Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Geeks explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
DC/Marvel: It's All Happening Again
We dive deep into the fascinating history of Marvel-DC crossovers, from the 1976 Superman/Spider-Man meeting to the ambitious Amalgam Universe of the mid-90s. Looking back at these collaborations reveals how they've historically revitalized the industry during challenging periods—much like what we're witnessing today.
Our spotlight on the overlooked 1999 Superman/Fantastic Four crossover (where Galactus destroyed Krypton and Superman briefly became his herald) showcases the creative potential when these universes collide. With both franchises heading to theaters in 2025, this crossover represents not just exciting storytelling possibilities but genuine hope for the industry's future.
This far and no farther.
Speaker 2:We make a pod and they push back. I will make them pay for listening yeah yeah, pay up. Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 1:Are they in the proper approach? Pattern for today Negative. Approach pattern for today Negative.
Speaker 2:All weapons.
Speaker 1:Now Charge the lightning field. I put in minimal effort at work. Why would I put in any at home?
Speaker 2:Because this is something you actually care about.
Speaker 1:This is actually something I care about more than work at all. Well, you know as it should be.
Speaker 2:Work is not life. You're not doing what you love. You're loving what you do? No, you're not. Neither of those is happening.
Speaker 1:This is what I do. This is what we do. This is what we do. There's no bluff in basketball.
Speaker 2:Let's welcome you to the show and to the host.
Speaker 1:This is.
Speaker 2:Dispatch HX. I am Jake, I'm Skip, that's Skipper, hey, hey.
Speaker 1:Oh man, yeah, the morning zoo crew was here earlier. Sorry, there was a bad energy. We had to. They had to be put down. One of them started frothing at the mouth it was the manimal Jimbo, and the manimal had to go. We just couldn't do it anymore. They'd been here since four o'clock in the morning and we just. I work in TV, I don't need the radio. Assholes up my ass. I couldn't deal with it anymore.
Speaker 2:And besides, there was no more blow left, so they couldn't keep it going.
Speaker 1:We had no more blow or K2, so they just fucking rode off into the sunset, and by that I mean we burned them out back in a trash pile.
Speaker 2:They went to live on a farm where zoo crews go and can enjoy the rest of their days.
Speaker 1:Upstate, where they can chase rabbits all day. Now we're back to our show, finally.
Speaker 2:Finally.
Speaker 1:God we can get rid of those dickweeds.
Speaker 2:Weed out those dicks, as it were.
Speaker 1:It's really kind of a metaphor for how radio is gone. We killed the radio star for our podcast.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I understand all this Radio Gaga you're speaking of.
Speaker 1:It's just a lot of radio blah blah. You know what.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sorry, what was that? Drunk passing by? He's fine. There's liver disease out on the air man.
Speaker 1:Andy, Cap you wife-beating drunk.
Speaker 2:Well, somebody had to.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh yeah.
Speaker 2:On today's.
Speaker 1:Dispatch.
Speaker 2:Ajax, we're going to look at some comic book stuff. Hey, Skip, did you hear the news? Did you hear this news coming out here, this recent news?
Speaker 1:Is Jesus coming back?
Speaker 2:Jesus is in fact coming back. I've been waiting by the window. He has a new line of sandals that he is promoting.
Speaker 1:This is maybe the most embarrassing thing that I know ever. There is a Ray Stevens song that's very similar to this premise of this bit. I'm just going to leave that there, all right.
Speaker 2:So recently at the Comics Pro Retailer Summit that we're all clamoring to go to every year.
Speaker 1:I try to get my tickets, man, but it's like two minutes they're sold out. It's faster than the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:my man, it's crazy. Cb Cebulski, the head editor-in-chief at Marvel, and Marie Jarvins, Javins, Javins.
Speaker 1:America's sweetheart.
Speaker 2:The head editor-in-chief at DC have announced that their two companies will be collaborating in the year 2025 of our Lord to put out a DC Marvel crossover.
Speaker 1:I legitimately was surprised by this. Legitimately was surprised by this, considering the way that things go, considering that the emphasis on movies and properties like that other media other than comics. I was shocked that this happened because I remember talking to you about the old DC Marvel crossovers and I kept thinking like this is never gonna happen in our lifetimes again, like who framed Roger Rabbit, there's no way that fucking Warner Brothers and Disney would ever come together, ever again.
Speaker 2:Who Framed Roger Rabbit again, double Jeopardy. So there are going to be a series of one-shots that come out later this year, and this will be their first crossover of the two companies since 2003's JLA Avengers miniseries.
Speaker 1:Which was written in the 80s. It was Perez and Marv Wolfman, right, and they never finished it because, like the deal fell through at the last minute okay, okay, kurt Busiek. Okay, fine, but I know it was George Perez yes, yes, mr Perez.
Speaker 1:I literally sat at a panel when I talked to him about it and he was like, yeah, we did that a long time ago but they never finished it because the deal fell through for the crossover rights. They had to wait 20 years. And he was like, yeah, we did that a long time ago but they never finished it because the deal fell through for the crossover rights. They had to wait 20 years to finally get it hammered out. And it kind of shows, considering a lot of the plot points in it, but it's still kind of awesome in some ways.
Speaker 2:No, it's still ruled.
Speaker 1:When Darkseid is given the Infinity Gauntlet and he's like what the fuck is this? And he's just like, oh, it's this thing from another universe. And he's like fuck that. And he throws it over his shoulder worthless trash, it's a long out of print series.
Speaker 2:They recently released it as a benefit collection. That did really really well good good for them for George Perez after his passing right and in 2025,. This will actually mark the 30th anniversary of the big Marvel DC event which led to the Amalgam Universe. These are all things we've spoken about on previous podcasts. Do check them out.
Speaker 1:Go check those out, because we rant about how bad that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we talk a lot about the Amalgam Universe in our comic votes. Oh yeah yeah, worst comic marvel ever put out, um that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a fun episode to check out. We talk a little bit about these in our different multiverse series that have come out in the past that is true.
Speaker 1:Strangely, though, we have never actually done an entire episode about our big thing where we fix the amalgam universe.
Speaker 2:We kind of hint at it, but we never do our whole thing well, maybe we'll have to see what come to this, because there has been some artwork that has popped up that could lead one to believe that this will be a continuation of some amalgam stuff oh boy, well, 90s nostalgia is all thing.
Speaker 2:But it's tough to say whether that is legit or just fan stuff. I mean random Reddit posts and Twitter threads. There's no real word has come out about what's heading down the pike, but this is all coming off the heels of interesting fluctuations within the industry. Some people look at this as a bellwether that the industry is similar to how it was in 1985, where it needed a rejuvenation. It needed some help with its sales and whatnot, and so they turned to these two big companies to inject life by crossing over and combining, which really did inflate the market there for a bit. There's a lot of factors that are at play within the comic industry.
Speaker 1:So if you go by, say a Rich Johnston, which Take what he says with a grain of salt, yeah, Some of the stuff he puts out there.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's really.
Speaker 1:Once again we have addressed Rich Johnston a couple of times I wrote for him for a brief period.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Some stuff he puts out is really great breaking news and does challenge the status quo, and some of it is just TMZ garbage.
Speaker 2:Recently he put out some quote-unquote news about the possibility of comic book price rises due to the new US tariffs on Canadian printed comic books.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, yeah, I mean that's possible.
