Comics Can Break Your Heart on The Corner Box - S2Ep39

David and John pay heartfelt respect to the late, great Peter David—exploring his legacy on Incredible Hulk, X-Factor, and beyond—while reflecting on what makes a comic creator’s career truly enduring. Along the way, they dissect the tangled origins of Bloodstone, the eccentric brilliance of 1970s Marvel publishing, and the wild world of blind-bagged Invincible spin-offs. Plus: John reconsiders Rick Spears’ “Wolfman’s got nards” joke, and the duo spotlight a gorgeous Fantagraphics/Disney release.

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Timestamp Segments

• 00:00:58 – Benjamin Percy Interview Recap
  David and John reflect on their recent talk with Benjamin Percy, praising his sharp insights and deep voice worthy of a mythic lumberjack.
• 00:03:02 – Chuck Dixon Sketch Story
  David tells the hilarious story of how Chuck Dixon imagined—and sketched—a wildly inaccurate version of him based on their emails.
• 00:05:33 – Remembering Peter David
  A heartfelt tribute to Peter David, focusing on his legacy with Incredible Hulk, X-Factor, and his rare longevity in the industry.
• 00:12:02 – Comics Buyer's Guide Influence
  John recalls Peter David’s But I Digress column as a foundational influence on his path into comics.
• 00:17:03 – Elsa Bloodstone Deep Dive
  The hosts explore the obscure roots of Elsa Bloodstone and how Nextwave turned her into a fan-favorite.
• 00:24:02 – Bloodstone’s Wild Origin
  David wades through the chaotic, multi-artist, multi-decade origin of Ulysses Bloodstone—a tale as messy as it is fascinating.
• 00:36:22 – Blind-Bag Comic Dilemma
  John debates whether to open a mysterious Battle Beast blind-bag comic live on the show… and ultimately does.
• 00:45:10 – Gorgeous Disney Comic Spotlight
  David highlights Mickey Mouse and the Lost Ocean—a lush, European-style graphic novel from Fantagraphics worth discovering.

Notable Quotes

• “I apologize officially to Rick Spears for not thinking that "Wolfman’s got nards" was a famous line. I was incorrect.”
• “I'm unreasonably excited that you have not opened this. This is messing with my collector head big time right now. ”
• “I remember where I was the day that I read Peter David's last issue of Hulk, where I was in my apartment in San Diego, perhaps not entirely sober. ”

Books Mentioned

• Incredible Hulk – Marvel's long-running series featuring Peter David's iconic run
• X-Factor – Peter David's second and critically acclaimed run starting in 2005
• Dark Tower – Marvel’s adaptation of Stephen King's saga, co-written by Peter David
• Wonder Man – Marvel character with a limited series by Peter David
• Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. – Cult-favorite Marvel series by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen
• Legion of Monsters – Marvel monster mash-up series featuring Elsa Bloodstone

Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:01  Welcome to the Corner box, where your hosts, David Hedgeock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on the Corner Box.

Speaker 2 00:00:28  Hello and welcome back to the corner Box. I'm one host, John Barber, and with me, as always, David Hitchcock. My good friend David Hitchcock. Yes, I always forget that part. And I realize that I'm the one that causes this problem. Any time we have a delay because I don't say to my good friend part, that is the key. Yeah. I'm. What?

Speaker 3 00:00:46  Maybe I should be offended by that. Maybe I'm. Maybe I'm not as good a friend as I thought I was.

Speaker 4 00:00:50  Yeah. No. Well, even.

Speaker 2 00:00:52  Anyway, here we are.

Speaker 4 00:00:53  We're back.

Speaker 2 00:00:54  no guests this time, so all our voices will be in the same register this time.

Speaker 3 00:00:58  That was a fantastic interview with Benjamin Percy that we did last week, because I don't know when this particular episode is going to air, but we just chatted with Ben last week and it was pretty cool that we got to, like, be one of the first to hear from from the horse's mouth. You know, his his take on Punisher and what he was going to do with that. That was that was pretty fun. Yeah. What a smart, sharp, guy he is. I don't know how to say it. I don't know, just, I was impressed by. I was impressed by him and all the things he's doing. I wish I could have paid more attention than John, but his voice is so manly. I just was getting lost in his voice the whole time.

Speaker 2 00:01:38  Yeah, it was something. Yeah. No, it was easy.

Speaker 3 00:01:40  Yeah. It's like if I close my eyes, it was Paul Bunyan talking to me. And like, my childhood hero was in the room with me.

Speaker 3 00:01:46  It was fantastic.

Speaker 2 00:01:48  Yeah. Underworld creator.

Speaker 3 00:01:50  Kevin.

Speaker 2 00:01:50  Grievous seven. Grievous. Yeah. Could be his own super villains voice.

Speaker 3 00:01:53  I did a bunch of comic books back with Kevin Grievous. Back in the day. We were doing it like his. We were working on a line of different comic books that he had created. So he would call me, you know, all the time. We were talking all the time for a while there, but every time, and he would call me and I can't even do his voice. It was so deep. It's so crazy deep. And he'd be talking to me and I'm like, I can't, I could I it's I'm struggling to concentrate here because your voice is so incredibly manly.

Speaker 2 00:02:23  It is. You know, that is one of the funny things about like less so now. But it was the funny thing about editing comics, I don't know, like 15 or 20 years ago is that there were so many people, I only knew them from their voices and had no idea anything about, you know, what they looked like.

Speaker 2 00:02:40  And that's a funny thing sometimes to know about somebody, you know, or like, you know, someone might have a, a real high pitched voice and then they turn out, they're like, you know, seven feet tall and three feet, you know, 30ft wide or something. I don't know, but like, did.

Speaker 3 00:02:55  I, did I ever did I tell them? Did I tell the story on the podcast about Chuck Dixon, what he thought I looked like?

Speaker 2 00:03:01  No, I don't remember.

Speaker 3 00:03:02  You did? I think I did, but I'll tell it again real quick. So just exactly that, right? So, Chuck Dixon. you know, I was working with him on I think he was on Winter world at the time. I worked on a couple different projects with him, but I think at the time it was Winter world, and I had never met him. Of course, I think maybe we had spoken on the phone once or twice, but almost all communication was through email.

Speaker 3 00:03:22  Yeah, because.

Speaker 2 00:03:22  Chuck.

