Episode 17: The Girls Take a Break

Persephone and Perl host this week's episode on April 1's new comics! Listen in for the latest in news and reviews! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hello, welcome. This is the Absolute Ultimate Escapist Comics Podcast. I am your host, Persephone Possum. And with me is Dr. Pearl Berry, PhD. We are the one and only Comics Wife cast. Unfortunately, Tate has been written out of continuity, and I am the only person who remembers her. If you would like her restored, call the DC phone number line. And she will either be brought back or written out completely. I will post the number in the show notes. I don't know her. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

If she's not canon, I don't know her.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

She'll come back in like a weird limited series run or be brought back for Vertigo. Absolute Ultimate, Tate McFadden. Some James Gunn uh, you know, throwback character. I I will say if anyone at DC would be willing to bring back Tate, it would be James Gunn. And I I can't like justify that, but it's true. Um, anyway, this is the podcast. Unfortunately, our dear friend Tate is not with us this week. Um, she is doing, you know, other stuff um with her life. And so we'll be doing these a little bit differently. The only married podcast in Berkeley. Yeah, I guess this is how we announced that we're married, which I think is very important.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

We're not married, but we are engaged in a in a co-workerly kind of way. In a co-worker way.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah, yeah, you know, work wives and all that. Um, we're we have a work engagement. Um anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Wow, this podcast is already disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yeah, you know, Pride Month comes early for us all, doesn't it? Um, trans day of never shutting up. Um, that's that's our promise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

This is the Trans Day of Visibility official uh escapist podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Um I should not say what I feel about that holiday, mainly because I want all of our enemies to be kirked. Um, and I'm gonna leave it at that. Um, I wish that we could live a beautiful life uh without hindrance um from God's dumbest pedophiles. But yeah, get yeah, get kirked, uh Donald Trump and everyone else. Um but anyway, we should leave it at that before I start saying things which are more actionable. Um anyway, we're doing something a little different this week. Um we are we do have a couple single issues to talk about. We do have a new trade to talk about, but we're gonna be um also talking about some kind of things that you might have missed, some stuff that we've been reading lately. Um Pearlberry is gonna be talking about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Um, Steel Ball Run, maybe maybe a little bit of the uh Florida season because we're and I are watching that. That book came out today, right? Volume six? Yeah. Um, unclear because Jack, the way he orders manga is sometimes stuff is dummy late, and so I can't actually tell. It's new to us, but what stuff is actually new and what's not is not entirely clear with his manga orders because he'll just get them like in these big bulk things, and so we'll get like five volumes of Chainsaw Man at once.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

We put Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Steel Ball Run Volume 6 on our new shelf, so I read it.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, so we'll be we'll be talking about it might not be new because we just are ridiculous here. We are, and you know what? That's beautiful. So um sometimes that's sometimes beautiful. Um, so we'll be talking about Steel Ball Run. We'll be talking about uh the manga Fool Knight um from uh Viz Signature, which I have started reading um and I'm really loving. We're gonna talk about uh Young Animal. Um, and I've recently reread Mother Panic and Cape Carson. We're gonna talk about that. Um, but as for stuff this week, we're just gonna kind of jump right into it. There's not a whole lot of comics news we're gonna get into. If there's something big that happened, uh I forgot. Um that said, um, Amazon announced they're doing an animated uh monstrous adaptation, uh, which is both very exciting and also I have no idea how they're gonna do that. Um on one hand, like Amazon is willing to do pretty intense things. Like you watch the boys, they're willing to do some pretty, pretty nasty, heinous things on that show. But like the boys is like largely like it's you know, it's it's like it's intended to be like comedically slanted. Monstrous is like war crime central. Um, it's inspired by stuff that like the Japanese were doing in Manchuria, or the Japanese Empire was doing in Manchuria in like the early 1900s up to like the 20s and 30s. Um, so it's it's bleak. There are like child soldiers eating corpses on battlefields and stuff. Um is it looking to be animated? Yeah, the yeah, they're gonna animate it.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah, which is like kind of the only way to do it. Like, we talk a lot about how live-action adaptations of of comic books kind of would kind of destroy a lot of style. And that would be very true of Monstrous. It would be both prohibitively expensive to do it in live action, and also like Sonic Takeda's art style is so integral to that book. Like you've you've seen Sonic Takeda's work, like it's so so intricate and so like gorgeously rendered. Um like the way that she does like fashion and hair and like tentacles, um buildings and backgrounds and colors.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

It's it's iconic.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, there's nothing else that um that looks like it. Um she's got such a singular art style, which actually very fun funnily enough, um, she did um a variant cover to Mother Panic, which we'll talk about later. But I didn't know she had done this variant cover, and I was like, whoa, holy sh random Sonic Takeda in the wild. Yeah, look at this Sonic Takeda dog. Oh it looks so good.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Is it's a fox? What is that?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Uh she's yeah, she's kind of like a fox and kind of like a bad bat. Anyway, we'll we'll get into that later. Mother Panic's a whole other discussion. Um But Sonic Takeda, yeah, is an incredible artist. Marjorie Liu, incredible writer. I I think it has the potential to be very good if it doesn't um if it doesn't deflate itself, you know, if it if it doesn't censor itself particularly. Um I think part of like monsters kind of has to be that intense and that fucked up, like to work. Like I think it is a book that like very much there's a lot of like big epic fantasy books about war, and like a lot of them war feels kind of very flat and it feels like just like kind of like a an action thing, whereas like war feels horrible and monstrous, and like its historical basis kind of makes that very necessary. So we'll see. Um I am I'm hopeful. I it's weird to say, like, I'm hopeful they're gonna show heinous things on on television. Um but like yeah, kind of like Imperial Slavery and like and and just like child soldiers and stuff are a very big piece of that. So I'm kind of curious how that'll go, but and how they'll even just kind of approach it because it is just like a very intense, very yeah, so it's it's an interesting series. But yeah, if you haven't read Monsters, I know I've kind of hyped it up as like this big brutal thing, and like it is, but it's also a very fun book, it's a very beautiful book. Um it really runs the gamut from like here's these like talking cat people who are like wizards, to like here's these Lovecraftian horrors beyond comprehension. It's it's kind of doing a little steampunk, a little cosmic horror, a little bit of a little bit of everything in in Monsters.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

It's a really exceptional book. Um I've honestly tried to read it like 20 times. I can never get past issue one. And I know I'm very wrong for that, because it is gorgeous and amazing, but uh I I've yet to really sit down with it. No, I because I am a fool.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

No, you're you're not a fool. I'd like I'm gonna I'm gonna be real honest with you. I I read it for the first time years ago, years and years ago, when I was like like 2018, 2019, and I read the first volume and it just like did not stick for me. Yeah, and it only stuck for me when I gave it a second chance. Um and like that first issue is dense, like there's a lot going on, and I I do respect that you're thrown into the deep end with it. Like, they just like do not explain how this empire works, they do not explain like what this like system of like child slavery looks like. Like it's it's it throws a lot of very intense and very like complex socio-political things at you very fast, and does not really give you a lot of time to adjust or kind of like situate yourself in that. And I think that's like a smart choice, but it is a little alienating or a little bit like difficult to penetrate. Um yeah, but I I do recommend it. Like there's there's a there's a compendium out now if you want a cheap, easy way to read it. Like picking up a volume one is always a good bet. If you like your your Game of Thrones, if you like your like high epic like dark fantasy, like Monstrous is really the ticket. Berserk for women. It's kind of berserk for women, even though Berserk is also berserk for women. Um, but it is yeah, it's it is kind of the closest thing the West has to like a berserk. Um yeah, if you like Berserk, you'll you'll really like monstrous. Um and if you like monstrous, you'll really like Berserk, I think. Um, but that's kind of that. Um what was the other piece of news that we were looking at earlier, Pearl? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

What on the computer? Yeah, because we were we were when I was when I was googling news, comic news.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Look, usually I write this stuff down, but I don't think there was like a ton of big uh news this week.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Something about um Batman getting his ass whooped by Black Canary and and nerds are mad about it.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Oh yeah, can we talk- Oh my god, okay, so like there was a minor controversy because in I guess detective comics that Tom Taylor wrote, um Batman and Cat and sorry, Batman and Cat and Black Canary like had a boxing match and she won. And the most annoying nerds alive um are mad about it because err woman do better than my my man. Um which, like, first of all, homophobic men are like the gayest people imaginable. Like, imagine just like being that obsessed with like a man's strength. Um, I don't know. We're like, it's it's it's okay to come out of the closet, just do it. Um hello, welcome in, y'all. Um, but it is just like crazy incel behavior to be like mad that like Black Canary, who is a boxer, like that's the thing that she does, like, is better at like a fist fight than like Batman. Like, grow up. Also, like, why do you care? Like, this is stuff for these are books for kids. Like, calm down, grow up.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