Speaker 2:He stated possibly 25% tariffs that could change comic books from a $4 price point up to a $5 price point. Jesus.
Speaker 1:Christ, that would affect For a 24-issue comic book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh. This could also lead to delays in Pack-free comic book day and supply chain issues. The tariffs on China may worsen, but this is kind of also coming out of this could kill printed comics, you really-.
Speaker 2:It could, but let's just let me do some magic here. Let me massage you a bit. Fair enough, Since COVID-19, a lot of retailers have felt the hurt. There's been supply chain issues, distribution problems, a general decrease in comics. The Comics Pro, the trade organization that we spoke about earlier. When they were speaking to comic store owners in the direct market, they had a lot of bad things to say in 2023 to 2024. To say, in 2023 to 2024, saying that 69% of responding retailers said that sales were down. Sales of new comic periodicals were down 73% from responding comic shops in 2023 compared to 2022, while graphic novel sales were down 65% in those shops.
Speaker 1:That's really bad. That is, book sales went up during the pandemic, so that's a really bad indicator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were having a lot of issues and there were a lot of.
Speaker 1:Well, no, they weren't, that was rough, oh hey. Hey.
Speaker 2:A lot of comic shops were having trouble staying afloat and a lot went under, but there is some light. That approached in 2024. Things began to look up for many in the industry, especially if you go by Skitched.
Speaker 1:Is that a magazine about riding on the back of a car with a skateboard?
Speaker 2:S-K-T-C-H-D.
Speaker 1:You're trailing the back of a car on a skateboard. It's a really niche magazine.
Speaker 2:They were looking into things at the beginning of 2025, and they were asking retailers all across the globe how things are doing, and generally things were optimistic. So from 2022 to 2023, things were pretty dire, but 2023 to 2025, that period have seen things turn for the better. There seems to be a general positivity coming out of a lot of what the retailers talked about. Some of this has been finding a lot of success in digest size collections and more accessible reprints for new and younger readers, and one thing that's really drawn is actual single sales have increased, not necessarily across the board, but for a lot of retailers they have seen an uptick and a lot of that is due to excitement at the fan base. A lot of retailers, when they were asked about talk to, pointed to a few different things the absolute line at DC, really bringing people in the door and not only bringing them but keeping them.
Speaker 2:Marvel, their Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimates line have done stupendously well. More nostalgia, not nostalgia. A lot of this has been new readers who didn't read the Ultimate line, and these books have been really, really good. With Jonathan Hickman, his take on Ultimate Spider-Man and the Ultimates is currently being written by Dennis Camp and illustrated by Juan Fregheri, fantastic book, really pushing a lot of boundaries, really putting their version of an increase, with the GI Joe and Transformers stuff going like Gangbusters, the new Jason Aaron, tmnt run that people are really digging. So thankfully a lot of this is showing some distinct improvement and a rejuvenation into people actually coming and buying comics, which I think kind of points towards good things for the industry, not necessarily needing these two big companies to combine and do something.
Speaker 2:Now you do have the looming specter of Diamond's bankruptcy, ooh yeah, which post their mid-90s consolidation of distribution for comic books. They have kind of been your one go-to source for years. But there's been so many problems with Diamond, from their packaging, their distribution, their lack of update, their FOC stuff. It's been always a pretty consistent problem for retailers trying to get product to their consumers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they had a monopoly. I mean, we've talked about it before, but they had a monopoly on distribution. For those of you who haven't listened to those episodes the comic book companies print comic books and you can get them, you can subscribe to them you always have been able to to every major comic book company. They will ship it to you. But to get it to a store where you can buy it, yeah, after the 90s, there was only well, no, there were some other alternatives, right up until like 2006 or 2007.
Speaker 2:There have always been other alternatives, but we're talking about 90% of the market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, they became a monopoly.
Speaker 2:There were always other alternatives, but essentially Diamond was your, the one place to go to.
Speaker 1:Right. It's also how, like most people also got bags and boards and your catalogs for upcoming stuff they basically were the middleman. They were the awful capitalist middleman that was the buffer between you and the actual company. So it's not like a mailman comes and brings you your comics. Most of the time it's fucking diamond. That's how you get it.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times they wouldn't bring your comics. That's right, yes, which is a problem if you're wanting to sell comics and or buy comics.
Speaker 1:Or they get your order wrong, or if you had to specialty order something. Let's say you specialty ordered something, like somebody in a store wants a specific comic. You can't just go to DC or go to fucking Dynamite and be like, can I have this comic and you sent it to me, dynamite? And be like, can I have this comic and you sent it to me. You have to go to Diamond and then Diamond has to acknowledge that you exist and then Diamond has to put in that order and then Diamond has to go to that company and then Diamond has to ask them to print off a certain number so that it justifies how many they can just ship to you or whatever. So they were an awful, awful company but because of the monopoly they created, now that they're going under, it's going to create even more problems.
Speaker 2:In the recent years you've had some splitting off, so DC and Marvel both left Diamond to go with Random House Publishing and Lunar Publishing. Now you're having other companies, so I think Image has broken away as well and you're having other smaller companies go to some other options. You're having a lot more as the wealth is spreading and so you're going to have plenty of comics that will continue to stay out and relevant and be able to ship people how they're going to like, do catalogs and things. I don't know yet. It'll all be online. Currently, marvel, dc and Image they all put out their own singular catalog. Yeah, that is paired with the previews that Diamond puts out, but now that Diamond will be eventually, in some form or fashion, not the same entity they are now, we'll have to see how that all shakes out and shapes up. You think one of them is going to buy them.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know, as long as Amazon doesn't buy them. They do do similar things, but they don't do mainstream comics. So I'm curious. As long as somebody like Amazon doesn't buy them, I am curious to see how that adds up, because they still have an infrastructure? They do, but if you don't have neither of the big two, or even I mean third, fourth, fifth, but when they go under, can't you see DC or Marvel being like, well, fuck it, I'll just buy them now, one up on the other competitors.
Speaker 1:Then not have to go through another company, I mean it's possible, just own their own direct chain of, which might actually lead to them bringing prices down Like I could totally see that happening. I don't know that it will.
Speaker 2:I don't know about bringing prices down. I don't know if I see that happening.
Speaker 1:I know it's American capitalism, so prices are never coming down.
Speaker 2:That's wishful thinking.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, though they should.
Speaker 2:We're not having wars in the Middle East, but gas is going to stay the same. Oh, no, birds and, and they're fine, but we're still going to keep the price of eggs the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:That's just how that goes.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So it will remain to be seen. I think a lot of smaller companies will have trouble staying afloat. I think a lot are going to collapse.
Speaker 2:I think you're going to see reorganization of a lot of that that sucks. It's going to suck, but change is good. I think overall this will help. At least I'm trying to stay positive. I think things are looking more positive than some people are speculating. So we'll see. And I definitely think this marvel dc crossover will put juice into some excitement for both of those companies outside of their smaller titles that aren't doing as well. So I mean I mean, like absolute Batman, absolute Wonder Woman, absolute Superman are killing the. You know the Green Lantern sales or action comic sales or anything like that Similar to the Ultimate line is doing so much better than, say, the X-Men universes right now. So I think having these two crash into each other will generate some excitement for at least a couple issues.
