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Jessica Cruz is one of my favorite superhero origins of all time. The whole. I got the ring because I, I, I had the will to withstand terrible trauma. I always thought that was a really cool, like, story. And now they're not doing 100% with her, but that's.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: And I liked her with short hair. Seemed like it was more along who the character was.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: But anyway.
Yeah, we should wrap this up.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Sorry. I get it. I start. We start talking about comic books, and I've had a long day, so I'm.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Well, this is, this is how this podcast goes. Everybody knows it's a chat and a conversation, but we're going to wrap this one up. We just finished into the Storm number three. We're going to go into into the Storm number four. You should pick up Power Pack into the Storm. You can even pick it up as a graphic novel and I won't yell at you. You can also go buy the floppy somewhere, and that's fine.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: It is still available.
You still have your shop ordering.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: Greg will be back soon, but you can go visit Greg. I wore the shirt today at the Retro Emporium in Kent, Washington, so you can go do that.
Of course.
You know, Travis has some books that should be probably close to Kickstarter.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: Oh, I have a date for you for one of them, but.
So I have a bad, bad future coming out.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Not good future.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: No, it's a bad future.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: I don't know, like bad English or bad medicine or bad why.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Okay, so anyways, that's coming out. You can find that on Kickstarter. I do believe it's coming out September 26th.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: I will be in Tucson next Friday at 2pm doing next Friday when?
[00:42:16] Speaker A: In the future past.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: In the future. Hopefully not the future past. Oh, it is.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: It'll be the past feature.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Because the 29th.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Oh, so. Well, Travis will.
You'll hear this later because it's the future past. Travis was in Travis. But Travis will post this somewhere. Or I'll post it because Travis will tell me what to post and we'll let you know before this. But in the past future past.
Yeah, yeah.
Wobbly timey wimey stuff.
Don't sue me.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Wibbly wobbly timey wimey. Yeah. So. So Bad Future comes out September 23rd on Kickstarter. So just do a search there. And then I have Nemesis, which is available to sign up to get notifications on on Kickstarter. And then we just finished up the graphic knob. And then let's talk about Greg's stuff. Greg's got stuff.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Greg has stuff. Greg has abs. Absolute Launchpad is not the name of the book. I believe it's called Absolute Zeros Camp Launchpad.
Absolute Launchpad. That would be like the B C series in the absolute line for DC. Like absolute Batman. Absolute Superman.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: It's Fab McQue.
Yeah, but he's like, serious.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you imagine? You know what they the Absolute line needs?
No, it needs Absolute Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew.
You're.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: You just got to go for obscure.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
It was written by Roy Thomas.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: I just say, like, I, I, I lost it.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: And you're like, I said Roy Thomas and you got mad.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: Roy Thomas, creator of Wolverine.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Yes, we're good.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Make you really mad.
The.
No, like. But anyway. Yes, anyway, sorry. Absolute Zeros Camp Launchpad. You can still buy that book. It's still kind of summertime, so I think it's fun to read any time of year, though.
And if you buy that book from Greg, he will personally send you a signed copy of an MXPX CD with the book.
You heard it right here. Reach out to Greg. If you haven't gotten those CDs, he will sign that MxPx CD for you and send it out to you.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: You'll make me miss beverage and.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Well, you should move there.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: I should move home.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: Do you want to sing the song with me?
[00:45:00] Speaker B: No.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Oh, okay. I mean, you don't like it that much, so.
And then, of course, jujitsu layer Paul. He keeps us on the air when I do stupid things. And, yeah, go to him. Employment law needs whatever else.
And if you want to choke out your opponent in jiu jitsu, you can do that, too.
I think he was in Las Vegas earlier this month.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: You weren't.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: I was not.
But we'll talk about it off air. But I may go to Las Vegas next month, so I'm down.
Let's do it.
And we can podcast from there. But until that happens, we're going to go now. And we'll be back next time with issue four.
Come back for another fun bantery episode.
Bye, everybody.
