Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, we plan to release an episode on Uncanny X Men 244, first appearance of Jubilee. Unfortunately, Cerebro ate our podcast, so our special guest, Tracy Mock will come back and do another podcast with us. That's another day. However, Tracy first met us at OCON a couple years ago. So we are going to release episode 318 where we covered us one, number three with a live audience. I hope you enjoy this re release of this podcast and come back soon next week for some more original content.
Episode 318 of Funny Book, for instance, recorded OCON in Omaha, Nebraska. Actually, Council Bluffs, Iowa. We have some audience interaction. Sometimes it's a little difficult to hear and maybe the audio is a little bit different. But we wanted to give this live podcast a try, so we hope you enjoy this one, even if the audio quality is a little bit different than normal. And we're about to get right into the podcast, so I'll see you on the flip side.
And why would you ever have Parasmore with Gigmon?
That doesn't make sense.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Doesn't make sense.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Are we. Are we?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Are we?
I just started recording because this is
[00:01:10] Speaker A: a normal way we start the podcast. I mean, we just start talking.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: So somebody hits record and then all
[00:01:15] Speaker A: of a sudden you're supposed to let me know.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I never let you know before.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: We're dropping historical bombs sometimes as I forget.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: And then like 20 minutes later you're like, did you start recording? And I say no.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: And then we got to re record a whole entire podcast. You're crushing me right now.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: I have crushed your soul.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: There's all sorts of things going on around us. We are at OCON right now. We've got a puppet fight going on in the podcast room. Right.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Puppet fight in the podcast.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: I'm not really sure what's going on, but what was brought to us, we had a wonderful. Not even listener, mind you. New listener. Listener. As of right now, we now have. I just like to share.
We've got an audience here. We now have.
We now have. Officially, we have four listeners.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Four. Four.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: We now officially have four listeners. Count the puppets. That's.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: That's two more.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: That is by one. Two. I can do math. That's five. Plus one is six. We now have officially six. And Iggy, that's our host here at Okon.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: From Project Nerd. So that means we now have had seven listeners to the podcast.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: OKON has helped us go from one to seven. That is a seven times increase. This is a record increase for this podcast.
And we're going down A listener now.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Oh,
[00:02:25] Speaker A: I thought. I thought we were out. Well, I thought.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: I thought we scared them away.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: That's. Well, I. I've promised Greg for a long time that if one comic showed up to us, that we would do it, I guess. A comic from a comic series.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: And what amazes me is that there. There's two facts that amaze me on this comic. There's a couple things I want to point out before we disclose to the listeners what this comic is.
Number one, this comic's value is 60 cents. This is what it was sold for. 60 cents, by the way, audience out there. 60 cents. As you can see, this comic out here was 60 cents. But on this inside cover, it looked like it was being sold for $0.50, $0.10 less. So this comic book was so famous.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: So famous.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Somebody wrote in pencil that it was sold for $0.50.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: After it was purchased for $0.60, it decreased in value.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: And it.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: And, you know, you didn't write in comics in pencil, like maybe in the 80s. So this comic was published in 1983.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: So.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: So probably around, like, late 1983, somebody had marked it down to 50 cents.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: 50 cents.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: And so we're talking about one of the most valuable comic books of all time.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: All time. All time.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: But since we have the actual comic book today, instead of one of those awful scans, we have all our advertisements in here, too.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
This is actually the only reason I really, really love to read these comics with you, Dan. I think you just stopped recording.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: I did not stop recording.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Okay. Oh, gosh. Oh, my God. See, this is what happens. No, just. Just leave. Don't touch the computer. Oh, my gosh. Okay, we. Again, this is, like, the first time we've ever had it, all right?
[00:03:55] Speaker A: And I. I know. And we don't even have equipment to, like, you know. It'd be awesome if we had this cool setup where we could, like, put the comic down on the table and it, like, displayed the pages after everybody.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: But we don't have.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: But we don't have that. No, what we have is a. Dan and I can show you that we're doing us one. Number three.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Number three.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: The rhyme of the Ancient Highwayman. And what we have, gosh, is a ridiculous, nice, Michael golden cover.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: So beautiful.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: And if you could just see this, like, if you can just imagine. We've got. Actually, we don't know who he is yet. We don't know. We're gonna hold off because we didn't read issues one or Two.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: No.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: And I can tell you with pretty confident. Cold. With confidence. We're probably not reading issues one and two.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Oh, we will, we will. Now that we read number three, let's go back and read number one.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: You know how much of a completist I am, and I still don't know if that's necessarily happening after reading this issue.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: It is.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: What I can tell you is we've got some crazy Kirby Crackle going on all over this cover. I had no idea Michael golden did Kirby Crackle.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Me neither.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: I thought he only drew large breasts, so I really didn't even know he knew how to. You don't really. Kirby Crackle around that area of the anatomy in the drawing. So not what. You're a little bit crazy. And US1, usually US1 has this nice road sign looking feel to it. We've got like the outline of the interstate here, but we've got Kirby Crackle going on all behind it. It's pretty fantastic. And we've got a truck, and his truck has gone from blue and red to. Well, we don't. I guess we don't know because we haven't read the issue, but I have. So we've got a yellow.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: I read the issue just like you told me.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: It's like a yellow golden truck driving through Kirby Crackle. It's all pink. And then we've got this crazy, like, lightning guy.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah, lightning guy.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: He sort of looks like a lightning. I mean, if I was a Legion fan, and I am, he might look like one of the lightning beasts of Corbel. And if you don't know the lightning beast of Corbel, I am so sorry. Talk to me after this podcast and we will make sure you're square on that.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Get on it.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: So we're going to get into this rhyme of the ancient Highway Mariner. No, I already messed that up, highway man. I'm already trying to change it to the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. You see where I'm going there?