Speaker 3 00:03:23  Is a total pro, like that guy, just like, you know, he knows what he's doing. He doesn't need any hand-holding. He doesn't even know when the deadlines are. He's going to give it to you. Well, like he's going to do. He's a pro. So my job was easy basically. So at one point we had to get together for something and I. So I met him. I must have been at a con, so I met him at a con and we chatted, you know, of course. Hung out a little bit, had a great time hanging out with him. And then like during that conversation, he's like, man, David, I, I did not expect you to look the way you look. I mean, what does that mean? It's like. What? Well, it's like I just had a different image of you in my head the way you communicated. He's like, well, what? What does that even.

Speaker 3 00:04:05  What are you talking about? He's like, well, first of all, I thought you were much older. And he started to describe it, but you didn't see. He says, you know what? I'm just going to draw it all. I'm. When I get home, I'll draw it and I'll send you drawing. I'm like, you're going to draw what you thought I looked like. He's like, yeah, he's what I'm listening to. So like a week later it shows up in the mail and it's like a backing board, right? Like a sketch on the backing board. I had, like, a giant handlebar mustache.

Speaker 5 00:04:32  And, like.

Speaker 3 00:04:33  Thick Coke bottle, like, black rimmed glasses and, like, short cropped dark hair. I was like, who am I? Is this guy? It was hilarious. I was dying, man. This is my favorite thing. I framed that thing and hung it in the office. He was sitting in my office forever. I don't know where I have it right now, but I.

Speaker 3 00:04:51  I cherish that drawing is cracking me up. So anyway, yeah, you don't know what people look like these days, but it's getting easier, like you said. Like with between Zoom and Google Meet and things, it's you. Definitely, the working environment is, is a lot more visual than it used to be. Yeah. Which I think is good because the more we, the better forms of communication we have with one another, especially in creative endeavors, you know, the better things are because things can get misinterpreted in an email. And that's that's always a tough time for everybody.

Speaker 2 00:05:20  Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Do we start late?

Speaker 3 00:05:25  I think we should start with the heavy stuff first because, you know, before it's already gotten a little silly. But I think we should start with the heavier stuff.

Speaker 2 00:05:33  We don't always talk about it when when somebody passes away, to be clear. Often quite random, because sometimes you might have a guest on that week and we know it's going to air at a different time.

Speaker 2 00:05:43  So we just don't talk about something. So it's not ever meant as any sort of disrespect to anybody. But, as we're recording this, We recently lost Peter David. And at least for me, that was kind of a big one. Like that's somebody that, you know, he'd been around a lot of a long time and a lot of different places. I have no idea if you ever worked with him, if you had any interactions with him, or.

Speaker 3 00:06:07  I never got to work with him. But Peter, David was blessed with some incredible artists during his Incredible Hulk run, and that entire run is like my Incredible Hulk for sure. I think the only other time that I've really been even remotely invested in Incredible Hulk comic books is around the World War Hulk Planet Hulk stuff. Although I do have to say that the current run of Incredible Hulk is actually very good too. So Peter David was like my Incredible Hulk writer for sure, 100%. I've known a lot of people that have worked with him directly and indirectly, and I've never heard anybody say an unkind thing towards him.

Speaker 3 00:06:42  I know he was pretty controversial at times, especially around the time of the image launch. I think he famously got into some brouhaha with Todd McFarlane. I don't know how much of that was real and how much of that was kayfabe, to be honest. In fact, maybe it adds to the fact that he was a pretty great writer and, it's it's, certainly saddened to see, him pass this mortal coil.

Speaker 2 00:07:07  Yeah. Well, there's a few things that are really extraordinary about him, I think. One is that he was probably one of the first people that went from the sales department into being one of the being a writer at Marvel for 40 years. Maybe that happened when there were like six people at Marvel, but that was at the point where there was like a, you know, like a lot of people there. But the the other things were, that he was one of the, one of the few people that made that transition from like late 80s, early 90s writing up through 2000 and up to the, the, the last several months.

Speaker 2 00:07:37  Most people don't don't have that kind of longevity.

Speaker 3 00:07:40  I think for better or for worse, editors are always in sort of in search of the new hotness, right? Like they're always looking for new, fresh takes on things and for like breaking new voices, I think that, well, maybe I'm just just speak for myself, but I think like breaking New Town, like discovering new talent and breaking new talent sometimes is a really exciting, time. It can be a lot of work, but it can also be a really exciting time because you're you're getting in on the ground floor of potential creators who are, you know, really exciting to be around. So once a creator like Peter David, who's been around for ten or 15 or 20 years, I think the for better or worse, the bloom appears to be off the rose and it, it is a rare talent, I think, who's able to continually, I guess, reinvent themselves is the right term, but just continually achieve levels of excellence and levels of entertainment and interest and freshness for that long period of time.

Speaker 3 00:08:41  I can only think of a couple of the people that have been that have managed to do that in any meaningful way. Yeah. You know, somebody like Mark Wade comes to mind. He's having a bit of a renaissance over DC right now. and I think his stuff is just as good, if not better than it's ever been. And that's he's also a guy that's been around for almost same amount of time. Cusack is another, although I feel like he's not working as much as he used to, but I don't know if that's purposeful or not.

Speaker 2 00:09:06  Yeah, but he's not. He's not headlining a DC relaunch the way Mark Wade is.

Speaker 3 00:09:11  Right. And I don't know that Peter was at that level that like Mark Wade is at the moment, but I seem to have certainly had it in in him. And he's certainly still steadily employed, as far as I could tell, at Marvel in particular.

Speaker 2 00:09:24  I think there was an interesting thing that happened with Peter is that when you go into the Marvel in the late 90s to Marvel in the early 2000, almost nobody makes that transition.

Speaker 2 00:09:35  In terms of writers, there's a ton of people that some of them kind of stagger along a little bit. Some came back a little bit later. I feel like that at that time there was a feeling that like basically that the image guys were right. You know that when those guys quit and they were like, hey, we can write as well as these writers. I think there was an opinion that, yeah, they are correct. They could write as well as these writers that were writing these Marvel comics at this time. But the solution, instead of it being like, have the artist right? It was, well, let's look at Vertigo. Like, what if you had these, these great Vertigo writers writing the stuff, and you combine that with the image? Artists like you have the best of both, both worlds. I think that was a lot of what that early 2000 Marvel was actually about, was sort of combining those two things together, especially when you look like very literally anybody that was a Vertigo writer was finding a home at Marvel.