Speaker 2:We'll see if they can translate that into something else.
Speaker 1:It always does.
Speaker 2:This obviously isn't the first time this has happened.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:There have been many crossroads between Marvel and DC over the years for a variety of reasons. You can go back to 1976 when you had Superman versus the Amazing Spider-Man. That was only the first. In 81, you had Superman and Spider-Man join again. You also had Hulk encounter Batman.
Speaker 1:We've talked about that before it's great.
Speaker 2:We have talked about that. I'm just going to lay out some of these. This is kind of more of laying the groundwork.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're recapping, you're getting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:These are things we will come back to in time, but your X-Men, teen Titans in 82. Then you had a couple of Batman Punishers the Lake of Fire in 94 and Deadly Nights in 94. You also had Galactus, darkside in 95.
Speaker 1:Silver.
Speaker 2:Surfer Green Lantern was in 95. As was Spider-Man and Batman Disordered Minds.
Speaker 1:I had posters of all these on my wall, by the way.
Speaker 2:Captain America, batman in 96. Another Batman-Spider-Man, new Age Dawning, in 97. This is also about the same time. You're having Marvel vs DC. That was in 96, along with the Malcolm comics from 96 to 97. You also have Marvel DC All Access and Unlimited Access in 97 and 98.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Then you're getting Silver Surfer Superman in 97 and Fantastic Four Superman in 99, along with Hulk Superman in 99. You had a Daredevil Batman Eye for an Eye in 97 and a Daredevil Batman King of New York in 2000. Then we got the 2003 Avengers Justice League, which we spoke about before, and then there was a Spider-Man Superboy in 2015 and the Spider-Verse issue, which kind of counts. It's more of a continuation of the mid-90s stuff in the Amalgam universe.
Speaker 1:Which raises all sorts of questions.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was kind of talking about Spider-Boy, which was the fusion Because Spider-Verse every issue is dealing with a ton of different versions of Spider-Man across the multiverse.
Speaker 1:I'm just shocked that DC let that happen. Honestly.
Speaker 2:Probably some goodwill from all the Spider-Verse stuff In 15?.
Speaker 1:In 15? I don't know. That seems pretty early Because the Spider-Verse, like the movies, didn't even come out until what, like 1920, something like that 2018. Sure, I mean, I'm saying it's pretty early.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:I'm just surprised.
Speaker 2:My time frames, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know. Good, I'm glad it happened. I'm just surprised Even though that was one of the lamest Malcolm I's they did.
Speaker 2:Well, most of the Malcolm I's weren't too great, oh they were all bad. We're going to fix them, but before then, let's journey to the past, shall we? So you had the mid-90s we did yeah, sorry what no?
Speaker 1:we did, we had the mid-90s.
Speaker 2:I remember that. It's true, we had them. You couldn't take care of them so you had to have them taken away from you. So in the mid-90s you had kind of a boom in comic books. You had, you know, the Image Comics came up, your post, jim Lee, chris Claremont, x-men stuff, your Death of Superman these are all big time stories that were covered outside of just comic books. You know you had feature up on CNN and your local drive time zoo crew. They would chat about it all the time Before we had them killed, before they had to die. Everybody's got to go.
Speaker 1:Which was public service.
Speaker 2:We kill them for you.
Speaker 2:Finally justice is served. But in the back half of the 90s things have taken a turn. A lot of the sales were down, things weren't doing super great, a lot of the crossovers and events weren't really hitting, but you kind of had some new voices step up and take over. You had a lot of stuff from Vertigo, you had the Wildstorm universe, you had stuff like the Authority, tom Strong, danger Girl, planetary. These were all coming out in 1999. It's kind of a turning the page into a new era of comic books.
Speaker 1:Remember, image split up into like 15 different companies In that time frame. That's an important context. Those guys leaving Marvel to create image created a huge turmoil in the big two and then, when image split up, for kind of the same reasons, they left. In the first place, you created wild storm, shadow line, all of those different spinoffs of image with those same creators who left to join together to form a new company. Wildcats obviously was jim lee, and so, like he took his intellectual property and spun off and created his own company called wild storm. Mcfarlane and eric larson became two big anchors of image and they somehow managed to weather the storm through all that, the wild storm, as it were. And then there was, um, obviously Shadowline, was what Not Silvestri Valentino, top Cow, there you go, that's Silvestri.
Speaker 2:An image imprint that then spun off into its own, where you get yeah, and you got Homage and Cliffhanger and Darkness and yeah, witchblade.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think which was also a TV show.
Speaker 2:I think you had a lot of that stuff. You can look at it in a negative that it pulled stuff away from the big two and that it splintered off. You could also look at a positive that it allowed for a lot of different type of stories and different readers to have more access to different comic storytelling. That was going on.
Speaker 1:It was definitely more of a market at that point. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. You had your dark time post Superman, batman movies. You know, this is 1988 when blade came out. X-men film is still not till 2000.
Speaker 1:So that's when Marvel started actually making movies that weren't direct to video or made for TV.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, spinning out of that image, wild storm, vertigo stuff. You did have more Vertigo titles that were coming, Some bigger creators coming onto the market really allowing to do their own thing. You had the Ultimate Universe stepping up. That was created in 2002, I believe the Ultimate Universe was really good at the beginning.
Speaker 1:It's waxed and waned over the year, but that allowed for Well, I mean it disappeared and then came back and then yeah, but I mean that was allowed.
Speaker 2:creators like Mark Lahr and Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis different people to those were the British Invasion guys, except for Bendis.
Speaker 1:Well, right, except for Bendis. I mean.
Speaker 2:Bendis is like your Geoff Johns, where it's like he was part of that same wave, mm-hmm, but definitely not British at all no, but he did.
Speaker 1:He did a good Marvel run, but I mean there was a yeah, there was that whole yeah, he did. Actually he had an Avengers book. That was actually pretty good.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. I mean it's not compared to his flash or Green Lantern or his Hawkman. No, I know, it was GSA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's way better, granted, but I mean, like it's not bad, I would, you know, for a first-time writer, pretty, pretty okay, you know. And boy, that's a guy that disappeared real fast for good reason. Yeah, I mean, a lot of those guys were just like the guys that came over during the comics british invasion in the 1980s, mid-1980s morrison, alan Moore, ellis Gaiman, mark Miller.
Speaker 2:Gaiman's. A little before that, gaiman was like your tail end of the first British invasion.
Speaker 1:All of those British invasion guys then moved over to like after they had their DC runs Because Mark Miller wrote for fucking. Superman for a while you know like they all had their run in DC, Just like Morrison and just like for fucking. Superman for a while, you know like they all had their run in DC. Well, I don't Just like Morrison and just like Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think DC is necessarily where everyone cuts their teeth and they move to Marvel necessarily.
Speaker 1:No, but that's what happened in this case. They went to Image.
Speaker 2:He worked on Marvel UK before you ever did any DC stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, ellis is kind of a weird case, though, because he did all of it.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying you're painting with this broad brush and I don't think it applies to everybody, that's all.
