Escapist KO: Ultimate Axacia vs. Absolute Aldo

In this episode the escapies discuss some disheartening comics news including the firing of over 1000 Marvel Studios employees, the possible rise of AI, as well as some excellent comics including Storm #1-3, Absolute Batman #19, and Batwoman #2! But the real hot button two-page splash issue for this episode is the appearance of both Axacia and Aldo for some fun banter and comics discussion! 

Follow Tate's Substack for way-too-nerdy comics criticism: https://substack.com/@janethesturgeon#?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:43

I love that. Um, this is uh, as you know, I'm not the usual podcast host. Um we cooed Tate. Um we secretly overthrew her from behind the scenes, and now we have taken over for one episode. I'm sure she'll coup us right back and be back in power immediately. If she can escape the dungeon. If she Yeah, she's gotta the Dungeons of Doom, actually. She's gotta do like the the Latvarian ski lift and then do a sick kick flip, and there's a whole lot of other weird bullshit she's gotta do. No she'll be back tomorrow, or not tomorrow, she'll be back next week. Um, but for now, I am your host. Um I'm Persephone Possum. I'm Dr. Pearl. And we have a special guest on the podcast, friend of both the podcast and the podcasters. And the world. Uh I'm Acacia. Yeah, good friend to all of us in the store. Um wait, was I talking too quiet?

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, I'm talking way too quietly. I I'm Acacia. Oh god, I have to project.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Project Take up Space Diva.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Hello. We have one microphone here. In in a perfect world, there would be three microphones that are like perfectly adjusted to all of us, but for now it's just one big one.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

If you are men with money who listen to our podcast, and I know some of you are, um buy us, buy us some more microphones and also give us money. Because I think support the dolls should be something you actually do and not just say. Um and if you're a woman with money, go get yourself something nice.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

You deserve it, Queen. So welcome back. We're gonna do the shit that we always do. We're gonna talk comics news and then we're gonna get into our reviews for the week. Um, we have like a pretty good fucking week of comics, like actual comics to read and talk about. Unfortunately, the comics news section is gonna be a little bleak. So if you just will have some patience with me and with us, we're gonna go through that. And if you come out the other side of uh uh with us, apologies, I got like two hours of sleep, so have patience with me. I wasn't even doing nothing. God, I wish I had been fucking my way through no sleep, but I just couldn't. Anyway, that's staying in the podcast. Whatever. Whatever. Like anything goes here, more or less. Um, except for the like 30 minutes of 9-11 jokes we had to cut out from that one when we talked about Doctor Doom and 9-11. It was like, I cannot anyway. Um get get the release the uncut 9-11 jokes, the Snyder uncut version of the podcast. I know I made that joke already, but whatever. So we're gonna talk about comics news. Um, some of it's gonna be a little interlinked. Um, there will be some things in the notes. So, first, I kind of wanted to talk about that the founder of Dark Horse, Mike Richardson, got dumped by the gaming company he sold Dark Horse to a few years ago. Uh, don't worry, he made good money on this sale before he walked out the door, and your favorite IP content experiences will continue to flow down the trough. Um, what that means in terms of hot IP content generators, Hellboy, Millerverse, whatever the Bendis thing is, Magnola doesn't seem to know. Um, he's hoping for the best. He's like, as far as I know, Lands Unknown and Hellboy is still gonna be published by Dark Horse, but I don't really know. Um, which doesn't seem to be an encouraging sign. Um my source for this article is gonna be Heidi McDonald's Comics B article. We will link it in the notes. There's a lot to go into there. There's more to go into there than even she's able to fit into her article. Um, she does not get into the um Mike Richardson kind of publicly defending uh Scott Alley, aka Bighty the Clown from repercussions for uh biting people uh in sexually inappropriate ways for years, um, in the way that you know men protect each other. But that's like such a The story is so big that like even she couldn't fit that in, and we're not gonna fit that in either. That's just gonna be a thing you're gonna have to look at. But um the thing about Mike Richardson is that he's been with Dark Horse for 40 years. Um he's kind of the guy that started Dark Horse as just like a little thing. I think it was initially like a comic shop or like had connections to a comic shop first, and then he was the guy who brought in like Hell, uh he brought in Mike Magnola for Hellboy, he brought in um what's his name? Not Dave Sim, Frank Miller. Frank Miller for Sin City, he brought in Paul Chadwick with Concrete, like he's the guy that kind of made Dark Horse a independent uh creator-owned space. And a few years ago, he sold the company, and then there was some crazy shit. Heidi McDonald gets into it better because it's a lot of like selling it to different people. Eventually he sold it to this gaming company, and then the CEO of that, or not CEO, the the head of that gaming company ended up or sorry, he sold it to a gaming CEO, a former gaming CEO, who is now the CEO of Dark Horse. That guy laid him off. At the time of uh when this news initially broke, it was framed as like he got sacked. Um, he got laid off by this gaming company.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

What was the gaming company that he used to run?

SPEAKER_04 6:19

I'm so curious. It's like it's one of those Was it Blizzard? It's not Blizzard. It's so it's one of those things where it's like not actually a gaming company, but it's like one of those like subsidiary things that just like owns things. Or not subsidiary, it's like, you know, it's like a parent company that doesn't actually make things, it's its purpose is to own things.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

That's more like a deadbeat dad company.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

It's a deadbeat dad company. Um that company immediately after sacking him, basically. I'm trying to find the exact quote here. Oh, uh yeah, here we go. Instead of kind of like talking about his legacy or any of the other things that you would expect, you know, a company to do when they fire somebody of like 40 years, their only response was please be assured that Darkhorse remains fully committed to working closely with you and to creating the very best products and experiences for fans worldwide. Um uh new CEO Jay Comas Experience also seems publishing light. Jay brings extensive experience with global intellectual properties across games, film, and consumer products. Um please be assured that Dark Horse remains very fully committed to working closely with you and to creating the very best products and experiences for fans worldwide. Oh god. So it that's what we're looking at. And then if if if Golden Goose Mike Magnola doesn't know what the fuck is going on, that's a bad sign. Um they have seemingly Dark Horse creators have have expressed they're not really sure what's going on. Um you know, I've talked some shit about Dark Horse kind of falling off in the way that Image has, but like they've they've but that like they're the home of like Mark Millar's whatever Miller verse bullshit. They're home to Bendis, they're home to like they just announced that like Hickman's uh Three Worlds, Three Moons thing that he's doing with a bunch of writers and artists was gonna get finally published to Dark Horse. And so what this company, which doesn't seem particularly interested in publishing things, is you know, like what what what are we gonna what's gonna happen here? We don't really know. Um if you want more details on that, read Heidi McDonald's writing on it. It's I read it this morning, it's really good. Um, I really appreciate uh what she had to say about it. Um jumping around a little bit uh onto the next thing. Um speaking of weird parent company bullshit, um news kind of came out of The Stranger in Seattle this week that Emerald City Comic-Con, as well as several other cons, including Oakland Comic-Con, which is going to this is really complicated, and I'm going to link the article because this one's even more complicated. But basically, a parent company of a parent company of a parent company that owns you know, that like a company, the company of company that owns ECC has like We live in hell. Has like I'm I we live in hell and we're gonna talk about that. Is um is has like I'm trying to find the exact number here. Uh Corinne sent it to me. Um actually, you know what? I'm just gonna read The Stranger, it's gonna make it easier here. Um back in January, Con Goers, Emerald City Comic Con, discovered that ECC's parent company, Readpop, which acquired the con in 2015 and runs a variety of cons, including NYCC and BookCon, has a not so distant connection to ICE. The problem lies in a rotten corporate family tree. Readpop is part of the entertainment group RX, which is owned by RELX, and RELX owns Lexus Nexus, a data broker that holds a 22.1 million contract to ICE's pre-cogs, helping the agency track people who may potentially commit a crime and their cars according to the Intercept, and their cars committing uh according to the Intercept before they've actually broken the law. Um and so wait, before they break the law? Yeah, they're doing some like minority report bullshit. It's minority report. They're just doing minority.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

What's it like so funny? I was just talking to somebody about 1984 and how much it lines up with like modern society, and the like optimistic conclusion we came to is like at least they're not doing thought crime yet. So I you know, here we are.

SPEAKER_04 10:32

Yeah, Inventures of the Tor and Writer of the Book, Don't Invent the Torment Nexus inspires Inventure of the Torment Nexus. Um and so uh last thing. So a group of Unhappy Cause players penned a petition asking Readpop, which purports to quote, promote inclusion and diversity, to force their parent company to divest from Lexus Nexus. Readpop responded with a boilerplate statement saying RX, Readpop, and our event brands operate independently from other RELX businesses on an arm's length basis. Rx, readpop, and our event brands do not sell any information or data to the US Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And first of all, my I don't sell, we don't sell any of your information to US Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement t-shirt is answering a lot of questions asked by do you sell our information? Or however that joke goes, I'm a little too tired to string it together. Um, but the point is, this is another case of like a company of a company of a company having these like fuckedaneous connections or just like having a fundamental disinterest in publishing and instead investing millions in fucking ice. Um, including an Oakland City Comic-Con, which is coming up. We don't have a parent company, right? Uh you know, you know what? That's the good news about Jack. He he would he would never sell this shit to a parent company. Oh he would Jack is the kind of guy who would like if someone try if someone tried to knock on the door of the business, so to speak, and tried to get a he would he'd he'd be the guy that like comes out of the kicks the door open from inside and like fires a shotgun in the air.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

It's just my porch.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Get off, get get get the fuck off my porch. We're not even gonna get into him few like having that fight with the juggalos that one time that tried to take yeah, Kish. I don't know if you know about this. So one time one time, one time, because Jack has Dark Carnival, right? So he like uh not not the juggalos as a whole, because like I don't know, that's I don't know, that's a lot of people. I thought the juggalos were good guys, like no no no the the main juggalos are it's it's um it's it was just like a small subset of dudes, like they were not the main dudes, they were they were like just like a small group of juggalos and juggalettes and juggalettes. I think I think it's like an actor situation where it's like don't say act, like they're all actors, like you don't suddenly have a like you're a juggal, whether you're a man or a woman or some other fucking thing. Like juggalos of all shapes and sizes and genders and juggle they they would they have jug experience. God, I hope Tate makes that the name of the podcast episode.

SPEAKER_03 13:05

But uh apparently dark carnival is the name of like of their like their fandom or no. Maybe their convention, I don't know. If you are a juggalo and you love the insane clown posse, you are of the dark carnival. Oh, is it like being a friend of Dorothy? But I think it's like being a little monster for Lady Gaga, right? But you're in the Dark Carnival means you like means you're a juggalo. Sick. So Jack has been the Dark Carnival since 1970, whatever. And he he's had the website theddarkcarnival.com for since whenever. And they tried to take it from him. And they threatened to sue us. I see. They threatened to sue us over ownership of the Dark Carnival.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

And to be clear, Jack laughed in their faces and said, You and what fucking army, and the Juggalos did not rise up.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

The Joggolos, they did not rise up.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

No. Wow. Yeah, no, these they uh it did not work. Um we would so we would never have a fucking parent company. But just to kind of, yeah, that's that's kind of all I have to say about we also do not sell your data to uh the government. That said, I do know what y'all are reading because I'm A a nosy bitch and do and B do all the polls, and I also I I know y'all. I know y'all.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

We do we do judge you, of course, from our you know, ivory towers.

SPEAKER_04 14:36

As the arbiters of taste, parentheses women.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Um, we do not sell it to the government. We do not sell it to the government.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

The government doesn't want to buy it, they they don't care about your taste in comics.

SPEAKER_04 14:49

No, they they don't really fucking give a shit about your taste in comics. They don't care if you eat. They don't care what the fuck you're reading. Um, but we're gonna jump from that to um well, okay. I'm first I'm gonna give a Heidi McDonald quote from the last article, but then I'm gonna go into what I'm calling images dumb fucking scheme. Um so to quote Heidi McDonald, so tale as old as the 21st century, it's all about the IP. Almost every comic book publishing company is now part of a larger entity that runs it as a low-cost IP studio, not as a company that makes money publishing things. And I think that's really key. I think kind of the only one of the big monthly title companies that's really doing anything serious right now is DC, and they're owned by fucking Warner Brothers, and that's a whole thing with the whole Paramount merger. But we're not gonna talk about that. What we are gonna talk about is what I am going to politely refer to as Images Dumb Fucking Scheme. Um and to introduce Images Dumb Fucking Scheme, I want to talk about the fact that Dork number one is being promoted as it just was the first comic to break $300 as a 9.8 CGC graded slab, and it and absolute Batman took three months to do that, and Dork took like three weeks or something like that. Dork. Now, if that sounded fucking stupid, and you were like, well, what about the book? Like, if that was just incomprehensible garbage to you, I have good news. It is. Um, so for the last four weeks or so, image and vault with nectar, but like image with um Dork, with Narco, with Tigris Island, and with God, one of White Sky. Um all had number ones drop, all of which sold out at the publisher level. Most of them before they even like actually were on sale. Um, which is a crazy thing about books that had no hype and were at best of middle-in quality. That every single one of these books I've not seen anyone talking about. I've never seen anyone talking about it as like a story or art. No one has anything to say about these books as a piece of art. And I think the creators are largely innocent in this, other than maybe of like making mid-stuff um at best. Um because all of it, like, the best looking one is Dork, and that's just like if you've read a Scotty Young comic, it's like that, but like middling. Um and the at worst you get White Sky, which is like I would call it a knockoff of The Last of Us and every other like unremarkable post-apocalypse comic of the last like 20 years, except what it's actually ripping off more than anything is Noctara, a different image book about a post-apocalypse where there are shadow creatures. Um it's it's shit. It looks like ass. It isn't inspires no confidence. This this week, Tigris Island came out and it's already sold out.

SPEAKER_03 18:03

It's just a booby book.

SPEAKER_04 18:04

It's just a booby book, and that's cheesecake. It's just cheesecake, and that's fine, but like there's no way it's sold out at the publisher level. So I'm briefly going to tell you what Image's dumb fucking scheme is because last week when Narco and Nectar came out, those sold out near immediately with books with no hype and books that nobody has told me about. Batman number seven, a mainline Batman title, was getting skipped over and for this garbage. And look, I usually am not one to complain about people checking out independence over fucking Batman. But Batman's actually good right now and thoughtful, and none of this shit on the shelves. Again, I want to be careful because I think the creators are largely innocent other than making middling work. But I think image is like I think I think Emma read, I'm gonna read. I'm gonna take some bitches to college, I'm gonna get some bitches some knowledge. But I think image is running- You haven't even read Dork. I I read a little bit of dork. It could be a masterpiece. I I read a little bit of Dork, dude. It was fine. It's it's the kind of thing that would have been unremarkable in 2014 image. It would have been like, wow, Scotty Young's having an off day today. Um and that would have been the most to say about it. And that's one of the better ones, dude. I mean, Tiger's Island is a booby book, but at least there's like at least like the booby stuff is like more interesting, like it doesn't look like 90s bullshit. Um but anyway, to before our customers get here, to get into the image scheme, like people were kind of like wonder, like asking, like, what the fuck is going on? Why are these books selling out? And I've I've got it. It's very easy. Lay it on me. The answer is easy. Image, and to a lesser extent other companies, saw the organic hype of machine and the money that Absolute Batman created, as well as the derangement of the card market, because card people are fucking insane, um, and will not see heaven. Um they decided that they wanted in on that, but given that almost everything put out at Image has the immediate interest and cultural legacy of a squeaky fart, um, Image decided they had to manufacture it with the help of uh Cover Price and a small crew of other spec hype sites. This is part of what's happening. Um I've seen all these books. They are at best forgettable and middling, if not derivatives of derivative genre fair, whatever. Um anyway, whatever your opinion about Absolute Batman, it is broadly speaking good. Like, that's just not negoti-like whether you like it or not, it is broadly speaking a comic that is good, and it is also a Batman book where the entire like baseline thing is like a bigger and more rock and roll. Of course, that's gonna have hype. It's it's it's it's big, scary, cool Batman, and you do six he does six shit. You know, he's got a big axe and a big truck, and he and like I do think the book is sometimes smarter. And he's got those thick thighs, he's got those daddy thighs. God, I will say the greatest thing Nick Dragota's brought to absolute Batman is those thighs. Thank you, Nick Dragota. Thank you, Nick Dragota, for being a horny little freak.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

I appreciate it. Honestly, Batman should always be a little cheesecakey. Like Batman is a pinup girl.