Speaker 2 00:10:23  You know, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, you know, those those are the guys that were defining that early 2000. Mark Millar and then with the addition of like, Bendis, even Brian Vaughan, like Brian Vaughan, is a Vertigo guy. Straczynski was the other big one. That wasn't a Vertigo guy, but he was he was coming from from TV in an era when not many people were doing that. Same thing with Kevin Smith, I guess. Anyway, exceptions a lot. Yes, but but Peter was one of the ones that. Kind of bridge that gap. He always gave credit to current boom EIC Andy Schmidt, who brought him onto a limited series, and he wanted to have a rock series. And that eventually became the second run of X factor that Peter David did. Which is another crazy thing about Peter David is that he had like a defining run on X factor left it, came back and did a longer and better run. The second time Peter David came back to Hulk, but nobody remembers the return to Hulk issues the same way.

Speaker 2 00:11:17  But that second round of X factor was even more defining.

Speaker 3 00:11:20  Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 2 00:11:22  The other thing that was amazing about Peter David or that was unique about Peter David is I grew up in a place where there were a lot of comic book stores and, you know, people were making comics there. And you, you talk about how you didn't, but neither of us grew up with the internet. Right. There was no internet. There was no comics internet at this point. I mean, I guess they were like bulletin boards or something, but I certainly I wasn't on them. I don't know anything about them. But I did have comics Buyer's Guide, the, the weekly comic book news newspaper that Don and Maggie Thompson edited, and Peter David Wall. During the time I was reading, it started doing a column called but I digress that ran in every issue of Comics Buyer's Guide. So every week Peter David would have a full tabloid page plus to write whatever he wanted to write about.

Speaker 2 00:12:02  There were other regular columns, but they weren't really active comic book writers. Tony Isabella wrote one, but he was more of a retailer at that point. Basically, what you had was Peter David was the one comic book creator who had the internet, you know, so he would be able to go and post blog posts and then also respond in the letters column with like a comment section to that. And I think that a lot of the image stuff came out of that too, was, was the image guys were getting a lot of press, but Peter David was the one writer who had a place where he was. He also had a lot of press every week, and nobody was really I mean, nobody's editing him, but I mean, nobody was was controlling what their stories were. That's interesting because when I was a kid, I was like reading that stuff and learning about being a comic book writer. And, you know, there's weren't that many places to do that. Peter David was like half of them, you know, and Dave Simm was the other half.

Speaker 2 00:12:50  God help our generation. I mean, it's like in a crazy way, but I remember, like, driving places in high school thinking about, you know, comic books or whatever. I think thinking about, like, writing comics. I mean, like, you know, like thinking about stuff and there being, like, almost a dialogue with Peter David in my head about some of the stuff. Not like I actually thought I knew him or something like that, but just like, well, he was somebody that I know has an opinion about this. How does my opinion match up to theirs? Where are the changes Socratic dialogues going on in my head about, I don't know, Ambush Bug or something, you know, Star Trek characters or whatever. Those formative for me later on. I did get to work with with Peter on on X Factor and Dark Tower and Wonder Man and a bunch of one shots and stuff.

Speaker 3 00:13:31  Right. I forgot that you worked with him on Dark Tower.

Speaker 2 00:13:34  Yeah, I guarantee this isn't about his mental acuity at all.

Speaker 2 00:13:38  If Peter and I were in the same room together like last year, he would have no idea who I was. Now, I don't mean that. Again, that's not out of mental acuity. That's out of line. There's also 100,000 other people who can just say what I just said. You know, like, I was one of, I don't know, 6 or 7 editors on that X factor book like that was that was almost a joke book. So many people took over editing it and it was always, you know, still Peter. So it was pretty much the same. The one edit Stephen King gave us on Dark Tower ever was. Peter. David had had like some really clever Peter David grammar line, you know, like like you'd, you would kind of do that, would make jokes about grammar in the, in the sentence, in the, in the dialogue. I don't remember what it was. There was something convoluted, kind of funny, like not mad or anything, but Stephen King crossed it off and just wrote goddamn or something like that.

Speaker 2 00:14:26  Like it was just, you know, like instead of whatever clever, you know, description of things.

Speaker 3 00:14:32  I remember you telling me that before. You probably talked about it on the podcast, and that was like the only note you ever had, right? That's that's incredible. What what a great collaboration.

Speaker 2 00:14:40  I remember where I was in the day that I read Peter David's last issue of Hulk, where I was in my apartment in San Diego, perhaps not entirely sober, and my neighbor knocked on the door. And this is the neighbor that was dating the homeless guy who I was kind of friends with. She came in and she got a break on her rent because she, she would help watch over the property. This is down in El Cajon and not a not a super great neighborhood. She and the homeless guy that she was dating would often take speed and, yell at each other all night. So I remember at one point I was like, up at, like 2:00 in the morning working on something for school.

Speaker 2 00:15:14  And I went to sleep and I got up at like six because I had to get there early and they were still yelling.

Speaker 3 00:15:17  Oh my God.

Speaker 2 00:15:19  You know, like the walls are not very thick. I could hear every bit of it. Anyway, she says, you got to come see this somewhere. All right. So I put down the last issue of Peter David's hall and I walk out the door. She takes me over to this apartment. Now, again, I'm just sitting in my apartment. Your bare feet, your shorts or whatever. Walk over there. she goes. Okay, come on. Come in here. These people just moved out, and I go in there and she goes, look, there's roaches everywhere. And I'm like, okay. I, you know, make my way out of there. And she says, oh, you got to come see my kitten. Am I all right? So I go back to her car and she opens, she has this little cat and she's like, oh, isn't that isn't that cute? Her apartment was stacked with stuff like newspapers or whatever, just floor to ceiling making this, like sort of border maze in there.

Speaker 2 00:16:03  Yeah, like a meth hoarder. And then the cat starts shitting on her with this runny poop going all the way down her. And I'm like, you know, kind of pointing at it. And she's like, oh, she does that sometimes. And then I then, then I went back and, finished reading Peter. David.

Speaker 3 00:16:19  So I hope you lock the door.

Speaker 2 00:16:22  Vine's obviously.

Speaker 3 00:16:26  Like, I'm not gonna.

Speaker 2 00:16:27  Live there with the door unlocked.

Speaker 3 00:16:28  That was not the Peter David incredible story that I thought we were going to be getting today. John, I thought I thought we were going to get some sort of sweet, thoughtful memorial to Peter's writing. Nope. Mary on the shirt. Yeah. That's why they listen to us, John, because they never know what they're going to get.