Speaker 1:All I was trying to say was that there is context for this, because we've talked about the British invasion before and a lot of those guys were part of the British invasion and then they ended up in no matter how many stops they made in between, ended up either. In Image, doing this in this era.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, yeah, About this time you're having Mike Carey and Brian Nazarello and oh yeah, Mike Carey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who's the one that did Swamp Thing after Alan Moore? Veach, Rick Veach. Yeah. Also great run, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:True, Really great writers, kind of underrated writers it's just to give some context of that time frame of kind of like falling out of that early 90s hype, mid-90s glut into the late 90s, early 2000s, right steam in strides, new voices, new writers the only reason I brought that up was because I was trying to say that when image split off from marvel, basically it was just a bunch of creators who were like upset that they didn't get and this is context for other people who didn't listen to our previous episodes. For instance, todd McFarlane created Venom and Venom was a huge thing in the 90s, but he didn't see a dime extra for Venom being enormous and so they all left out of sort of protest, because Marvel owned their stuff, no matter what they did or how popular it was, and they were getting paid shit. So image creator owned Right. So they went creator owned and created image, which is their own thing.
Speaker 1:The problem was with early image stuff was that a lot of the guys that left were just artists. They weren't even writers. There were a few, but not very many, and so a lot of the books were just hollow replicas of stuff they'd done before. Wildcats was just X-Men, but without Chris Claremont, and it was just Jim Lee and it was garbage. Early on this era the mid to late 90s, early 2000s they finally started getting some of those really good prestige writers, of those really good prestige writers like Ellis, like Morrison, like Miller. Those guys. They came on to things like Wildcats and Authority and things like that. In fact, I think most of those people were eventually a writer on Authority, if I remember right. Yes, most of the people you've said. Well, it was Ellis Morrison and Miller, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then Veach, if I remember right. I don't think, rick ever had. It was somebody else, though there was another guy that went in there later after fucking Miller. But anyway, these writers gave credibility to those spinoff company wise and it kind of saved them from the brink of extinction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was less flash, like your image and your Aspen and things like that, more substance, which is really what is going to bring the flash of the early 90s. That wasn't going to sustain, that wasn't going to bring readers long-term. No, which is kind of what you saw with the big pecs, big guns, big pouches mid-90s comic stuff Liefeld oh God, we didn't even mention Liefeld.
Speaker 1:That's funny, we didn't even mention Liefeld.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's just part of that image group, you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean Youngblood which just part of that image group, you know. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I mean Youngblood, which is also an X-Men ripoff. I'm still waiting on my wet works number five, or whatever. I'm still. I'm still waiting at the door every day. He's, he's trying. We got planetary number 25 before you ever got wet works number five or whatever some stuff just never gonna happen, and that's fine.
Speaker 2:I'm still waiting on my fell issue 12 or whatever well, you got to find the cab that that script fell out into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Whatever backseat of whatever woman's car that he was in.
Speaker 2:But just to give you some context, we're going to highlight the idea of this episode, which is kind of looking at things, and then the Marvel DC crossover that's happening at the time. So in 1989, you had two sets of characters that I'd say were kind of at a down point in their readership and I'd say currently somewhat similar now maybe not as much as 1989, but just in context In 1999, this is during Claremont's fairly dull run on the third series of Fantastic Four and in 1999, this is mere months after the blue and red Electro Superman era that we had a lesser red and kind of drifted into obscurity crossover of Superman and the Fantastic Four Treasury Edition. It came out July 1999. Now I wanted to highlight this one because it's Marvel DC crossover, which kind of what we're just talking about all in the news.
Speaker 2:You kind of had these two characters that were kind of down at the time. Neither was being read and having that much great comics being put out and three, fantastic Four isn't doing great right now and Superman, at least as far as I could tell, has been and the action comics did okay the past couple of years and the absolute Superman, I think, is doing well, but overall Superman isn't doing super great, but both Fantastic Four and Superman are having movies made of them in the theater in 2025. So I thought it'd be fun to go back and look at one of these crossovers, you know, 26 years ago, and see what was going on then.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about that, what you just said. I was like oh, that's Superman Red and Blue, which is I know dumb, but it was like a callback to an old 50s story where that happened. That's actually it's not. It wasn't like original for the 90s, it was actually a retro thing or whatever. But that was at the same time that they did a JLA Wildcats crossover, when he was Superman Blue but DC had just bought Wildstorm. So, whatever, it doesn't count, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the JLA Wildcats that would have been in 97. Yeah, it was in that same era God.
Speaker 1:he was superman blue for a long time in comic book years yes, yes, that's weird he would. He was superman blue longer than he had a mullet well, I mean, both were electrifying, so so one of these days we're gonna have to talk about how lorenzo lamas and renegade is 100% just Nomad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% yeah.
Speaker 1:It's the same exact thing, the great Nomad run.
Speaker 2:I don't think when I worked at the comic shop we could even give away an entire run of Nomad. No, there's no way, we had all 25 issues plus limited series and the annuals could not sell it.
Speaker 1:Didn't Brubaker do a really good job of explaining that character in that run of his of captain america, what he was like a paranoid schizophrenic.
Speaker 2:I would have to go back and read that. Oh, I'm pretty sure he did.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure there's one issue where they go back because he was one of the buckies and then he back in those days before before the Lorenzo Llamas days, he had a costume, it was like yellow and blue, and I'm pretty sure they do an issue where they address what happened to him. It was basically like James Gunn's super or kick-ass or whatever, where he's imagining that he's a hero. He's not really anything. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2:I mean there have been so many Edward Fur and your Ricky Barnes, your Ian Rogers, your Jack Monroe, there's no, that's a whole thing, so I don't remember off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:Everybody forgets there were several Buc-ees and that there were several Captain Americas. People always forget that there have been many of both of those characters.
Speaker 2:It's comic books. There's so much. I mean it's like trying to figure out what's going on. The X-Men right now.
Speaker 1:Well, but I mean there's only been three Batman ever, but there's been like five Captain Americas. You know what I mean. Like it's a little different, but you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there have been five Captain Americas.
Speaker 1:I know there were multiple people that were Cap over the years, but Batman has always just been either Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson or John Paul Valley. That's it.
Speaker 2:That's true. That's definitely less. I will give you that.
Speaker 1:It's a Sesame Street episode also. One two, three Captain America 1999., Picture it Sicily 1999.
Speaker 2:All right. So here's at least a conceptually interesting premise. I'm going to lay this out for you. What if Galactus had traveled across the universal dimensional boundary and was responsible for the destruction of Krypton and, upon witnessing the proto-Cal-El escaping on a ship, earmarked him for service as his herald of the future?
Speaker 1:Oh man, jake, oh man, oh man. That's really funny Because I was when I was moving back here. Joe and I were in the car and we were like we had that horrible thing where we were stuck in a hotel for three days. I was telling him about our amalgam thing and he's like, oh, that is a really good, interesting idea. And he started thinking about it. We were both like, hmm, what would you do? And I was like what if Galactus destroyed Krypton and Kal-El was his herald? Or what if the silver surfer was from Krypton or whatever? So that's damn it, it's already been done, fuck.
Speaker 2:It's true, it has already been done.
Speaker 1:Damn it.
Speaker 2:Dan Juergens came up with that first.
Speaker 1:Of course it was Dan Juergens. He did Superman. He did all the consummate Superman stuff in the 90s. Then he did that Spider-Man run and that Thor run. He was doing JLA and Superman at the same time, which was crazy.