SPEAKER_04 21:19

Batman is a pinup girl. You're so right for that, D.

SPEAKER_03 21:23

I want him and Chun Li to like model their thighs in the same pinup. Oh my god. That's what I want.

SPEAKER_04 21:30

We should we we next time Nick Tragota is around, if we can get him in the store, we should ask him to do this. Um anyway, before we get too lost in the sauce Absolute Batman generated hype because it is broadly speaking good and it's like rock and roll as fuck. That will always sell and it's always got hype. But these image books don't have that. None of them are any fucking good. Um so what Image does, it's a simple six step process. They massively underprint them, they have the site. Like cover price, hype them up as the hot new thing worth dollars days before or even day of release. Um, and it's like if you look at cover price, like our boss Corinne, she's like, I hate that I have to follow this stupid fucking site, but I do because otherwise I I like I need to know what the what this what like what the spec sites are saying and what that's gonna do to our customers. Because there are dudes, and you can tell, like are reading those spec sites because those books go immediately.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Yeah, our Wednesday Warriors eat them up. It's gone within the first you know 20 minutes. And you know, no dis no disrespect to our Wednesday Warriors.

SPEAKER_04 22:35

They are broadly some just incredibly nice guys. They are so nice. They're so nice. We have a lot of really I love my Wednesday men. Yeah, our Wednesday men are really fucking nice across the board, broad like, and I really like these guys. Um but they're being told that this thing is like worth something, or at the very least, that it's like interesting and you should keep your eye out for it. So anyway, the they basively image massively underprints, the sites hype them up as the hot new thing worth dollars. Tiny runs immediately sell out, the value skyrockets because of artificial scarcity and big money buyers CGC and comics of little value to make them appear valuable, which is how you get with the the week Dork came out, seven of the ten most CGC'd comics were different dork covers. That's insane. Why would you ever slap dork?

SPEAKER_03 23:24

That's like or I mean look, I mean apparently it was a good idea. They're making $300 on that shit.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Because because yeah, because the market is is is fake. It's so fake. It's so fake.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Um all markets.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

All markets are fake, yeah. This this is this is really we're gonna- Down with capitalism! Oh, we're gonna talk about that. But anyway, before we get we gotta get through this before so we can explain. Uh the value skyrockets, new print runs can get announced so everyone who missed out, almost everyone, rushes to buy it and see what all the hype is about, or get in on the gambling. Six rinse and repeat for the last four weeks, and probably for the rest of our fucking lives, as long as this uh miserable institution keeps going. Image Comics is publishing almost nothing worth reading. With some notable exceptions, like Assorted Crisis events, Onzuelo. Um a couple times a year they wake the fuck up and they remember, like, oh, we used to be like at the forefront of something, and they'll publish like uh It's Lonely at the Center of the Earth, they'll publish an Onzuelo, they'll publish 20th Century Men, they'll publish Assorted Crisis. But for the most part, they're just they're just publishing like I don't know. Anyway, sorry, they're they're publishing almost nothing worth reading. But it's that that's not any more offensive to me than it was seven years ago when they've they've like gradually fallen off. But Image, no longer content to just publish IP nostalgia sloth and genre content, again, some of which is good, like DDWJ's Transformers, has decided to publish speculative economies with words and pictures stapled on. Or worse, they're using creator books as Trojan horses for speculative economies. Either way, Image's publishing directive has transcended tacky and become thoroughly contemptible. Everything is gambling now. Even reading is gambling. All things are consumed into the speculative economy and shat out. Human life, art, and engagement with the world around us reduced to a fucking roulette wheel. And while doing this to a gaggle of forgettable image number ones is nowhere near as serious as this, to be clear, I'm not saying these are the same thing, but it's not unrelated to how psychopaths on polymarket are gambling on if the US will blow up another hundred Iranian children and other global atrocities. What is so contemptible about Image is that they think so fucking little of you that you're a mark to them, not a reader. They're in the process of selling you and comics as an art form out to be players in the scam gambling economy, just like everything else from art to human life and dignity. It's like the AI shit. If you don't tell them no now, they'll take what that inch and run off into the fucking future with it and everything else in tow. I just, we have to say no to this shit. Like, because again, it's not the same thing as like betting on if the United States and Iran are gonna have a nuclear war. These are obviously different things. But the point is that like we live at best, the best case future is the thing Heidi McDonald said about uh almost every comic book company is now part of a larger entity that runs it as a low-cost IP studio, not as a company that makes money publishing things. That's the that's the optimistic thing. We've we've been in that for a while. But what Image is doing here and broadcasting clearly is not that anymore. What it is now is speculative economies, gambling. Everything is gambling.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

The movies, baby.

SPEAKER_04 26:41

We need more blind bags, yeah. Everything like blind bags are fucking gambling. The this like CGC bullshit is fucking gambling, and like CGC's been around for a long time, but like but this specific thing of like image churning out these like not even they're not even just churning out content anymore, because they've been churning out mostly content for some time now, but like now they're just it's just speculative economies. And at best, that's you know disrespectful to the creators. I don't think the creators are in on this. I don't think this is a scam that the creators are running. I but I do think Image is like running a fucking scam on you. And I think you deserve better. We deserve better. We deserve to live in a society that doesn't fundamentally reduce our lives and and the art that we make and the ways that we communicate and the ways that we live and the ways that we connect. We should demand that it's not fucking gambling. Don't you want more? Like, I think we should demand more. I think we're we're owed more. Like, we're owed, like, not everything has to be, you know, the most profound art on the fucking planet. You can just have a good Spider-Man comic. Some of the comics we're gonna talk about today are just good, you know, they're just good, like, superhero comics or whatever. They don't need to change the fucking world. And again, they're comic books, but you deserve books that like somebody wanted to fucking make. Like and the reason we get less and less of those these days, but the reason we get less and like I don't want to sound like an old woman who's like, comics used to be better, because like there's actually a lot of things that are better right now than they've ever been. Good morning. But one thing that is worse is that, you know, we used to have regular mainline DC books would like be getting into, you know, the question, Green Arrow and stuff, would be getting in, like, would be engaging with the world around them, would be engaging with the politics of the day. You'd get Dwayne McDuffie like having like a Palestinian refugee superhero over in Milestone. You'd get fucking like the question dealing with like inner like corruption in like big cities in the police force. You'd get like Green Arrow and and Green Lantern like dealing with like uh dealing dealing with um like the heroin epidemic and like and the like racialization of that. And like that would be like for better or worse, like actually engaged with. Human life and art and meaning would have meaning. And now more and more things are becoming IP, and then beyond that, more and more things are becoming gambling, and like I want more for you. I want more for us. And at some point, we have to tell image to shut the fuck up. Like, it's it's contemptible. Like, I s I've talked a lot of shit about Marvel, and I don't wanna I've I've been talking a lot, so we should actually get to the books. But the point is, like I have a lot of frustration with with Marvel. They mostly make bad content right now for the most part. But they still wanna make something. Image doesn't want to make something, they want to sell you a fucking idea. They want to sell you they want to sell you a little stock exchange, they want to sell you a little little piece of cryptocurrency. It's not gonna fucking mean anything. You're gonna forget about it tomorrow, and it's gonna be a wet fart in the wind.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

I know. What dork thinking about what dork is gonna be like a a year from now, just no one's even gonna remember what the hell that is. That that dude's like little $300 slab dork is gonna be worth nothing.

SPEAKER_04 30:19

And I feel and I feel bad for like the scrambling. And I feel bad for some of these creators too, because like Brett Bean seems like a fine guy. Like, I you know, I'm we talked a lot of shit about Dork. Dork's become like the face of this. It's again not even the most offensive one, and this guy's like doing something, you know? He's making a little comic, and like, even if I don't like it or don't think it's that interesting, he's he wants to be here. Why does an image? Why does an image give a fuck about him? And why does an image give a fuck about you? Like Image should. And you should you should tell them that. Um, anyway, that's going to be the news for this week. Um, we're going to get into comics reviews in just a second. Um What about Dave Pilke in the Epstein Files? No, we cannot joke about that. No, no, Dave Pilke is not in the Epstein Files. We cannot joke about that. Dave Pilke, I mean, look, Tate's gonna cut this out anyway, but just in case she doesn't, we cannot be, we cannot be claiming the Captain Underpants guy is in the we cannot be doing that. Like, look, look, I don't need to defend Dave Pilke's honor, but like the level of, and it is funny, but also like poor Dave Pilkey is catching strays about that.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

I love attacking Dave Pilke. I'm sorry. Just a pastime of mine. No, no, I'm absolutely toxic.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

No, I support toxic women. I just think the specific line of attack is what we can't do. I think we just can't say that Dave Pilke is in the Epstein Files. I think I and I think we shouldn't say that a children's author who by and large seems to be mostly fine, we should not say that he's in the Epstein Files. That said, the last thing I'm gonna say because that almost certainly this is going to get cut, so I'm just gonna say something a little bit funny. I'm trying to think of who the comics creator who makes a comics for grown adults um is that's probably in the Epstein Files. Solid case for solid case for Robert Crum. Um the Woody Allen of comics. Um solid, solid case for uh He is the Woody Allen of Comics.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Wow. He would be in there. Ultra late stage cancellation.

SPEAKER_04 32:37

Late stage Robert Crumb's yelling about the 5G towers and shit. Who fucking cares? Like he's not he doesn't he doesn't know what's going on. Um I've talked a lot of shit about Dave Sim, but he's not in the he's not in the files. Dave Dave Dave Sim has never left his house. Um has left his other 20 years. Um since we're doing libel that's gonna get cut out, um I'm just gonna say Jeff Loeb. Decent possibility. Um definitely some creators in the manga industry. Oof.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Actually, I'm gonna say no because I feel like there's probably a separate group of elite Japanese pedophile men that hobnob together that might or might not intersect with the American ones. Yeah. I don't know. No, no, no, there's there are many countries that have a list that should be released, you know?

SPEAKER_04 33:34

Yeah, yeah. There are lists in every country for those at the ICC. That's kind of the thing, too, is like people. I I I I don't know. This is just reminding me there's this this thing where like people talk about Japan as like people talk about Japan in these really weird racist ways, so they're like, oh my god, they're like so pervy over there. And it's like, well, first of all, I'm going to gesture at our profoundly pedophilic society uh run by a pedophile president. Um I would also just like to gesture to the fact that that's like a you know, that's a that's a like empire with a patriarchal society problem. You don't even have to be an empire with a patriarch, you just have to be a patriarchal society to have a pedophilia problem. Like, this is a global problem in societies with like significant patriarchal like power.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

I would love to be a fly on the wall when Tate is editing all of this.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

Oh, she's gonna be so fucking sick of our shit. Like, at least it's at the end, so she can blanket cut this. That said, I'm gonna make her job a little more difficult by saying that there is actually something worthwhile talking about here. I'm gonna be very brief about it because I don't have most of the info, but there was, I forget which manga company it was, but basically they got found out that they had rehired a mangake who was a pedophile, and they came under fire for rehiring him under like a different name, and a couple mangake with that company, um one of whom I wanna say was either the Freerin or the Delicious and Dungeon woman. I I forget. There was two mangake that were part of that company that were like, or were getting published under that company that were like, we're taking our shit off. We like, we like we do not want to be associated with this, we do not fuck with this, like we do not want to be published by a company that hires rehires pedophiles. Um I forget who those were. I think it was the woman who does Delicious in Dungeon, but I forget. Anyway, we're we're done with that. Um Tate, I'm so sorry. You're gonna I you're gonna have like 10-5 minutes of cutting to do. We're gonna talk about the the books next. Um anyway, this'll be the end of episode one. Uh tune in for the next episode where we actually talk about comics. Um also thank you for sitting here with me through the Persephone monologue hour. Um, I know I talked a lot. We're gonna be doing some group discussions, and also I will be continuing to talk a lot. Um because that Addy hitting is all I gotta say. That Adderall. Oh, I forgot to take my pills. You can take your pills. We're gonna we're gonna take a brief pause. You can take your pills. Oh, they're there. Oh, I mean Pearl will probably give you a pill. She's got a bunch of addies. Anyway, bye! Alright, hello. Welcome back to the absolute ultimate escapist comics podcast. This week, sorry, this is take number three, because I've accidentally been messing up the uh the recording on the next part. But this is our um this is our this is our single issues round table. We're gonna be talking about a lot of really good issues this week. Um, we're gonna be talking about uh Vertigo's Best, Bleeding Hearts number two. We're gonna be talking about two pretty stellar titles in the absolute lineup, Absolute Batman 18 and Absolute Green Lantern number 12. Um we're gonna be talking about one of the one of the better black label books, uh Sirens Love Hurts. Um one of the most girly pop books on the stands, maybe the most girly pop book on the stands. Uh we're gonna be talking about alias Jessica Jones, uh the kind of sordo return of Jessica Jones. Um we're gonna be talking about Love and Rockets, number one, the reprint of uh Jaime and Gilbert and Mario Hernandez's classic, uh just like seminal comics masterpiece, um, that's still going to this day. We'll be talking about that. We'll also be talking about X-Men United and number one by Eve Ewing, and we're also gonna talk about Storm Earth's Mightiest Mutant. Um and to briefly before we get into those, I just kind of want to briefly talk about some books that came out this week. Um Locust, the uh L-O-C-A-S. Loka or L O C A S. That's probably Loc locus. What am I talking about? That's not Locus. Locus locus. Literally, what am I talking about? That was a you say locust? I was a that was a very white brain slip of me, to be quite honest. Um yeah, um uh Jaime Hernandez's um Hopi and um what is her name? Maggie and Hopi stories is collected in this like nice thick volume from Fanagraphics. I to be quite honest with you, wanted to it it it took a tremendous amount of willpower to not snag it off the shelf like the Grinch stealing Christmas. It's pretty cheap.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

It's it's pretty fucking cheap. It's cheap for what looks like a giant omnibus.

SPEAKER_04 38:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

It's like $49.99.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

And I want it so bad, dog. I want it so bad. If people don't buy it today, I might buy one for myself. Um and we'll talk about why a little bit later, but uh when we talk about Love and Rockets number one. But Love and Rockets has been a huge kind of gap in my in my thing. And again, we'll we'll talk more about that later. Um Flinch got reprinted this week. Unfortunately, we're gonna have to reorder another copy because I snagged it. It was Vertico's horror anthology back in the day. This cover is gross. Yeah, where it's the guy and he's like ripping his own eyeball out. Ripping his own eyeball out. He's like drawing like uh incision diagram, like doctoral like incision diagrams on his body to know where to cut with the scalpel. It's pretty gross. Um, this was a horror anthology that uh Vertigo put out, 16 issues, um really cool, really big names on it. Like Richard Corbin did stuff on it, Garthenis did stuff on it, um Azareo did stuff on it, Kent uh Kent Williams did stuff on it. Bernie Reitson. Murney Rison did stuff on it. And the stuff really I have I'm still reading through most of it. I have not read most of it, but to give you kind of a spectrum here, I have I have glazed Vertigo a lot, but this is like a pretty good. This is like a much more realistic representation of Vertigo, which is to say that a lot of it is very good and very interesting and very special. Not all of it is. Um, the Garth Ennis story in here is kind of nothing. It's satanic, like the Titanic, but what if instead of an iceberg it was because people did Satanism and had sex on a boat and then they blamed it on an iceberg? And like that's kind of dumb.