Speaker 6 00:16:49  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 00:16:50  John, that's that's quite an interesting tale. I don't know where I was when I read the last issue of Peter David's incredible book, but I'm sure it wasn't anywhere near.

Speaker 3 00:17:03  Kitten diarrhea. Speaking of kitten diarrhea. I picked up a collection of Marvel comics. I said, John, that Elsa Bloodstone was going to be my jam because, as you recall, and longtime listeners know, we did a deep dive on Next Wave. Agents of Hate by Warren Ellis and Stuart. Eminem Eminem. Eminem. So it reignited my passion for that series, especially doing all the research and stuff. And of course, you know, Elsa Bloodstone is sort of the key character in that series, I suppose. She's she's certainly a bad mama jamma in that series, and she's super fun. So I was reading the next wave of got super excited about it. And Elsa Bloodstone is one of the key characters and she's super cool. And so I was like, oh, you know what? There can't be that many instances or appearances of Elsa Bloodstone in Marvel Comics leading up to Next wave Agent Save, like the purpose of Warren Ellis picking the characters that they did is that they're not really used anywhere else.

Speaker 3 00:18:04  And I think, in fact, the Elsa Bloodstone that Warren Ellis used only appeared in like a two issue series, and maybe it was a four issue series by Dan Abnett in Andy Lanning. Oh, okay. I think that's the version that Warren Ellis was riffing from or using as his version of Elsa Bloodstone. I think that was the first iteration of Elsa Bloodstone. I think she's set up from the beginning to be the heir of the Bloodstone fortune. So now the original Bloodstone. Daddy. Bloodstone. Who? Who is Elsa's father? He's the original Bloodstone. In Marvel Comics, he appears in Marvel Presents Number One and number two. And then he's sort of shown the door. And, by issue three, we get the first original iteration of Guardians of the Galaxy. So anyway, I was going to, like, do this deep dive and sort of like pick up, try to pick up all the, you know, original copy, original books of any instance of Elsa Bloodstone. I started to, like, look into it and it turned into work.

Speaker 3 00:19:04  And then I realized, John, that there was a Bloodstone in the Legion of Monsters trade paperback collection that collected pretty much all the Elsa Bloodstone and her father's appearances throughout the years. So I picked that up. I got it off eBay. Its cover price is $35, but I did not spend $35 for this. It was much cheaper. It was a solid little read. I enjoyed it all the way through. It opens with a forestry series by Dennis Hopeless and Juan Doerr with Will Quintana on colors. And they did this Little forest miniseries, and the focus is largely on the Legion of Monsters, which in Marvel is sort of, you know, Marvel's take on a bunch of the, you know, the werewolf, the Frankenstein, the Dracula, what's his name, the living vampire in here. I should have done a little more research on this. And also blood.

Speaker 2 00:19:58  What should have been a little Morbius research?

Speaker 3 00:20:01  Yeah, a little more research. Thank you. Morbius. Living vampires in here is the vampire.

Speaker 3 00:20:05  Anyway, Elsa Bloodstone makes an appearance. And that's why this four issue series in here, not just an appearance. She's sort of a meaningful part of the story so far. She series. There's a short stories, and then there's the original Bloodstone comic books, and as well as some Bloodstone stories that appeared in, I think, Savage Tales, which was, I believe, a Conan vehicle Nicole before it became just Savage Conan. Well, it's all pretty fun, but the thing that I found interesting in here that I wanted to point out is that you edited one of the stories in here, John. Or at least you co-edited.

Speaker 6 00:20:41  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the original appearance of Ulysses.

Speaker 2 00:20:43  Bloodstone in 1975.

Speaker 3 00:20:46  Right? No, no. There's a story in here. Astonishing tales. Boom, boom. And Elsa. So boom boom. And Elsa in next wave. They're friends. So this obviously is taking place after the next wave series or during the next wave series. At least that's what I presumed.

Speaker 3 00:21:03  It's a fun little tale written by Rick Spears, drawn by James Callahan, and edited by you and another editor. You had some co-editor. It was a fun little story, cute, interesting art. And it introduces, maybe for the first time, Frankenstein. I believe that that was pretty good.

Speaker 6 00:21:21  Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:21:22  I think our nemesis of the show, Dave Baker, was talking about Rick Spears at one point, is one of the, like, a really key teenagers from Mars.

Speaker 3 00:21:29  Oh, he wrote teenagers from Mars.

Speaker 2 00:21:31  Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. which I liked. And I was trying to bring them in to Marvel to do some stuff. I can't remember what, if anything, else we ever did. We we we worked on this, and then I'd left. By the time it came out, I completely forgot this existed. I was trying to guess what comic you possibly could have had. I put together the paperback of, Captain America The Bloodstone Hunt, and I thought that must have been it, because I couldn't remember Elsa Bloodstone thing.

Speaker 2 00:21:55  But yeah, I know, obviously, like Rick and I, we were both big fans of that next wave at that point. So this is probably right after Next Wave, maybe even like before. He knew for sure if there wasn't ever going to be more next wave. So I remember doing it. I don't think the I don't think had anything to do with the art. I think I was gone by the time the art got done. The thing I remember about this is there was a joke in there about Wolf Man's got nards, you know, for Monster Squad, which I did not recognize as a famous line from a movie. And I remember talking to Rick, I'm like, I don't I don't know if that's famous. And it is famous. I don't know, I just I just hadn't encountered it. I've never seen Monster Squad and I didn't know there was a thing. People,

Speaker 3 00:22:33  Reference once you said once you said the quote and and attach the film to it. I remember it.

Speaker 2 00:22:39  Was one of the things that years later I was like, oh, I guess I think I was just wrong. I think, I think people I think, you know, not everybody is going to get it, obviously. But I think some people, I think a lot of people would have got it anyway.

Speaker 3 00:22:51  So that line didn't make it into the into the story.

Speaker 2 00:22:54  I don't know, I think and again I remember it being any sort of fight maybe, maybe, maybe Ric like is sitting there seething that like everything would have gone, you know, like like, you know, like that was like the Sliding Doors moment in his life or something. And Ann Arbor just ruined everything for him. But I think if you really wanted to use it, we probably would have used whatever the line was if we could have. I mean, I'm pretty sure we couldn't have said Nards regardless. So maybe that was the line and that's why we didn't use it. Can't say that. But also, hey, don't worry, I don't think people would have got it.

Speaker 2 00:23:23  And then yeah, he's like, nah, people got. That's all right, you know? Like, maybe it went like that. It was like a like. So that's a low key.