That's why we shouldn't let trans women in sports.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Stop. That that said they are like the the black canary that they're having for absolute green arrow is like really, really butch, but also the way that some of the people are drawing.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Butch black canary?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

She's very yeah, yeah. Have you seen her? She's like looking very butch, but also she's drawn in a way by certain artists that's like very well.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Okay, I have a theory that she's going to be trans because they shouldn't let trans masks in sports either. Stop.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

No, I think she's gonna be I think she's a trans woman.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

If she's a trans woman, I'm going to scream. They do not let trans women into Batman books. This is crazy. No, they don't.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

And like I'm probably wrong because they don't let trans women into Batman books. That said, it is porn check uh Picha show. My reason for this is that one of the like they a bunch of the covers are drawing her like very, very clocky. And that wouldn't necessarily mean anything on its own, but um uh but Gileon March did a variant cover for her. And the thing about Gillian March is that like he's a he's a he's a booby book guy a little bit. Like he definitely draws, like if he if he has a chance to draw like big chested women, he does it. Like that's kind of his thing. What a king. And he like draws her like completely flat. And so like I know that I'm doing like insane transvestigation on like a transvestigating black canary on a variant cover, but like let her let us have this. Let us have like like trans black canary sounds so tight.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Um I already head canon most characters as trans women because I have deep psychological problems looking at you, absolute Wonder Woman.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

She is trans as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Also, I'm gonna close this door real quick, but achievement unlocked. It's it it's it's freaking raining out there.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah, it's crazy that we went from a heat wave to um to uh to rain within the span of like two days.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Uh dude, it's it's bad out there.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, climate change is real. Um, and I love that we um are accelerating the death of our planet so that people could make images, could like artificially generate things like Peter Griffinfeet.jpg, a thing a 14-year-old on DV and art would do for free back in like 2009. Um the only thing The only thing fucking AI generation is good for is like half of it, as I as Pearl and I talked about yesterday, half of it is just like revenge and child porn stuff, and the other half of it is like reality distortion for fascists. Um so if you're using AI generation, you're a dork and I will see you in hell. But like that's kind of not the point. The point is that like yeah, it's it's it's real great what we're doing to our planet so that we can make uh strawberry eggplant. Uh this is not an AI stan account. Absolutely not, no. Um but anyway, yeah. Uh the the absolute black canary, like, I you know, I'm just hopeful. And like it is porn shack or porn sack peace writing. So, like, he knows trans women exist, uh, which is more than I can say for most comic book men. Um but we've kind of talked about this long enough. I think we're gonna bounce real quick. So the couple of things that we're gonna talk about for new releases, we're gonna talk about uh Batman number eight, uh Bizarro Your Nun number one, and I'll probably briefly talk about Matt about DC. Um, and then the Ari Tupka uh Lands Unknown graphic novel by Mike Vignola.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Um one of these days I will get obsessed with X-Men again, and we will talk about X-Men on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

One day they'll have to make a good X-Men comic again. Sorry, Gail Simone, I'm sure your book is good. And same with you, E-Wing, but like we've we've talked about it before too. Actually, the Acacia episode is gonna drop uh today.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Oh, is that actually coming out?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah, yeah, I guess uh uh Acacia was saying that that Tate said that she was gonna drop it this week. So yeah, we we talked quite a lot in that episode, uh, which will be out by the time you hear this. Um, about how like, even though there are good things happening in the X-Men, it's held back by the line, having just absolutely no direction. And honestly, Marvel having no direction, it's it's it's pretty embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Um I think there's God, what's coming out for X-Men soon? There's like some sort of Hellfire Gala Murder book coming out. Cool. Uh I think we're on X-Men number 28 starting today. Um and so so many Wolverine and Logan titles and so many other things. I just I just can't bring myself to read it all.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

No, and like almost none of it's good, and like the little bit that even is good is just like it's really hard to get excited about it because it's just like it's trapped in a sea of nothing. But like, let's yeah, let's not talk about that too much just because we we spent so much time and and much and much more thoughtful words about it on the Acacia one. Um so yeah, we're kind of talking about no Marvel books this week, um, which kind of really goes to show you how we feel about Marvel right now. Um, but it is also kind of a small week um in general. Like Batman was kind of the one really notable release besides Mad About DC and Bizarro. So, like, not a lot. Actually, no, sorry, there was also um Batman, Superman World's Finest Issue 50, um, which we're not gonna talk about because I'm not reading it, but I did flip through it. It's beautiful. Dan Moore is back. Um, he does some really fun stuff on art. I didn't know he quite had that in him. Um, I would love to see him do weird, some some weird shit like he does with with parts of that issue. Um but anyway, let's let's start with Bizarro Year None, I think. Which um the interestingly about Bizarro Year Nun is it's kind of a Jimmy Olsen book, and it's kind of a Perry White book, as much as it's a um, as much as it's a bizarro book. Um who's doing interior? Uh Nick Patara, um, who's who's an acolyte of um uh Frank Whitelink. Yeah, it's giving it's give it's giving FQ. He's the same guy who did um was that Hickman book? Um Manhattan Project. Oh, this is Manhattan Project guy? This is Manhattan Project guy, yeah. Oh my god. Um so yeah, the art is fantastic. It's really, really lovely to see Nick Patara on art again. He has such like so much fun with like the kind of landscape of Metropolis, and like there's there's like a classic Superman villain, like a very silly, fun, like silver agey kind of one that shows up in this issue, and like Nick Patara has the time of his life drawing this. Um his rendition of Bizarro World is also really fun. I like it. I like there's like a little bit of a grotesquery element that's like not as much there in Frank Whitely's work that I do really like. The way that just like there's kind of like a little bit more of like a bug bug to his eye, like the the stubble is like really scratchy and kind of squiggly. Um like and I and I really do like that. There's like a little extra element of the grotesque in his work.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yeah, we already it's like 1230, and we've already sold out of all the bizarros.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah, we we didn't order a ton.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

I didn't expect that to go.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

I didn't expect that to go either, yeah. Um, and I will say, like, it's a pretty good book. I I think it has some some flaws that we'll like kind of briefly talk about, but like, but I do think it is largely a very good book. I'm happy to see that so many Superman books on the shelves right now. As much as there's too many of them, a lot of them are leaning into like what's interesting and good about Superman, which is like just kind of like the weird science silver age vibes of it, the kind of um the kind of just like anything is possible kind of vibes, uh, are what I find interesting about Superman, not like him fighting Doomsday. I'm more interested in like Professor Dalton and his like incredibly garish number two yellow jumpsuit with like a thousand things on him, being like, I'm gonna set up my my laser beam on the docks, and I'm gonna do mad science and metropolis and like bringing toy man and shit into it. And I'm like, this is good, I like that. That mustache is legendary too. Oh my god. Yeah, the way Nick Patara draws facial hair is crazy. Like, incredible facial hair drawer, Nick Nick Batara. Um yeah, so like half of it is a book about Jimmy Olsen as like a young teen getting a job at the Daily Planet, um, and then the other half is like dealing with them getting stuck in bizarro world. Um on one hand, there isn't there is entirely too much dialogue in this book. Like the first half of it is just like the the pages are just it's just pages and pages and pages of dialogue, and most of it's most of it's pretty good. Um like, but it does get really excessive, and it took a like it it just like it slows the pace to a crawl after a certain point.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Yeah, there's a real density here.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Yeah, it's like very hyper dense. You see what I'm saying? Like the art's gorgeous, like this is incredible, but like you just get into this and then they're just talking and they're talking, and the the di the balloons have to be really small, and they're talking and they're talking and they're talking. And to be clear, most of the talking is like mostly pretty good, um, for the most part. Um, the dialogue is largely good with the caveat that like there's a little bit of like an old man thing going on where like they don't quite know how to write Jimmy Olsen as like a younger, almost Gen Z thing, and they're like trying to do like him talking about how like the news is kind of like outdated, and like maybe they need to like reapproach how the news is to like appeal to kind of like younger audiences and like get into video, and like so they are talking about some real things, but it's like there's a little bit of like a cringe, like old man trying to write Gen Z thing going on. It's not that bad, and the script does seem kind of aware that the two writers, Kevin Smith and um Eric Carrasco, are like old men trying to write about the youth. Um there's kind of a gag about that, but there's there's just too much dialogue, and some of it's a little cringy. Um that said, like it's a fun book. It's a fun book, it's a weird little book. Um, and they do some different stuff. I won't get into it, but they do some different stuff with Bizarro than I'm than you ever like really expect them to do. So I don't know, kind of a kind of a nice, cool little book. I'm curious to see uh where this goes. Um yeah, is there anything more we want to say about it?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Bizarro, Bizarro! Superman himself is already said. Is that is he from the Silver Age? He seems like he'd be from the Silver Age.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yeah, he's he's very from the Silver Age, and they kind of twist him around here. Um the one thing I'll say is he doesn't do his bit here. Like he doesn't do the like talking backwards. He doesn't talk backwards? No. There's there's okay, so he just has bad teeth. Well, there's one thing I will say. So there's there's a bit where he says, like, it all gets so confused, hard to keep the byline straight. I try to hold it all, but there's so many versions of my story. The margins keep moving, the columns break, and whenever that happens, me am I am not a happy customer. So they kind of like imply and reframe bizarro as um He learned how to talk frontwards. He he's he's in this one, because this is like a year one, year none, like origin kind of thing, this implies that he actually did know how to talk to begin with, but that like because of how bizarro world works, and that like because of the way bizarro world works, and I won't get into the exact dynamics, but like because of how bizarro world works, like he's constantly having to hold all continuities of him in his head, and if he slips on that, that's when the words start breaking and things start breaking down, which is very interesting. That's probably the most interesting part of this book, is like the kind of reinterpretation of like Bizarro here. Um yeah, it's I think it's gonna be like a four issue. I think it's really fun. Um, Patara is the exact right guy for this. The spitting off the the the edge of the earth. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