And maybe, maybe some of these things will play into this book. I mean, this book could be a copy of other stories, I don't know.
Or maybe just the Highwayman, like, you know, on his horsey to ride on his horsey, sword and pistol by his side. I'm not going to try to be Johnny Cash right now because that's. That's a losing game for me. So.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: And we're going to go there. You never know. You never know.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: I will just also share out with our listeners because we do like to point this Out. This comic is, of course, pure. And was approved by the. Approved by Comics Code Authority. So, you know, there's nothing wrong with it, and it could never harm your children.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: It's safe for them to.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: And it's from. And it's from the 80s. And so I. Jill, just. Since we do have a live audience especially, I'm going to warn you, I'm going to guess that there's probably things that are offensive in this book. So literally, just be prepared for that, because this is a book written in 1983, and there is a character.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Well, we'll.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: We'll get to those.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: I'm going to say there is a highly likely.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Yes, Offensive.
It's not highly likely offensive. It is straight up offensive.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Straight up offensive.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: But, hey, we're going to go with that. So we've got our first advertisement. We've got Scotty in a Cracker Jack story, and Scotty is playing baseball.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Hungry.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: And unlike me playing baseball, I had a little league average of 0.087, and my dad was the coach, so I got to keep score, and I knew how to keep score. And they had a little chart in the back of the book that showed you your batting average. And it was awesome. And I was so excited. And my batting average was zero for a long time. And I just kept dreaming, like, and I would add up my number of at bats, and I kept seeing, like, on the chart, like, if you got one, what your average would be. And so I finally had a hit, and then my batting average was 0.8 7.0. Not 0.87. Sorry. 0.087. Let's be very clear. Less than one hit, less than 10 at bats. And I was very excited. And. But it's very clear, like, Scotty, if I had just gotten a hit, I would have got a whole box of Cracker Jack. And if you call it Cracker Jacks, I will punch you.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Cracker Jack.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Okay, I don't want to get punched because there's a choice of arms. Look at his arms. Toy surprise inside. So. All right, well, we opened to the first page of Rime of the ancient mariner. Highway 1. Stan Lee presents. Now, the fact that. The fact that we're still one. Jim Shooter is the editor of Marvel comics at this time. And I don't even know if Stanley is working for a company at this point, but we've got Stanley Presents. And Stanley is so proud. We've got Stan Lee right up here at the front cover of the book because he's going to Present Us one.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Us.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Well, what I do know about Us One is I thought Us one was just a bad comic series because somebody thought it was a good idea to have trucks drive around in the Marvel Universe and then talk about the truck drivers.
I don't even know if did we even find out to send you truck.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: I mean, it's a truck that he has control. I mean, I think he technically has control over it with his robot brain, but I. The truck kind of controls itself. Kind of, sort of.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: That's there. There are robot brains in this book. Yeah, Big brain. Robot man. Well, anyway, we get a front panel and we get a colorful semi speeds across the hellish alien highway as demonic spirits sear the air.
So is it an alien highway or is like the highway to hell Highway?
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Hell.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: It's Denver. I can see that. So it is actually. And we get this nice. Actually, I think the art's pretty cool.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. The I very, very delicious looking is delicious.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Well, we have this written. This is written by Marvel Stalker.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: You got to read.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Read this.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Every single line of this.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: This is.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Okay, because this is the rhyme of the ancient highway, man.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: You know, I think it's important. Okay. Written with tongue in cheek by Al Mingram. So Al was very proud of this one based on what he wrote right here in his own credit. We've got penciled with fine technique by Frank Springer, who we'll get to in a moment.
Inked with hardly a leak by Mike Esposito. And Mike must have been really proud of this one, because I know with Mike Esposito's long and long track record as a fine inker at Marvel Comics, I'm sure This issue of US1 was his proudest achievement.
We've got colored with a brush antique by Paul Becton. We've got edited by a man with a very large beak, Ralph Macchio. And not that Ralph Macchio. I just want to make sure the karate chimp, also a Ralph Macchio that was an editor at Marvel Comics Comics. So I just want everybody I confused by that for a while. I was like. I was like, is that cool? Yeah. When I was a kid, I thought, like, Roth Machu edits comics. The greatest thing ever. And then he goes on in the movies and.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Makes one illegal kick. He makes one illegal kick and ruins Johnny's entire life.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, right? I mean, it's.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: And it got supervised with an eye toward critique by Jim Sharpshooter.
Youngest writer of comics ever, I think.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: At like 13 years old. Thumbnailed his own books.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: You can be that person.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: And then he became the editor of Marvel Comics and everything was downhill from there. He should have just stuck with writing comics as a 13 year old and just never come back.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: So I have to make a, make a note here without all of Dan's commentary. Every single line rhymed.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Okay, I'm not into rhyme around. It's a comic book falling off, but
[00:10:59] Speaker B: it makes sense because it's the rhyming the ancient highwayman.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: All right, well we get. We start out this book and we are automatically set into a dream sequence. Which is fantastic because we don't know what happened in the first two issues. So we're in a dream sequence and let's see, we've got. It's Archer.