Speaker 3 00:23:30  I feel like maybe you should. Maybe you should apologize to Rick Spears.

Speaker 2 00:23:33  Yeah. No, well I do. Yeah. Here. I apologize officially to Rick Spears for not thinking that Wolf Man's got Nards was a famous line. It was, incorrect. Was I, and I've thought about that since then, you know what I mean? Like, that was the thing that I. That I held on to, when other people would do jokes that I didn't get or didn't think was funny, I was like, oh, this could be another wolf man's got nards moment in this game. Well, no, there's a learning moment for me.

Speaker 3 00:24:02  Obviously. All right. The only other thing I want to point out in this collection, which if you're just, you know, looking for something to read, it's a fine Sunday afternoon, you know, kick back in a chair, sit down and read some good, monster stories.

Speaker 3 00:24:18  It's good for that. But the origin of Bloodstone himself, like the father of Elsa Bloodstone. It is the weirdest, most convoluted, most hard to understand origin story of anything I've ever experienced. Not only is the story itself fairly incomprehensible, but the way that it is presented is also fairly incomprehensible in that the story started with John Warner as the writer, and he presented the origin, the the start of the origin of Bloodstone in Marvel Presents in issue one and two. And then it got the axe right, but then he somehow managed to bring it back, because I think not only was he a writer, but maybe he was an editor as well. And so he managed to sneak it into. So he came out as Marvel Presents in a full color format. And the artist was Pat Boyette, I think. Okay. yeah. That black Pat, Pat Boyd's the, the writer for some or the artist for some of it. So this is another thing. So Mike Boasberg, I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 00:25:29  Mike Boasberg and Bob Leo are the artists for the first part of the story. Then in the second part of the story, Pat Boyd comes in and then they switch artists again. They need like three artists to complete one story. So then Sonny Trinidad comes in and finishes off, and suddenly Trinidad art is pretty good, but none of it's really great.

Speaker 2 00:25:49  Right.

Speaker 3 00:25:49  But then they move over to I think it's Savage Tales.

Speaker 2 00:25:54  Okay.

Speaker 3 00:25:54  And suddenly this story. Now imagine you probably didn't see Marvel Presents whatsoever. Well, John Warner decides that, hey, it's cool. We're just going to drop this story. I'm not going to really give much context. I'm just going to tell the next chapter of this story, like right here. Like. And it ends, like in the middle of a sentence. And then he, like, seemingly year or two or later, it like starts, it starts. That finishes that sentence in another book with an entirely different art team. It's not like color anymore.

Speaker 3 00:26:26  It's black and white now, and the only thing they do is like they do say in a caption like, hey, the first part of this story is in Marvel Presents one and two. Go get that. But if you want to make any sense of what is happening here, because if you don't have those, you don't, you can't really make much sense of it. John Warner I don't think it was a very good writer. John. I don't think I like him very much. I don't think like he had some really good, like high concept stuff in here. But execution is very, very poor, John. Very, very poor. But he's blessed in this, this next thing, in this next iteration of the book. He's got John Buscema inked by Rudy on the art. And it is spectacular. It's like John Buscema at his finest moments, like, he looks amazing. Rudy never inks the hell out of this stuff. There's, like, ink washes and stippling and it's it's just a beautiful, beautiful full renderings.

Speaker 3 00:27:19  Every panel is gorgeous. I just wish the story made any sense whatsoever. It was just it was just remotely cool. It would be so good. It would be so good because John illustrates the hell out of this thing. Yeah. And I don't remember Rudy Neighbor as being like my favorite John Buscema inker. But man, he does a great job. And then in the second part of it, you know, you only get John Buscema for one issue. John. And if it's not a hit, you don't get to keep John Buscema. So, Bob Brown steps in for art tours, for chapter two. And thankfully, Rudy Neighbors is inking him as well. And so it is painfully obvious that it is not John Buscema anymore, but with Rudy Neighbors sort of covering him, it works okay. It's not even worth describing the story, because honestly, it's just it's just a mess. Even like the short captions, like at the beginning of each chapter, like they don't make sense. So any finally the story moves on Sal and then Sal Buscema.

Speaker 3 00:28:19  Now we're really gone from John to Bob to salvage FEMA, but still inks by Rudy. Neighbors. And again, like Sal Buscema has never looked as good as he looks with with Rudy never inking him. I've never seen Sal, who seems Art looks so much closer to his brothers style than in these pages, like, it's it's almost a little jarring. My exposure to Sal is more along the, spectacular Spider-Man, you know, line. You know, when he's much more, I don't know, cartoony. I don't know what to like. He's got that more.

Speaker 2 00:28:54  Yeah.

Speaker 3 00:28:54  Sort of angular angle. Yeah, yeah. style to to his work. This is all, like, soft lines and lots of detail. Much more attention to more realistic anatomy. Again, Rudy is inking over it. Really makes it look good. I was wrong, Val Merk then comes in and finishes off. Anyway. Interesting piece. Definitely worth. You know, just kind of like hanging out on a Sunday to read.

Speaker 3 00:29:17  Except for the last, I would say, like it was probably almost half the book is this black and white story. I'm totally there for the art. But, the story is just. I don't know, man. It's weird because the concept is good. Like, he's a dude that's been around for thousands of years battling the forces of evil, and it just falls apart almost immediately, like the forces he's been battling are not evil or or they are. And they've been manipulating the whole time. Or or maybe they haven't. And then there's a monster that just shows up out of nowhere for no reason. That has nothing to do with anything about the plot. But later he tries to tie that in. But I don't think he meant to. I it's very it's very hard to understand, I don't know.

Speaker 2 00:30:00  So I just looked this up on Wikipedia. Apparently it was supposed to run in a comic called Where Monsters Dwell that got canceled at the same time as Warner's other book, The Living Mummy, got canceled.

Speaker 2 00:30:11  So two chapters have been completed. Wikipedia makes it sound like the plan was that Pat Boyett was going to draw the series, but Boasberg drew the first the first chapter, so they put both of those in the first issue of Marvel Presents, and then he had to finish the story in the second issue. He'd planned it to be this sweeping, epic story, but it wasn't available by the time that comic was coming together. So yeah, then it then moved over. It says here, moved over to Rampaging Hulk as a backup story.

Speaker 3 00:30:39  That's what it was. Rampaging Hulk. Thank you. It wasn't Savage Tales. Randy.

Speaker 2 00:30:43  Randy apparently wrote the.