I love that the earth is a cube.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah, Q Berth, Bizarro Q Birth is great. Like it's such a fun little bit in like all good Bizarro books. So yeah, it's I'm excited to see where this goes. Um yeah, that's kind of all I have to really say about Bizarro. Um, do we want to jump to Batman number eight? I'm ready. Excellent. Um, yeah, it continues to be really fucking good. It like I was worried because this is the first issue without uh Ryan Sook. Um sorry, this is the first issue without Phil Jimenez, or god damn it. This is the first issue without Jorge Jimenez. Oh no, Jimenez is out just for just for an issue or two. He's he's he's coming back. Um, but I was a little bit worried because it's like, okay, you know, we're we're we have a Phil and artist, that's usually not a good sign. But Ryan Sook does a very good job, I think, with this issue, especially given that it's an issue where it's just three conversations happening mainly. Um he does quite a lot with like facial expression characterization, kind of in these like small dialogue-driven moments. Um it is a a series of scenes with both uh Batman and Alan Scott talking, uh Poison Ivy and Vandal Savage talking, and um the old journalist man in Houston, uh the kid who caught Vandal Savage's police planting evidence. Um this younger man who caught the the police planting evidence. And it's it's called Three Old Men, uh, One Night in Gotham. And it's really good. One cup. And one cup, yeah. Three old men in Gotham, one cup. Um the yeah, you you can see. You can see it right here, too, just like these little bits of characterization with just because like you you have to when you have dialogue heavy books like this, um like you have to um have like good character acting. And there is like even it's it's little, it's subtle. Like a lot of it's not particularly like forward focused, but like there's just like even just little tilts of the head and like little like little glances to the side do quite a lot of work. Um and just like characterizing these characters in the moment. Uh Sook does a very good job. I was uh like I run hot or cold on Sook um as an artist, but I think he's really on his on his A game here. Um the um and he also like when he gets to like the history of Vandal Savage, does it very well. Like he makes Vandal Savage scary. Um similarly, like we were talking about dialogue, and like there's a lot of dialogue in this issue too, but I think Fraction is much better at keeping it like tight and concise, and like there's as much dialogue as this issue is, I it still feels so much less wordy than than um Bizarro, because it's just like really tightly scripted, even when there's a lot of talking, it's it's like very tight. Um also like Fraction just writes a really funny Batman. Like, what is his like I love that he's blue again? I like yeah, it's nice that he's blue. There's like a very classic kind of vibe going on here too. Um blue Batman. Blue Batman. And yeah, speaking of Batman, I I really love there's a tendency in Batman stories for him to be like the best that ever is, and like the and like that's part of what this like incel freakout is about, right? With the the black canary thing is like everybody's like Batman is the bestest ever. And the only person to do that even remotely compellingly was uh uh um Grant Morrison, mainly because Grant Morrison was like, Batman's not really like a guy, he's like a living idea or whatever. So it's like it's kind of founded in that, whereas like this Batman is just like a just like a dude. He's just like a guy. And he kind of talks about it here where he he approaches Alan Scott and he's like, hey, like I I don't really like I need help. Like I I need I need someone else's perspective. Like I'm not gonna be arrogant and like not ask somebody for help when I kind of I'm kind of stuck on this problem. I don't really know how to logic out what Vandal Savage is doing, and like you're Vandalsavage's first like like a nemesis, so to speak. Um sorry, I have to take off my beats because they're really loud.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Um and um is is Minotaur still our main villain?

SPEAKER_01 28:06

He hasn't been there since issue four. Um, but he's been in the background, but he hasn't really done anything. Is that not him right there? It no, that's Vandalsavage.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Oh, that's Vandalsavage.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

That's Vandalsavage, who um I don't know if you know. Do you know Vandalsavage's thing, Pearl? Vaguely. Yeah, that he's like a caveman from the dawn of time, and like that he got like enhanced, like he basically became immortal because of um because of this like meteorite that fell, and so he's been living. He's like the Death Eater from uh Fargo. He's a little bit like the Death Eater from Fargo, except he's like a bad dude. Um well I guess the Death Eater from Fargo is kind of a bad dude, but that that's a whole other thing. Um but just to give you a thing that Alan Scott says about him. Gotham is too small for him, but revenge is what sustains him after all these years. Savage thinks on a different timeline than the rest of us. We have to force ourselves to think on a different scale that can be hard to see. He doesn't wonder where he's eating next. He wonders what guy he has to kill to get the field he'll plant to survive next winter. And it'll turn out that guy's great-great-granddad was rude to Savage once and he's been stewing on it ever since. Oh my god. It's like it's a really compelling like window into like what, yeah, what makes like Vandal Savage a good villain, which is just that like he's so petty, but he's also so, so good at planning things and so good at hyperfixating on you. And like you can get murked by him just because your great-grandad was mean to him at the grocery store. Like, um, and so yeah, there's a lot of really good stuff character work here for Vandal Savage, there's a lot of really good character work for Batman and Alan Scott here. There's a really funny bit where like Batman, yeah, like Batman says, like, what, because I like coffee? So Batman likes coffee. Tell the world, and it's just such a good gag. He's just kind of a little shit in this one, but he's also like, you know, he's also doing something here. Like it's it's a book, more than anything, that is like very thoughtfully approached. Um, it's a very thoughtful book about Batman, it's a very thoughtful book about like what he's doing and why, and like how he presents himself out in the world. Um, including in very little ways, too, of like why is he why is he specifically Batman in this in this diner right now? Like, is thought about and considered. Um why does why does Green Green uh Green Lantern pay the bill? Like, in this one, even though they're both rich. Like, that's thought out and considered.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Um Yeah, Matt Fraction's killing it on this one.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, he's he's always been a thoughtful writer, um, but some of his books are better than others. I think this is some of his best work, period. Like, this is this is up there with his Hawkeye and his Castle Nova stuff or just being like so wickedly sharp. Um The other kind of thing I want to talk about, other than just like my one thing with this book is I don't totally understand why Ivy kind of bends the knee to to uh or kind of lets Savage have what he wants here. I don't under totally understand what the mayor Ivy thing is. I know that's going on in her book. Um shout out to her getting you know, like 43 issues now. Busty Redheads. Busty Redheads, you know, we love them. That's all it takes. I've never met a busty redhead. Yeah, me neither. Um but um yeah, she's like I don't I don't know why she's mayor right now. I don't totally understand it, and I don't totally understand why she agrees to what Vandal Savage decides he wants here. Um but she's she's playing fifth-dimensional chess. She's playing fifth-dimensional chess, but also is very desperate in a certain way.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah, but she sees 20 steps ahead. I believe in Pamela.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Yeah, no, I I believe in Pamela too. I just I I think my main critique is like if you are not familiar with what's going on in in Poison Ivy, I don't feel like I totally understood where Pamela was coming from with certain choices here, but also I might just be wrong on that. Um kind of the last thing I wanna Yeah, kind of the last thing I want to talk about, other than to just briefly say that like I think a lot of comic book stuff does like when they announced like Alan Scott was gonna be in this book, I was like, what the fuck could he possibly be doing here? Like, I like I believe in Matt Fraction, but like who why why is he here? And like Fraction comes up with a very compelling reason to have a crossover where I feel like most crossovers are just kind of like so they can throw a character on the cover and be like, Miles Morales and um uh the maker hang out. You know, it's like it's like why why are these characters hanging out?