SPEAKER_03 40:15

But then you died every time I did Satanism while having sex on a boat, I would be dead hundreds of times over. That's true.

SPEAKER_04 40:25

It's this woman's lived a crazy life, y'all. Y'all don't even know the fucking half of it. Um, that said, that's like one end of the spectrum, and the other end of the spectrum is like kind of the infamous Red Romance by Joe R. Lansdale and Bruce Tim of um Batman the Animated series, which can really only be described as two bad, very bad people figure out that they love watching each other murder other people, and then that becomes not enough anymore, and then they need to like literally physically torture each other as like a sex thing, and it's really good. Like, horror anthologies have no sauce these days, and it's because they don't put do anything with even half the level of like horror or eroticism of these two like dog shit straight people getting off literally torturing each other with like pliers and fucking blowtorches and shit. And it's look, I'm gonna out myself in some kind of way, but it's it's really hot. It's it's all it's like She's outed. I'm out, I'm outed as a freak with taste in class. Did you ever watch Hostile? Well, no. See the thing See the thing the thing about the thing about hostile Jesus Christ. The thing about see, there's torture porn, and then there's torture porn. And that's what Hostel is the former, and the Joar Lansdale Bruce Tim is the is the is the latter. Where it's like it's meant to be hot. Hostile's not meant to be hot.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

I accidentally watched Hostile with my grandma. What? It was the strangest thing I have maybe ever done in my life.

SPEAKER_04 42:07

What if you what did you do to that woman?

SPEAKER_03 42:09

Uh what did she do to me with her idea? She wanted to watch Hostel? She wanted to watch a scary movie, and so we picked one up from Blockbuster. And she picked- and it was hostile. That's so funny. I think the Blockbuster guy suggested it to us. Yeah, watch this with your grandma. We had to turn it off.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Understandable. But uh yeah, back to the thing at hand. Just uh just come check out this book. Like, yeah, like just incredible people worked on this. Duncan Fagretto, Phil Winslade, Ken Williams, Phil Jimenez, Jim Woodring, um, Bernie Wrightson, James Romberger, like Mark Wheatley and Mark Hempel, Garth Ennis, who again I talk shit about, but Reese uh Eduardo Riso, Dean Moder, Bill Sinkovich. Like, you you can't shake this book without good creators falling out of it. I still need to read through most of it. Wait, did you say Sinkovich doing horror? Yeah, Sinkovich did uh where is it right here. Hey, welcome in. Yeah, Dean Moder and uh Bill Sinkovich. Oh, this is boogie. Yeah, like there's there's names in here that are just like they just they just don't got this kind of sauce anymore. Like they just don't put this level of effort into into horror anthologies anymore. Yeah. Like, even if not all of them work, and again, like I I said what I said about fucking like the Garthenis one that I didn't like, but like they Garth Ennis one would be like the high point of like most horror anthologies nowadays. Um anyway, we got yeah, we got Locas, we got Flinch, um, we got Metadogos, the new release from um Drawn and Quarterly, which is kind of being described. As like the punk zine version of Tekken Kin Creep that's like focusing on like the intersection of race and class, um, like from a French Vietnamese cartoonist. Um, it looks fucking incredible. It looks unreal. Um mixing a little like anywhere, it's like somewhere between Tekken Kincrete and like Ted McKeever. Um if any of y'all are familiar with uh goat Ted McKeever. Um a little bit of um maybe a little bit of Freddie Carrasco in here too. Um it's it looks great. Check it out. Um I also took our copy of that one because comic book gestures privilege. Um but anyway, those are trades. You can you can come look at them for yourself. Um let's talk about some single issues. Uh we wanted to start with sirens, I believe. Did we want to start with uh sirens divas?

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Yes. Sirens number two. Sorry, I got distracted by absolute green lantern.

SPEAKER_04 45:00

How how are you liking it so far?

SPEAKER_02 45:02

It's it's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 45:04

Yeah, it's a weird book. It's we'll get to that. We'll we'll get to that. Um what a fun little book. Good art, very good art. Yeah, I really, I really like Janoy Lindsay's work grew on me. Like it took me a second to like acclimate to it, but like I was like, oh no, this is like good, and it's like doing some interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_03 45:22

Um my god, sirens continues to draw just the hottest women.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

Oh my god. Oh, Renee Montoya.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

Oh my god, the Renee Montoya of it all.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Oh my god, what a what a baddie.

SPEAKER_03 45:34

Talk about fuck the police.

SPEAKER_04 45:35

Yeah, I we've talked about A Cab hall passes before of like who you would send to jail and like you know, but A Cab Hall pass and like the cop that I would fuck, and it's Renee Montoya. The things like like look, I'm I I'm a Dom, but like the things I would bark for that woman is all I'm saying. Little Wayne may have made some points with that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Wee wee wee wee. You're so right for that. Yeah, she's so hot. Oh my god. And like the men in this comic just they they just can't not draw them very gay. This is actually like all the women are just like so stacked and so into each other. I mean, the the Harley and Ivy of it all, like every time they're on panel, I'm just like, wow, they're really in love. Yeah, like you just feel that the way they draw it, and then and then they can't help but draw all the men extremely gay.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

It's an excellent the art is excellent in this book.

SPEAKER_04 46:34

Thank you, Bab Star, for being a lesbian. Like it's it's we've we've I think we've all talked about this, but it's like um there's a certain class of of gay women's artists, uh Q Hayashida among them of Dorohidoro Fame, who like when they draw women, that like there's there is like a very palpable female gaze going on. And these women are hot in ways that just like are not nearly as appealing to like men, because it's not for men, and you can tell when it off-puts men, and it's very funny to watch men be off-put by it. Um, because it's just really good art. It is like both technically just very accomplished cartooning, um, just wildly expressive and gorgeous and fun. Um, it's one of the best-looking books on the shelves. Um, and also these women are hot. Like men trying to draw women are usually not that good at it because most men kind of don't. I know.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

It's like it's like hot women, but they're not goofy cheesecake booby comics. They're like, you know what I mean? Like it's hard to describe.

SPEAKER_04 47:36

Yeah, because they're real people. There's like they're real people and they're sexy in ways that don't just appeal to fucking like these are these are women with like huge racks and like sk like like kind of skimpier outfits, and like they're and you would think that this is for men. There's like a couple sex scenes in here, one of which is like straight. You'd think this would be for men, but it's but it's not because it like it really does come down to framing.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

Um I mean it is a straight sex scene, but I personally found it hot, which is saying something. Yeah, right, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:08

Uh-oh. Better not awaken anything within me.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Oh no. My long what's the word I'm looking for? My long repressed Batman fetish.

SPEAKER_03 48:20

The reader's barely disguised fetish. Bring back Batman full frontal.

SPEAKER_04 48:25

You know what? That was that was the best thing Black Label ever did uh for for years, was putting Batman's hog in it and like, look, have as I've said before, was Batman damned bad? Yes. Was Batman damned racist? Yes. Was Batman damned misogynistic? Yes. Was it dog shit? Yes. But was the best thing about it Batman's penis? Yes. Yes. And then DC were pussies. They pussied out the second they got it too.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Pussied out on the dick. I know. Disappointing.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

They regularly pussy out with Batman having like being a sexual being at all.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

Like, similarly, like he wasn't allowed to eat out what's her name? Catwoman.

SPEAKER_04 49:06

Catwoman in uh in the minute series. And you know what? He doesn't eat pussy in this issue, but I believe he eats pussy. Like, I believe, like off-paneled, like a like a second later, he eat pussy. Heroes don't do that. You know what? I you know what? Like, I I think we need to push back against cancel culture. I think I think I think Wokus has gone too far. Uh, we need to like eat pussy again, is all I'm saying. Like, we need to bring eating pussy back. Make Batman eat pussy again. Make Batman eat pussy again. And I believe this Batman does.

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Um, you know, it's just nice to see a I mean, most more to the point, I believe this catwoman would insist on it.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, this catwoman is not leaving without getting her shit rocked. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

Oh my god, that this Harley and Ivy is just so cute in here. Sorry to distract. No, no, no. I just found a panel of Harley and Ivy kissing, and I'm just so happy. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 50:00

I would like to I would like to state on the record that Harley continues to be just like me for real. Um, but both with her new balanced parody shirt that says Big Naturals, um, and also her deep, unabiding love of a beautiful tall ginger. Um, Harley continues to be so just like me for real. Um that said, uh everybody's star charts is revealed in this in this comic. Oh my god. And I think Pearl has a hot take on this because she should be a Leo. She's because I'm a Leo and she's just like Harley being a Leo would make a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_03 50:36

Her being a fire sign at all would make sense. In this book, they make her a Libra. Tell us more. Tell us more. Well, I mean, a Libra, the symbol for the Libra is the scales, where you, you know, weigh things and judge things. They're the arbiters of justice. Harley Quinn is a maniac. She's at least I can't believe they didn't make her a Gemini. Yeah, she should have been a Gemini.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

Who was a Gemini? Someone was a Gemini, I think.

SPEAKER_03 51:04

I don't think anyone was a Gemini.

SPEAKER_04 51:06

Yeah, because Calum was Scorpio. She lied and said that she was a uh a Pisces, but which obviously.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

And the villainess knew that she was lying. She's like, bitch, you're not a Pisces.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

Because, like, look, not to be that gay person, but she's not a fucking Pisces. Like, I'm not even that well-versed in fucking astrology stuff, but she's not a fucking Pisces.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

I'm the resident non-believer in all of this, so like, you know.

SPEAKER_04 51:29

And you're right.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

You need to leave.

SPEAKER_04 51:31

No, no, she's right for that. Why is she she's being so controversial and yet so brave? I'm on Acacia's side.

SPEAKER_03 51:37

The only one that they the only one that they got right was uh Ivy as a Taurus.

SPEAKER_04 51:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:44

Because of course Ivy's an earth sign. Tell me more. In what ways is Ivy a Taurus? Ivy's got like a penchant for I think being cozy and like having a good homestead. True. Um, she is of the earth and of the plants. Yeah, very little. Although if she was an Aquarius, that wouldn't not make sense. Aquariuses are like the uh weirder, more um Sigma, if you will. Uh the more independent Aquarius. Ivy, Ivy is Sigma. I'm sorry. Um just like Bonnie Tyler said.

unknown 52:25

Ivy is Sigma.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

Um yeah, but if if she's gonna be a Taurus, I'll accept it. Um what are the other Earth signs? Virgo and Capricorn. Capricorn. I don't see her as a Capricorn. I don't see her as a Virgo, yeah. Of all the Earth signs, she would have to be a Taurus. Taurus is also known for being hungry and being uh insatiable. Um so I think that works for her. Libra! Maybe when Harley Quinn, for whatever reason, was kind of a part of the Bat family for a second, um, that was maybe like the most Libra thing she could have done. Um, but she's not Libra, she's an agent of chaos. Uh she's either Gemini or or Ares or Leo. That's and that's it. Anyways, that's that's my main beef with this book. Is they're trying to pin her as a Libra.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Yes, which is a totally valid and sensible beef to have. It is it is valid beef.

SPEAKER_03 53:38

I am sorry. Um we do uh in this book, we do get to meet uh the actual villain of the book. Um they've been pinning it on Calendar Man this whole time. Uh but I guess he has an alibi for the last murderer, so. And I think that's a brand new villainess. Um do we get her name in this?

SPEAKER_04 54:02

We don't. She's a she's a brand new villainess.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

Um we do get we don't I don't know if we get her villain name, we get her real name, like her civilian name.

SPEAKER_04 54:10

I I don't know this.

SPEAKER_02 54:11

She's like a therapist, which is fun. We've all known evil evil therapists, so that's realistic.

SPEAKER_04 54:18

I don't know if this is um, I'm gonna go grab something from up top, but I wanted to briefly say there's possibly an implication here that she is like a the return of a character. Cause there's because there's like that Catwoman Win in Rome thing. And like there was kind of an implication that like maybe she knows Catwoman. It's like a very brief moment, and like maybe I misread it, but I was just like, oh, were you like somebody that was like in the background of like Catwoman Win in Rome? Like, I've never read that, but it just it just seemed like there was just like maybe she like knew Catwoman a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 54:52

That might might have been just a throwaway reference, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 54:55

Black Canary refers to her as Horoscope at one point. Horror scope? Yeah. That just sounds like a quilt. That could be just a quit, but so far I think her working title is Horoscope. Can I see it? They they literally hit say her name in the book. Um, but she she's interesting. She's like Harley Quinn is like just doodling on the like crime photos of all the stabbed women, and she's just playing connected dots with the stab wounds because she's a Gemini, first of all. And uh they realize that the stab wounds line up with constellations.

SPEAKER_02 55:37

I think her name is Portia Celestine, or at least that's what Catwoman thinks her name is.

SPEAKER_03 55:41

Oh yeah, and she's Italian. And she's Italian. That's so brave.

unknown 55:47

Italian X.

SPEAKER_03 55:48

Italian X.

unknown 55:51

She is also brain of the serious.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

Good villain. Did you did you like the book, Acacia? Oh, I I did enjoy it a lot. I mean, it was just like You didn't read number one, right? I didn't read number one.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

But this was very much kind of like a romp in this way, like a very kind of like I don't know, like a road trip movie or something. I mean, it's not literally that, like we're not going anywhere, but it's like a girls' trip. A series of events, and they're all it's very like you're along for the ride. You know what I mean? Like, and it's interesting because it's like the time frame the book takes takes place over is longer than you would think once you read it. But the whole thing feels very like snappy and action-packed, like very much cutting out like the bullshit and just like get to the good shit.

SPEAKER_03 56:46

It would be such a good animated series. It would.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

I mean, it draws so much from the Harley Quinn animated series of the stuff. Yeah, I feel like it is.

SPEAKER_03 56:54

I feel like it feels a lot like uh uh what was that other thing they were all in? The Birds of Prey? Oh yeah, the the the Birds of Prey, the Kelly Thompson one. Yeah, it feels a lot like Birds of Prey, but like I don't know, sillier. Sillier, sexier. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 57:11

God, one of these days they're gonna let Kelly Thompson like off the the leash and just let her do something feral. Because like you see that like in again, like we don't want to talk about too much because it's not out this week, but like her in Absolute Wonder Woman, like the like bisexual sexual tension going on with between her and Zatana is fucking crazy. The amount of gay shit happening in that book is wild. And I've said this before to people here individually, but I'll say it on the record for the podcast. If Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Zatana do not scissor at the end of this arc, I will be storming the DC offices like it. This is my personal January 6th. Um I will be right there with you, sister. I'll be occupying fucking Jeff Johns' office or whatever, Jim Lee, whoever's fucking running things down.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

I'll be I'll be occupying Jim Lee's office like um I'll be the person that gets accidentally stabbed with a flagpole while all this is going on. Oh my god. I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_04 58:14

That'd be a great look. God, we truly live in the stupidest country on God's Green Earth. This fucking country dog. Um, is that all we want to talk about with sirens, or is there more we we should talk about?

SPEAKER_03 58:29

Uh hot chicks and uh murder mysteries, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

This is a gay book for gay women, and I think we need more shit specifically for gay women in the cape space.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

I wish this book was getting more attention. Teeny Howard and Babs Tar are just slaughtering it. It's so good. They're so incredibly good.