I'm going to mess up his name now. I still haven't seen a name yet.
Well that's okay. We don't know his name because we haven't read the book. So there's a truck driver and he has blonde hair and a headband because it's the 80s and it's a red headband and it's amazing. Think the Supergirl headband, but way lamer cuz it's not on Supergirl.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Not on Supergirl.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: And if you don't know the Supergirl headband from the 80s, you're missing out because it's fantastic and everybody needs to see it for good. So what we've got here is we've got a guy and a truck and a robot brain and a woman with a giant whip made of motorcycle parts. Yeah.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: And she's on a really awesome motorcycle, I must add.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: And we have no idea who this woman is.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: She's just beating the crap out of him.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: But what we do find out is our truck driver has a CB skull. So think about this. Just think if I actually had a real brain and this was translucent. And there was an amazing network of CB radio up here because we said one or two transistors. I don't even think that's that cool. Like if I had a CB in my head, I would never need cell phone batteries. I could just talk to everybody on the highway forever. We would just literally plug me into the cigarette lighter and I'd be ready to go.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Could we say you would go? Ham man,
[00:12:34] Speaker A: You got me. That's the first time I break on this one so far. And there will be many other times. So anyway, our, our, our, our hero, Hero. Hero awakens. And I want you to know this is the most muscular truck driver I have Ever seen in my life. We're talking like blonde haired Rambo here. Like, this is amazing. He's got, he's rippling like kind of. Yeah.
Way too much hair.
Arnold Schwarzenegger with the headman.
I also want you to wear. He wears his headband to sleep.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I mean everywhere.
You never know.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: That's Ryu for Street Fighter from our audience. For those of you listening to this podcast and you're not here, we do have some audience commentary. So we'll try to fill it in for you.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: And yeah. So, well, anyway, we've got it going
[00:13:25] Speaker B: on and he's like Mario in the room with him.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: And then we, then we're finding out. We're, we're, we're meeting some of our characters. Yeah, yeah, there's, we've got. He, he wakes up and he screams.
Because that is really what it says.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Age.
Okay.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Oh, it is Arnold's horse of Tinker. But.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: We, and we get a woman here who we don't know yet, but we're going to find out about very soon. She says, my gosh, Papa, that sounds like us.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Oh, that's his name. Okay, good. Okay.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, got it. So his name is us.
Oh, I think it's Ulysses. I think it's Ulysses. Yes. Well, we're going to find out.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: We'll find out.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Sure. Because I did find the research I got to do in an hour and a half for this. I was spot on with this research. I want to tell you all this
[00:14:16] Speaker B: is usually the course if you not, if you're not familiar with the podcast.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: I may do a little bit of research. Most of the time I get. He does and he lies. He's. He's so wrong. Well, anyway, we get a woman running in and she's wiping the head of the man and we get two more characters running in and she's like, oh, I couldn't just, I just couldn't bear the thought of you being hurt. So let's talk a little bit about Mr. Springer. So we had Frank Springer. So I didn't know a lot about Frank Springer. So I went and asked an expert, Bob hall, if you've never met Bob hall, comics legend in the comic book Hall.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: Boom, right there.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: I had. Fantastic. Just walked in the door. Bob Hall. No, Bob hall in the comic news group. You have a true legend out there. So if you don't take the opportunity to walk by and say hi to Bob hall and introduce yourself like, please do. I go to Bob hall and I'm like we're looking up Frank Springer. We can, we can see that he drew some Nick Fury. Tell us about this man. And he said, oh, oh, it's Bob Hall. Then he went through like seven artists. He would compare Frank Springer through, which I'm not going to through go through on this podcast. But then he said Frank Springer was a great artist. What he should have been doing was the comics that strips in the newspaper and drew like Mary Worth. Do any. Does anybody know who Mary Worth is? Harry's like, oh my. So Mary Worth was like a soap opera comic. So basically it was a comic strip. And every, you know, Monday through Friday you would get. Or Monday through Saturday you'd get a new episode of the soap opera. On the Sunday you get the color wrap up of the soap opera. And it usually they'd either do it monthly or weekly, but they'd end a storyline on Sunday. So you get those comic strips. These are totally. I'm going to show you, these totally look like soap opera comics. These look like love comics. Soap opera comics. And it's really interesting to see Frank Springer doing this right in this book where I kind of. Well, I'm not going to argue with Bob hall ever. One. And number two, it does very much look like comic strip art. But I do think it's appropriate for the book because this is in a book with superheroes. Theoretically, it's a. Well, I guess he's sort of a superhero. He's like a mechanical CB head superhero.
So we're rolling around in this book. Well, and we've got the love story. And we're meeting, I guess, the parents. So we've got. At least we've met Big Papa. And we've got unnamed woman. And unnamed woman. Okay, Mary.
So now we get us walking with Big Papa.
And Big Papa wears a big red cap. This has shortstop on it. And I'm really not sure is he a baseball player or does shortstop. Sam for something else.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: I think it stands for something.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Oh, I bet that's his diner.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Okay, that's. That's gotta be Stop diner. So high road trekking, right? Everybody needs to go to a truck stop. And truck stop food is the best, right? I mean, literally is like if you ate truck stop food every day, you would totally be the Buffett truck driver in the world.