SPEAKER_00 32:52

You gotta keep those IPs rolling.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Gotta keep those IPs rolling. Whereas like this one feels very thoughtful. Um the last thing I'll kind of say, and this is not even really a statement, so much as just a kind of open thing, is that a lot of a lot of Batman books have explicitly are like explicitly about like the corruption of the police and like and the like the lawlessness of the police, but always kind of in a way that like kind of backs down from it. Um Fraction so far a few different times has kind of like very explicitly more explicitly than most stuff does, kind of gets into like the anti-blackness specifically of the police. And I'm I I don't necessarily like I don't want to say if that's like good or badly handled, because I don't obviously I'm not the person to make that that statement, and also there's still plenty of time left to kind of see where things develop. But I think it is interesting to me that like both issue two specifically evokes the murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Um the the planting of evidence is like very sp is like very pointed. And then in this issue, the the journalist and the uh the the young man um who who uh filmed the police planting that evidence, who is like a younger, a younger black boy and like an older black man, get there's just a kind of like a wordless bit where like the police intimidate them with their car and then leave. And it's very scary, like it feels very loaded and very like upsetting, and it feels very intentional, it feels very like thoughtfully placed in how it approaches that. Um that said, like I I it's just kind of something I'm I'm just noting here, you know, because like I I think so far I've I've I personally think it's been doing it well, but I also, you know, am a white girl, so like and there's also still plenty of time. Um I just think it's interesting because a lot of superhero stuff wants to kind of talk about contemporary issues, but kind of leaps out like getting getting like specific with it, you know. Um, we're kind of seeing this in the new Daredevil show where like sometimes it's like very, very bluntly like this is ice, and we're like critiquing ice and we're like beating the shit out of ice agents, and it's like very clear. But then other times it's like okay, they're going after like white Greek immigrants at times too, and it's like oh okay, like that was clearly a note that like you you like like Disney was like, okay, you gotta white up those immigrants so like we don't get like too specific.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Damn.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Um, even though I think the show that that Daredevil show does largely like a pretty good job, it's probably actually one of the only interesting things Marvel's doing right now. But a lot of superhero stuff by necessity backs down from or necessity of these companies and the money they want to make, like backs down from getting into it. Right. And I'm kind of surprised that Fractions Run is like so specific with it. Like it's it's really like evoking some very specific things, and it's also being very blunt that like it's not just like kind of blanket corruption in the police force, it's like like anti-blackness is at the center of like this, or at least is like a fundamental force like underlying uh the police corruption here, and I just think that's kind of an interesting thing that's that that's happening here that Fractions Run is like willing to be honest about that cool. Yeah, I'm I'm willing to kind of see I like our or sorry, I want to see where that that goes. Um like obviously Fraction is a white writer, and also this is a Batman book, you know, how willing you're like going to be to like properly get into it on a mainline Batman title by a white writer is always you know uncertain.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

But like I'm just I just I just think it's interesting and I mean yeah, it's it's it doesn't seem handled too poorly. I mean, ever ever read Size Ferior? Try and talk about these things.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, uh Size Ferior is uh really not good about talking about race and especially not blackness. He's uh he's not very good at it. Um very very unfortunate sometimes. Um and you know, Matt Fraction's never been like perfect either. Like there's a bit in Casanova, which I don't even really want to get into, but just like he he's like there's a bit in like early Casanova where he like later is like, yeah, I was trying to do some like subversive stuff about like racism in pulps, and just like ended up replicating some racist stuff from pulps by doing that, and that was like really tacky and gross, and I'm sorry about that. Um, so like, but like it just kind of speaks to I think that like Fraction is a writer who even when he makes mistakes is always like very thoughtful about his approach and tries to be like very considerate, and that's more than I can say for like a lot of comic book men is like the willingness to like be thoughtfully engaged with what you're doing, but also humble enough to be like I'm wrong. Um yeah, I think we've talked long enough about that. Um I've been kind of yammering a lot, so I'm just going to very briefly talk about can we take a little break? Yeah, let's take a little break. Um and we'll be right back after these uh commercial messages. Hi, and we're back after that commercial break. Um, we just learned about the genderless burger experience. Um the guys over at Nirvana the ban the show. Um, so thank you, uh Jay and um Matt, there we go, for enlightening us about the non-binary burger experience. Um we are back to kind of briefly, I'm gonna briefly talk about Uri Tupka and the gods, the new Mike Baniola joint, but we've been hearing me yammer really intensely for quite some time, so we're gonna listen to Pearl talk about Jojo um right now. Uh right after I'm gonna briefly talk about Uri Tupka, but then we'll talk about Jojo because I've just been yammering so much. You are a yapper. I do love a yapper of hello. Hello, first appearance of the background. First appearance of Max Jordan on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

No, you're good, Max, you're good. Don't worry about it. You you too can wind up on the Escapist podcast if you wander in on a Wednesday and uh make strange sounds in the background.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

We got we got Aldo, we got Eric, like we're we're now we got Max. Like, we're getting, I think Jerry's been through one time. Um, so briefly, could I get under you menu? Uh we're just gonna very kind of briefly talk about Uritupka and the gods, the newest um Lands Unknown release from Mike Magnola. Um, it's pretty good. I liked it a lot. Um, Mike Magnola, you know, I'm a big classic Hellboy girl. I've I've read all of the main Hellboy stuff, I've read all the short stories. Um, but kind of after a certain point, it just like Hellboy should have stayed dead, it was going on too long. It's just like he's kind of been asleep at the wheel just putting out Hellboy stuff for a long time because it's just like it makes too much money. It's like it's the dark horse cash cow. Um, so a lot of it's kind of felt uninspired for a while. So he decided Mignola decided to do this thing called Lands Unknown, where last year he put out Bowling for Corpses. Um which is like a whole new Did you read that one? Bowling for Corpses? Yeah, yeah. Um Bowling for Corpses is like good but inconsistent. Um like some of the stuff I was like, yeah, it was pretty fun, and other stuff I was like, oh, that's really good. Um but and this is maybe my critique of like kind of the broader lands in the project so far. The graphic novels, Bowling for Corpses and Uri Tupka, are both like a hundred pages, they're both like very short, um, which feels insubstantial, especially at like a $25 hardcover price point. Um that said, Uri Tupka and the gods, um, because bowling for corpses kind of was like a sampler platter of stories, was like, here's some of these are stories that resolved in the book, here's the other ones that are gonna be series or graphic novels. Um, and he drew it all himself. Um Uri Tupka is just focused on one guy. Um, specifically the the titular Uri Tupka. Um, but it's a very like short story-oriented book. Like it's kind of a like, let me tell you about like you're probably wondering how I ended up here. And then he tells like a story within a story within a story, and then suddenly he's told like 12 stories on the way to telling like why he's here. Um that said, they're all very compelling. Um, I think this is the most interesting thing Mignola's done in a long time. I still don't think it's like quite up to par with like classic Hellboy, but I do also appreciate that like it feels different. Um there's there's a very different vibe to like there's still some of that kind of like European folklore energy going on, but this tends to feel just like a little bit more like Eastern European, it tends to bring in some stuff from like you know, kind of like Arabic myth. It kind of brings up some stuff. It's like it's playing a little bit more with like different types of of beings. It's like pace feels a little bit different, it feels a little bit more um yeah, it just it just feels a little bit different, even if it's there's there's like still enough similarity that like people who like Hellboy would still really like this, but it just feels just different enough, and like just passionate enough that like like he he really feels like he's just really happy to be here telling funky little stories. Um love that Mignola art. Yeah. Oh, he's so happy to be doing like art again, like his his shadow work remains unmatched. Um the like the textures of his line, just like the the like the kind of like very specific blockiness. It's so him. It's so him, yeah. Like nobody draws like this, like nobody draws like this, and he's he's like clearly really reinvigorated creatively. You know, he designed our gift cards. He did, yeah. Very, very early 1983 Mike Baniola like jester illustration that's on our gift cards. That's that's our boy. I think we have the original drawing somewhere. Jack definitely does somewhere, yeah. Mike Mike Magnola, friend of the store, friend of the podcast, friend of our hearts. Um it's it's a really good little book. I I don't know if I have a ton more to say about it, other than like you should check it out. It's very short story oriented. Um, it's very fun. Um we got too many of them, didn't we? We no, that that one we got just enough of. Like we got we got like 12, but like, but like this the bowling for corpses, we only got like four, and and like it became like a massive. People have already been buying this one, yeah. So like we yeah, we we got like three people's like pre-ordered it on on day one, so like, and we've probably got more coming in. It's really good. You should check it out. I think it's a special. Little thing to see him doing something new again after you know he's been doing mostly Hellboy stuff since the very late 80s, early 90s. So like it's it's very worth checking out um this book. Um and I think it does like yeah, a very compelling job of like blending its folklore and it's like cosmic horror and doing doing things very differently than than Hellboy does. It's also funny. I think people forget that Mike Bignola when he wants to be is very funny. I don't think there's ever been like a funnier gag in like monthly comics than the than than the than the like the three-panel like is that a is that a monkey? He's got a gun, chimpanzee firing bullets off from early Hellboy. Like the just like the the visual pace of that gag is so good. Um and Ori Tupka features some pretty good gags from him. Um but that's kind of all I'll say about it. Let's talk about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Pearl Berry. Pearl Berry, can you introduce us what is what is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure?