SPEAKER_04 58:49

And Mikhail Muerto. Yeah, uh Mikel Muerto Mikhail Muerto, sorry, my thing is tripping over myself. Um, really good colorist and a really versatile colorist too. Because he's the guy who usually colors um Matthias Bergara. And those are incredibly different colors. Um, and then yeah, this is so much more girly pop and like has like a sheen and a glisten to it. Um like something you would see like over like Leslie Hung's work on Snot Girl, um, which actually he might be the colorist for. I don't actually know. Um like Muerto is like a really undersung colorist, I think. Um obviously kind of Jordi Belair kind of gets a lot of focus and attention because she's spectacular. And like we're gonna talk some about Matt Hollingsworth, who's also very good. Um Tom Rabon villain. But Muerto does uh Miguel Muerto does a lot of really good work, and I think he should get the flowers. Um I think we should probably head on to um Bleeding Hearts. Uh oh hi, we'll be right with you in just a second. Um right, next we're gonna talk about bleeding hearts from uh Vertigo Comics by Dennis Camp and Stephen Morion, creators of 20th Century Men, the upcoming Ultimates number 23, and just some of the best fucking creators in comics right now, the two of them. Um I just I mean, we've we've long glazed them on the show. We don't need to glaze them any more than that. But we should talk about this book, um, Bleeding Hearts number two. Uh this is another one, like Sirens that all three of us read. Um I would just like to kind of maybe introduce this and then we could kind of start talking about it. Um I've said before that like all of these out of all of the books, this one feels the most like Vertigo in the sense that it's like really doing something different. Like nothing else feels like this in any tangible way on the shelves. I can't even think of another book that it feels like. Um We are kind of in an interesting period. And this is a much longer article that I want to write, so I'm not gonna get into much now, but like between Bleeding Hearts and um uh uh 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later the Bone Temple, we're kind of getting this revisionist zombie story. We're getting like the revisionist zombie story, like whereas like the and to clarify what that means, like the revisionist western was this genre that came about in response to the western's like valorization of like uh genocide and policing, and was and like the revisionist western would be like okay, so we're gonna like kind of like fuck with the myths of the west here, and we're gonna kind of like be a little bit more honest about what you know a western actually is for good and for ill. Um Cormac McCarthy does a lot of revisionist westerns, is a good example of them. Uh Red Dead Redemption 2 is arguably a revisionist western. Um hot take, hot take, yeah. I and I might be wrong. I uh you know, I could I could see uh Old Town Road. Old Town Road revisionist You know what? I will die on that hill.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:12

Old Town Road revisionist western, I believe. Take my horse to the Old Town Road. I'm gonna ride till I can't know more.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:27

But we're getting these, to get back to the revisionist zombie story, we're like getting these zombie stories where like zombie stories often have like a particularly like again, like I like for example, I love The Last of Us 2, despite many things. Um we don't have we don't even have time to get into that. Oh my gosh. That's a whole other thing. We don't have to that's a whole fucking mess.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

But Druckmann, you will always be famous and infamous. Always both.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

Yeah, it's like we can't hang out, but I like what I like you can't hang, like like actually spiritually Israeli, like the term spiritually Israeli gets thrown around a lot. There is some spiritually Israeli anyway, we're gonna we can't get into the last two. This is the whole fucking mess. I know we all feel strongly enough about it that we will just start talking about it. Um like I love that, I love that, that, that thing, and like, you know, people on this podcast have expressed liking The Walking Dead before. Um or like But the the thing about the zombie genre is that there's like a kind of an inherently reactionary bent to it. There's kind of this inherent in-baked assumption that like people are only out to get each other, and so thus, like, it it becomes this like very like you know, it it like kind of kind of post-George Romero's stuff, which is pretty radical. Like a lot of the original zombie stuff by George Romero is pretty like like the one of the like the like the main protagonist of George Romero's first um zombie movie is a black man, and that's very important. Like when he made that in the 60s. Like that, like that was incredibly crucial to the material. Like it is a very political movie. Um and kind of similarly, like 28 days later, in 2004, like which most zombie thing or in 2001, 2002, which most zombie thing, modern zombie things have kind of spun off of, like The Last of Us and um and um fuck. Um what was what was um The Walking Dead? Sorry, my bad. The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, pretty much any big zombie thing has taken scenes right out of 28 Days Later. But if you watch like 28 Days Later, it's like a relatively small movie about how England is foundationally evil, and also it's about Celyan Murphy like killing a bunch of like rapist British soldiers. Like that's like the crux of the entire movie is he's like, I gotta I gotta kill these fucking rapists. Like, it's not a particularly reactionary movie, necessarily. Um, but kind of everything since then has kind of had that bent of like this like hyper-violent world. And we come over here to Bleeding Hearts, where this is a very, like, as Pearl pointed out in the last episode, this is a book which takes has more in common with Zits than it does with like The Walking Dead. Um, it's it's a very funny book, it's a very silly book, even in its darker moments.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:24

Um my god, the the the zombie names get me every time.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:27

Oh, they're so good. They're so good. The the zombie culture, like they all have like their like they all have their own actual culture, which is fun. There's a bit no wait, I think that's when issue three, so I'm not gonna say anything, but like yeah, they all have their own unique individual cultures and like relationships to each other, like that bit in issue one where they like the to mark that you're best friends, you like tore off one of your arms and swapped it with the other.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:51

I know that's what that's why his arm, one arm on him is always so big because he took his friend's arm. Or it's like the one character whose name.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

Is like goes to a house filled with a starving family and eats the whole thing selfishly by himself. And like that name is like his punishment for that like selfish act in their culture.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:13

Yeah. Like that's that's what I'm getting at, right? Is like this is like Bleeding Hearts is foundationally about how our differing experiences of material material reality make it so we may as well be different species, and how we communicate in universal gestures of kindness and care around that. A lesser writer, because this this issue, jumping from the zombie's point of view, this one takes place from the human's point of view. Um the last survivor of that, of the of the humans who got eight, last issue. And she's kind of and it's this really beautiful piece, and she's talking about like the daughter she had with her husband, and then her husband dying, and like her daughter getting. There's a there's a really crucial line where it's like like her her she's talking about her daughter, and she says, like, I my daughter knows well enough not to, or what is it, rabbit, rabbit knows well enough not to get attached, but she does anyway. That's the whole thing. Like that's that's it right there. Like like sh like she gets attached. And like it is a book about how because they they can't understand each other, like literally cannot this the the sound of the zombies just sound like roaning. The to the zombies, the sound of human beings sound like screeches. Um, I think that might actually just be the very, very beginning of issue three, but like they both sound like monstrous to each other, they both inherently view each other with distrust or like uncertainty, and they don't know how to communicate because they literally can't. And a lesser, a lesser book would be like, this is about the political divide in America, and it's it's not that because that's too simple for what this is. Like, this is like two cultures of of people who have such foundationally different experiences with the world that it literally makes it impossible for them to communicate directly in like at least in like direct language terms. They can't have like a direct conversation, but what they can do is like these universal gestures of of kindness and care, like Poke goes the the little zombie boy goes to get um rabbit's stuffed rabbit, I forget with the flip-flop uh or flip, um, and goes to get that rabbit and passes it to rabbit. And rabbit after that like starts off with distrust and then kind of goes, Hey, wait, like, and her mom can't quite get on that level yet, is kind of still, you know, as an adult and is like, oh fuck, like these things are scary, they're violent, they killed my husband. And like, she has reasons to think that, you know, she did just watch, she's watched everybody she's ever loved be torn apart by zombies.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:49

But yeah, actual humans do not last very long in this comic. I'm surprised to see uh uh some characters actually get some character development because every human has just been ripped to shred so far.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:01

No, I I I thought that was like kind of a really good, like, from a storytelling perspective, like that the first panel that they show you is of like these human survivors like making their heroic escape, and then over the course of the first issue you see them all die, but then we return to these two characters of um what's the woman's name?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:24

Um god, what is her name?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:26

Rat Rabbit and Rabbit's mama, we're gonna say, yeah, but um, yeah, ultimately it's like come on in, don't no worries. It was sort of like a double like um flipping of expectations where they're like, hey, this is a story about the survivors. Just kidding, it's about the zombies, and then like just kidding, it's actually is about this one survivor, yeah. You know, but just like outside of like the larger themes and um you know ideas being talked about here, just the storytelling chops of Denise Camp is like a really long point here.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:59

He's he's kills it with everything he's on. He kills it. He's the best writer in monthly comics, and like Ron V's the only person even playing the same sport. Like, and I still think Dennis Camp is like like Dennis Camp is playing on such like a major league level that it's like insane. I know, it's relatively new, also. Yeah, I mean like before 20th Century Men, he had one book. He he had a book called Maxwell's Demons that was like a mini-series. I I haven't read it. Um, but it's supposed to be very good, and then 20th Century Men dropped, and it was like one of the best comics of the last like four years. Like, it's fucking incredible how good that book is in terms of like monthly stuff. It's so good. Um but yeah, I just I I I just think this book is really special and really cool. Like it's doing something really unique and interesting. I like that this book is like engaging with yeah, how do you communicate across lines of like fundamentally different material reality experiences? Because like, yeah, it's like it's not as simple and reductive as as like a political like right versus left, blah blah blah. It's like how how do you like Sorry, I accidentally went backwards in the conversation, my bad. Um, what I had meant to say earlier was actually going back to our point about the the survivors, was that I it seems like there's like an implication here that like a lot of survivors are dead at this point.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

Yeah, the implication seems to be that most of the world is dead, or at least they, you know, they seem to be in North America, that that most of the continent has already been killed and eaten by the various hordes. And um, you know, for the zombies from their point of view, like food is getting scarcer and scarcer, you know, and life is getting better because, you know, I don't know. The the book hasn't really gotten into the idea of whether or not a zombie horde, a zombie planet is like sustainable long term, but it seems to be at least implying that it is not, and what's going to happen when they run out of food, you know, is perhaps a question that will be answered later on.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:06

Yeah, and I'm I'm excited for that because Des Camp does really think about those things. He he is like a guy who like all of his books are kind of taking like a pretty like taking this like a pretty base good idea premise, and then being like, how how deep can we like get into that? Like a sort of crisis event, similarly, is like how like how many different facets of like what a crisis event happening to a regular person would look like. And Camp is is really good here. But sorry, Pearl, you were gonna say something, and I I I think I cut you off.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:39

Uh I'm just I'm really interested in this beating heart. Yeah, yeah. That's like the big like his heart is just beating. And is he cut- is he coming back to life? And are his friends going to try to eat him? That's what I'm really interested in.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

I mean, there is definitely going to be a confrontation with like his besties. Yeah, once they figure out his heart's beating. And that seems like it's going to happen soon because I think they were here together in this abandoned school. And then we kind of cut to, you know, him bringing back all of the rabbits, um, various toys and you know, food for him and his mother. And um, we don't really know what happened in between.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:25

So I suspect issue three is going to like fill in that gap for us. They don't really remember that they were ever human. I believe hopefully that happens in this issue and not issue three. Because I have actually read issue three. Yeah, Pearl and I have both read issue three because they um they they sent us a little PDF. Uh-huh. And uh I'm trying not to reference issue three.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:46

Yeah, because issue three does some cool really cool things that I want, I keep I similarly, like I like keep wanting to reference it. Um but yeah, I'd like I'd be really curious to see where the memory kind of aspect comes back. Because like I'm I I imagine he might start remembering some things and like and also where does that leave him and being able to kind of be this like weird middle ground between the material realities of of life and death. Um to kind of jump a little bit when in there, just to kind of talk about the art really quickly. Um look, I glaze Stippen Morion all the time. We've talked about how his art is closer, like evokes more things like zitz and crazy cat than it does a traditional zombie book. That his form, he does like so much with like having like a very loose form, he can tighten that form up really intensely. Like there are parts of like 20th century men uh where the form with like the the forms are really tight, there's like very hyper-intense detail. He can also go very abstract and he can go very loose with his line. He plays with anatomy for expressiveness a lot. He is very good. I think he's one of our best like working hard genus. He's just unbelievably good. Um and even and this is like a more restrained issue from Stippen Morion. Like, he's not doing quite as many, like it definitely is like a little bit more reined in some of his like wilder tendencies, like that if you're gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:36

But also I feel like that's it's kind of like emotional, and like based on like the the tone that he wants these scenes to have, you know what I mean? Like how disparate or focused the style will be, you know, kind of like the reader's focus follows that to an extent, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:55

Exactly, yeah, and like what he does zero in on here is like some really solid abstraction. The bit where she's talking about like her husband's death and like the and like paralleling the going up the stairs, and that like that's just incredible. Like the the use of that, and we'll talk about color in just a second, but just like the silhouette work there and just like the parallel with her going up the stairs and the kind of almost curve of it a little bit. He plays a lot with having a like much looser backgrounds. Um, and just like I just I just love Stiffen's work. I I'll later show you um this book he's this Santa Claus book he's doing called Our Soot Stained Heart. That's unhinged. It's so it's it's crazy. Um, but kind of the last thing I want to say about this book, because we've been talking about it for a while, we should jump around. Um Matt Hollingsworth is a colorist who's been in the game so long it's easy to take him for granted. Um he's he's done like you've seen a Matt Hollingsworth color at some point. Like, if you've read the original Jessica Jones, he did that. Like, if you've he's he's done books for Marvel, he's done books for DC, he's done books for Vertigo, he's done books for I think he was like the artist on or the colorist on maybe Preacher was maybe the colorist. Like he's he's been around for fucking ever. Um, and it's really easy for somebody who's been around forever like that to kind of take them for granted. Like you just see Matt Hollingsworth's name on there, and you're just like, yeah, he's you know, he's the color guy. Um but his color work cannot be overstated here. He really, really gets how to color Stippen Morion for maximum effect. He like, he really gets what Stippen Morion's doing. Like with these kind of like almost painted, but kind of like very soft paint. Like it's not watercolor, but it's like I don't even know exactly what to call it, but it's it's this kind of dreamier kind of like color. A lot of like purples, a lot of like kind of these like these pink purples, these kind of like dark blue greens, this kind of like reddish-orange. Like there's there's something very playful and very evocative about it. There's a panel, again, I don't want to speak too much about issue three, where it's just like the both the composition of Morion's images and the purple and blacks that Hollingsworth uses are so evocative, are so beautifully done. Like it just yeah, it's a good color palette. Yeah, it uses a limited color palette very, very effectively. Um, and he can branch out to be doing more color, but like yeah, the beginning of that with like the purples and like the like the sunset purples and pinks on that the with the the the birth scene, incredible. Like, so so good. Like I Hollingsworth is yeah, just a really you know, he's he's just a really top shelf talent, and he's been around in the game for a long time because he's really fucking good. And this is a good reminder that like he is that rich. Um, is there anything anybody wants to say about Bleeding Hearts 2 before we jump into Oh, one more note on the art.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:56

Yes. Uh the black hair and like black features and on the characters, very well drawn in this way. That you know, obviously, like a lot of artists in comic books cannot draw racialized people very well, but not true of um uh Stippen Warrior. Stippen Warrior, yeah. No, he he gets it and it's like it's nice to see, you know, just I don't know, the the bar is in hell, but like but like people just looking like people as as we are.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:26

It's it's nice, it's nice to see, yeah. And let's uh that reminds me, or like let's let's talk about Absolute Green Lantern, because I remember you said about uh her hair too being drawn well, and I just thought it was a fun little transition point.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, Absolute Green Lantern, another book that you know, who is the artist here?

