Episode 20: The Time the Old Gods Slayed, Diva

Oh boy are y'all in for a treat in this extra long double-feature omnibus edition of the Absolute Ultimate Escapist podcast created by the cataclysmic coupling of last week and this week's episode by our villainous editor, Tate. We talk all sorts of stuff including Absolute Wonder Woman, the new Tillie Walden Book, The Ultimates, the new Zatanna Series, and Swamp Thing 1989!

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:22

Ooh, what's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Absolute Ultimate Escape is Comics podcast. I think this is like episode twenty or something. It is Wednesday, April 22nd, in the year of our Lord, 2002. Smoke we're six.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

I think you're a few days late, dear.

SPEAKER_04 0:39

On 422. I'm just still high.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

From the last podcast.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

Um, we don't have a ton of comics news for you today, but I thought I would uh talk about the Hugo Award nominee announcements for best graphic story or comic. Uh one of those nominees features a podcast favorite, Absolute Wonder Woman Volume 1, The Last Amazon, by Kelly Thompson, Art by Hayden Sherman, and Mattia De Julius, Coloring by Jordi Belair, Lettering by Becca Carey. Um The rest of the list I like kind of don't know much about. Um we've got A Girl and Her Fed, uh, which is I think like a webcomic of some kind. Um something that I don't think should be allowed to be nominated, which is Wizard of Earth Sea, a graphic novel. Like I I feel like like an adaptation of something that's like already written shouldn't be. No, that's kind of cheap, Hugo Award nominee, especially because Le Guin, like already has Hugo Awards. Just feels weird. Um Invisible Parade. I don't really know anything about Invisible Parade. Uh, but it's like a kids or like middle reader book. Power Fantasy, which I've seen a lot of people buying, but I haven't read myself. Have you read Power Fantasy?

SPEAKER_05 2:07

I read the first little bit of Power Fantasy. It's it's good. I I'm gonna say these lists always baffle me because I'm like, who who fucking read for this? Like it feels like people who didn't read comics some sometimes, but then also the cut the pics are so esoteric, you're like, where did you get this?

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Yeah, and like I do feel like the fact that Absolute Wonderman is on here suggests that like Absolute Martian Manhunter should probably be on here, you know? Yeah. Um and I guess it's technically 2025, but like assortment crisis events probably should have been on here.

SPEAKER_05 2:42

Um That's where Crisis Events came out last year. Um they had a reprint, or like Vatu, I think, came out last year.

SPEAKER_04 2:48

Um for Well for 2026 though.

SPEAKER_05 2:51

Oh wait, is this for 2026? Oh wait, no, wait.

SPEAKER_04 2:54

Well, I guess, yeah, that that definitely like uh includes stuff from last year though, because it's only the fourth month of the year. Yeah. Um yeah, like there's there's stuff there's stuff that is really like excellently written science fiction and fantasy that I feel like should be on here that I'm not seeing. But then again, I also like haven't read any of the other things, but I I feel like for sure a Wizard of Earth see a graphic novel should not be on here.

SPEAKER_05 3:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:22

Um I'm like I'm really curious about a girl in her fed on this like ancient website. Um I'm really baffled. What is that a ghost koala? Yeah, like I don't know what I'm looking at. It's been an ongoing webcomic since April of 2007. Yeah, like that seems crazy to me. Anyway, uh basically I just wanted to say that Absolute Wonder Woman Volume 1 is on this list, and I think that it should win.

SPEAKER_05 3:52

Yeah, what a great book. We're gonna be raving about it this week.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

Yeah, all the other ones uh shouldn't win. Cuz Absolute Wonder Woman should win. Uh that's all I'm gonna say. I love her.

SPEAKER_05 4:07

She's a big lesbian. Speaking of big lesbians, do we wanna dive right into Absolute Wonder Woman?

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Yeah, you guys should uh you guys should jump in.

SPEAKER_05 4:18

Um, okay. So, first of all, Hayden Sherman said if DC's not going to let Kelly Thompson make them explicitly gay, even though Kelly Thompson is so unbelievably clearly making them gay, Hayden Sherman's like, I'm gonna draw them so unmistakably gay. You're net like it's it's just unavoidable. It's like it is just textually gay at this point. Even if they don't like even if they don't scissor, like I've been threatening to storm the DC offices over if they don't do um for the last few episodes. Even if they don't do that, like this is just textually gay. Um do lesbians actually scissor? Yes. Sorry, I'm having I'm having flashbacks to the handmaiden discourse when people were so mad about at Park Chen Wu because there's scissoring in that movie. And it's like, you guys just anyway, we're not we can't go too far down this route.

SPEAKER_04 5:16

Yeah, no, no Park Chen wuck uh discussion today. Park Chen Wuk. Uh you get you get lost in the sauce too quick.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

That was that that was an ironic question coming from me. Anyways.