SPEAKER_00 44:57

As much as Jojo's Bizarre Adventure can be. I mean, it kind of says everything you need to know right there in the title. Uh there's a guy named Jojo. Okay. Or sometimes a girl named Jojo. Jojo's like a like a family lineage. Yeah. Jojo, right now we are what's releasing for Jojo right now, this is a manga. It's we're on part six, volume six. So that's I believe what just came out. That's what I read yesterday. Um if you're if you got a Netflix account, they have animated almost all of it, uh, up through season six, which is the one uh yeah, right before part seven.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

To be to be clear, they've up they they've up through season five, they've done fully, and then season six just had its first episode.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Oh, right, right, right. Um it's called the steel ball run. Yeah, tell us about steel ball run. What is it JoJo's part seven is a steel ball run. Uh Jojo's basically is yeah, following a lineage. We start out with a guy in like the 1800s, his name's Jojo, and he goes on a bizarre adventure and he has to kill a vampire, and uh basically that vampire has followed the family lineage uh just for generations and generations, and there's always one Jojo born in this uh uh you know generation, uh, and this Jojo is from the late 1800s during uh what is known as the steel ball run, which is which was a real thing. Uh it was a cross-country uh horse race that went from San Diego to like New York, which I don't I don't know, I've never actually done any real research on what that actually was, but it was called the Steel Ball Run. Uh JoJo in this series is a uh paraplegic uh person in like uh in a wheelchair, he can't use his legs. Um but he used to be a big time jockey uh you know horse rider man, and uh he he basic he he meets Giro Zeppeli, and Giro Zeppeli and Jojo are one of the most shipped anime characters I think that has ever happened. They're they're you know, I think the ship is older than me somehow, and uh the the entire story revolves around uh Jero Zeppelin's uh steel balls. He has these two giant steel balls that he carries with him. They are like his weapons. He like throws them and he uh rotates them and he's able to do super magical things with the rotation of the steel balls, and he is able to make Jojo stand. He can like he can do like Uzumaki shit with his balls. And so the whole story is Jojo trying to figure out how he was able to stand. So the story follows him trying to touch Giro Zeppelin's balls while on this race, while on a race across the street.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

We should we should mention for those who don't know, Jojo's bizarre adventure is crazy homoerotic.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Like it's deeply homoerotic.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Yeah, it's like it's it's very like I don't know if Iraqi is like, I don't think he's ever like come out, quote unquote, as like a gay man, but like, first of all, but it flows through him. It flows through him magically. There's there's a homosexuality that flows through him magically. There's a there's like the character designs in Jojo Bizarre Adventure are like some of the best like character design and costume work in in just like comics and manga in general. Like, nobody does fashion like Iraqi does.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

He borrows a lot from like high fashion uh like runway looks and like Vogue magazine and like all the characters are posing. Like Jojo's is very known for just like posing. Like there are panels where they're just like, oh, I think I'm gonna make some coffee, but they will be posing for their life, and it will be like the cuntiest thing you've ever seen. And for what? For pouring a cup of coffee. Um, it is high drama. Um it comes out, I believe it comes out in Shonen Jump, uh, which is crazy to see that next to like Naruto.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Like Jojo's like this gay fashion, surreal science fantasy manga. Like to to articulate real briefly, like JoJo's runs tonal and like stylistic gamut that like almost nobody else does. Like season five is set in a prison in Florida and it's like got some insane body horror shit, and also is doing some like weird science fiction prison story stuff. Italy is doing some like season five or four, I think is season four is the Italian season, yes. It's the Italian like crime season.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yeah, it's it follows like a very gay uh you know mob.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

I need you to I need you to picture um uh what's his face from Yu-Gi-Oh! Maximilian Pegasus. I need you to I need you to picture Maximilian Pegasus, and I need you to gay him up about like 50%, and that's probably the least gay Jojo's character is is Maximilian Pegasus.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

What what makes JoJo so amazing though is that it holds such a deep sincerity. Like the person making it, Hirohiko Araki, he he puts his heart and soul into the into these books, and uh part part seven is is is just like that.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Can you can you tell us about the production of of of Jojo the the weekly to monthly shift?

SPEAKER_00 50:48

Oh, right. For uh Well, because it comes out in Shonen Jump, which is like a magazine uh in Japan, it uh it was literally coming out weekly for like uh I think 15 years between Jojo's part one and Jojo's part six. Um and uh that is part of what makes JoJo so bizarre, so to speak, because he is trying really, really hard to keep the book interesting on a weekly basis. So every week he's just like, How do I keep my readers like engaged like for another week? And he writes the craziest shit. Like basically, the the characters all have these superpowers, and the superpowers themselves are a character that stands outside of their body, so they're known as stands, and it uh it often turns into like a villain of the week story after a while, but with part seven, he decided he was gonna take care of himself, and he decided he was gonna do some self-love, and uh that means for him that he's only releasing them monthly. Um these, of course, came out in like 2012 or something, and we're only just now getting the translations. Uh but in part seven, the steel ball run, which by the way, you can just read part seven of Jojo's and be literally fine. You can you can jump into any part, part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Like you're fine. Just jump in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

They stand almost entirely on their own. And even when there is overlap, like Pearl and I have been watching the prison season, which is the one before Steel Ball Run. Um, Jotaro from season three is like the main character's dad of season five, but like, but you don't you don't need to have seen season three. I haven't seen season three, and I've been following it perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Oh, season three is iconic though. I do need to begin with you. Yeah, it's uh Steel Ball Run is actually a actually a cohesive story because he he gives a month per chapter. Um and we're getting a lot more character development, we're getting a lot more like uh understanding of just like the environmental storytelling, like where we are, when we are. Um where I'm at in the book right now, um, not to give too many spoilers, uh there is lesbian espionage happening uh where a woman is trying to seduce the president's wife, the president of America's wife, so that uh she can steal the president's heart right out of his chest. Um and that that's that's so normal for this book.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

Um Yeah, that's that's like a pretty tame that's a pretty tame storyline for Jojo. Like I we were talking about the prison season when Jolene has to like is like shrunk down and has to wear a rat's corpse as a costume because her cellmate has like a weird obsession with shrinking people down and putting them in animal carcasses to be her best friend and call her mommy. That's like a normal that's normal for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Like the first two seasons are like weird, but like the first yeah, the first two volumes are like weird, but like pretty not not that crazy, but kind of once you start getting into like the stand era, which starts with Jotaro's stuff in season three, which what was that volume called, do you remember? The Stardust Crusaders? Stardust Crusaders, yeah. So once you get into Stardust Crusaders up through like up through um up through Steel Ball Run, shit gets off the rails.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

I personally love season one, but a lot of Jojo's fans will tell you not to start with season one and two because they are extremely different from the bulk of the series. Um honestly go on Netflix right now and watch episode one of part seven. Well, I guess it'll be season six of it of Jojo's called The Steel Ball Run. Uh, it is amazing, it is fascinating. There's so many good characters, and uh you really get a taste for what like that bizarre JoJo's experience is. You it really you really have to get in the mindset of like being okay with things being wildly over-explained in a beautiful anime kind of way, and then two episodes later, all those rules getting broken and shhattered in half for no reason. Um, you you gotta be ready for like the reality warping madness that is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. It's unlike anything you've ever read. The art style is so iconic and unique in its own right. Yeah, nothing, nothing looks like it. And it's high fashion. The fandom is extremely strong, and god damn it, it's the gayest thing I've ever read.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

It's yeah, it's maybe the cuntiest manga I've ever read. So cunty. It's like it's like the gay man versus so so there are like two spectrums of like gay manga where it's like you have Doro Hidoro for like little freak lesbians like me, and then Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is like the most capital F fag manga you can possibly imagine. And I I I like it's so good. Um yeah, I'm I'm relatively new to Jojo. I've like I'm familiar with a lot of memes and characters. Like my my fiance is a big Jojo's uh Bizarre Adventure fan, so like I'm I'm like familiar with a decent amount of it, but like I never really dived in just because it was like kind of daunting. There's so much of it. But Pearl's right, you can just dive into any volume, and you probably should with Steel Ball Run dive in because the the release schedule for the anime is like infamously inconsistent. Uh let's say it took it took um what is the Miami season called?