SPEAKER_04 1:19:46

It's both uh Janoy Lindsay and Sid Codyan. Janoy Lindsay does all the the really good looking stuff. Uh Sid Kodian's the one who's kind of doing these like flashbacks that look a little bit like they're not bad, but they're just like not as good.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:58

Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, I can definitely see the the difference in their styles. But um, yeah. Um yeah, there's this basically the the first like double page splash in Absolute Green Lantern, you know, it features Jo running um with her like hair flying behind her and the shape of it and like the motion of it. You know what I mean? Like there's a stiffness to braids that's different than like if you have like a ponytail of like some straight or like curly hair or whatever, and it's like it's portrayed well, and it's just like it's kind of like the little things that like one notices as like a black comic book fan, as far as like you know, whether whether we're being portrayed in a way that like I don't know, I don't know what to say if it if it's accurate or respectful somewhere in between the two. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, it it doesn't look half-assed, I guess I will say, which a lot of black hair in comics can look very like, ugh, here you go, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:08

Yeah, it's very, very easy for non-black artists to just kind of be like, well, black hair is just like whatever, I get it. I don't need I don't need to like do research or think about it or talk to a black person about hair or do do any of that work. And so it's yeah, it's good to see like I don't know if John if Janoy Lindsay is black like or not. Um Stippen Morion, I know, is not. Um, but it's nice just to see, yeah, artists who like actually put thought and care and consideration into that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:37

I do miss the pompadour. Yeah, from the pompadour days. That was that was a good era for her.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:44

I mean, even Janelle Monet's not rocking that anymore.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

I know it's it was a moment. It was a moment. It's okay. I do miss it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:53

It was a better moment than the killmonger hair moment. Oh man. Which sadly just still still persists.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:00

Still persists.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:01

Janoy Lindsay is black. Metrics. I thought so, but it was just good to confirm. Um, it's, you know, I've I've talked about this book a lot. Um, I think it's very good. I think it's a sleeper hit. I think it's sometimes even better than Absolute Batman is. Um, like, um, although we'll talk about Absolute Batman in a second, um, because I have a lot of very positive things to say about it this week. But Absolute Green Lantern, yeah. I really I continue to really like the very weird kind of revisions that it's doing to Green Lantern. It's kind of falling into the Martian. It's not quite doing as much weird shit with it as like Martian did, where it's like almost completely a different thing. This is still a Green Lantern book to a point. Like it is still recognizable on some level as like a Green Lantern book, but it's fucking weird. And it's willing to take significant chances with like what the lore of the rings is and like how that works, and like why or what that even is. It's willing to complicate itself in these characters. There's just good, like it's not in this issue, but like there's just good dike drama. I know I've talked about that before, but it's just like, thank you, Al Ewing, for knowing how to write people.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:09

Yes. Also, good dike drama is foundational to Joe's character as the number one far sector fan. I can say this.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:16

Hell yeah. We'd love to see it. I it's still it's still really fun to me to think that that was a young animal book. Like, people kind of forget that that was part of like the the um the Doom Patrol like and Gerard Way initiative from 2017, but it was, which is just like a fun thing. Yeah. Um can I see that real briefly? Because I wanted to. There was like a this is a spoiler, but I did just want to read Hal's thing here. Because we have long talks on this podcast about heroes don't do enough to save people anymore, and it's like kind of less about that than it is, I don't know, weird intra nerd bullshit. Um, and I I really like his thing here, so I'm just gonna read it. Hal becomes the Love Lantern. Um and what he says here, we help them up. There's someone in there talking about the monster that's attacking them, trapped. I can feel them. Somebody, somebody was forced into this. Whoever's hunting us wanted a Tomar, uh Tomar Re. But what if the Black Star itself is Tomar? Anomaly. What did the Abencer want? What is chaotic action, Joe? It's not about fighting. Action without thought, maybe it's violence, maybe it's hate and cruelty and blind obedience. It could be those things if you twisted it. Or it could be something else. Something like love. Be free. Which is so fucking good. Like, if you've been reading this book, like that I think just clicks everything E-Wing's trying to do with re- reworking the like spectrum at uh instead of being emotions as being like levels of conscious action. It's re- recontextualizing like uh um Hal Jordan's Black Hand and the Black Stars. It's recontextualizing like the Love Lantern as love as as action. Love as a thing that you do. Um, and I don't know. I just think that's fucking cool. I think that's real neat. Um we want to say about it before we jump to maybe X-Men United or Storm?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:22

Uh no.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:27

Uh yeah, I'm very excited for where the uh cliffhanger on this one goes. Tomar wants to shoot Mogo in the face with uh with a gun. Excited for what that means. Umar's a little shit in this one, I like it. Um but anyway, would we like to talk about X-Men or Storm?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:49

Sure. Um I I've only skimmed X-Men United. Um and I've not gotten on Storm yet.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:59

Then Acacia, you read both of those, right? Or you read, or you didn't uh Storm number five comes out, but you were reading Storm number one and two, right? Uh yeah. And then and then you read X-Men United number one. Um and then I haven't read either of those things, which is part of why I wanted to do this now, is because I I can I can shut the fuck up for a second because I've been taking a lot of uh time to. Shut the fuck up for a second. Look, I love to talk, but it's also like, I don't know, it'd be nice to hear from other people about books that I haven't read. Absolute Ultimate Shut the Fuck Up for something. That shouldn't be the title of the game. So actually take if you're if you're when when you're listening to this, Absolute Ultimate Shut the Fuck Up has to be the title.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:39

Uh let's talk about um X-Men United first. Eve L. Ewing? Eve L. Ewing. Who has some some experience on Xbox in the past? Uh she recently wrote Exceptional X-Men, which I read like the first issue of and a half of. It was you know interesting or whatever. And um before that, I believe she was writing New Mutants back in the Krakowan era, which was um Was she writing New Mutants? The second run of it. I think she had Yeah, the second run.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:13

She had an X-Men run recently, didn't she? Was she doing like Exceptional? She was doing exceptional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With like Emma and Kitty and all of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:21

Right, right. That was a good one. Yeah. But um Yeah, basically, um, this book is interesting because it I don't know, it's it's another reset. The X-Men, X-Men side of Marvel is always resetting because you know, they're kind of allergic to the long term world or character growth.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:44

Yeah, it's a reset of a reset. There's like an identity crisis ever since losing Krakoa, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:50

This book seems to be in dialogue with that, though, which is good. Like, I don't know, in this weird, like, metatextual way, I hope the character. Characters working through the trauma of losing Krakoa can like lead to the X Office also being able to work through that and find some direction forward.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:11

Yeah, Eve's really doing something here. She's sort of set up a new uh home base for the X-Men in some sort of mind palace.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

Grey Matter Lane.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:21

Grey Matter Lane, but is that also nowhere?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:25

It's not. I don't know. They re- I don't think it's like nowhere or like the guardians of the galaxy nowhere. Oh my gosh. Anyway. This book, on the other hand, very bad drawing of of black hair. Like Prodigy's Raids are a travesty here. A travesty. Um, but that's whatever. Neither here nor there.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:47

Yeah, the the art.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:48

I'm not in love with the art in this book. It's um Tiago Palma. Yeah. Who I know very little about, but I'm I'm not loving his work on this book.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:59

Honestly, a lot of Marvel books look pretty bad for the most part right now. Um, even if the art were even if the line work is better, the coloring on these on Marvel is we've talked about it why it looks historically bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:12

Yeah. But the the writing in this book is is pretty interesting. I mean, they're doing a, you know, it's it's a hard reset and a back to basics sort of take on the X-Men. They're like, we have our home base, and the home base has like a cerebro of sorts and a danger room of sorts, and you know, there's a leadership conflict involving Scott Summers being a bitchy little bitch, you know. And, you know, which is which is all fine. But it's this book is only as valuable as where they go with it. Like, it's very much like a starting point, and like, you know, they're just giving us like, hey, here's your cast of characters, and they're kind of like trying to pull from various eras. I mean, not various eras, like the various recent like status quo they've had.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:05

We've got a lot of uh comebacks from exceptional X-Men and the recent, you know, Uncanny and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:12

Um, we have one mutant from Araco, which is a callback to the Krakowan era, which honestly that's my biggest kind of bone to pick with how Krakowan era ended, is they introduced the entire like society and culture of Iraq and mutants, and then they didn't do very much with it outside of like Al Ewing's uh X-Men Red.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:36

Um that got swatted down early. Like you like you read X-Men Red, and like the first three volumes are so good, and then you read volume four, and it's like it's not bad necessarily, but it's like, oh, you had like so much more to do here that you wanted to do here, and you just had you just had you just had to wrap that shit up and got wrapped up, and you and you had to like be involved with like three other fucking dumb fucking things happening because the end of Krakoa was so much worse than it started.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:00

Oh, it it ended with a whimper, sadly.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:02

Yeah, poor fucking poor fucking E Wing, uh the other E Wing who's who writes good X-Men. Yeah, uh was just yeah, that was.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:10

But that's I don't know, that's the problem. Like the way they ended the Krakoan era has just had long long-term repercussions because they could have kept it going and just made it the long-term status quo. And I know they were never planning to do that, but ultimately they also didn't have I'm just looking for a book that's called 51 image.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:33

We know we didn't have 51. Okay, alright, cool. Was it out this week? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:38

It came out this week.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:39

Okay, we didn't we didn't get a book called 51.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:41

Sorry about that. No, no, it's all good, don't worry. Alright. But um, the X Office neither had an intention of keeping Krakoa as a status quo, nor did they have a long-term plan for how to resolve it. So ultimately it just ended kind of messy and all over the place. And then the new era, you know, that came after that was also very all over the place. Like it felt like kind of throwing shit against the wall to see what what was thick, and I don't know, from from my limited reading experience um with that, I guess, ongoing era. This feels like a reset, but I also feel like the the uh the current era of storytelling hasn't ended, per se.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:24

Yeah, to kind of speak on that, like when when Krakoa finished um the spirit of Jim Shooter in the air saying, like, get that gay shit out of here. Enough. Um, after that ended, they were kind of like, okay, we're gonna do like a very 90s back to basics. And not all of it is like holy capital be bad. Like some of Jed McKay's X-Men, I read the first like six, it wasn't bad. There was some like interesting things happening here. I liked, you know, I liked Glob's. Glob's characterization was good, Cyclops was having some complex, like maybe I should be like a maybe I should be closer to my uh uh uh like Phoenix era, like Magneto was right, and so am I, kind of era. He was like kind of edging on that. Um there was there were some like little nuggets there that were interesting, and I kind of can't tell how much is the fault of individual X-Men writers. Well, some of them, some of them you can tell, because some of them are just bad comics, but like, but some of them it's also hard to tell, like, how much is the fault of like editorial who like kind of all of Marvel Editorial seem to have no idea what they want to do, and then kind of partway into this, they they stopped everything for four months to do this, like the fucking uh Raid on Greymal shit. No, not the Raid on Grey Mulk. They did like an Age of Apocalypse thing. The old the Age of Revelation, right? And multiple people like who were like X-Men readers were like, I can't fucking do this, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:02

So dumb and bad.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:03

So dumb and bad. Like they were like, we can't fucking do this, man. Like I I couldn't follow it. It it's it's rough out here for X-Men readers.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:10

And it was like, they telegraphed it so early, and I knew it was gonna be bad when they did the fucking like who's gonna be Apocalypse's Air Mini event. All these really good candidates, and then they were like, oh, it's gonna be Doug, because fuck all his previous, you know, characterization and storytelling throughout the Krakoan era, which was actually pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:32

With my man got married, he was like perma merge with Warlock, like he was the voice of Krakoa. He had his own, his whole kind of like weird polyamorous family going on with him and his wife and his island and self-friendly, and then they were like, no, he's he's gonna be a B tier apocalypse now. And that was dumb and bad when they did it. And then they stuck to their guns and said, We're gonna have a whole demand about it. And I do they not, I don't know. Was there no feedback? Did the fans not say, hey, this is dumb, don't do this? Or do they just ignore what fans want? I don't understand.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:14

I think they're ignoring, because like I don't know, like, I don't know how you end the age of or sorry, not age of friendly. I don't know how you end Krakoa like they did if you give even a single shit. Like, so speaking to your point about Doug, like, Apocalypse, similarly, was a character who was given so much depth. A character I had previously never really cared about. He could just have conversation, like a single conversation from him was fascinating. Like that that issue four of Hickman's X-Men, where fucking Apocalypse was just having like a religious debate with Nightcrawler is peak peak. Yeah. It's so good. And then the end of uh and then the end of like they made him like a cool, like fucking like religious leader and a wife guy. I think a wife guy apocalypse is one of the best things Jay Hickman's or Jay Hicks ever done.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:08

Um, and then in the end they were just like, well, he's just gotta be evil again, cuz that's how literally reintroduced him in like the you know penultimate issue of the Crack of One era, and it's just like, and now he just wants to fight all the X-Men. It's like bro, he was mentoring them in the ways of mutant magic. Like he was doing all kinds of like cool ass shit, merging like the world of like X-Men with the world of like you know mystical Marvel, blah blah blah. And and yeah, and now he was just a villain again, and now his heir is an even more boring villain. And I'm like, what what are we doing here? That's that's my question. And I don't know, I guess getting back to X-Men United, I think Eve understands that that we're having an identity crisis, and her solution does seem to be very much like back to basics, and I'm not sure I agree, you know, like I think Eve Ewing is a fantastic storyteller and could definitely do some interesting things with the premise that she set up here. However, um it's a little back to status quo.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:28

It's a school again.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:29

Yeah, it's a school, Emma's in a leadership position, you know, and so is you know, kitty, like, you know, again, Cyclops is bitchy again, which I kind of like bitchy cyclops, but he's been he's been way, way more interesting recently than that, you know. I don't know. I don't know. I just I want to see X-Men comics be good again, and I'm not sure if they if they're working with enough ideas to make that the case, actually. Like, you know, like that's like this book was a fun read, and it was very like comfort food for longtime X-Men fans. You know, it's like oh there's a danger room session, but somebody got too into it, and now it's actually dangerous. Like, you know, it's like it's very like they're playing the hits, you know. They're playing the hits, but like, I don't know. I there's so many new characters though. Like, if they if they can do something interesting with at least one of these characters and give me some you know character arc to invest in.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:43

I just I don't think there's very much interesting to be said or done with like Scott or Emma or Kitty or anybody right now, but like I don't know. Give me something interesting with like bronze or you know, one of these new kids.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:59

Yeah, I I think uh kind of a broader point, I think this will lead us to Jessica Jones alias, is I think something that's happening now is that when interesting things happen at Marvel, it is often the writers having to like actively fight an editorial who like at best has no vision or actively is hostile to them. And I kind of think the X-editorial seems very hostile towards X-Men fans, towards X-Men readers, it just kind of wants to cater to like the people again who are just kind of like, well, I didn't like that gay shit with Krakoa, blah blah blah blah blah. And like they just want their fucking wanky goddamn 90s bullshit back because we're in the 90s wave. And so people like EV Wing have to have to kind of like try their best to get something through this. And kind of similarly, jumping over to Jessica Jones, which we won't talk about a lot, it's like look, I'm a Jessica Jones girly. I I I love my I love my like like foul mouth girly, like her dealing with like the rape that she experienced, the hands of the purple man was like very seminal at the time, and it was very meaningful to me in my life when I read it. Um I appreciate that she's not dealing with the purple man in this, just as a brief note, um, because I think writers have kind of gotten stuck in being like, we just gotta have her like endlessly relitigate the thing with her rapist. And it's like, guys, like Alias already like it was in the original series, like they already they already did the whole arc on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:30

And also just to put yourself in the in the shoes of the character for a second, what a living hell! Yeah, just like your whole life is defined by you having to confront your rapist over and over and over and over again, and you never move on, you never heal. Yeah, you know, such is the way of being in a comic book, but still, it's egregious sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:52

It's egregious. And and so for a while, Jessica, like nobody's really done anything with Jessica Jones. She's kind of, I mean, like, Gail Simone did a thing called the Variants, which seemed okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:02