This is clearly what we're getting. No, like, hey, well, I'm looking. I see the evidence right in front of me.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: It's right there in US One. I mean, don't lie to me. Comic books.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Well, what we find out is we find out the tragic story of Jeff. No, us's brother. His big brother. What happened is Jeff and us were driving their trucks, and then they ran into the secret black truck, and the black truck drove by them. And the black truck was. Jeff says, good Lord. Flashback.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: It's the highwayman.
The highwayman.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: And the highwayman runs the truck off the road, and he goes tweeting off a cliff. And poor Jeff is dead off panel. And only us is left alive. And us says, and there was no trace of Jeff was ever found. I swore I wouldn't rest until I found the highwayman.
And then a man in the back of the diner says, excuse me, young fella, because everybody that drives a truck has to have sort of a little Southern accent and say things like, excuse me, young fella. Because that's how people talk in the South.
Or at truck stops. Or at truck stops. Yeah, I've seen. And now we get a nice conversation with this old timer, the old timer and the old timers telling the story of the highwayman.
And we have a young truck driver. And he started out, which looks like clearly in the 1920s, when trucks had a single axle. So basically a truck used, apparently, according this picture, a truck was like a thing with some oil on top, and then it had one axle going down the whole thing, and that held the whole truck together. So I could see where he'd be traumatized.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: It looks like one of those old truck banks you would get at Christmas time as a child that you would play with or not play with, because it might be worth a lot of money someday. So those old test trucks that my dad used to buy me, like, I would get one every year, and I have, like 20 of them.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: It's terrifying.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: I know. Super terrifying.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: And they. And they're all still in your garage.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: I know. They. Shut up.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: So now, like, we. We find out that the highwayman, he just can't keep up with the young truck driver. So he wants to keep up. And what he does is he goes to a spirit. And he persisted in his church search to find youth. And eventually he found the help. He suck. And the demon says to him, because we have to have demons.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: So this progressed very quickly, by the way. This guy wanted to be, like, a good truck driver. And now he's like, well, anyway, you seek youth and powerful. Whoa. Youth and power. Power. That's a weird. Like, it's.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: There's a. I told you the writing.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: You seek youth and power very well. Our master can grant you these Boons.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Bones, Spoons.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: No, it says boons.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Okay, well, again, we had to.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: We had to revisit the fact that
[00:19:44] Speaker B: we have a letter writing a comic book.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: So, I mean, traditionally there was a letter. No, no. The person writing the comic book was a letterer.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: That's fair. And it's Michael Higgins. So I don't know Michael Higgins lettering history. And he must have been one of Marvel's best letters since I know nothing about his history and he got put on us one. So clearly we're looking at the high quality. I mean, they were going after John Costanza for this one. Right?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Like George Costanza loved not.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. Okay, John. No.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Okay, okay.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: No. Well, anyway, so what we find out was the price was his soul, because that is pronounced. And there's like little. It's not even Kirby Crackle. It's just like squiggly lines around it.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Wait a minute. Hold on a second.
He's a trucker. He's. He makes a pact for the demon for his soul to be a better trucker.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: To be the best trucker.
No, it's not. Man Bear Pig.
No, this is completely different.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: This sounds a lot like Man Bear Pig.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: No, it doesn't. Okay, well, Man Bear Pig, it's a trucking version of Spawn. That's a good call out. Trucker Spawn. Trucker Spawn.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Young Todd McFarlane was reading us, and in my brain he was like, what can I do that's better than a trucker? It sells his soul to a demon.
I can do Spawn.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: We find out the backstories. These 12 issues were his favorite comics.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: You know, if we had just. So for those of you in the audience and our listeners that don't know, Todd McFarland owned the comic store in our hometown, Puyallup, Washington. And I have all sorts of early Spawn issues signed by Todd McFarlane. Because he would just come to the store and we're like. We're like, oh, we line your book. This is the greatest. I'm like, who is this guy? Oh, this guy's amazing.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: He's, he's. He's. He's the new up and coming.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: That's great. And his brother in law owned the store. So we just went there.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: You guys like toys? He's going to start making toys. They're really cool.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: And if I could go back in time and just ask Todd McFarlane. Todd did with Spawn inspired by us one.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: And he'd be like, hey guys, let me tell you a little inside baseball action.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: It was, you know, he'd say, hey, guys, I know I've let you come to the store for a while, but I don't think you're allowed back.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: He would be like, so you owe me five bucks.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Well, what we find out is the old timer comes back and he says, no man can beat him. None can escape his grasp.
If you manage somehow to survive one encounter with him, consider yourself lucky, man.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Be pig.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: And then he storms out of the door slam.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: All our characters in the diner are going
[00:22:27] Speaker B: to.
Because they don't know what to do.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: By the way, that visual I just did was very good for audio.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: It was so good because, like, he. I mean, he walks out, everybody is
[00:22:35] Speaker A: stunned, and I kind of look like my dog pointing out a squirrel. So it was good. All right, so, well, we better move through the story because we're gonna be here, like, seven hours.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Look at that.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Oh, wait, the shortstop is the truck stop. I knew it. Okay, I got this. I'm reading through this story, Al. I got you. I got your back. I'm covering up this good. I mean, this. And I'm not covering up anything. This phenomenal writing. I don't have to run anything.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: The art is fantastic. I love it.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: So we. The art is fantastic, actually. So we get, hey, wait a minute. And us runs out after, and he's gone. The old man's gone without a trace. There's no truck where to be seen. In fact, it is just like, classic. You are going to see. We've got classic Old Empty Road. I think you'll probably have run that paint. That little print. That little panel has probably been in, like, 75 Marvel comics.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: It's been reused so many times, it's almost like a trauma film with Sergeant Bukaki or Sergeant Kabuki.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: I'm sorry, I missed what.