SPEAKER_00 56:33

Uh it's it's called uh Stone Ocean.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

Stone Ocean, Stone Ocean, the the like the Miami prison stone ocean arc took like two years to to come out.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

And so, like, still more run. This will similarly probably take two years to come out. What's really fun though is watching that first episode and then just jumping in on the book because it it gives you like such a good idea for for what we're doing here, and reading the book is just even better. Yeah, you get so much more detail, you get so much more like clarity on certain things and more dialogue, more story. Like the more Jojo's the better. It just makes me so happy.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Yeah, now's now's the best time to come get it because we finally restocked on all of Jojo, like for Steel Ball Run. We finally caught up with Chainsaw Man volumes, which I need to catch up on because Chainsaw Man's over. Actually, that's a bit of news. We won't talk about that. Um, other than to say a lot of people are pissed off about it, which means that I'm probably going to like it. Um because Chainsaw Man fans, much like Star Wars fans, are denser than a neutron star sometimes. And you're a non-conformist. I just think Chainsaw Man's really excellent, and I think the ways that people talk about Chainsaw Man are super annoying. Like people, people like vet, like there's something about Fujimoto because Fujimoto's like really off the rails, too, that people kind of like like to pretend he doesn't talk about real shit. But it's like it's like, guys, somebody can be like a weird little freak and talk about real shit at the same time. Like, to some degree, here at Hiko Araki with with um with uh uh um Jojo's Bizarre Adventure does that, but he doesn't quite he's not like as as like politically minded maybe as like uh Chainsaw Man is really Chainsaw Man is like very very much about like being groomed and like it gets into some very very heavy shit for a manga that is also about like a guy with a chainsaw head riding a shark man into a tornado. Like it's it is also off the rails, but it's so but it also yeah, like it gets into real shit, and like I a lot of people are just like very against taking chainsaw man seriously or reading basic fucking thematic text that is just like explicitly in the text because they just like kind of refuse to engage with it as like a as like literature. Um, but anyway, that's Chainsaw Man is a whole other conversation. We got Chainsaw Man in, we got Steelball Run Run In. Um, we got a bunch of other manga in, including one called Fool Knight, which I'm gonna talk about in just a second. Um, but Pearl, is there anything more you want to say about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure?

SPEAKER_00 59:04

I think I think I've I've gotten my point across. Uh, if you read it, come into the store and talk to me about it because I am a big fangirl. And uh we we can chat.

SPEAKER_01 59:14

Yeah, she will she will chat you up forever about that. And I say that with tremendous affection. Like, she's very fun to talk to about this. And you you should pick it up, you should read it. I'm probably gonna do the same thing with Steel Ball Run uh once I get some of my other stuff taken care of. Um such as Fool Knight. We finally got Fool Knight into the shop. Um, it's gonna take a second to restock it because I ended up picking up all of it. Uh sorry about that.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

Oh my god, you picked up all of it?

SPEAKER_01 59:42

All of the eight volumes that are currently out. Are you gonna give it back? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Oh my god. Okay, well, uh, you're gonna have to wait for us to restock this one because uh the biggest comic book and manga nerds ever work here and take all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 59:58

So the the premise of this book, I'm just gonna read you this real quickly. For a century, thick clouds have blotted out the sun's light. Neither winter nor night ever end. Virtually all natural plants have withered away. Humanity's hope for survival now rests in a new technology known as transfloration, which turns human beings into plants. Now every person in this world of despair has a choice to make. Die as a human being or abandon their humanity and live on as a plant.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

So the main characters There are just so many manga like ideas and concepts that you will find nowhere else.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like no one else is doing JoJo's or Fool Knight or even Chainsaw Man for that matter. Like, manga is so important. Like I don't know how to express that enough. People get so in their fucking feelings about manga, both because they're like, oh my god, I have to read a book in a different way than I'm used to, which is not that hard to adjust to. I I if you can read a comic in English, reading it from the back. She always loves reading it from the back. That's why she's a trade waiter. Love me some trade. Love me some trade. Um, but the other thing is like people, and like this is this is a people are just fucking racist. And people are just like, oh, manga and anime is just all that tentacle, and it's like it's full of perverts. Full of perverts. And it's like, first of all, okay, look. There are some like fucked up mangas and like or some like fan servicey mangas, but like we have we have a king pedophile right now. Like, I don't like like they released a pedophile list and did nothing about it. Like, I don't know, I don't like any anybody who like wants to give like manga shit for being too pervy, who's like lives in the United States, has nothing to fucking talk about. Like, we we we live in like a pedophile theme park, is what this country is. So like don't even at me with that racist, like Japanese people are especially bad. It's like, no, they're not. Like, this is this is a patriarchy problem, but anyway, we're we're we're getting a field of it. Fool Knight is incredible, it looks unbelievably good, like the art style is really strong. It's got like a a kind of a Tatsuki Fujimoto vibe in certain respects, particularly like when Tatsuki has the the time to work it, with kind of even like a shakier line and even more detail sometimes. Um like the lighting is incredible. Like the lighting in this book, like there's some shots and scenes in this that are so unbelievably well lit that like you can just perfectly picture them. Like, same with um same with just like there's shots that are so scary just because of like how a face is contorted. It's unreal. Like it's it's like the art is fantastic. Um Kasumi uh Yasuda. This is their first breakout book, and it's incredible to see like somebody who's like already so masterful at form, like on a breakout. Like, I do think we're gonna be hearing a lot more about Kasumi Yasuda kind of as time goes on. And it's kind of rare for um Viz Signature. Um, is like Viz puts out these these things called uh signature books, which are like Doro Hidoro is a Viz Signature, uh Goodnight Pun Pun is Viz Signature, where it's like here's a manga by like an artist that is like very specific and very talented and in like high demand. Um similarly, Tao Matsumoto, like people we've raved about on this podcast regularly, um, and just personally are Viz signature people. Um, it's incredible to get like a Viz signature on your first breakout book. Like no one else is is is doing that. So yeah, he's just an incredibly talented writer and artist. Um very similar to Chainsaw Man and the respect of both being kind of about like here's these really poor boys trapped in desperate poverty who like through some kind of like fucked up science fiction situation end up getting cajoled into working for the government. Um, but instead of being like a demon hunter, he's you know, he takes this transfloration process to pay for his mom's like psychosis medication, um, and to be able to just like not live entirely in poverty anymore, and um which means that he's going to be turning into a plant over the course of two years. And um there's so many people who have become transflorated or are actively already like plants they've like developed over those two years fully into plants, and they have like speech bubbles of this kind of incomprehensible like language that nobody can hear or understand. Uh the main character, Toshiro, um is able to understand what the plants are saying, and so he gets hired by the government to like translate what the former what people or plants that were formerly people are saying. Um and then it just keeps like spiraling out um from there. It's really good, it's really phenomenal. I'm on volume three right now, but I I think I'm going to be like really locked in on this. Um it's a very sad book, it's a very merciless book in certain respects. Like it it is a book that like similarly to Chainsaw Man, like deals a lot with like child abuse, particularly for parents. Like it is a book that deals very heavily with poverty. It is a book that like deals very heavily with kind of like the way that it does violence as opposed to Chainsaw Man's very heightened, like absurd violence is like very sad and very like heavy. Like people when people get murdered in this book, like it it just kind of like it kind of sucks. Like it's realistic in that capacity. It is also a funny book. Like, there is a point where like the main character's boss is like, hey, I know you can talk to plants. Sit outside of this room that we play poker in, and the plants around the table will like ask the plants around the table what my opponent's hands are so I can win at poker again. Like, I've been losing a poker too much. You gotta use your Plant translation to help you win a poker. There's kind of a Chainsaw Man like absurdist humor to it, but like in a much sadder package. Um, yeah, I think it's a really special book. I'm really curious to see where it kind of goes from here. Because it just like it's such a weird book. It's like got such a specific tonality to it. And yeah, if you're like a Chainsaw Man fan, but like in that real way, like pick the shit up. It's really good. Um yeah, we'll get more of that in stock soon, and I may even bring back some copies just so people can read them and I can get some restocks. Um we're gonna talk about one last thing, but just briefly, um Batman Dark Patterns comes out this week in trade finally, the Dan Waters Hayden Sherman. We were going to talk about this probably next week once Tate has a chance to read it. Um but it's really fucking good. Check it out. It's like some of the best Batman, my like modern Batman work of the last like five years. Like Dan Waters is like stealth, one of the best Batman writers that we that we've got going. Hayden Sherman's art is if you've been reading Absolute Wonder Woman or anything else they've done, fantastic. Um, it's a very back-to-basics Batman book. It's like the the most notable villains you're gonna find in there are like Ventriloquist and Firefly. A lot of them are new. Um and it's it's very grounded. Yeah, it's a very just like we're gonna do some investigations and we're gonna keep it really tight and locked in. Um very good. What we're gonna talk about this week, kind of in briefly, is the young animal imprint and um my rereads of that from uh Mother Panic and Cave Carson. And so the the kind of background on Young Animal is this was called a pop-up imprint, uh, which is that they gave Girardway uh Doom Patrol, and then Gerard Way was allowed to curate like an imprint, basically, for so they they had four books to start with. They had um Mother Panic, um, which is like a actually we'll get into that one. Did Gerard Way create Mother Panic? Yeah, so so Gerard Way, what Gerardway did is that like Gerard Way developed an idea for a character, in this case, Mother Panic, and then um she's an original character. Cave Carson has a cybernetic eye, is like a extremely deep cut from DC. We'll we'll talk about that in a sec. Um, Shade the Changing Girl, which is um uh a former Vertigo book of Shade the Changing Man, and then um Um uh Doom Control. Um I think I'm forgetting something. I don't know, we'll come back to that. Um but anyway, so Gerard Bay like came came up with an idea for these, he helped these writers develop them, and then he just let the writers and artists do that book. Um so like he came up with the idea for Mother Panic, but then just let Jody Hauser, Tommy Lee Edwards, Sean Crystal, uh John Polygon, etc., Ibrahim Mustafa work on the book. And then Cave Carson was similarly like he co-wrote with John Rivera for a couple of issues, and then he just let John Rivera go off with Michael Avon Oming make the book. Um they had two volumes each, and then they had a crossover called Milk Wars, um, which is maybe one of the only good crossover events in in history. Um, we're not gonna talk about Milk Wars because we'd be here all day, but like, and then they shifted the third volumes shifted what the book was. So like Mother Panic went from Mother Panic to Mother Panic Gotham AD. Cave Carson has a cybernetic eye, became car Cave Carson has an interstellar eye. All the books would shift. Um Shade the Changing Girl, I think, became Shade the Changing Woman. There'd be some like radical shift in what they were doing at like between uh like at the end of Milk Wars, and then they became like a different book for a volume, and then it was done. It was a very tight, concise, like kind of two years of stuff. Doom Patrol similarly was that way. That was the only one Gerardway like actively was writing um with Nick Darrington. I have read almost all of these books before. Um, I think Young Animal was like kind of almost no misses at all. Like the crossover was good, all of the books were excellent. It was like tight, contained.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:10