Um, it had Phil Nodal art made it really hard for me to get through it.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:06

Yeah, I mean that yeah. Phil Nodo's one of those dudes who like I'll I'll show you this later if I can find it, but he did a he did a Fantastic Four versus the Planet of the Apes cover recently. And all of the variants for each issue, there's there's one variant each issue that is done like a classic movie poster, and he did one that's a reference to that's like remaking the Wicker Man poster, and it looks so good, and it's like you have this in you? Like, you can just like change your shit up and like make it look like because there's times where I think Phil Nodo can work for the story, but there's but a lot of the time, yeah, it can be so flat. And like he changes it up here, and it's like it's it's it's like echoing the cover to a degree, but it's like uh or echoing the the original movie poster to a degree. But it's like you have that gas, like you have like this like abstraction that you're like playing with here, these like thin, wiry like figures and this very like 70s movie poster. Like you can do that, but anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:06

I'll have to say that because yeah, I will. I was just thinking, is Phil Nodo like influenced by Romita Jr. Because there's something about their art that reminds me of each other, and it's just the uncanny valley of like the faces or something.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:20

I yeah, I uh hold on, I'm gonna push this back just because of the table shaking, but I I had I had never I had never thought of that, but you're so right. I I think that actually really helps me kind of get what maybe Nodo was trying to. Yeah, you know what? That's he's fuck, he's a JRJR guy. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. That makes so much sense. And also a JRJR guy, and he's probably also a little bit of I wonder if he's also a little bit of a Salvador LaRoka guy. Like another artist for whom coloring really changes the whole game. Like LaRoca looks like dog shit if you put that fucking 2000 coloring. But like you, but if you put like the like they if you look at read Hickman's Avengers or whatever in LaRoka's art and you're like, what the fuck? This LaRoka? Anyway, we are getting so afield. Um, and this is already running so long, and that's okay. Like, Tate'll probably just chop into two. And you know what? We have so much good stuff here. I think this is just an incredible episode. I think I think we've I think we fucking slayed it. Um but Jessica Jones is back. Um it's better than expected, um, which the bar's subterranean here, um, because they haven't done almost anything good with Jessica Jones for a while. And admittedly, they're only doing it in part because the show is coming out, or or or Daredevil season two is coming out and Jessica Jones is coming back, which, first of all, Daredevil show is shockingly really great, besides episode five. Two, I'm really excited to see Kristen Ritter as Jessica Jones again. Like, look, I'm a simple woman. I thought that first season was so fucking gas.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:01

Yeah, it really was, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:03

It was so good. I'm just I'm just happy to see her again. Um, and so they're doing this series, and like the thing is, like, it's one of the better looking Marvel books because Borges is doing he's he's doing like it's not it doesn't look that great, but he's definitely like channeling Michael Gados from the original series. He's channeling Alex Malieve, he's channeling that kind of era of like 2000s, like more like shadowy, kind of very angular artists. Um, and so it like looks pretty good, if not like it's not particularly ambitious, but it looks better than most Marvel books do at this point at this point. And the colouring is okay. Um that said, I like it overall. Um I think Sam Humphreys has not a bad voice for the character, but kind of to bring it back to what we were talking about with X-Men United, he's having to push an interesting thing through a bunch of dumb Marvel editorial bullshit. One of those things is that Redband is the less serious thing is that Red Band is nonsense, and it doesn't mean anything, and I don't know what we're doing with explicit content here if she can't even say fuck. The fact that she can say shit as much as she does is a step up from what Redband was doing. Like we were having like Punisher like like fucking Tombstone was like cutting dudes like pieces of dudes' faces off very graphically, and then but like the word fucker and cunt and shit was like bleeped out kind of bullshit. It's like what are them to baby America. We're in baby America, and like at like Black Label was kind of that way too for a while, but at least some of the black label stuff now, like sirens, that's like thank you for just letting the girl say some bad words. Like, we live finally as like we're being serious here.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:48

Um, and so Sam Humphreys is like, you can actively feel him like he like wants to say fuck so bad because it's so clear that that's what a moment calls for, and he just has to use shit and damn. It's weird that damn kind of ends up becoming like even more of a fuck insert than it's it's weird, and you see him like straining against like this. The more serious uh difficulty, and I think he's really making something he's making maybe the best of this that you could. Um, but that in Amazing Spider-Man recently, because of the stupid gang war bullshit that happened at the end of fucking Zeb Wells' thing, Luke Cage is mayor of New York City. Um that's still a thing. It's still a thing, and it's dumb and bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:33

Every time I look up in Marvel Comics, I'm just like, wait, the dumb thing that they were doing five years ago is still happening, and it's always still happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:40

It's always still fucking happening.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:42

Like they won't change the status quo when it's something cool, but when it's something really dumb, they're like, Yeah, mayor Luke Cage.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:49

And so most of this issue is like Jessica being like, I had to give up my fucking license. Um, and she finds some she finds her neighbors killed when she's like going back to her office, and then this reporter snags a photo of her and is like a journalist who was supposed to not be a fuck or uh uh investigator who's not supposed to be an investigator anymore. She had to turn in her badge because of conflict of interest with the mayor's office or whatever. She's back at it again, and a bunch of this issue is like Luke Cage being like, baby girl, I can't believe I'm saying this, but like I'm the mayor now and I have to worry about optics and blah blah blah, and they get into this fight. And the fight itself is like well written, but it also necessitates that like Luke Cage be concerned about optics. Like, and it ends up accidentally being a book about how like assimilation into the broader political structure ends up just getting you nowhere, and that like Luke Cage can't really get anywhere. Being I don't know, I don't want to give Sam Humphreys that credit. I mean, like maybe it's I I think it's not not there, but it's also just kind of there by necessity if you want to be even remotely serious about any of this. Like, the whole thing is just like Jessica being like, literally, why can't I just go investigate my neighbors being murdered? Like, why the fuck do you even care? Like, and he's just like, well, no, I'm on your side, but like, we should fucking I don't know, like the optics look bad for me, and like I have to navigate optics, and like there's a whole bit in here where he's like, and it feels this feels like Sam Humphreys complaining more than it does like him being into this. But he's what is what is the thing Luke says? It's crazy. It's fucking crazy. This is an official line. Um he's like, Where is the the fucking line? Because it's it's so important. Um sorry, this is taking me a second. I can't believe can't believe I'm about about to say this, but how about we give the cops a chance to do their job here? There's no fucking universe in which Steve Cage says that.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:01

Honestly, it's it's so disrespectful of his character. Yeah, like I I don't want to just be like Marvel Comics is racist, but Marvel Comics is racist, obviously. Marvel Comics is so But it's just like the way that they're just treating this black character like just this blank slate. Yeah, like everything that made him who he was and all of his like his backstory and his political motivation and ideologies, throw it out the window. He's the mayor of New York now.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:31

You know, and it's like and not eat like if there were a such thing as a real life like spook who that sat by the door situation, you know, like Luke Cage would be that guy. He would be that guy. Instead, he's just like, Well, gotta follow the rules now. I'm the mayor. And it's like, who is this man? Where is Luke Cage?

SPEAKER_04 1:49:53

That's just not his character. Very briefly, if y'all haven't seen the spook who sat by the door, I just also watched that myself recently. What for the first time? What a good fucking movie. That's like they call everything woke these days that has like a half a heartbeat and like gives even like a modicum of a shit about somebody. But that movie's like militantly actually woke. Yes. It's so good. Anyway, sorry, good movie. Go fuck go fucking check it out. It's really good. Um, I actually cannot believe that movie got made in 1972. But um, yeah, and the thing about it is like I like I feel I feel a little bad for Sam Humphreys here because it seems like he understands this on some level. And the way that he's writing this is like you can just feel him straining to make a good comic, and you can you can feel him like banging on the bars of his fucking cell here, just like, please, why do I have to do this bullshit? Like, at least let like at least let me like make this complicated. Like, and Jess does call that out in here. Like, Luke says that, and Jess is like, when the fuck did you ever care about optics and any of this shit? Like, why does this matter to you? And they have like a real argument, like it feels like a good argument, like it feels like actual human character writing. Again, I'm not saying this is even that good of a comic overall, but the bar is so fucking low at Marvel right now that just like having like a real human conversation with like messy, mature feelings wrapped up in that. I'm like, Jesus Christ, roll out the red carpet! Someone wrote a good fucking comic at Marvel. Um, and it's again not even that good. We're not even gonna get into the broader plot here. There's there's like typhoid Mary, and there's like a cult thing, and that looks fine. I don't care. Um, but I just like on one hand, I'm glad to have Jessica back. I'm glad to have a writer who seemingly gives a single fuck about her at all. But it is crazy that like they're like even even a good comic like has to be like a a small flower blooming through the concrete at Marvel. And even then, like it's like it's inherently lesser because people like Eevee Wing and Sam Humphreys have to fucking deal with stupid bullshit like to get where they are. Like and again, I'll just we're running out of time and we still got a few things to talk about, so I'm not gonna talk about Imperial Guardians. For the short version, Hickman was gonna set up a thing. Imperial Guardians was supposed to be the first in a long-running uh Guardian series. Um but then they cancelled it to five issues last second and didn't say any reason why before it even released. And so Marvel's just doing nothing right now. Um anyway, we got kind of we're we're running a little bit long, but we've we've we've had some really good conversations. I think the last two things I want to talk about Batman and Love and Rockets number one. Um Love and Rockets number one, I'll kind of talk about because I think it's a little bit maybe faster. Uh Love and Rockets seminal work by Gilbert and Jane and Jaime and uh Mario Hernandez. Um been running since 1979, or I guess 80 was when it was actually published. Some of the comics in there were made 1979. Uh still runs to this day. Um these guys, I were a huge blind spot in my I'd I've I've read like like you if you're a a a comics reader of any serious, like tasted class, you've you've at least like encountered some level of like a Jaime or Gilbert story somewhere, whether that or even just like a cover that they've done, because they're they they're so prolific. Um but I had personally never read Love and Rockets, and that was that was like a huge gap in my in my reading. And they put out Love and Rockets um volume or uh the first issue reprinted as it was initially printed um back in in 1980. And um God, I love the cover so much. It's very good. The cover's so good. The art is incredible. Like, just out of the gate, I'm gonna I'm gonna say I I Gilbert and Jaime are some of the best black and white artists that we have. Like the shit that they're doing from the jump, by the way, is incredible. And it's and it's just clearing everything of that era that like people kind of talk up like the Dark Knight Returns and all of these other seminal books, and like they are seminal books, they are important books. Love and Rockets does have respect on its name, but it but definitely less. And I just like they are just doing shit that like is just body this stuff in here is bodying the future, like, and this came out in 79, 80, and 81. Like, that's fucking crazy to me.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:43

It is.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:44

Um, and it's so and so so the original volume or uh uh magazine of this, of this issue one, is broken up between Gilbert and Jaime stories. Uh Gilbert here is just Bert, um, because he's funny like that. And so he he's serializing a story called Bem, uh B-E-M. Um we'll get into that in a second. And then uh Jaime is doing his like Maggie the Mechanics and like related world stories. And this it creates a really unique pacing where like Jaime is a very grounded guy. Like he's a guy who's like, you know, here's my here's my little like slice of life lesbian stories, and like maybe there's a robot, and maybe there's some flying motorbikes or whatever, but it's just about some girls and they play in a punk band, and it's it's very like slice of life, very smiley face. Oh, very good character work, but it's very grounded. And Gilbert is just on his shit at all times. Like, he's just like, all right, guys, this is a story about a god who's like actually like a concept, and it was buried underneath the earth for millennia, and he's going to kill everyone who imprisoned him, including a guy named Harold Penis, and also a guy named like something Zitz, Harold Zitz, who's like a he's got an airplane head, and three different people need to try to seduce him because actually this monster that got out, these real estate developers like possessed his brain, and they're gonna use that to like do colonialism, and so we need to do sexy dances at it on an island to then gain seduce it and gain control of it, and it just like spirals out from there into madness. And the thing about it is that like both of these modes are fantastic, but what I really like about this the single issue, and what's kind of a bummer about reading Love and Rockets, is that most of Love and Rockets, when in the collected editions, is collected by story. And so you'll get like here's a collection of like Jaime's mechanic stuff all back to back to back, or like here's all some of Gilbert's like wild bullshit back to back to back. What is so nice about the pacing in this book is that like Gilbert can like do his crazy shit, which is all really, really good Pult Fever Dream stuff. It is excellent, like it is an excellent, excellent, like both authentic and satire of like Pult Fever Dreams. It's so good. Um, it's very Starenko and Ditko-influenced. It looks incr but it's also so silly, it's incredible. There's a ton of dick dick and poop jokes. It's it's wild. It's great. But but once that like that becomes like very overwhelming and overstimulating, and then you immediately go into like a uh Jaime, Maggie the Maggie the Mechanic story, or Penny Sentry, or these like much more grounded, even when Jaime's doing something more uh elevated, like you get the Penny Century story, where she's like hooking up with this devil and he and she's like trying to convince him to like make her a superhero, but that's kind of all it is, is like she's just like talking to a boyfriend that she wants something from, and he says why he can't give it to her. That's like it's it's it's that grounded. And so you get this like really good roller coaster where like you come down from this like insane high, read something much more mellowed out and character-focused, and then you come back up and you are on that wavelength again. It's really nice, and you and that was something I didn't expect because I've only known Love and Rockets or known the way Love and Rockets has been packaged by story. And kind of the only way to read it issue by issue is this big $400 collection that Fanagraphics put out where it's like every issue by the issue with all of the back matter and stuff, and it's incredible, it's very cool. But who has $400? Yeah, who has $400? And like I get why, in most circumstances, you would want to like have just like, yeah, here's a bunch of Maggie the Mechanic stories. Like, because they're all a slice of life that all follow each other, it's a big serial, it progresses with these characters for for decades. I'm considering picking up uh Locas um because it's yeah, it's just like it's good slice of life fiction.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:46

But I just like this idea about like packaging in like in art and especially storytelling, but the parallel I'm thinking of a little bit is like um albums, like a music and like the difference between like hearing a song in the context of an album versus hearing it like on the playlist or on the radio.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:04

And it's like the original format of Love and Rockets was almost like a playlist on purpose, you know what I mean? Or almost like, you know what I mean? And and yeah, like it's easier to consume stuff if it's like put together in this way that's like cohesive and has like a you know continuous narrative, but the whiplash of the original formatting of it was part of the experience. And I don't know, there's something to be said here about like author intention versus editorial, like you know, meddling, or I guess it's not even editorial at a certain point, it's like publishing on a on a larger scale, but like yeah, but um, yeah, no, I I think it's interesting, like, and there's something cultural there, you know, about like that format and like you know, 70s and 80s, like indie comics, and like the vibe that people were expecting from that, yeah, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:06

There's and there's something really to be said. I need to read more of this interview. Pearl found this really good interview. I don't remember if it was in the comics journal, it was somewhere, it was like this really big interview with Gilbert and Jaime, and I think Mario was piped in sometimes too. Mario's like the weird brother where like he does do stuff and he's like involved, but sometimes the degree to which he's involved is never quite clear, but he's always kind of there and he's always doing shit and he's always important, and he does have some some solo stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:35

Weirdly specific rec reference, but the shea to their NERD. Yeah, yeah, perfect. We all we all know what Pharrell and Chad uh do, but this other guy, he's there. He he talks sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:47