What are you on?
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Totally different.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: You are trying to get me to have to edit this podcast. Like, this is a live to cave show, and you drop that.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: It's a delicious food dish.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Don't look it up.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: It's a noodle dish. Don't look it up.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: Okay. No, it's not.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a. It's.
Yeah, it's a ramen dish. Yeah, other people turn into other things. Whatever.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, it's a ramen dish. So.
All right, so now we get. And we meet our cast because we're going to be introduced to a new character, and I'm very excited.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: New character.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: We get some characters. They stop in the Short Stop store.
Short Stop, Truck stop, Short Stop Truck Stop. Short Stop. Truck Stop. And we get.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: It's so fun to.
We meet.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: We meet Taran o' Connell at your service. And the man who spoke the words of wisdom is Retread. My name is Retread. Just Retread. I'm not going to say what. Greg read this as the first time I'm dyslexic.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Okay. That's how I got the wrong name on the.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: It's also an 80s book, so we just assumed it was really terrible.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: And I had to reread this thing a couple of times and I asked three other people at the table to reread it with me.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: But it gets worse. Are you ready? We find out Retread is introduced to some other characters. We meet Ed Wheeler, Wide Load Annie Us Archer.
And the hired help who introduces herself as Mary McGrill. Yes, the same Mary that rusty US Archer US side as he was. Yeah.
So okay, that's. That's Wide Load Annie. That's that. I mean the completely like that's a name that would roll now.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: I. Yeah, I think a lot of the. A lot of the names would have to be changed. A lot of. And then situations like to protect Al Milgram.
Changes in the book would definitely.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Well, we're gonna skip ahead just a tiny bit here because we've got some nice dialogue like any Mary Worth comic. We've got to sit down and we have a nice diner conversation when we learn about Retread. And then Retread tells him the whole story of the Old Timer.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Old Timer whole story gives him the download.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: And we're finding out this Old Timer might not be such a great guy, so might be a bad dude. It could happen. So now Retread goes out with us and they get in the giant US1 truck. And now remember how it's yellow on the COVID when we saw this. I know you can't see that on the back, but do you see this beautiful blue, red, white and blue truck? Is this not the greatest truck of America ever? I mean, if I was going to have an American truck in 1983, this. Is that true? You.
I think that Ronald Reagan personally rode and endorsed this truck.
And Nancy Reagan made this part of the anti drug campaign.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: I mean, just say no to trucking.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Well, as our intrepid heroes. I mean our intrepid truck drivers move down the street.
Retread is chatting it up, or actually he's thinking. And we find out that Retreads reverie because I don't know how they choose the words in this book, but they don't want me to be able to read it because I don't know if you can say Retreads Reverie three times fast.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Well, he's retread.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: And I would imagine he would say stuff. Double. Double back.
Because it's a retread.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
I just think if you were a truck driver, too, Retread is probably not the right name. Like, I just that. I mean, that's not the tires you want.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: No, you don't. You want, like, new, fresh tires or, like, you know, you don't want retreads or double slicks, because that's just bad.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: Well, maybe that's why he's in the passenger seat.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: He's not a good driver.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Well, anyway, as us is going down the road, he's suddenly surrounded by three other trucks, and people are firing guns at the truck. You're in real trouble right now. And thank God we are interrupted by a Bubble Yum.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: And so it's like when you're watching a bad video on YouTube and it.
You're like, oh, nobody got hurt.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: And I love bubble Yum. And that's the grape flavor.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: And the grape flavor always lasted longer than the strawberry flavor.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: It pretty much did.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Did you know it was owned by Nabisco? I'm shocked.
Who also brought us those drug issues?
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, those drug issues.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: Let's not talk about that, because I'm
[00:27:42] Speaker B: gonna see Dark Time in the podcast.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: If there's a Dark time in the
[00:27:45] Speaker B: podcast, go back and listen to them, because they're hilarious.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: I don't know. I was pretty angry.
Well, anyway, we get a giant drug fight. Drug fight? No, truck fight.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: That could. Yeah, comes later where they open up the trucks and they find all the drugs.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: But what we do get is US One is, like, trying to figure out what's going on. He opens up his radar scope, and his brain communicates with a radar scope, and they find a blimp in the sky.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: What? A blip?
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And he, like the blimp, I guess, is firing down on them and is letting the other trucks know where they're going. So instead of getting her, like a radar plane, they had a blimp. But what you didn't know is just like Batman's utility belt, the US one truck has many things it can use to take care of itself. And in this case, he releases smoke screen. And a smoke screen comes up over everything, and it prevents the blip from tracking them.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: It's like he's driving kit from Knight Rider, but in a big truck.
But Knight Rider also had a big truck. Oh, my gosh.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: And then we.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: In a big truck.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: And then we flipped the page and.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: And, oh, hey, I want to get big like Atlas.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: I know you were wanting more of the story, but Atlas is huge, and you could be a slam dunker, too. And more importantly, you subscribe to Wolverine comics and other comics for only 42 cents a copy.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: The copy man, we could have got us worth of 42 cents.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Well, this was tough because, well, it does say offer expires May 31, 1983, so you should be very careful there. But what I will say is this comic was 60 cents, and this had just come up from 50 cents. And if you just went from 50 to 60 cents and you got us one, I mean, think of the quality. Like Marvel expands their line just for you so they can go to 60 cent comics and they could give you this fine book.