Like yeah, there weren't that many.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:11

There weren't that many, no. There was a couple, um, like uh Magdalene Visaggio and uh Sonny Liu did that Eternity Girl 6 issue. Right, right. Uh Mikey Wei and somebody else did that Collapser book, which I think Collapser is the only one I haven't read at this point. But it was it was kept very tight. You didn't have to like be reading all of them, you could be reading any of them independently. The only crossover was very fucking weird and very specific. Um and they're all excellent books. Um it's kind of a testament that like Mother Panic might be the least good of them, which is weird to say. Um, but I recently read through, reread all of Mother Panic, including AD, Gotham AD, which I hadn't read before. And then I read through the first two volumes of Cave Carson as a cybernetic eye, and then I need to find Interstellar. I um but just to kind of introduce them, Mother Panic is a is like a psychotic bisexual Batwoman care like archetype who relatable. I know, as as a psychotic lesbian myself, um who like also is like it's it's weird that this is like a Batman book that's like kind of about child abuse, or kind of like about child soldiers specifically. Um like and like she was like kind of experimented on by these like nuns at Mother House, like after she like or uh not motherhouse, sorry, I I gather house, um at the mother hotel. At the mother hotel, um after she was taken from her because her after she was taken into custody because her her mother is psychotic and her and she killed her father for like trying to sell her mother off. This is like this is like baseline premise of this book. Um there has maybe been never like like Mother Panic's costume is so good with her like all white like cape and boots and like these giant like metal gauntlets with spikes on them, um, and her like fox helmet. Like the look that like John Paul Leon specifically gives her is incredible. Um John Paul Leon and and um Tommy Lee Edwards um and Ibrahim Mustafa all do really, really good turns on the book. I think some of the best character design I've ever seen is with John Paul Leon on on Mother Panic. It's so good. Um kind of a book about a person who like really does not want to be a hero and mainly just want to like mainly like wants to beat the shit out of these people that like experimented on children. Um it's it's but like ends up kind of getting wrapped up into like, oh well like now I have to like I like freed these children, like now some of them are like very attached to me. And like what do I do with that as like a surrogate parent? I didn't want to be a hero, I didn't want to be. I'm just like a crazy abrasive lesbian. Um it also does some interesting things with like the Playboy Batman aspect, where like Batman, you know, because men who are like playboys are seen as like, oh, they're like fun and silly, but like her being like her cover being like I'm a rich girl, like she's controversy. Like everyone is constantly like she's abrasive, she's rude, she's like controversial. And the way that like women can never be like playboys or whatever, so there's like a very like specific like gender aspect that this book is like pretty smart about. Um that said, like I think Sean Crystal, I like him as an artist. I think his portions of the book are not as good. Um, I think his art really kind of is just not suited for this book, and like the storylines really suffered too when when he's on it. It's still good, but like yeah. It's too bad. It's too bad, but it is it is a gorgeous book. It's very good. Um, you know, sometimes a family can be like a crazy bisexual in a costume, like a psychotic mom, uh like a gay guy with a crazy ex-boyfriend, like rat catcher, and a little girl with a knife. Yes. Um, it's it's very like gay found family shit. Um that's my shit. You would you would like Mother Panic, I think, actually. Is she from the future? She's from the present.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:19

Um she looks like she's very futuristic in her hover bike.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:24

She's got a futuristic vibe, which is part of what Gotham AD plays with. Is that um sorry, my uh computer stopped for a second? Um recording. It's recording, yeah. Thank God. Um they play with her being kind of a futuristic character because what her shift is is she kind of gets thrown into the future. I won't say any more than that, but it's it's interesting. It's a really good book. Um Cave Carson. This is the only one of the main series that I had not read before this. Um and it might be one of the best books of the line. It's really fucking good. It like it's in contention with Doom Patrol, is the best book of the line. Um if you like Venture Brothers, if you like Fantastic Four, if you like Challengers of the Unknown, it's very on that like old 60s pulp vibe, where like here's this guy named Cave Carson who is like his whole deal is that he's like an experimental geologist. Like he used to go down, he used to go down South Park. What are you talking about? What?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:30

Like South like Stan's Dan's dad is a geologist.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

I have not watched enough South Park to have any fucking idea what you're talking about. No, no, baby, that's so funny. I just wanted to derail you, I think. No, thank you for doing that. That was very funny. Uh thank you for derailing me. We see I talk too much. We need a little, we need a little bit of of of uh breakups from you from from you. Um uh but anyway, he was an experimental geologist. Um, he found an underground civilization. Um, he ended up marrying their queen. Uh, and then at the very beginning of the book, she dies. And so he's kind of like a widower at this point. He's been out of the adventuring game for a long time. Um, but he kind of ends up getting sucked back into it when that civilization, the Moldrug, call back to him and they're like, hey, this like crazy fucking fungal god that we like had encased in a crystal. It's like out now and it's like doing crazy body horror shit to people.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:29

Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

And so him and his daughter and a very, very deep cut character called Wild Dog from DC, very deep cut, end up having to steal one of their um former like mining vehicles called the Mighty Mole. Imagine like the mole man's fucking vehicle. He has like a mole man vehicle, okay? And they steal that from the corporation that that uh like owns all of his stuff now, EBX, which is found to have be like involved with like unleashing this outer god, and they have to go like go below the earth to like save the world from this crazy outer god. Superman shows up a bunch. Um god, it's dummy violent, but like because of Michael Avon Oeming's art style is like so fun and very like pop psychedelia, it like ends up it's it's weird, like how it's probably the most violent book of the young animal line, but it's also so goofy and so silly. It looks very cute. It's very cute, it's very funny. Um why does he have a cybernetic eye? So, actually, uh about that, actually. So, I'm not going to tell you why he has a cybernetic eye because it's a huge spoiler. But the the thing about K person, so um Gerard Way pitched Doom Patrol and Shay the Changing Girl first. And Jim Lee was like, cool, that's great. Let's have some like non-vertigo stuff. And he kind of threw the like history of DC character, the DC universe at Gerard Way, and and he was like, go through this, like find find somebody, like find somebody that there's like almost nothing about and do and do something. Um, and so that's how a lot of like vertigo stuff, like technically, Shade the Changing Man is that way, where it's like it was like an old Ditko character that got dusted off. Swamp Thing got pretty dusted off too to a lesser degree. Uh Sandman is actually kind of that too. Like it's it's a reinvention of Wesley Dodds, it's like a completely different thing. Um, but Jaragway found Cave Carson, and there was only like one or two lines on him. Um he'd been in Resurrection Man in the 90s for like an issue. Um, which, you know, Friend of the Pod, Resurrection Man, Rom V did and Anandar K did something similar, but they dusted off that character. But anyway, um they yeah, he he had been like a character in the 60s, he'd shown up once in the 90s, he has a cybernetic eye, but there's nothing about why he does. It was just kind of a thing that they did in the 90s, where like, oh, he has a cybernetic eye now to show that he'd been having adventures since the 60s. Um this book is like Gerard Way coming up with the most insane, and John Rivera coming up with the most insane possible explanation for why Cave Carson has a cybernetic eye. Um like what the actual reason on that is is un unhinged. I like I do not want to spoil it because what the actual explanation is is so good and so ridiculous. Um, but yeah, it's it's really good, it's really funny, it's really special. It's very like some of the best character work, I think, of all of the books. Do we have any in store? Did you steal them all? No, I haven't stolen all this. I'm bringing I brought Mother Panic and Cape Carson back. Um and we don't have a copy of Interstellar Eye, which I still need to read. It's dummy fun. If you like, yeah, if you like Fantastic Four, if you like Challengers of the Unknown, if you like Venture Brothers, this book is for you. It's like wildly like experimental. It does like universe hopping things in ways that are like interesting and engaging. Um, there's some backups by because all these stories had backups. The Mother Panic ones are like fine. But the Cave Carson one, the first volume has backups by Tom Sioli doing weird takes on the DC universe. Um, such as what if Green Arrow fucked too much and had to jump off a boat and swim to an island, and when he got stranded on an island, it was actually Starro. Um, so what if he like hung out with Starro and smoked too much weed on an island? And like the Wonder Twins, there's a whole Wonder Twins like thing that he does. Tom Scioli's like alternate DC universe takes are fucking insane. And I would read a hundred thousand pages of them. Um, and then in the the second one, there's some there's some other good backups. I'm forgetting what they are. Um, but that's kind of all I wanted to say on those, other than like I think we should do more things like Young Animal. Which is not to say that we like it has to be like Gerard Way or even this weird, but like DC, you know, next level talks about being like, okay, here's, you know, some of our C-list characters, and we're giving them like series and trying to do something different and give them a spotlight. And it's like, okay, you know, like Firestorm is technically kind of C-list, and like, but like low people know who Lobone Zatana are. Like, come on, like, this is not this is not like particularly obscure, and you're not doing anything particularly different with any of these books. Um, Batwoman is especially not obscure. Um But these books, like, Mother Panic is an original, but like Cave Carson is not, and says, like, is an extremely deep cut. And Shade the Changing Girl is a reinvention of a vertigo, but like, she is something new. We should be and like in that also this is a pop-up imprint. Like, it lasted for two years and had like a very finite endpoint and very finite goals and ideas of what it wanted to do, and that's why I think it was so successful. And I think we should have more pop-up imprints like this. We should give, we should give somebody who's like kind of like the showrunner, and we and we say, like, hey, like, curate a line for two or three years, just curate some ideas, and then let some writers and artists go off, do whatever they want in their own little corners, and make really unique books. Like, even with any any like critique that I have of any of these books, I think they're leagues better than a lot of books on the shelves because they're just not beholden to continuity, they're not beholden to really anything, but getting to do something fun and interesting and make a unique comic with unique artists. They look amazing, yeah. Like the and there's a really strong focus on design work, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:25