Yeah, we know he's doing something important, but like we're not always entirely sure. And like, yeah, yeah, that's a it's a really good way to put it. And music is a really good way to put to put it too, and like, and also, yeah, what is culturally expected of them is also a way to put it. That in that interview, they kind of talk a lot about like being their like father being like a Mexican immigrant. I think they're like second-generation United States uh immigrants to the United States, and like kind of talking about like their I forget what their father did. I'm forgetting. They like talked a good deal about it, and it was very interesting. And that their father, like, and their mother both encouraged them from a very young age to like read, and like that comic books were very much a thing that their parents supported. Like they were just like, our kids are reading, we're happy with that. And they would like they didn't always have money for like good paper, but they could come home and they could like get like packaging basically, or like like a um paper wrapping for books, and they could like tear that up and make little like papers and give little crayons and pens and pencils to to the three brothers, and they would and like they immediately like locked it on and got like and developed this like this this rapport with each other, where like they have such a like a very similar style. Like you could, in theory, if you were just looking at line work abstracted of context, you could you could probably be like, it'd be hard to tell maybe who Gilbert or Jaime is if you were just like were at a glance and you had zero context. But if you pay attention to any context, you can tell who what Jaime is who or what Jaime is doing and what Gilbert's doing because there are these little nuances, and like you can tell like what specific kinds of of comics that Jaime really liked. You can you can see the Archie influence, you can see like you can see a lot more like grounded slices of life. And Gilbert, you see like you see a ton of Starenko, you see a ton of Ditko, you see a ton of like you see a lot of like old like spy pulps, and like you you get you he's like a lot pulpier than than uh uh Jaime is. That said, they both do go the other direction. Like in some of the the short stories that are interspersed in this are also really there's like there's a really good experimental Jaime short in there. It's uh who killed uh How to Killa. How to kill a how to kill her. Um and you could mistake that for a Gilbert story in terms of it just being like weird and abstract, but it's a Jaime and it's so good. Like, I don't think I could tell you what exactly specifically happened, but I I fucking felt that. Like it gets on like uh Gary Groth, uh the publisher of Phantom Graphics, has a thing in the front where he's he's talking about them and he's talking about Gilbert, but I do think this is true in a similar way for Jaime's story here, where they're both talking about like, or Gary Groth is like, yeah, Gilbert is so fucking good at doing this like abstraction of pulp, and I think Jaime's doing that really good here too, is like in that story, he's like he's abstracted pulp down to its like most essential images and like tones and to something that is so felt, like, and it and you don't have to like you know similarly. The story after that Gilbert's doing there's some there's some naked ladies and giant monster poops. That guy loves big titted women in monster poops. That guy loves drawing poop, it's crazy. He does.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:15

You can see the love in these drawings of poop.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:17

He's he's gotta I I I'm calling.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:20

I need that squirrel to just be just so perfect.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:22

I'm calling it now Gilbert Hernandez Scat Fetish. Um Two Brothers One Book. Two brothers one book! Stop! Wow. Wow okay, you know what? I've said this like three times, but this is actually what we should call the podcast. It's two brothers one book. That's so funny. That's so funny. Thank you, D.Va. No, like if you've read his blubber, which is the first one of the first things I read of Gilbert's, it's one of his more recent books, it's like what I can only describe as like a zoological survey of the horniest, most shitting animal like cryptids to exist on God's green earth. It feels like if like Michael DeForge was really into drawing like Yeticock and like and like monst and like weird cartoony monsters like eating poop and like carrying around big titties women. Like Gilbert, Gilbert's on some fucking like id shit, but the thing about Gilbert, or the thing the thing about underground cartoonists is that a lot of them pride themselves on being on that id shit. Like you're like you look at like Robert Crum or like Chester Brown paying for it. They're all like guys that talk about poopy and like have sex and they think about cum and masturbation, and like most of those guys are boring as fuck. I don't give a fuck about Robert Crumb. Like, he's again, we've talked about this before. He's technically accomplished, I don't give a fuck. Like Chester Brown, like, man, that's cool that you're a John. Like, I don't give a shit. Like, what do you gotta tell me, man? Like, most of these guys suck, and I don't give a shit about them. Jaime's like an or not Jaime, sorry. Gilbert is an actual honest to God freak. Like, he is a pervert in ways that would obliterate Robert Crumb from the face of the fucking earth. Like, and I and I love that about him. Like, does Gilbert have some some like odd like fetishes with like big boobed women and he he discovered dick girls at some point and he's like never quite let that go. But you know what? I'm gonna let him have it. I'm gonna let him have it. Like, I think he's earned it. I think he's earned it. And Pearl, something you said when I we were talking we were talking about it at my house is that like, even for all the ways that there is like clearly some like some fetishy and cheesecakey stuff going on here, both Jaime and like Gilbert actually like women.

SPEAKER_03 2:06:52

Yeah. Yeah, that that comes through. That comes through. Like they get to be main characters, they get to be lesbians, they get to be like real, have real bodies. Yeah. You know, like, and as much as they are uh fetishized and uh you know underground cheesecaked as they are, uh, they feel like real people a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:15

No, it's both. Like I'm looking at this page right here, and they have a picture of like what may or may not be the same character, and in one she's like dancing, and her ass is like sticking out and it's very like sexualized in this way. And then another panel, it's either the same or a very similar girl, and it's just like you know, in her little dress looking very cute, and it's like you know, it's it's very both hand, like it's not putting women in like a box of like women are this or must be this, it's just they're people, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:45

You know, like women have a lot of different body types. What there's like there's a lot of black women in this book, actually. Like, there's like a lot of black people in general.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:54

A lot of black people in general.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:55

Yeah, a lot of black people, black people, yeah, black people in general in that book. Like, there's a lot of people of different body sizes and types, and like some of them are very silly, and some of them are very like are cheesecakey, but they all feel like real people, like first and foremost. And then, yeah, to your point, Pearl, about like getting to be lesbians, they were doing that, like Jaime was like drawing that in like fucking 7980. Yeah, like most people were being giant pussies about putting gay people and shit, and like Jaime was just like, I don't know, man, they're lesbians. What are you gonna do about it? Like, he doesn't even draw attention, like they wake up in bed together naked, and they're like, it's kind of unclear if they're friends or if they're like girlfriends, and honestly, the story never resolves that. I only figured that out because I looked up later, and it's like sometimes friends, sometimes girlfriends, Maggie and Hopi. Um, and you know what? Like, that's that's crazy. That's crazy that just like some guy was just like, I'm gonna write good lesbians because fuck it, I want to write some good lesbians.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:51

There's like nuance in there, yeah. But they're not just like these I don't know. I mean, maybe they are for the male gays, but they feel like they've got several more layers to them and dimensions that like they feel like real characterity.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:06

Yeah, yeah. And they and and yeah, like they're just like every woman in there is like so different. Like they're so different, like everybody has like such like everybody who's like a character and like not just even like like background characters have have detail, but like every woman who's like a main character has like such a different temperament, and like has like such a different like there's like arguments between women in this book where I'm just like, oh, I see how you like got here. Like in just a few pages, I see how like you have this like wider history and how your various temperaments have like informed this like frankly very silly argument about one of you being a little bit fucking woo-woo about new age shit, like and not doing enough drugs about it. Like, but like there's there's there's some real there's some real depth here. Um also shout out to the one comic where it's just like it's just like almost entirely in untranslated Spanish.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:59

Yeah, yeah, I was noticing that as well.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:01

I have a I have a friend who like does when in her short story, she like some of some of that work is is untranslated, and she's just kind of like, well, oh yeah, I guess we are running on time. You're right, you're right, you're right. Thank you for keeping me focused. Well, we can talk about that later. Um we have run really long. Um We never talked about Storm. We never talked about Storm. I do we could still talk about Storm and I want to talk about Absolute Batman. Tay can cut this up into two pieces. Tay Tay, baby girl, I'm sorry. What's that at? That's at an hour and a half.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:33

An hour and a half. How long is it usually? Well, that's an hour and a half, and then there was a recording before it. That was 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:39

And that was also, yeah, so usually we're like an hour total. No, we've got we've gone into it. An hour total before editing? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Or no, no, no, no, no, no, no. An hour after editing. An hour after editing. They've they've been running closer to an hour recently. After editing. Um I will say though, like, again, I don't want to belabor this. I want to just get to our last two. I want to talk about Storm, I want to talk about Apps of the Batman. Um, and I'll try to go through those faster because we we But I I think we like had like some really fucking good conversations.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:06

I like I barely also I don't know how to podcast, so I'm I'm just here talking. I don't know how long anything's supposed to be.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:12

You know, like I I've said this on the podcast before. I like people don't come to podcasts for fucking brevity. Like, people people don't come to podcasts for you to get to the point. You want to get to the point, watch a fucking documentary. Like, people listen to podcasts because they want to listen to people they like or like cool, hot girls talk about shit. Like they like you want to hear people banter. Like, you don't you don't tune into a podcast for people to be like a sterile documentary in focus. Like, for the most part, you you get on a fucking pot, you listen to a podcast because you you care about what these bitches have to say. Anyway, Pearl is running out of patience with me. God bless her heart. She is such a sweetheart. Um, let's talk about Storm and we'll end with Absolute Batman.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:52

Is it Storm number two? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:55

Yes, we're we're going back a little bit because Storm number five came out. Do you have it?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:59

That's on. In this stack of books. Oh, here it is.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:03

Oh, okay. Yeah, Storm number five came out this week, but we're gonna talk about one and two because we haven't talked about Storm on this podcast really at all. And Acacia has been gracious enough to read it. Um and I would and I would like to know what's going on with Storm. Um I just haven't been able to bring my- I just have too many books in my fucking docket. Um yeah, please tell us about Storm. I would love to hear your thoughts on Storm.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:24

Okay, so Storm number two. Um I don't think I read number one.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:30

Oh, okay. Okay. But you and you read the you read the paperbacks that the because this is spinning out of um God, what's his fucking name again? I forget.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:39

I just looked it up and then I forgot, and I'm gonna look again. Um Murewa Ayodele.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:50

Oh, thank you. That helps me to see it. Oh, Murewa. Okay, I was hearing two W's. Ayodele. Ayodele. Okay, I was hearing two W's for some reason. Anyway, thank you for showing me that.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:59

But yeah, um, you know, I've read a little bit of his work on um on Storm before in the previous series. I think I read like the first trade, which was like the first five issues or whatever. And um, he's doing good work on the character, honestly, like really exploring a few different dimensions of her character that go underexplored. Um, this issue two of the recent series is really getting into Storm as a sorcerer, and the idea of like how much of a magical magic user she really is, you know, and and what that means to be like a a mystical hero versus like a more I don't know, whatever the opposite of that is. Yeah, you know, so we have her like, you know, training with and talking to Scarlet Witch and you know all this dialogue about like magic and chaos and you know the nature of the sorcerer not being like a straight-ahead, like, you know, principled person, but rather like a schemer and a snake and a trickster, you know. Like there's a line in here. Uh, in the world of mysticism, victory belongs to the biggest scrap scoundrel. Yeah, oh that's good shit. You know, and it's very much like, you know, and it's it's an an interesting place to take a classic superhero character.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:23

You know what I mean? Like, this is a world in which your moral righteousness and like moral high ground aren't going to help you. Yeah. You know, it's like it's not about being a hero. Which is which is great. It's it's more interesting, you know. But it's still doing the classic, you know, there's the big bad, and we gotta blah blah blah. You know, but I don't know. I think I've always liked Storm as like sorceress and you know, borderline like Witch, and you know, whatever. So it's interesting to see that explored a little bit. They're also exploring this idea of her being like a hero of Earth, and she has all like these sanctuaries, you know, for various mutants, and you know, sort of playing the hits once again of X-Men stories, of human mutant prejudice, and can we get along? I don't know, blah, you know, and all that shit is a little boring, but um I don't know. I think the the the overall story they're telling of um you know Storm trying to immerse herself in this world of mysticism that she is honestly quite out of her depth in is good because I don't know. Storm as a character is like she's too powerful, and that's a storytelling constraint with her at times, which is why they resort to depowering her all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:50

It's it's been interesting because like it seems recently, starting kind of with Krakoa, they've kind of like actually upped her power in certain ways and been like, what is it like for her to be in this position of like almost godliness? And like, what is this position of like Ali Wing? Like, and this is maybe going back a little bit, but like in X-Men Red, her being like, yeah, kind of both as like a mutant and like a black woman from Africa, like, what does it mean for me to like kind of be do like like what are the boundaries of colonization happening here happening here on Araco? Yeah, like um, as much as I think like any white writer was really going to be at uh at Marvel was really going to be able to do, but like, but there was still this kind of like push at the pushing at the boundaries of like who she is and like who Auroro is and like what and and like the kind of the spaces and worlds she inhabits and the kind of responsibilities that she has, and it has been really cool to see her like so intersect so much more with like the magic. Also, thank god there's a good looking Marvel book. I know I've said that a few times, but then then there then there are. I talk a lot of shit. There are a few good looking Marvel books, but like god, thank god there's like a pretty good looking Marvel book.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:03

I miss her being the Queen of Mars. I miss the Mars. I really miss her being the Queen of Mars. That was such a good role for her. Yeah. I mean, she was the Queen of Mars, but really she was like the leader of the soul system. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck that was so cool.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:18

Literally, her and Magneto and Apocalypse on Mars is just like outside of like original House and Powers and a like a scattered couple of of Hickman's X-Men issues, was just like the highlight of the fucking crack over. Like it was just so good, and these characters were given so much attention and love and agency. God, I fucking miss that. And I'm glad at least Storm has been getting that. That said, it is a bummer that like there's a bunch of like X-Men, including a lot of like cool X-Men women, some of whom are X-Men women of color as well, who have gotten who are getting miniseries right now. I do think there's too many X-Men books.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:56

I haven't read like any of those miniseries. Are any of them good? Because they they've given miniseries to a lot of my favorite X-Men characters.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:05

Well are they good? I haven't checked out the Sylock one, the magic one. I read like the first two issues and and and dropped it. The art just kind of wasn't good. Uh, and the rogue one is just trash.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:20

Um the the problem is too, is that like all of those are, as far as I know, series.