Wild. All right, so what we now get back to is a whole situation where us one finds an encampment of bad guy truckers. And all those bad guy truckers have a smuggling ring.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: All the bad guys.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: And they're just chatting. But because this is like a comic from the 80s, we can't really say that they're smuggling drugs, that they're bad guys. We did see some guns, sort of, but it looked like the Pew Pew gunfighter from like, maybe like, GI Joe.
Laser shots, please. And definitely nobody's dying, because, remember, we had the comics code authority on this, which means we can't say that police are bad. We can't say that there are drugs. We can't say that they're smuggling. No, we can't really say there's anybody bad. And you can't, by the way of the comics code. You can't disparage professions. So if these folks are truck drivers, then you can't actually say that they're smugglers because they're truck drivers, and that's bad. And that's a profession. So we can't say that truck drivers are bad people.
You can't sit in the truck drivers. No, see, truck drivers are professions. You can't do that because we have to make sure that everything's okay.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: In the 80s.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: We had to protect people. Well, if you wanted the code stamp, I mean, you could go without the code stamp, but then nobody would distribute your comic book.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: So then you would have to do,
[00:30:38] Speaker A: like, Robert Chromebooks kind of terrible.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Well, that's a whole other bag.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: We get our. Our Heroes have driven the truck, though, up on a rock, and they're looking down. But then retread, because he's really clumsy, he slips and he falls down the
[00:30:53] Speaker B: entire hill and crashes in while firing a pistol.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Well, he's.
Well, they're firing pistols at him. Oh, he's holding one, too.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah, he's holding one, too. But we find out it's not a real gun. It's a flare gun.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: But this distraction is fine, because US one, which strangely looks like Optimus prime, drives down the hill as fast as he can. And there we go. Us one captures an old man.
Well, he grabs the old man.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Grabs the old man. He's trying to help.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: He thought the old man was captured
[00:31:21] Speaker B: by the guys because those guys are whooping.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: I'm spoiling the end. I said he thought.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Well, he's whooping. The old man is getting whooped on by everybody.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: I'm so sorry. I spoiled that.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: You didn't spoil the old. You didn't spoil anything.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Stop.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: The old man is captured. He's. He's getting captured. Us one, he comes in and he starts whooping on all those guys. And the funniest part, I find is, like, you know, we got. We got retread sliding down the hill. Us one is sitting there, and he's like, karate. Like retreads, karate kicking people. Us one is sitting there, and he's got a metal head, right? And some dude goes to hit him, and it's like.
And then he's like, oh, wait a second.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: There's another one called Clung.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Clung. And then he's like, I'm just headbutt these dudes. He's like.
And he hits them all with. In the face with his head.
I know that's a lot.
What?
[00:32:10] Speaker A: Well, he doesn't want to damage that.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but. But he has to.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Well, anyway, we get a giant fight, and eventually they get piled up on, but us one calls the truck with his brain head, and the truck comes flying at everybody, and everybody scatters because they don't want to be run over by Optimus. I mean, I'm getting copyrighted.
So now we know what inspired the Transformers. It was so good to find this out tonight.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: There's one.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: The origin for everything. Us one is clear. The origin for everything.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Well, despite this fight, this.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: Oh, these bullpen bulletins are great.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I would like to point out, though, we get a bullpen bulletin from Jim Shooter, not Stanley. And the other thing is, this book isn't old enough to have a letter column. If it was old enough to have a letter column, because we're only in issue three and your letter column's probably not going to show up till issue four, and that's probably going to cover issue one. I would have loved to read the reviews of issue one to see what the fans were saying about this crazy
[00:33:07] Speaker B: stuff are you doing.
And, but apparently, like some of the notes though, and what we talk about in previous.
In previous issue or previous episodes is
[00:33:19] Speaker A: that a lot of, A lot of
[00:33:20] Speaker B: stuff that's going on in comics history at this time or right before is there's a lot of shakeups going on in the industry. In the industry. Kind of like what we have going on.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: And if you want to know what was going on right now we've got the Thing number one, which is the issue where Thing breaks off from the Fantastic Four and you eventually get she Hulk in the Fantastic Four. So actually there was a historically cool thing happening, just not this comic.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Well, I was, I was talking more about the changes in edit and the editorial staff at Marvel that was coming over from other comic book companies or
[00:33:50] Speaker A: the Marvel people that were all leaving to go to D.C. because they love Jim Shooter.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: So. So that's what's in the bulletin. Bulletin is that he's saying, hey, our
[00:33:59] Speaker A: products are still great.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Don't worry, we're going to still put out good books. We're just changing some staff right now. So you're going to see some new
[00:34:06] Speaker A: names like, like Larry Hannah, your favorite. Well, yeah.
Well.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Which was great. I love.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: That was probably great. Well, and we get an ad for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
Yeah, there he is. Oh, wait, this stuff.
Well, isn't it funny that the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was in the book about demon Trekkers?
[00:34:27] Speaker B: So.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Because you all know those people that played D and D in 1983 were probably murdering people in parks.