The the art feels unique, the ideas feel unique, it's experimental comics, which that that's a big reason why I go to comics at all, is for why when they're experimental, because they can do anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:40

Yeah, yeah. And like Mother Panic is probably the most normal of them, and it's still like a weird experimental Batman book about like queer found family and navigating child abuse from the state. Like, Cave Carson is just like a crazy 60s pulp riff. Um like these books are really good, and I think that like there is like DC has such a weird extensive backlog of like we were talking to Mikey about this yesterday, where like DC has like such has been around for so long that they just have like weird fucking corners. Yeah. Like, and almost nobody's particularly interested in exploring them, other than like unfortunately Tom King with Danger Street, which wasn't very good, but like, but at least he was mining like the fucking like the the the like the fucking the trillion dollar boys or whatever the fuck like the the the the wealthy kid gang or whatever he was like pulling something like crazy Jack Herbie deep cuts, and there's a lot of room for like doing a weird, strange book that way, and that's how we get stuff like Saga the Swamp Thing, that's how we get stuff like uh uh Sandman, that's how we get stuff Sandman referenced, unfortunately. Um you know it's like that's how we get real like really interesting work, and it we and we get it by giving them to artists who would like Michael Avon Oming doesn't do a lot of superhero stuff besides uh uh um powers. Like Tommy Lee Edwards and John Paul Leon have done some some superhero stuff, but like they're probably the closest that we get. Like Sean Crystal's main work on superheroes was like a was like fucking Phantom X Max back in the day. Like, yeah, Nick Darrington doesn't get a job doesn't get jobs anymore, but like his work on Doom Patrol is like some of the best, like capable cartooning of like the 2010s, and similarly, like his covers for Mr. Miracle, Tom King's Mr. Miracle runner, excellent. We should have that back. Yes, my dear. Um, we should wrap this up. We should wrap this up. Um, I am a historical yapper. Um oh boy. A yapper of all time. A yapper of all time. We'll have been doing this for yeah, about an hour and a half. Um at this juncture. Um, thank you everybody for listening to us.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:56

Yes, actually, if you've gotten to the end of this podcast, you are one of the real ones. Uh apparently people actually listen to this podcast. Uh, that's something we recently learned. Um, hopefully uh we're entertaining, and I'm so happy you're here. And um, we're talking about, you know, how we can expand stuff. Uh and I kind of want to do like a write-in episode where where uh maybe you answer questions um and maybe figure out uh you know uh what else can be done here.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:34

Yeah, and it would be really nice. Like, hey, yeah, like first of all, write in. Second of all, let us know. Like if you come into the store, there's no real way to write in though.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:43

We need an email.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:44

Yeah, we'd we'd have to we'd have to set up an email at this point. If you know our store email, you can send us a store an email to the store.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:51

Just call into the escapist. Yeah, just call it. Or we should do a live episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:55

We should do a live episode, but that would be so tight. Um, but yeah, if like if you like the show, like please tell us because like the people who have told us, it it means a lot. Like, we do like Pearl Tate and I do the show kind of for free. Um, I mean we do it on company time, but like it's it's like kind of for free. We do a lot of work to make the show good. Um, Tate's gotta like edit shit and like do a lot of stuff off the clock. Like, we put in a lot of a lot of effort into this show, and like it can sometimes feel I know Pearl and I talked about this as like artists ourselves, like it can feel very like feels like our work is going nowhere, or that people don't care, or that we're just like putting a lot of effort and and putting into the void, but people have talked to us about liking the podcast, like a lot of our subscribers, um people from Cape and Cowl and and Dr. Comics, like other people really like what we're doing, and that's so heartening to me. And like I'm really grateful for it. Thank you. Like, if if you listen to half of this, if you listen to all of it, thank you. And and please keep telling us that. Like, we it means a lot to know that our our efforts and if you're a famous comic book creator, let us uh interview you. Yeah, we would love to do that. Like, we've we've previously had you know some conversations with like I mean not like we've we've talked online with like Dennis Camp and Aditya Bidakar, and um I'll have more to talk about with Aditya Bitikar. Aditya Bitakar's new book and your skin coming out. I read it, it's good, it's really, really good. Read it, I'll talk more about it when it comes out, but it's really fucking good. Um but um yeah, I don't know, like yeah, if you're a famous comic book writer, we would love to talk with you. Um and we're probably talking about setting up a Patreon soon because like it is a lot of work, and just to you know have a little bit of like extra money for our efforts, like we are at the end of the day, minimum wage workers, and us who do this podcast are all like minimum wage working trans women who like don't make a lot of money. Like, I work five days a week almost four. Hours at a bookstore job and I can barely afford to pay my rent. Um sometimes I can't even quite do that. Like I sometimes need a little help.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:07

Like I'm I'm personally rich as fuck.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:11

Yeah, she's the one I get help from, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:13

I'm loaded. I don't even need like Patreon money, but I would just would do it anyways. Just you know, as a as a form of of social payment.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:24

But you know, as a you know, to our to our you know, all jokes aside, like I am a doctor. She is a doctor, um, doctor of my heart. Um, but yeah, we we we put a lot of work into this podcast. And um, yeah, it's true. Not beating the homosexual for my wife allegations.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:40

Um God, we really do need Tate here. We're a little too disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:44

We're a little too disgusting and a little too like uh Tate is good at reading us back now. And reading us to filth. And reading us to filth. She is very good at that. We do miss her. Um, get better soon, Queen. Um, she's she's not sick. I just I just wanted to say that. Um, she's fine. She's just at work. Get well soon. Get well soon. But um, yeah, you know, we put in a lot of work and we and we really love doing this, but it does help us to be able to live. If just, you know, like this job is a labor of of passion, and this podcast is a labor of passion. And uh, if we have money, we can do more things with it and we can live a little bit easier. Oh my god, imagine getting paid to yap. God willing. We we pay men to yap all the time. Pay trans women to yap. It was Trans Day of Visibility yesterday. Trans Day of Visibility. How about Trans Day of Pay Us Some Fucking Money? I know. Dollar dollar bills. Anyway, that's gonna be the end of our podcast. Uh Pearl, I know you probably thought you were gonna get away with it. Oh my god! We need a closing song. Give us something. You've got this diva.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:51

Uh uh. If uh you're doing so good, baby. If I was the escapist, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la, I'd have the best podcast in the world if I was escapist girl. Ooh, okay, that was fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:18

I like it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:18

I feel I feel like that's a song from the f the French musical. Le Miz? Les Mises.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:26

Les Mise.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:27

So that's a Lay Miz reference for all you out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:30

For you culture swines. Okay, I love you bye. Love you by.