Speaker 2:Does he have stamina for that? I mean, that's a lot of bodies to go through.
Speaker 1:Well, he did it so I guess.
Speaker 2:So I've seen the condoms on the floor he took care of business.
Speaker 1:Don't tell me it didn't happen.
Speaker 2:I've seen him do Superman and the Justice League at the same time.
Speaker 1:I seen it. He had blood, wind on one end and ice on the other.
Speaker 2:Frosty tip.
Speaker 1:Motherfucker had ice and fire double stacked.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I'm melting as we speak. That's what we have too, so I'm gonna walk you through the issue here. Yeah, please do so. You see Krypton destroyed and Galactus is there. We jump to the present day and a craft that was sent by Galactus for Superman comes to Earth. There's a shadowy figure that sees the crystal headed for Earth intercepts, earth intercepts, but the next thing we see is that Crystal finds Superman as he is in the middle of defusing a nuclear bomb that has been set up by what appears to be Muslim extremists.
Speaker 1:It's not even the nuclear man.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's very much like infidels. You will all perish.
Speaker 1:True lies.
Speaker 2:Great.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, isn't it, isn't that the same premise? That's the fucking plot of True Lies.
Speaker 2:I know that it is racist and has the bad guys be.
Speaker 1:Muslim extremists.
Speaker 2:I don't remember like if they're just like dealing.
Speaker 1:I remember in True what the what their goal was it was after the original world trade center bombing, so it was about, yeah, muslim extremists. That was the whole. Premise is that they were gonna get their hands on whatever mcguffin yeah, I mean, that was like the year before.
Speaker 2:I wonder if they even hmm that was the zeitgeist true lies came out months after the world trade center bombing, and then this was 99, so we're talking like another seven years after that.
Speaker 1:That was the American mindset at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was just a-.
Speaker 1:Which got worse. It was just disappointing to see it especially pre 9-11. There was a Superman arc in the 90s where there's a Saddam Hussein stand in that Superman fights. It's the fictional country of Karak.
Speaker 2:Where Black Adam? Oh, that's Kondok.
Speaker 1:That's Kondok. That's actually in North Africa. This is the Middle East. It's like sandwiched between Kuwait and Iraq. Nice, yeah, that's good stuff. Yeah, that's where we were.
Speaker 2:Well, I wasn't happy to see it, but anyway. So this crystal comes, finds Superman. It appears to be a Kryptonian communique from his father, Jor-El. Now I don't know if you're imagining Marlon Brando or Russell Crowe.
Speaker 1:Always.
Speaker 2:But it combined the two and that's who's talking.
Speaker 1:Wow, great acting and bad acting. It's so weird no accent and an earpiece. I'm so confused. It's so weird no accent and an earpiece.
Speaker 2:I'm so confused. Which was the great acting, which was the bad acting? That's the good question.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It depends on what year it does.
Speaker 2:It depends how much wine is involved. What if we're just combining old Pope's Exorcists Crow and Island of Dr Moreau Brando?
Speaker 1:You could swap those guys and no one would notice. It's like Black Cat and Catwoman. When Marvel and DC wanted to do that to bring it back around hey, don't be smirching my cat, ladies.
Speaker 2:Whoa hey. But you're not taking a side on which I like what I like.
Speaker 1:But you're not taking a side on Felicia versus Selina. I've tried. I've tried to do this. Only people like you and I all the geeks at the fucking comic book store have had this debate ever. I I can't. I can't every time I like that's why they wanted to swap them. That's why they wanted to swap them, because nobody can. Everybody's like oh, they're kind of the same exact fucking character and it's, and it's not like deadpool, and I'm not gonna say you're right, I'm just not gonna say anything just because you're proud.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2:I get it uh, russell crowe's jor-el comes to him. He tells his son that it was indeed Galactus that destroyed their world and that he is to avenge us, my son, before he disappears.
Speaker 1:So, Superman.
Speaker 2:He's like oh shit, I got to go do this. I don't need help from the experts.
Speaker 1:No, not the X-Men.
Speaker 2:No, the experts. So we cut to a little. Franklin Richards and he's playing with toys and you see that we're playing with a Superman toy. You also see that there's a Batman and a Robin toy down there that he's playing with. They explain that the DC characters are from the cartoons in the 616 universe, but when he's talking about it with his mom they reference that they know Superman is real and in another universe. So I believe that they were assuming that they're referencing the 1995 DC Marvel crossover.
Speaker 1:I would imagine so, because they are creating and keeping canon even within the 616 universe.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I think we'll find that this is not an in-canon adventure, but so you're saying I'm DCing a Marvel story?
Speaker 1:That's what's happening right now.
Speaker 2:Just have fun with it. Don't think too hard, Okay all right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't look too hard into it, sure?
Speaker 2:So the Fantastic Four are just doing some science-y stuff in their warehouse, as you do. At this point in time they'd lost the Baxter building, so they're just in a dock warehouse, I don't know, like Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, actually just like that, because those are always hanging around in New York and no developers bought any of that shit up. Blackrock doesn't own that at all, nope, nope.
Speaker 2:Just free space for anybody to move in at any time. Do your super science.
Speaker 1:And then cops never think to look there.
Speaker 2:Why would they? And then all of a sudden, superman just shows up. They don't explain how he got there. Okay, doesn't matter, he's just there, okay. So Clark shows this crystal that he has, that we believe of Kryptonian origin, to explain what's going on, why he's there and everything. But the crystal zaps their computer, stuff in their computer which turns all of their super science stuff against them all.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Superman is helping to defend them, but then he gets zapped by a probe and kidnapped. An anal probe, a large anal probe it looks like an egg, so it's-. It smells like Gwyneth Paltrow. It's an unidentified egg object UEGs as you hear about in the news all the time.
Speaker 1:He is a pretty talented amateur rectal photographer.
Speaker 2:Get right up there.
Speaker 1:No, I would hate to.
Speaker 2:During this process of them fighting the computer stuff, tech bits start flying off and coming together to create Cyborg Superman.
Speaker 1:Oh weird.
Speaker 2:Now, one thing that this does and always pisses me off about Cyborg Superman is that he was a nothing. A bunch of tech bits come together and make a cyborg body, but then they show him again with the little bit of face and the coif of hair. That is actual biologics. How did he create that? It wasn't there before you said this always pisses you off.
Speaker 1:Does this happen all the time it?
Speaker 2:does Constantly happening.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's an everyday occurrence for me.
Speaker 2:Every time I see Hank Henshaw, I'm like you, fucker.
Speaker 1:I mean, is that on purpose? Because Hank Henshaw is part of DC's answer to the Fantastic Four?
Speaker 2:If you wait, we will get to that.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm sorry, my bad. I'm sorry You're right.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, it's like you wrote this in a hotel room, suffering from COVID.
Speaker 1:Why are we? Oh okay, wait what? That's a very specific reference.
Speaker 2:It was. That's what you guys had just talked about. You kind of came up with a similar plot, remember? No, all right, anyway. Rewind the episode and you'll understand what I'm talking about, anyway. So he sees Superman and trying to escape from his pod being possessed by Galactus and begs to take his place. Begs to take Superman's place, but he has stopped before reaching Superman's pod. Superman then gets enveloped and emerges as the Golden Herald At least that's what I call him, because he's all shiny gold.