SPEAKER_03 2:18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:27

This is not. Storm is not. It's a five issue.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:30

It is possible that if it's spinning out of the the previous run, then it's kind of a continuation of that.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:39

Yeah. It's a continuation of that. It's hard to tell if they are like only going to give it this five issues or if they're doing the thing that they like to do that companies like to do now, where they're like, we're not going to call it an ongoing, we're just going to give it a series of sequel mini-series.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:55

Yeah, I think that's what they're doing with it. And I hope that the fact that they have the same writer on it and he's like continuing with like the characterization and the direction of the character. Yeah. Makes it feel more of a continuity of like what I read before from his work with her.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:11

That's good. I and I I just I just want to see her see her win and have a good time. I like Storm.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:16

I mean, importantly, they seem to have dropped the Avengers bit because her being an Avenger was the least interesting thing to happen to her in the past. Yeah, 10 years.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:26

That's crazy. That's like that's like that's like being like a world-class painter and then them being like, hey, here's something you haven't done before. You wanna go work at a McDonald's? For real. Like, and like no disrespect to McDonald's workers, that is infinitely more honorable than being an Avenger. But like, I I don't like it was just like such a dirty thing to do to her.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:48

It was just kind of interesting. Like, she has no meaningful relationships with any Avenger outside of Black Panther and maybe Thor, but even that is like, you know, puddle shallow, just basically like Thunder Gods commiserating type shit, you know. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that was a really weird choice and direction.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:12

Yeah, I I hope to continue seeing like Storm do well and just like kind of be able to occupy her own space. Because as far as I can tell, she's mostly uninvolved with the broader bullshit of X-Men, and like she's kind of nice, because X-Men is such a mess right now, that I'm just like, leave my girl out of it, you know. And what she is intersecting with is like stuff that nobody else like, she's like intersecting with like the Hickman's gods stuff, and like I'm Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:36

So I forgot to mention the two things in this book that structural things that I'm most excited about. A, there's a return of like Hickman style graphs. Really? Yeah. Oh, okay. And now like the magical rhymes.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:53

I like that it's contextualized in the story too. Like, I love a data page as much as the next page, but I do, but I do like to see that.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:59

The contextualization helps a lot, yes. And then also the thought bubbles. I don't know how much of a trend this is now, but for a long time it seemed like thought bubbles were going extinct in the mainstream comics. And they have this really involved inner dialogue from a girl at the beginning of the book as she's kind of like, you know, training slash battling with like Wanda. And it's very nice to see the in interiority of the character in that way. I don't know, like maybe this is kind of a tangent, so I shouldn't go on too long about this. But it's just like there's a shallowness of storytelling that occurs sometimes when it's just like all dialogue and actions, and you know, with like a good writer can still make the stuff interesting, but the thought bubbles were a just a very unique piece of comic book like storytelling kit that I honestly miss. So this was very nostalgic for me reading this and being like, Oh, I I can see what she's thinking, and it contextualizes the story, you know.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:03

Yeah, yeah, no, I like I you're so right. Like, thought bubbles can be used so well, and like they just aren't used anymore. They're kind of viewed as like this outdated, outmoded thing, but you really can do some like cool fun shit with them, and I like that Storm's doing cool fun shit, like bringing back and like trying new things.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:20

Like, it's great to see the Marvel book with ambition because again, yeah, Iodele is a really interesting and like promising writing, like writer. Like, I haven't read much of his stuff outside of Storm, but yeah, he's he's definitely one of the brighter spots in modern Marvel storytelling.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:38

That's exciting. Hell yeah. Okay, so to jump kind of to the last thing, unless there's more about Storm you want to talk about. Um, and actually, um uh the people other people in the group chat are talking about how good you are at uh podcasting. Walter was very much enjoying. Oh he said, uh, is she a pro podcaster? What the fuck? Um and I and I and I just want to shout that out. Like, you were incredible to have on. Like, this this is fantastic. I would love to keep having you on, and I'm pretty sure Tate would also love to keep having you on. Like, this is this has been really fun and very conducive, and I think we've had some really great conversation, and you're fucking good at this. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I'm trying my best. You're doing great, you're doing so good. Um, and I think the last one we'll talk about, and I'll try not to spend too much time because like, yeah, we are running up on two hours of just talking about this, but again, I think good conversation. Absolute Batman. I have I have had my complaints and problems with this series in the past. These two issues, the 17 and 18 of with Poison Ivy, are by far the best the book has ever been. That's not the annual. Like, not counting the annual, which is just, you know, is that her on the cover there? That's her on the cover, yeah. Oh, you made her look so freaky. Oh, you're gonna love this. So, what she actually looks like is this. Oh, that's wonderful!

SPEAKER_02 2:23:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:59

They they recontextualize her not just as a plant lady, but as a like plant animal, like m uh uh bacteria, fungi, like the the the seven classes, T virus, yeah, um, all the classifications of the animal kingdom, and she's kind of like become all of them. Okay. And her whole thing is like she got burned alive as she usually does. She got merged with um all of this material that like she was working on basically to try to like use genetic engineering to with like using like pieces of like uh of like plant and animal and like bacteria and virus and like using little pieces of all of those things to like create like some really cool good medicines. Um she gets burned alive for it, her research destroyed because big pharma. She takes over a building, turns some cops into some plant zombies. Batman's making his way through there right now. Um, and she's you know a biblically accurate angel.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:01

She's beautiful. I love her so much.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:03

She's so good.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:04

I I wish you all could see the image I'm looking at when I tell you how beautiful I think she is, because you know, I don't have page numbers, but she is she is so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:15

She's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:16

It's like for like she deserves to not to not be human. Let women not be human. She is a uh a monstrosi uh monstrosity uh uh abnormal uh kind of scary, spiky m uh freakazoid thing, but she's goddamn very Lovecraftian, but if Lovecraftian, if Lovecraft loved women, which feels like a contradiction in terms.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:43

It certainly does. He yeah, I I like um I wasn't gonna say about voice maybe. She's just like such a good because a lot of a lot of the reintroductions of DC villain uh of the villains, like, have been kind of like Bane, but bigger. And like Bane actually is a little more complicated than that, but like, but like, or Joker, but he's a blood libel guy. Um we don't have time to read a litigate that ultimately later. Um but like most of them have kind of been either like good but uninspired, or they've just been bad, like the Joker one. This feels like an actual, honest to God, something different and really thoughtfully engaged take on this character. Like her idea is like she's still called Poison Ivy because, like Ivy, she climbs. She's never she like she is invasive because she refuses to be put down. She refuses to be killed by men, and she refuses to be killed by rich people, and she refuses to be killed by the human world. And her whole thing is like, I was developing these medicines, I'm going to like integrate everybody's bodies with this like plant-animal like uh uh like fluorofauna uh fungi, etc.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:00

And Batman Wait, so she wants to fucking um what's the name of that show? Claribus? Claribus, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:11

She she kind of wants to Claribus, but without the like hive mind of it so much. She just like wants to like more, it's more about the body.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:19

Because like her mother, a big, a big important thing is like her mother died of cancer.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:24

And she there's kind of a fun bit, all right. This is a weird thing to say about the cancer, but there's there's like a fun nod to like the red and the green and the black, which is first appearance of the red, the green, and the black, or first mention of those concepts. Are you familiar with those? Um, I'm familiar with the green.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:39

I don't know about the red and the black.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:41

Uh the red is like uh fauna, life, and then black is death. Okay. Um, and so she like her mom dies, and so her mom dying is a big part. We're gonna remember that for later. Um and um I forget what I was I was saying with that. Um, jumping forward a little bit. There's a lot of a lot of Absolute Batman has also just kind of been Batman but bigger. But these two issues actually kind of really dive into something that I think is actually really crucial and is actually really meaningful about this distinction. And it feels like the first time like Snyder is like really locking in on that fully, which is that like Batman is usually viewed as like a psychosis engine, or at least he worries that he's a psychosis engine. There's this constant worry in like a lot of Batman comics of like, oh my god, did me becoming Batman make everybody crazier and worse? And what he's doing here is he's thinking more like the the thought is more as like is he an environmental or genetic anomaly, which all things must adapt or evolve to. Like, he's not a psychosis generator, he's uh he's he's some he's something he's an environmental or genetic change in which everything around him thus has to respond to. Like and so that doesn't mean somebody necessarily gets worse, that doesn't mean it's psychosis, but it's like he he is a he is an agent of change, and that is what is interesting and specific about him, and that is why the the Joker version of who's a billionaire in this doesn't like him is because he's an agent of change. Like what whether that's always good is not the point. It's like that he is wanting to change anything.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:23

Oh, that's interesting though, because that kind of flips the Batman and Joker dichotomy like on its head. Yeah. Whereas the Joker's always been like this agent of chaos and of like, you know, primal humanity, like the whole idea of just like you know, admitting the the worst of ourselves type of shit, and like Batman, this force of like order and law, and to flip that completely and to say like Batman is a chaos seed and the Joker represents conservatism, because that's like for me the main tension of like superhero comics as a medium, you know, it's just like the conservative need to retain the status quo and how heroes generally represent that. But like this this take on Batman seems to reject that wholeheartedly, and that's more interesting than most Batman comics I've come across.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:16

And this is the first issue to like or the first couple of issues to really do that. Because like a lot of absolute Batman, they made like a lot of hay of like he's the work he's a working class Batman. Most of it doesn't isn't really that relevant. Like honestly, I I for a long time I felt like Snyder isn't doing enough with that. It's kind of more signposting than anything else. Hello. A lot of it's been kind of signposting of him as like a working class character or as like a or as like a even a different character, particularly, other than he's just kind of like I don't know, he's like like him being bigger and nastier and and like is has been more consistently kind of the thing, which is fine, but like the actual you know, the heart of the thing that we're describing here, Snyder hasn't really put a lot of whatever into that. And it's kind of been like, well, okay, I guess Joker's like a blood libel billionaire, but like he's not but here it's like, oh no, here's where like the actual nuance and like thought is coming into it. Um and so on the flip end of that, um, and we're just going to skate over the court of owls stuff because we don't have time to talk about it, and frankly, it's a little indulgent, but like that's okay. I'm gonna let Scott have his thing, and as a Court of Owls stan, you know what? I'm a shell for it, whatever. Uh, we'll see where they go later. But what something, and this is a full spoiler for what happens at the end of this. Um there's this crazy setup that happens at the back of this where it's like there's this really good intercut of things that Gordon is saying and things that his mom is saying, and these like memories that is leading you to s to suspect that he's going to be his better self. And all this time, Ivy has been like, you have to adapt or die, like you can't stop what Joker's doing, but I can you and I can do it if we do this thing. There's been this constant like you have to adapt or die. He's also in this position where like all of his friends fucking hate him because of how Bane like mutilated the fuck out of them. This has all been building up for so long. His friends hate him, he's super lost, he doesn't know what to do. Um and this moment happens where he's like he figures out how to beat Ivy, which is that he's like, I can keep killing you forever. That but you you'll just keep coming back. The one thing that you haven't changed is your human heart. The heart that like your mother saw before she died. Because like her mother like ends up cradling the heart inside of a case, and that was all that was left of her when she burned up, and like um, and then the mother dies of cancer, and so he's like she was like reborn like from nothing, like a Dr.

SPEAKER_02 2:33:04

Manhattan almost.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:05

Yeah, basically, yeah, like the little like little seed in the heart, like bloomed and then created her. And so the the heart's the only human thing left of her. And Batman's like, okay, if you don't, if you don't fucking stop what you're doing, I will blowtorch your heart, and you can grow it back, sure, but it's not gonna be the human heart you're like that that your mother gave you. Um and so Ivy does, she she stops, and you get this whole bit where he's like having this memory of you know Gordon kind of encouraging him to rise to the occasion and and like always believing in his like essential betterness and instead he blowtorches her heart. He just does it. Like he like he fucking like he he does something that is like actually insanely cruel like to do. Like she stood down, this was no longer. Like a whatever, like he did something pretty bad to her. Um, and there's been a lot of stories of like Batman like falling into the darkness of his whatever, but it like but it feels much more earned here because he's actually doing something cruel. Like he's not being like an emo asshole, he's like he like did something really fucked up, like which I I like that though.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:28

Yeah, I like that, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, I think taking away a superhero's moral high ground in like a meaningful way is one of the more interesting things you can do to them, you know, and it's like, what is Batman, if not better than his adversaries? You know, like the classic meme of Batman like breaking the gun, we don't use the tool of the enemy type. You know, that's classic Batman, but it's just like, no, what if Batman literally is capable of being just as cruel and vicious as his enemies, and yet positionally, he still is a hero and a force for good, and we have to live in the contradiction.

SPEAKER_04 2:35:06

Yeah. Oh, I mean, absolutely. And what part of it's like a lot of little details that make that hit home so deeply is that, like, yeah, you get all these bits of these friends who like had been telling him to fuck off for so long, and like the the penguin screaming, and you know, and then he and then it's just a delivery guy. Like, he's been coming up to the penguins house every day and getting his ass beat by the iceberg lounge guys. This is the first day he hasn't shown up. Riddler's looking, and for the first time, he he's been ignoring him, but he doesn't see him on the stoop. Harvey's just gone. Like, Waylon is back in his human body and is in the sewers, and his friend wasn't around to greet him. Like, and and similarly, like, you know, he has all these the this voice of what fucking like Gordon was saying to him. Like, he's doing something bad to other people and himself in this moment, and it's like, and it the story positions that like not as a cool thing, but as like a a like a real spiritual fracture for him. Like, he really did try to be like a good man and a good friend, even if he wasn't not always good at doing it. And now he's sacrificing something of himself and his morals to become that symbol that he was growing increasingly uncomfortable with being made into.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:25

Yeah, are we deep enough into spoilers territory to talk about the last panel? Yeah, yeah, I think I think we've spoiled the whole fucking thing. But it's like he gets a call from his mom or a voice message from his mom.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:37

Yeah, who's still alive at this in this one? Which I'm alive as dad's dead.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:41

Yeah, I'm not touching, haven't read enough of this book to even understand the implications of that. But um, no, but he just like says, like he listens to half of the message, and it's like, Bruce, it's mom, honey. I'm and he's just like, delete message.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:55

Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he'd been through the whole issue. He's been like, that voicemail has been on his phone the whole time, and he's been like ignoring it as like his life falls apart.

SPEAKER_02 2:37:05

Yeah, and that's that's him like I don't know, like more so than when he than when he shot when he torched the heart, like him deleting the message is him like cutting the cord to his humanity, which you know, I'm coming into this book completely blind. This is the only issue I've read. But um, that has a lot of implications. Like, how how is he going to come back from this? You know, what is that what does that look like for this Batman? You know, like what is his I don't know, it's it's like could we be seeing a superhero book that involves character development? You know what I mean? Like, God willing. Like, imagine if he doesn't return to a status quo. What does that look like, you know?

SPEAKER_04 2:37:52

Yeah, I like just to kind of just kind of wrap it all up, like Absolute Batman has been a series of highs and lows. Like, I think there are some issues which are not as good, or, or even some that are not very good at all. Um But Snyder, when he wants when he's like really locked in and focused, he produces something really, really good and really special. And I think these two issues with Poison Ivy are really incredible. And I like really hope that, you know, like people as much as people want to talk about, like, you know, how cool, biblically accurate um Poison Ivy is, and like and a lot of people are talking about Sino, a lot of people are talking about how hot or how uh how she's not totally hot, and she's not hot anymore, and it's like the first of all scale issue, but second of all, it's cool that she doesn't have to like be hot or whatever. Yeah. Um but yeah, it's it's Snyder Snyder's really locked into something here. He's really found something in this take of Batman that makes it significantly different or meaningful to have. And I'm excited to see if he's able to continue that.

SPEAKER_02 2:38:58

Take the landing. That's always the hard part.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:01

Alright, I think that's gonna be our our episode. You know what? I'm gonna say it's double length because we didn't have one last week. We didn't talk about Batman 7, just read it. I whatever. I probably talked to you about it in the story, it's good, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:16

Honestly, the hot the that's the most complimentary review you can give a thing. Just read it.

SPEAKER_03 2:39:20

Just read it, it's good. We can talk about it in person. Be sure to bleep out the stuff about Dave Kilke and Jeff Loeb. That was in the read in the part where we reference it here.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:39:33

Yeah, no, you gotta bleep that too.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:37

Anyway, that that's our episode. Um, thank you for joining for our extra long, fun little podcast. I think this was great. Um, thank you to Acacia for joining us, who I would, you know, hopefully we'll have again at some point. This this was so good. And then, Pearl, I would like you to sing us out.

SPEAKER_03 2:39:54

Oh man, I thought I was gonna get away with it.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:56

You are gonna get away with shit! I let you get away with the song at the beginning. Oh no, no, no. But you're not getting away with the goddamn thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:40:04

Uh I mean Acacia's a musician. You wanna sing us out?

SPEAKER_02 2:40:08

Uh, what what is the song? Do you have to sing it?

SPEAKER_03 2:40:10

You have to make it up right now. Pearl, you cannot put this on our guests the first time.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:14

Pearl, but every every episode, Pearl does an opening song and a closing song where she just like improvs something, and she always does a good job, and Tate and I love it, and we giggle and kick our feet because it's a good fucking time. Diva.

SPEAKER_03 2:40:30

My name's Pearl, and I'm here to say escapist comics is full of gays. Every single day we read books in our little cozy nooks. Woo! Yeah. That was beautiful, D.Va. See, we we could I could. There you go. I made it a song.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:53

Thank you, Diva. You did great. Thank you, divas, at home for listening. Um, yeah. Thank you. Uh, and have a wonderful, lovely day.