Speaker 3 00:30:44  Last chapter.

Speaker 2 00:30:45  Of it.

Speaker 3 00:30:45  Is that. Oh, I don't know. I didn't see that.

Speaker 2 00:30:48  I actually have a funny experience with these. Is Super Young John, an early comic convention that I went to. I don't know if it was the first. Maybe, you know, something like that. There's some place that had grab bags of of comics.

Speaker 2 00:31:02  I don't remember the convention, but I remember getting this grab bag of comics and it was like, you know, whatever, like 25 Marvel Comics for however much it was. And whatever it was, it was like, you know, it sounded great to me. And we, you know. I remember like, my dad got it and we were opening him up and I'm like, you know, oh, boy, you know, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man, X-Men, Wolverine, the Hulk, man. Maybe even Thor. I'm not a big Thor guy, but maybe Thor. Open it up. And it's a lot of Marvel presents, for the most part, hilarious now, because if I knew where those comics were, they're probably worth something. We need we need to issue three.

Speaker 3 00:31:38  Definitely.

Speaker 2 00:31:39  I honestly never until right now knew for sure that that was actually the first appearance of Bloodstone and that, like, there like there wasn't a character that had appeared at other places or that that wasn't a reprint of appearances somewhere else, which would probably have made the most sense of any anything like.

Speaker 3 00:31:57  I know.

Speaker 2 00:31:57  One and two was confounding to like me when I was like nine or whatever I was when I.

Speaker 3 00:32:03  I'm not smarter, much smarter than a nine year old. But it was also confounding to me. It is funny.

Speaker 2 00:32:09  When you have these stories that.

Speaker 3 00:32:11  Like.

Speaker 2 00:32:11  It seemed to happen a lot at Marvel in the 70s? You know, I mean, the Thanos being the preeminent example of it that like, yeah, it's his character that Jim Starlin brings in in a backup story in Iron Man. And then just wherever Jim Starlin winds up making a comic, he puts the house, becomes part of this, this epic story. So if you're, you know, if you're if you're like me looking back on that stuff, not growing up with it and you're like, well, where do you read the Thanos story? And it's like, well, you start off in Iron Man, but you don't really need that one. But then you go into Captain Marvel and Warlock and and everything, and then it ends in an Avengers special.

Speaker 2 00:32:49  Okay. Yeah, but a crazy one. A really interesting one. One of the X-Men epic collections, like, I don't know, like volume 3 or 4 of the epic collections or like, they reprinted a bunch of stuff in sequence. It's all of the X-Men stories that take place between when X-Men was canceled, then it just went to a reprint comic and and then when X-Men relaunched. So it's like a marvel team up appearance or the X-Men show up, or in issue of something or angels in it, or the beast series. And, it's all over the place. It's different writers, but when you actually read these things in this epic collection, it is not only a complete story, but it's the Secret Empire story from Captain America, which is where the story ends.

Speaker 3 00:33:32  Really?

Speaker 2 00:33:32  Yeah, yeah, there's all these bits in, like beast number one or, you know, number two. I forget, like, you start getting hints about the Secret Empire in this X-Men story. These X-Men characters, like, sometimes they're not like they don't appear in certain appearances.

Speaker 2 00:33:45  But then later appearances explained that they didn't appear because they were missing. And then it turns into like, where are the X-Men? And then finally, in Captain America, it's revealed the Secret Empire captured the X-Men. They were being held prisoner. And it resolves with Captain Falcon, you know, saving the day, like stops being an X-Men story, and they just get rescued like it's bonkers. It makes a really nice paper. Like a surprisingly nice paperback, but it would have been incomprehensible any other way. Which is every which is the only way it's existed until four years ago.

Speaker 3 00:34:17  Right? This was not that. This felt incomprehensible from the jump. And no amount of collecting and putting it together was going to help. It really did feel like John Warner had like big plans, but yet he had some big plans. And then they got squashed and he was just desperately grasping, grasping at straws to try to condense it down into two issues. And then and he couldn't. And then somebody gave him another chance, but it didn't work out.

Speaker 3 00:34:46  It's a bit of a mess. It's all over the place, but I was still pretty entertained by it overall. The the actually the. So this is the Bloodstone and the Legion of Monsters trade paperback collection and the Legion of Monsters, the opening for issue series, by Dumas, Hopeless and Wando is quite good. There's a couple spots in here where Hondo just really cuts loose artistically. Dems hopeless gives them some really fun stuff to draw and he really does a good job. I'm more interested in Wanda now than I think I ever have been.

Speaker 2 00:35:15  You've got a new series just came out.

Speaker 3 00:35:17  Oh, he does believe so. Oh, no. I've never really followed him. I mean, I know, I know of him, but I've never really followed his work. So that's that. John, I'm just doing show and tell. Was there anything you want to do or else you felt like talking about today?

Speaker 2 00:35:33  Well, here I've got two also sort of incomprehensible comics thing. Why don't we dive into this? Because I've been hanging out with me for a while, and I haven't.

Speaker 2 00:35:40  I haven't done anything with it. This is one of the things that's like, oh, yeah, this must be when they recorded it. This is timely when they recorded it. No, no, this has been sitting around for a little while now, but I walked into the comic book store at one point in the past, buying my comics, and the guy was like, oh, I forgot to ask, did you want one of these? He holds this up and it's a invincible universe battle beast blind bag. What is that? Okay, this is great. Good, good. You know less about it than I do. So that'll be just launched. New number one series from the character from invincible. So, you know, I was like, yo, you want this? It's 3.99. And I'm like, you know, this is funny. I remember when I was a kid going up with McFarlane's Spider-Man number one, taking it up to the register and then being like, oh, do you like the bagged version? It's the same price.

Speaker 2 00:36:22  I'm like, yeah, sure. So I go to put back the, the metallic one, like, whoa, you can't put that back. You want to have one to read, right? And at that point I realized, oh, you can't open the bagged one. The bagged one. Oh, no, thanks. I don't want the comic I can't read. I'm going to buy the one I can read. So I bought that. Honestly, never looked back. Never. Agreed.

Speaker 3 00:36:44  Yeah. No, there was no there was no regret to have there.

Speaker 2 00:36:46  So here I'm confronted with this, and I tell that story to the guy. You know, we're talking about it. I'm not telling the story. You're talking. I'm sure he was like, hell, I'll buy it. I'll get it. Just for the fun of it. I wind up going on a meeting with friend of the show, Mason, and some other people, and I tell him that I think this is the stupidest thing I've ever bought.