Speaker 1:Does he look like Waverider or something? Ish, because he's all shiny gold. Does he look like Waverider or something?
Speaker 2:Ish, yeah, I'm kind of like an Oscar statue.
Speaker 1:but you know, with the Superman stuff, silver Surfer, but gold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah kind of. I mean he's not like he doesn't lose his hair or anything, so he's just like encased in gold in a way.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So like steel, but gold. Well, steel doesn't have hair, so oh, so he's like a later Captain Adam.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, more similar to that. Okay, he is now imbued with the power cosmic which Reed says, combined with his own extraordinary abilities, makes Superman the second most powerful being in existence.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean, it's hat on a hat right there it very much so is. Superman needs the power. Yeah, I mean it's hat on a hat right there. It very much so is Superman needs the power of cosmic.
Speaker 2:I don't think so, but he got it. But I don't know. Is he going to stack up against like the Eternal or Darkseid, or With the power of cosmic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, because, like was it Hickman that did the what ifs, those short ones, the one where Thor became the Herald of Galactus.
Speaker 2:They just did a whole series of what-ifs with Galactus just recently.
Speaker 1:Oh really, that sounds cool.
Speaker 2:Let me pull those up. What if Galactus transformed Gambit into his Herald, transformed the Hulk into his Herald? Moon Knight, rogue and Spider-Gwen?
Speaker 1:I don't care about any of that, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, there's your knowledge of the day.
Speaker 1:I mean do you All right? Well, there's your knowledge of the day.
Speaker 2:I mean, do you? I just like what-ifs? Okay, so do I. I love what-ifs. I married a what-if in Canada.
Speaker 1:You don't know her. She goes to a different high school.
Speaker 2:You'll see her. Just look at the latest issue of Vogue. She's in there. Promise.
Speaker 1:It's a side-fun episode.
Speaker 2:So Reed tries to grab him, but in doing so he gets zapped away. They both get blipped to wherever Galactus is. Now. Cyborg Supes and the rest of the Fantastic Four join forces to go search for them, even though he's a bad guy. So Superman has been destined since the time he was an embryo, flying away from the dying world, to serve Galactus' interest. Superman quickly acquiesces, despite Reed trying to reason with him, to fight, being taken over or, I guess, giving his will to Galactus. There's a momentary memory of Lois that gives him a pause, but the transformation is finalized. Reed continues his vain attempt to halt Galactus and Superman's actions, but he is confined and only able to watch. He's put in the cosmic cup chair and he just has to take it in, isn't?
Speaker 1:that one of the Orions from the New Gods, the cosmic cup chair.
Speaker 2:That's one of.
Speaker 1:Jack.
Speaker 2:Kirby's best inventions, by the way, jack Ryan's like in every hotel, there's going to be a cosmic cook chair. Jack Ryan, is he Jack Ryan?
Speaker 1:Yeah, From Clear and Present Danger.
Speaker 2:Get out of my cock chair.
Speaker 1:I think he picked a different Harrison Ford role.
Speaker 2:I know I'm done spraying all over you, but there's enough material connecting the two that you can follow along my leaps in logic.
Speaker 1:I get the train of thought. It's just funny because five different actors have played Jack Ryan, but then you went with a different Harrison Ford role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you could have seen it's like quoting.
Speaker 1:Witness and talking about Jack Ryan. Oh, you remember Jack Ryan in Working.
Speaker 2:Girls. I remember when Jack Ryan, he had a whip and a hat and just Robin Graves.
Speaker 1:Wasn't Jack Ryan, that one in 16 Candles that Molly Ringwald was in love with?
Speaker 2:I don't remember who that was.
Speaker 1:It was Jake. The character's name is Jake, something.
Speaker 2:Oh, literally Jake, something.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it'd probably be more interesting.
Speaker 2:There's a wrestler named Jake something.
Speaker 1:Oh, is there really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, how about that?
Speaker 1:Is your spirit animal.
Speaker 2:No comment.
Speaker 1:You could just put your face on his body at any time.
Speaker 2:It's me.
Speaker 1:It's better than Jake the snake, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's rough, it sure is Poor guy. All right. So the Fantastic Four and Cyborg Superman, they gear up to go. There's a retelling of their shared origins. So, as you pointed out before, they kind of follow along the same lines. If anything, one is an homage to the other. In a twisted way, both a group of space explorers that get imbued with cosmic radiation. But while the Richards family gained superpowers, henshaw's crew died from the radiation. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So they do the radiation. Oh, okay, so they do address it. Okay, cool, they do.
Speaker 2:They do it? Yeah, because he's kind of like retelling this tale. It drove one to use their talents for the good of mankind, while the other resented his fate and the loss of his human body, thus declaring war on its greatest champion, Superman. Wow, Interesting champion.
Speaker 1:Superman. Wow, interesting, they don't address the Fantastic Four stand-ins in Planetary at any point. No, we're not going to do that yeah.
Speaker 2:You're getting a little wacky at this point, Skipper.
Speaker 1:Isn't that Wildstorm? They own it.
Speaker 2:I don't think. When did Planetary even come out? I don't think they was even out yet. No, they make. Essentially the Fantastic Four are the bad guys in the Planetary series.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is fucking great. They do that in Super God too. Actually, the Morgan Lucas is supposed to be a stand-in for the Fantastic Four. Yeah, Good book.
Speaker 2:Good book. So as they're getting ready to leave, Franklin gives his mom his Superman toy for good luck and they depart. Superman as the Golden Herald Again I made up that name, but it fits he finds a planet uninhabited for Galactus to feed. Galactus is like hey, did you pick out this planet because it doesn't have any life on it? And Superman's like no, this one will serve your purposes, I aim only to serve. And so Galactus munches down the FF. They find them. You know, it's apparently super easy to just go anywhere in the universe and they try and stop them in vain as they're easily defeated.
Speaker 2:As they're getting ready to leave, Superman sees the husk of the devoured planet that galactus just chowed down on and becomes troubled with something deep in his mind. But they proceed on. They came upon a new world, this time inhabited with intelligent beings. The fantastic four again show up and try to stop them, but can't really do much of anything. Superman, at this point, has a crisis of faith, wondering if Galactus has a soul. No, he confronts Galactus and he thinks about his little green world. That was no more. He then betrays Galactus but is easily put down. In that moment Superman's on the ground from cosmic eye blasts. Moment superman's on the ground from cosmic eye blasts. Hank aims to gain perfection with the tech of galactus, hoping to become his equal. Galactus always has machines that he's hanging out in yeah, very jet kirby things yes so hank's trying to like get in there.
Speaker 2:He thinks that by using galactus's cosmic powered imbued tech, he'll become like the perfect version of Cyborg Superman.
Speaker 1:Okay, if Orion sits in the cosmic cuck chair, then Galactus stands in the cosmic cuck stand up desk. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. You can see it in your mind. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I know you do.
Speaker 2:I just don't know if it has the same roll-off-the-tongue version.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't marketed very well. Why do I have to stand at this desk? Just watch, it's like the action desk and that's why we have the cosmic cubicle.
Speaker 2:Comes with the reverse quarry hole.