Here he is.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Side note, that's what the news said when I was little.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Well, and that's what. And that's what the Tom Hanks movie all about. DND was about is if you go into a cave with your friends, you're gonna have a bad time playing DND real life. And you might kill a friend thinking they're a goblin.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Well, I can't wait. We're to the last page and this wrap up is fantastic because you're not going to believe this. We get a freaking Scooby Doo wrap up.
Yeah. So literally the old man, they grab him and they pull his mask off and he's nothing.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: He's nothing. He Was never there because this is
[00:35:17] Speaker A: how Miriam's best work.
How much involvement do you think the Ralph Macchio the editor had in this was. Was, Was Ralph Macchio just like going back to him and saying, yeah, can you rewrite page 19? Because we wanted a Scooby Doo ending.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Just fix it. Make the Scooby Doo ending. And right, like wrap it up. So we, later on we had an.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: We had an ending where Johnny Cash and the highwaymen show up and they start singing songs. And that was going to happen, but instead we got a Scooby Doo ending
[00:35:45] Speaker B: demonstration.
Well, that's what happens when you sell your soul to a demon. Well, that's the best.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Well, what we find out by the end of this book is that us has won a mask and a shirt because he pulled them off. And he gets to end the show with it.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: He gets to wear it. I mean, like the comic suit that everybody.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Wait, oh, that's another that.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: I mean,
[00:36:10] Speaker A: this is the end.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: You are 100% correct.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: In fact, George Lucas read this comic in 1983, went back in time and was inspired to write the Obi Wan character for Star Wars.
Because US one is the inspiration for all other things.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: Lives in the desert.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Well, the good news is at the end of the story, retread comes back, he says, finally got the flames out from when he slid down the hill and to see his butt was on fire.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: No, he set himself on fire with a flare gun.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Wow. I thought it was from sliding down the hill when his butt was.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: No, no, he fired the flare gun, set himself on fire. You go there.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: I think it could be either way. I mean, there's room for interpretation here.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: I think he said himself.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Well, anyway, us one says at the end, he says about the story the old man told us about the highwayman selling his soul to the devil and becoming immortal for a price. I can't help but wonder how much of that story was true.
Oh, the end.
And we get a nice ad for Epic's Coyote written by Steve Englehart, which was probably a lot better than this book and probably nobody bought.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: And also a follow up ad for the network game Tron.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: Well, he focused in on Tron and I focused on. Sell as many greeting cards as you can so you can have Epic prizes from the Olympic sales club.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Never worked for me because I didn't know enough people in the neighborhood.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Well, as we start to wrap this one up, we've got an ad for the Kool Aid man.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Oh yeah,
[00:37:43] Speaker A: somebody played who played the Kool Aid Man. Game.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: You.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: I did, yeah. It was on the Atari. I have it, so. Well, I got the Atari, so I was. Maybe.
I hate to admit this to an audience. Like, we were so poor. I didn't get an Atari until the Nintendo came out and I had to buy it from a friend for 15.
And then I got whatever games with it. So if I got a free game, I was pretty excited.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Free games.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Like, I wore out some joust because somebody gave it to me for free.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: House is a solid game still. Joust.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: It's a solid game still. So is qbird. Some big fan games.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Pac man ported over to the Atari, not so great.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: But Kool Aid Man, I'm going to tell you, not one of the greatest games in history.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Even better.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Good premise.
Good premise. A whole game where you break through, like, barriers. I mean, that's a pretty basic Atari gaming right there. But what this is also advertising is Marvel Comics the Adventures of Kool Aid Man. And let me tell you, as we've told our listeners, if you brought us a copy of US1, we'd review it. If you bring me a copy of the Adventures of Kool Aid Man, I will definitely review the Adventures of Kool Aid Man. I will even do research on the authors and the writers and figure out why in the world they ever decided to do Adventures of Kool Aid man. My guess is a paycheck. Okay, so just so you know, we're at ocon. We're in Nebraska. Well, we're not in Nebraska, but we're basically in Nebraska.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: It's a good.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: We're like.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: It's literally.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: We're like, in Nebraska north, known as Iowa.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: We're like, what?
[00:39:06] Speaker A: But. And there's a Kool Aid man museum.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Koolaid Man.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: And we need to go there.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: I'm just gonna bust through the walls there. Oh, yeah.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: And Kool Aid style.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Wait, yeah.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: Kool Aid style. I don't think he said that.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Well, the bigger question is, is the Kool Aid man the. The. The glass or the. The. Or is it the. The drink? I don't want to.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: I think it's disturbing. Like the koolaid.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: If you take. If you take one away. Do you still have the Kool Aid Man?
[00:39:33] Speaker A: Well, no, because it's like the Wonder Twins, which was always disturbing. Like. Like, he made himself into, like, ice cubes, and Gleek would bring a pitcher, and then they drank the Kool Aid out of the ice that Zan was in. That's gross. They were, like, drinking Zan and that's what the Kool Aid man is like. That's why he's so happy. You are what you eat. Well, we should wrap this up.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: We should.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: We should. We gotta wrap this thing up.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: We do have to wrap it up, but we do. You. You buried the lead as to why US1 was made in the first place, because we talked a lot about advertising in this episode. We talked a lot about the advertisements in the book, and we talked about the Kool Aid man game and the advertising in the.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: All right, so Tyco Slot Cars thought it would be a great idea to take something they made in 1979 as a toy and have Marvel Comics make it into a comic in 1983. Except there's no reference to the slot cars or anything in the actual book, Just a magical truck. So basically, like, if it was four years later and you, I guess you were lucky enough to find those US1 toys, then you could go back in time as a kid and be inspired to. But I don't see anything in this comic that tells me to go look for US one toys, which is really off the mark, because within a. I think within a year and a half, I think it was 85, we'll get star Comics line in Marvel Comics, and we'll get all sorts of things like the Care Bears and things like that in comics. So instead of doing something like this, Marvel just goes ahead and embraces it and runs the Star line and just says, well, we're just going to be an advertising line for toys. So it. This is, I guess, the first attempt, but not the best, because you. You. I. I don't say the Care Bears comics are good, but at least they were written for kids, and at least they had, you know, met their mission of advertising the thing.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: No.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Learned from that when he made Secret wars to sell.