Speaker 2 00:37:04  Like, I don't know why I bought this. Like, I don't even know what it's supposed to be. So I'd seen it online, and I'm aware there's a new battle. Number one.

Speaker 3 00:37:13  I ordered a copy. I know I got, I don't. I don't think it came in a bag. I haven't got it yet because I ordered all my books from challengers comics now. Oh, interesting. Because I'm too lazy to actually go to the store. And I haven't been going as much as I want to. So now I just order them and have them shipped to my house directly so I can. So I can get it that way.

Speaker 2 00:37:31  Like the regular edition is one sold like crazy.

Speaker 3 00:37:33  Oh, okay. That's probably the one I got.

Speaker 2 00:37:35  Yeah. Yeah. Like a reasonable person. Here are things I'm aware of. This may include a reprint of the first issue that Battle Beast appeared in of invincible.

Speaker 3 00:37:46  Instead of the book that you bought. Well, that's.

Speaker 2 00:37:49  Actually a question. I don't know if they even might have a book that bought, like, I don't know if that's on the table.

Speaker 2 00:37:55  Like, I don't know if that's one of the things they put in these bags. It might just be these other things I'm about to say. Okay.

Speaker 3 00:38:03  Sorry. So stupid. It's so common.

Speaker 2 00:38:05  At one point, I thought there might have been, you know, chase sketch covers, but then I realized it was like a Bleeding Cool article that I was looking at. Like saying that the here's some things that aren't actually Ryan Lee sketch covers like that may or may not be a thing that really could be in here. One of the things that apparently could be in here is a reprint of the issue of Marvel Team-Up that Kirkman wrote that had invincible in it. Wow, isn't that weird? Skybound reprinting a marvel comic, right? Like, that's that's the whole deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. So far, I've read everything that it could be. So, like, I think my hope would be. Well, maybe this is the issue of Battle Beast that just came out that I've never read, and it's a comic I haven't read that I could read.

Speaker 3 00:38:44  I feel like that's what you want, right? I don't know. I mean, that that literally says battle beast on the front. Yeah. And it's a picture of Battle beast.

Speaker 2 00:38:53  Yeah, it was on the back. Yeah. it was like, you know, you know, this would be a great. You guys should do this. If you guys had like a video podcast, you should totally do an opening. Like, you should open this. That's great content. We don't aim for great, so we don't need the video. So I thought, well, maybe I'll just open it on the show if we ever need like a bit we could do.

Speaker 3 00:39:13  Oh, you haven't opened it yet.

Speaker 2 00:39:16  No, I don't even like. I also don't know, like, do I open it? Is that even an action I should take with this thing? I have no idea. I don't know, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. I don't know what could be in it, and I don't know what I want to have in it.

Speaker 3 00:39:33  It sounds like the best $4 you've ever spent, John. So it's like Schrodinger's comic. Like, I was just going to say it's like it's a thing. Like it's probably more valuable as it's sealed. Right? Because you can. It can be anything to anybody right now. Like, you should probably never open it. Like you should just sell it for like ten bucks right now. This might be.

Speaker 2 00:39:54  What they were talking about when they were talking about the Holy Grail.

Speaker 3 00:40:00  I'm unreasonably excited that you have not opened this. I but I don't know what if you should open it I right I yeah, yeah, this is messing with my collector head big time right now. I'm tortured right now. I don't know what to do either. Yeah. Are you going to open it?

Speaker 2 00:40:15  You make a good point. So I'm going to, type in Ebay.com and type in look at the title, because I didn't remember it. That old beast, blind, bag filled, auto filled.

Speaker 3 00:40:29  Nice. So there's out there.

Speaker 3 00:40:30  Out there for.

Speaker 2 00:40:34  about $8. Okay. So let's see. Oh, here. Oh. Oh, my. This could reveal some of the possibilities. Should I say to them, it could be a foil copy of invincible 19. Could be battle beast. Issue two. Could be a foil. Marvel team up 14. It could be an ultra rare, number two again. Yeah. Okay. I guess it could be those three. It could be me those things?

Speaker 3 00:40:58  And each one is like, what's the ultra? What is it like? 1 in 100? 1 in 500. What's the. There's gotta be one that's, like, super crazy, right?

Speaker 2 00:41:06  Yeah. They're all. It's like ten. It's like 10 to $20. I don't think we're. Oh, yeah. That one. Okay. That was $40. That's four of them. So that's not, I don't know. Maybe I should take this in and get, like, a, like a Cat scan or something done in there and find out what's in there.

Speaker 2 00:41:22  You know, I think it's probably worth the risk to open it.

Speaker 3 00:41:27  Like, this is I've.

Speaker 2 00:41:28  Been playing a lot of the game of life with my son. And you get these, you get the houses, you know, like, you spend like $350,000 on the house and then, you know, maybe it ends up being 300,000 at the end. Maybe you get five, you know, like, this is like this. It's like it actually doesn't matter. Like, at most, it's going to lose $4 of value.

Speaker 3 00:41:48  Apparently it's weird because if you open it, is the book inside the thing that's worth money? Or is it only worth something if it's the book that you want inside and it's still sealed?

Speaker 2 00:42:01  Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 00:42:02  Right.

Speaker 2 00:42:02  Any of the ones that are selling for more than $8 or $9 are are opened. And they were one that you wanted.

Speaker 3 00:42:08  And and and they've been exposed to the air. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're they're true. their true selves. Hold your hands high so I can watch the whole thing.

Speaker 3 00:42:17  I'm. I've never been more entertained than I am right now. I just got this. He's gotten. He's gotten a little hurt, right?

Speaker 2 00:42:25  No, he didn't really hurt myself.

Speaker 3 00:42:27  He got into the comic book. Now it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 00:42:29  What if it was like a hollow foil? Invincible 14 with John Barber's blood covering it. What is that? I don't know. Is that, like, maybe. Right. I don't.

Speaker 3 00:42:41  Know. I feel like I feel like if if if the blood had been applied before the bag was opened. Yeah. At the. At the printer, then. Yes. It's worth a lot. But after the fact, not so much. I don't know if I should be excited about what's being revealed or not. I don't know what the. That's John.

Speaker 2 00:42:57  That'll.

Speaker 3 00:42:58  Be that issue two.

Speaker 2 00:42:59  No.

Speaker 3 00:43:00  Oh. What is it number one. That's just a book.

Speaker 2 00:43:07  David Finch cover. Cover me.