Speaker 1:Sorry, my headphones fell out. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:It is then, at this moment, as Superman rise on the ground, he sees the toy of his visage that has fallen in battle, and voila, he just becomes his old Superman again. All the cosmic powers is gone.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:He just does it.
Speaker 1:Why not?
Speaker 2:There's no process. He decides no and he's just back to being Superman. He then teams with the Fantastic Four. They make a joke about it being pretty easy to change that S on his chest to a five. Oh, and they are able to secretly reverse the flow on Galactus's world-consuming tech, which starts to drain energy from him. They then give him an ultimatum. He has to choose to either continue doing what he's doing and he'll have the life force, or whatever drain from him.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Patrick Stewart.
Speaker 2:Or yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Cosmic vampire. Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Cosmic vampire. You know you. You know you heard it, you've seen it.
Speaker 1:Or.
Speaker 2:He can promise Never to eat Another inhabited world Again, and they'll let him. Let him live and go do his thing.
Speaker 1:Alright.
Speaker 2:Galactus agrees, as the word of Galactus Is bond, which is what he says Alright, superman, read my lips.
Speaker 1:No more worlds, I am not a cosmic crook. Just what he says All right, superman confronts Read my lips.
Speaker 2:No more worlds. I am not a cosmic crook. Why am I combining president's quotes now? No, it seemed fair. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So he makes the promise. They flip his switch back, so now he can munch down on non-inhabited worlds. Superman then confronts Galactus and says, hey, he should pay for his destruction of Krypton. But despite him saying that he craved to eat Krypton we're going to make Galactus pay for it.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a beautiful new Krypton.
Speaker 2:It's going to be the best Krypton you've ever seen.
Speaker 1:It's going to be the best Krypton you've ever seen. It's going to be beautiful. We're going to make them pay for it.
Speaker 2:We're going to make them pay.
Speaker 1:Galactus is going to pay for it all.
Speaker 2:My good spacefarer, jd Vance. He's got it all planned out.
Speaker 1:I don't talk to him about this, but it's going to be huge. We've got the high evolutionary working on all of it. I trust him.
Speaker 2:He's got great ideas, folks. I mean, how can you have a problem?
Speaker 1:with it. We're going to take it all the way to the living tribunal.
Speaker 2:We're going to take it all the way to the highest court, my good buddy Darkseid. He says he's got eyes for all of us. Beautiful red eyes, Omega beams. Who doesn't want an omega beam? He's got incredible omega beams, god damn it, I know so. Superman confronts him and he says but despite him craving to eat Krypton, it was gone by the time he arrived that the crystal had been sent to one day so that he could then piggyback on a ride to the other universe and get Galactus and his power.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, okay, wait is that a retcon, or is that afterward?
Speaker 2:No, so you do see, as the crystal is coming to Earth at the beginning of the issue, you do see a dark figure in space. See it and approach it. You don't actually see anything happen.
Speaker 1:The next thing you see Then what we were complaining about, about Galactus creating Hank Hankshaw and the whole bionic thing doesn't matter, right, because he already exists.
Speaker 2:What do you mean?
Speaker 1:When he cyborgs Superman. We were talking about how it's annoying that he created him with the bionic part.
Speaker 2:Well, no, so Galactus didn't have anything to do with this.
Speaker 1:I thought you said that Galactus manifested Cyborg Superman.
Speaker 2:No, no, cyborg. Superman wanted Galactus', cosmic power and cosmic tech.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:That's the reveal now I was angry that every time Cyborg Superman shows up he has that little bit of skin and hair.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even though it's coming out of nothing.
Speaker 1:And eventually he had, like the Rachel or whatever, if you remember that era After he was Cyborg Superman. He just went by Cyborg, which sucks because there's already a black dude named Cyborg and you had to ruin that for him too. He had the Rachel from Friends haircut. All his cybernetics became red. This is that era.
Speaker 2:Now Ugh.
Speaker 1:Yuck.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, he's definitely. Uh, he's got the long flowing bang.
Speaker 1:But he only has hair on like one side.
Speaker 2:Essentially yes, only he's got like six inches of scalp.
Speaker 1:He's got a half Rachel.
Speaker 2:She just has the rach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it was before her nose job.
Speaker 2:Pre-jobbing, I see.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a horse of a different color. You know what I mean? Hey, you Got nothing.
Speaker 2:So Henshaw then goes to, you know, after he's admitted all this, he demands perfection from Galactus, and Galactus delivers. He zaps him with his cosmic eye beams that melt him into a flawless square of alloy, condensed form of a simple perfection, probably without thought or consciousness.
Speaker 1:Huh.
Speaker 2:These are many reasons why it's not in canon.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, obviously.
Speaker 2:Then Galactus just is gone, we're back on Earth and Superman thanks Franklin for his invaluable help, gives him his toy back and gives him his cape, and then he flies away, with everyone smiling as the adventure comes to a close.
Speaker 1:As I close the comic book at the dentist office and put it back down on the table for everyone else to read.
Speaker 2:Oh no, Spider-Man has to fight the molar monsters.
Speaker 1:No, he has to fight Smokescreen remember.
Speaker 2:There is a Spider-Man dentist, one where there's plaque monsters he has to fight.
Speaker 1:Really, because every time I went to the dentist as a kid, it was always Spider-Man and Storm versus Smokescreen, the anti-smoking one. You don't remember this?
Speaker 2:No, I do remember it. I'm just trying to track down the dentist Spider-Man one. No, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:I would like to see that. Actually, it's probably around the same time. I was reading all those issues where most superhero dilemmas can be solved by hostess Twinkies.
Speaker 2:Uh what.
Speaker 1:You don't remember those ads Maybe those were only only like 70s comics. They would have ads in the back where it would be both DC and Marvel, where it'd be like oh no, the Green Goblin is a menace and he's wreaking havoc. Well, here are hostess Twinkies that Spider-Man throws to them, and then they're like so distracted by how delicious Twinkies are that they're easily caught. And the same thing with Batman and like the Penguin, like they both did that. Well, it's true, right? Well, yeah, obviously.
Speaker 1:I mean duh, that's why most super villains today statistically have diabetes.
Speaker 2:I mean statistically. Yes.
Speaker 1:You saw the penguin series. I mean it's not inaccurate.
Speaker 2:Don't tell me it didn't happen. I saw it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like they would like throw Twinkies or fruit pies at them and then they'd be like, oh no, this is so good, I forgot to rob this bank.
Speaker 2:Oh man, but those fruit pies, I can understand how they were.
Speaker 1:Oh man, you know what I still love the chocolate ones.
Speaker 2:Those are so good, oh, gross gross. You don't like chocolate, though that's true, I don't, so it sounds gross.
Speaker 1:Okay, but you know what the best ones were? The Ninja Turtles yes, I was just about to say that with the green ooze. Fuck yeah, dude, yeah, yeah. Well, no, they had green frosting and they had vanilla custard inside.
Speaker 2:No, some of them had the green ooze inside. No, yes, that's a. Mandela effect that is a Mandela effect?
Speaker 1:No, I used to have one every morning before karate practice. I had them too. They had green frosting and they had vanilla custard inside.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, okay, you're right.
Speaker 1:I know they were so good.
Speaker 2:I fucking Mandela'd myself, didn't I?
Speaker 1:I know, I know, I know, I was like no, no, don't do it. They were so good though.