Okay. The question was, do we think Jim Shooter learned from that to use Secret wars to make Marvel toys? No. Jim Schroeder learns from no one because he's Jim Shooter and he knows everything.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: That's true. He doesn't need to learn from people because he's so smart.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Like, someday I'm going to go get Jim Shooter's autograph. He's like I heard you quoted as saying, I never learned from anybody because I know everything, and I'm going to Mr. Shooter. That's true. That's why I want your autograph.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: I actually am a little bit jealous of that, because I would be going and getting my Adventure comics, Legion stuff signed by Jim Shooter. So I'm a Bit jealous of that. I did see that Jim Shooter was out and around, so I am sort of anxious to get his podcast. But I feel like my conversation as a Legion fan with Paul Levitz is going to go very different than it does with Jim Shooter, so.
Yeah, but, you know, admittedly without. I don't want to just keep picking on Jim Shooter because his run at Marvel as the editor wasn't great. He tried, but I will give him some credit. He tried the. It was the new, I said in the last episode, but that new line, whatever comics. And he tried to do some new superheroes like Star Brand and did try to get some things out there. He did do a few things. So at least Jim Shooter tried to do some things. I will say that. And you know, you got to give props to somebody who is 14 year old, 13 years old when they write their first comic book and they actually sent it into a publisher with full. There we go, DP7 with full thumbnails. So if you don't know Jim Shooter's history before he became an editor, pretty fantastic that he could do all the thumbnails and everything as a comic book, you know, writer and then have, you know, famous people like, you know, the most famous Superman artist ever drawing over Jim Shooter. So that's, you know, when, when Swan draws over you. That's pretty amazing.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: So the fact that he was, he was draw. He was, he was doing all that while he was going to, to high school, going to, bouncing around, going to junior high. Yeah, junior high, high school, college.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: But then, no, then he went to college, he left the industry and he came back.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: But, you know, that's what you have to do sometimes.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: And then he went to D.C. and then he went to Marvel to be
[00:43:15] Speaker B: the editor because that's a pretty good
[00:43:17] Speaker A: career because he had a business degree, so now he can be an editor. And as if you, if you were. And for those of you in the workforce, as we all know, if you have a business degree, that makes you qualified to be in charge automatically. So just notice yourselves. If you want to be in charge, get a business degree, then that makes you in charge, even if you don't know what you're talking about. So that's the perfect way to do this.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: That's how you do it.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: So we're going to go ahead and wrap this puppy up. Greg, do you have anything to plug on this podcast?
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Well, as always, Junior Bridge of the Apocalypse is a book that I write with Michael Tanner. And if, if you're here at the ocon, you can come find us at our table. But if you're not.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Well, they're not going to be at the ocon. Well, they are here at the. The people listening to this next Wednesday are not going to hear this.
They're not going to know where the ocon. That's why we advertise the OCON on every other podcast before this one.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: So I.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: You were doing good at the plugs, but then you plug something that we're already doing that people won't be able to do after they hear this.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: I know, exactly.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we can. We can come to the next year's open.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And then find us here.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: So look in the future. So when you're listening to this, like a year from now, because you're listening to our podcast and you. And you're re listening to it every week because it's so amazing. You can come back to Okon the next year.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: You have anything else to plug?
[00:44:33] Speaker B: Well, Starlight issue 6 is.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: Starlight issue 6 will be on Kickstarter.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: We don't have a date exactly yet. So you got to come to our Facebook page, our Instagram, or you go
[00:44:44] Speaker A: to Overcast Comics and you could buy the first five. Oh, my gosh.
And you know, read the series and then get involved in it. And by the way, really, I'm not just saying this because Greg's my friend. Issue five, we reviewed it last episode and I read it and couldn't go to sleep for an hour because I was thinking so much after reading the issue. And for those of you that listened to the last podcast now, so this won't be a spoiler if you catch the reference, you'll get it. When we signed in to do the podcast, I logged in as Annie Wilkes just to let Greg know how I thought about him reading that book.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: I was scared as hell.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: We thank you.
Well, we want to also, like we always do, plug, plug the store, the Retro Emporium in Kent, Washington. If you are stopping by, visit Ann, and you'll often see Greg there too, and relive your childhood. So thanks so much for listening to this one. I hope you had fun with it. And if I know I can't find it, you have to find the book because this isn't available anywhere to actually read electronically. And I just can't imagine why Marvel hasn't prioritized putting this fine book up electronically so people can find it to read it.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: So.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: So there will be no link to this book in the podcast notes. I'm sorry.
And that's it. Bye, Greg. Say goodbye.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Bye. Bye, Greg. Say goodbye, Greg.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: I'm trying to.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: Do you.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Do you know where the button is? Yeah.