Speaker 3 00:43:09  Oh. That's just the book. Did you pay more for that? No, no.

Speaker 3 00:43:14  Oh. Oh, well. Fun. Yeah, I like it.

Speaker 2 00:43:18  Should have sold it for $8, though.

Speaker 3 00:43:20  No, you lost out, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:43:25  All right.

Speaker 3 00:43:25  You just gave away four bucks.

Speaker 2 00:43:28  Yeah, well, there we are.

Speaker 3 00:43:30  So, battle beast number one with the David Fincher. Hold that, David Fincher, cover it up, man. It did David Finch. They Finch still got it, man. It's a sweet, sweet, sweet cover right there. That's that's a Liam Sharp esque. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:43:42  Almost like Glen Fabry or something actually.

Speaker 3 00:43:45  Yeah. Yeah. All right I'm excited for that series. I was pretty into invincible for a good long time. And then I sort of fell off, sort of as you do, I think as series go on forever. Yeah, but unlike, like Walking Dead and Savage Dragon, I never bounced back in. At some point, I definitely want to grab like, all the big, thick omnibuses and give that thing a read.

Speaker 3 00:44:07  But I think I want to wait until after the series. The The Animated Series is done because I've really been enjoying the animated series. I think I'm good consuming invincible that way, but I'm in for but I'm in for battle BS for sure. I was very tortured. I was I was sweating Donna. Oh, that's what I.

Speaker 2 00:44:24  Wanted to do on the show because at least like for the sake of entertaining America in the world, I would make the sacrifice of whatever I.

Speaker 3 00:44:31  Do. Willing to sacrifice the $4.

Speaker 2 00:44:33  Right.

Speaker 3 00:44:36  I got a quick honorable mention of another book that I'm anxious and excited to jump into, but I haven't quite yet. and I don't remember where I saw this, so it's not a great story, but this book just came out from Fantagraphics, and it is Disney's Mickey Mouse and the Amazing Lost Ocean. It is very much a Disney Italia book. At least that's what it looks like to me. For our listeners that don't know, Disney Italia is very hands on in the creation of a ton of Disney's illustrative content.

Speaker 3 00:45:10  So comic books and storybooks and things like that, they're very much involved and in fact seem to like run the show in a lot of ways. For all of the artistic content that's created specifically around Mickey Mouse and Goofy and those guys. So when you hear names like Denise, Pierre Filippi and Silvio Campione, it's not like a surprise.

Speaker 2 00:45:31  Well, actually, that kind of is because there is a slight difference with this book. I looked up, so I was curious if it was like this because of the quality of it. When you should, when you, when you, when you brought it up. So I don't mean to derail it, but they also do sort of a high end like European graphic novel creator line. And at IDW we did, we printed one of them. That It was Lewis Trondheim wrote it, and I think this is actually probably from that same line, because these these exact same creators do a series called Gregory and the gargoyles that's unrelated to any Disney Gargoyles stuff. It's just like a it's its own series.

Speaker 2 00:46:04  Humanoids puts it out in the in the US or in English. I don't think like this isn't like the regular crew of Disney Italia. People that are doing the, appalling, Marvel Disney crossover books. You know, if you ever see those ones where it's like, what if Donald Duck became Wolverine? Yes. And you're like, oh man, that'd be terrible. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 00:46:26  Apparently.

Speaker 2 00:46:27  What a nightmare. What a nightmare for all.

Speaker 3 00:46:28  Well, that that that's that's where I was going with this. Like, so they have the controls, but this in particular is just like leveled up like, this is an a lush. Yeah. Beautifully illustrated book. And I'm excited for the story because just looking at the panel at the pages, it's it's a gorgeous piece. It's, it's it seems to have like maybe a mix of it's mixed media. I think it's, it's, it's, acrylics and maybe some watercolor and some color pencils, along with some very expressive illustrations, Mickey and Goofy sort of expressing in cartoon mannerisms in a way that, the squash and stretch is just like beautifully done, beautifully executed.

Speaker 3 00:47:14  And I'm just super excited to jump into this. The backgrounds are like, there's these underwater seascapes and Arctic lands and islands with steam powered airships and just really inventive and beautiful to look at. And so I just want to give it an honorable mention for anybody who's, looking for something new, and looking for some really fantastic art in a place that you don't always find it, like with these sort of, like, more commercial, you know, Mickey Mouse projects exactly like what you see with the Marvel, some of the Marvel stuff that we've done. So just want to give that one a shout out. I'm going to read this at some point. I'm hoping it's if it's half as good as the art, it's going to be a good one. So again, that one's Fantagraphics. It's 25 bucks, Mickey Mouse and the Amazing Lost Ocean by Phillippi and Campione. That's all I had on that one, John.

Speaker 2 00:48:07  Now, I checked that out, too. let me tie everything together in a bow.

Speaker 2 00:48:10  You know who wrote the next, Disney book that Fantagraphics is putting out? Peter. David, it was an epic. It's an epic Mickey collection with writing by Peter David. So really, it all back together.

Speaker 3 00:48:23  Well, there you go. I think that's a perfect place for us to end in.

Speaker 2 00:48:27  This has been our special Magical Transitions episode as we navigate from topic to topic seamlessly.

Speaker 3 00:48:35  So seamless. Yeah. You think after almost two years of this, we'd, like, try to treat it professionally, I don't know.

Speaker 2 00:48:46  That's aimed at me right now.

Speaker 3 00:48:48  It's more than me. Well, that was good, John. thanks for the chat. I hope everybody got a little. Get a little something out of that.

Speaker 2 00:48:56  Yeah. Thank you. Had a good time. It was nice to do.

Speaker 3 00:48:58  And I feel like I'm a little out of practice just talking to you without, you know, having somebody that we're interviewing. Yeah. You got kids and dogs, man. We got to get out.

Speaker 2 00:49:07  Got kids.

Speaker 3 00:49:08  And dogs. It's summer vacation.

Speaker 2 00:49:10  Yes. Welcome to the summer. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. Everybody here on the corner. We'll be back next week with something fascinating.

Speaker 3 00:49:20  Yes. Amazing content, as always.

Speaker 2 00:49:22  Something better. Well, thank you all very much.

Speaker 3 00:49:24  Bye, everybody.

Speaker 2 00:49:25  Okay.

Speaker 1 00:49:26  Thanks for joining us. And please subscribe, rate and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at and we'll be back next week with more from David and John here at the Corner Box.