Speaker 2:Those were the best ones.
Speaker 1:They were so good. Pudding pies, pudding pies, that's right. Ninja Turtles pudding pies.
Speaker 2:Let's not even pretend that there's fruit or anything in them.
Speaker 1:No, no, they make no. No, there's no pretense there. They know exactly what it is, you're eating pudding.
Speaker 2:I know that the other fruit pies were so bad for you.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're still terrible for you and somehow still the same price they were 30 years ago, which is also not a good sign.
Speaker 2:I don't think they've made any more of them. I think they just found a box.
Speaker 1:It's like candy corn, where they only made like batch, like 60 years ago, and we're still eating them yeah.
Speaker 2:We lost the recipe.
Speaker 1:Or it's like Coke, where they never trademarked it, they just put it in a vault. Yeah, oh man, never trademarked it, they just put it in a vault. Yeah, oh man, that necto cooler which they had for a crazy long time after ghostbusters was even relevant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they brought it back a few times. Well, never quite the same no, well, we that's.
Speaker 1:But see, that's one of those things we talked about medela effect, I think it was the same, but we, because it was packaged or labeled differently, it didn't feel like it I bet there was some dye that they legally couldn't use anymore. Well, that's probably true, like old red M&Ms back in the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, this. I just found this. It's like an enamel pen, but it's the advertisement for the Hostess Turtles pies.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:This is awesome, fuck yeah.
Speaker 1:I want that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I wonder if anybody's just selling those pies. I mean, I'm sure you could make them at home, but it'd be a hassle Pudding pie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what, though? I bet you, if they do, they are still from the early 90s and I guarantee you they're so fucking gross now, Though they're probably pristine considering all the preservatives in there.
Speaker 2:At least on eBay, nobody is currently selling a legitimate pudding pie.
Speaker 1:It's because they were too good. Everyone ate them.
Speaker 2:Can't help it, cannot help it.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you and I both had the same experience. It's like that.
Speaker 2:Mr T cereal, or like I mean TMNT, was my favorite cereal too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a good one too, with the marshmallows it was essentially like rice checks With little marshmallows. Yeah, and four different colors, though pastel, not the colors that they would wear In their masks.
Speaker 2:Oh shit, I could buy one. They've got the original ones. One for $65. Sealed, 1990. Comes with a free ID wallet.
Speaker 1:Whoa, holy shit. That was the year the movie came out.
Speaker 2:This is like right at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is early on. I mean, even the cartoon came out in like 87. Wow, I would eat the shit out of it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:I would then die of dysentery, but it would be totally worth it. I died as he lived folks. Of dysentery.
Speaker 2:Well, we hope that you guys don't die of dysentery and we hope that this new crossover really nails it out of the park a little bit better than this 1999 Superman. Fantastic Four one did, which was an interesting concept but didn't really deliver and definitely isn't worth the. I think the only one I saw online was a $90 copy available in fine, very fine.
Speaker 1:That one is one of the few, I think, I've never read.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting yeah, I think it only came out in the treasury edition size. It's very hard to find and very expensive I would, imagine. So yeah so on ebay you're looking like there's one that's 30 dollars. That's from germany, so it's in german, but like 80. Yeah, tough to come by, yeah, which is why I hadn't read it until just recently.
Speaker 1:That's cool that you found it, because I had never even read that. That's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's why I wanted to pick it, because I didn't think anybody had read this one. No, nobody's read that one, so now you don't have to, because I did it for you, because it's not great, so that's fine, it's not great.
Speaker 2:You're not really missing a ton of good art. Again, there's, like I don't know, a couple cool concepts. You know Galactus, destroying Krypton, making Superman a herald, maybe Hank Henshaw trying to do something, but Something. There's also so much that just is not explained and it was like I don't care, whatever. Hey, he's uh, he's in uh marvel world. Who cares? You don't give a shit. Read the book, just shows you already bought it.
Speaker 1:I don't care it's like that episode of uh extras. When the lead singer of cold play just shows up in the sitcom, you're like, why would you be here? Like what? Like, why would you be in this episode?
Speaker 2:that's's good stuff. Yeah, maybe we'll cover the crossover issues when they come out.
Speaker 1:Well, we probably will.
Speaker 2:See what's happened with those. We'll have to wait and see how that shakes out. We'll have to hopefully see that it continues to helping the comic market and see how the fall of Diamond shakes out with that. But check back and we might have some info on all that as it happens.
Speaker 1:All that jazz.
Speaker 2:Dispatch Ajax, your favorite geek podcast. Yeah, damn right, but until that day happens.
Speaker 1:Until, we are your favorite.
Speaker 2:Yes, until we finally make you love us.
Speaker 1:I've been calling and calling.
Speaker 2:Did you not get the black roses I sent?
Speaker 1:I kidnapped your dog and still.
Speaker 2:Hey, I said I wouldn't kill him, okay.
Speaker 1:I gave him back.
Speaker 2:I gave you that clap. You didn't say thank you. Now the clap's been given back to me.
Speaker 1:Hot potato.
Speaker 2:It burns.
Speaker 1:That hot potato burns.
Speaker 2:Well, when you take it rectally, it does Yep Well your state goes right there.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe that's how you're taking this podcast Rectally, but even if you're not, please do like share, subscribe, supposit this particular podcast. Rate us five poop taters Nato suppositories.
Speaker 1:That might be redundant. I don't think you'd have any other kind of suppository.
Speaker 2:If you wouldn't mind, rating us five cosmic cook chairs on the podcast app of your liking, ideally Apple podcasts One.
Speaker 2:They do have a cosmic cook chair rating system, so utilize that. But also it's the best way for us to get seen and heard and for us to spread this virus to more people, infecting them with happiness and joy, if that's what we call it. I'd also just like to say hey, thanks. Thanks for checking us out. We really do appreciate you listening to us. We hope that we brought a smile to your face. Maybe you learned something. That's kind of all we're here to do, so we hope you've enjoyed.
Speaker 1:We don't make money off of this.
Speaker 2:It's something we do, what else are we going to do? I'm not going to enjoy my life, so I might as well do this.
Speaker 1:We watched Runaway on purpose, yeah, like multiple times.
Speaker 2:And we'll keep brushing Runaway.
Speaker 1:Until you love us.
Speaker 2:Just love us, so we can stop.
Speaker 1:Please send me your bones.
Speaker 2:I don't want any more hot dog spaghetti water.
Speaker 1:Please not out of the coffee pot again.
Speaker 2:Oh shit, she brought out the coffee pot again, oh no, she brought the coffee pot again.
Speaker 1:Oh no, the stereo system's trying to cook again. She's the worst, isn't she, folks? Well, I'm going to fuck her anyway. My son sucks.
Speaker 2:My son sucks.
Speaker 1:He really does, and that kind of sums up our show. It's a lot like Pokemon.
Speaker 2:As do the Pokemon, but until they find them all Skip. What should they do?
Speaker 1:They should probably keep looking, but make sure they've cleaned up after themselves To some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure they support their local comic shops and retailers, and from Dispatch Ajax we would like to say Godspeed, fair Wizards. Pudding pie, pudding pie, pudding pie, one of us, one of us Filled with vanilla pudding power.
Speaker 2:Please go away.