SPEAKER_05 5:31

Yeah, we anyway, we're not gonna go too far down that. But Hayden Sherman said, like, if if those bitches aren't gay textually, which they are, I'm going to draw them gay as fuck. There is stuff in here that is just there there is there is simply no heterosexual explanation for that.

SPEAKER_04 5:47

Yeah, you were posting stories about it as crazy.

SPEAKER_05 5:50

Yeah, I I was just like, I it's like I don't want to be posting full pages of this, but like the thing I did post was like the fourth gayest panel in there. And it was not even like top three gayest panels in there. Hayden Sherman's just drawing them gay. Even the way Hayden Sherman is drawing like Steve Trevor is closer to Hirohiko Araki than it is to like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, than it is to like military man Steve Trevor. This is just a textually gay book. So even if Hayden Sherman doesn't or sorry, if even if DC, for whatever reason, you know, does don't say gay about this, it's a gay book. And we can all take solace in that. Um yeah, that that said, I do think Kelly Kelly Thompson is like doing a quote unquote reverse queer baiting. I'm trying to find a better term than that. Where she's like playing up like DC's never gonna do it, you guys. DC, I don't know, maybe DC won't do it, and then they're gonna do it. Like it's two issues, and it's gonna drive like a it's like a reverse controversy where it's like actually the good thing happened and not the bad outcome. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

But um I feel like even if they don't make it explicitly gay, like it'll still be a queer comic, yeah. And to like most people, I think. Um like I feel like at this point they've done so much to like make it queer. Uh like it's just it is like a queer book, even if it's not queer explicitly, which to me almost makes it like more queer because it's like a like a secret queer book. Yeah. Um that being said, I hope that Zotana and It's closeted. Uh Wonder Woman Snooch.

SPEAKER_05 7:27

They're they get real close in this issue. I'm lesbian style. They they do kit nearly kiss lesbian style at least twice, which is crazy numbers. Um, but yeah, no, this is an excellent issue. Um, and I'll also say this introduces a concept here that I think is going to have like really massive reverberations for her character in a way that's like a real like a relativ seemingly small thing that ends up like kind of blowing everything up. Um specifically the idea of like Aphrodite's gift. Um which is Aphrodite kind of tells Cersei at one point and is like, hey, I have to like stop hanging out with Diana because like accidentally.

SPEAKER_04 8:11

Spoiling the book again.

SPEAKER_05 8:13

Should I not say anything? I feel like you shouldn't spoil the book.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

Okay. What did you like about it?

SPEAKER_05 8:18

I I can't talk about what I liked about that without spoiling it. So I'm gonna not.

SPEAKER_04 8:22

Okay, you can you can spoil it. You can you can do it.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

You've had a spoiler warning, audience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:29

Okay, maybe that's what I need to do, is I just need to say spoiler warning before.

SPEAKER_04 8:33

Yeah, then we can skip ahead a couple minutes or something. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 8:36

Okay. So, spoiler warning. Aphrodite says, Cersei, I can't hang out with Diana anymore. Cersei says, why? And Aphrodite says. So Diana's just like naturally really lovable, right? Like, people really like her, people are really drawn to her. I also accidentally gave her some of my magic. Which is to say that, like, people are even more drawn to her than they already would be. And where the distinguishing line is between like her natural charm and like community building and the pull of this power is really blurry. And I have to leave, or else, like, I'm going to keep infecting her with this with this gift. But what this implies is that, like, Diana doesn't know about this. She was not privy to this conversation, and so she's gonna find this out at some point, it's really going to fuck her shit up, because like throughout the rest of this story, she's like been so natural at bringing people in and so natural at community building. If anything, this book is about community building in a lot of ways. And so, what does it mean to find out that, like, oh, to some degree or another, this is like against people's wills and not and and against Diana's will too, because she doesn't know.

unknown 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:58

And like, that's really sharp character writing. Like, that's really, really smart fucking writing. Did you read this troll? No.

SPEAKER_04 10:07

No, I didn't read it either.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Looks cool though.

SPEAKER_04 10:12

Yeah, I'm really excited to like read the whole thing in trades when it's done. It just like reached a point where I was too far behind to try to catch up in issues. And I was just like, fuck it, I'll just wait. Um, but I do like fit flip-through issues whenever they come out, and it does seem like the the quality has not dropped off. No, no. At least in terms of the art. Um, and I did I did cop a couple of the Zetana covers when they came out.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Oh, the Zatana covers are everything. Yeah, they're I thought we weren't even gonna get them. I thought it was exclusive to some store.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

Because it was it was initially listed, the Mark Brooks one was listed as an exclusive, and then when it came in, that was my fucking Christmas, I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Um, I think we should we should keep going and talking about new comics, but first, uh Dr. Pearl, hit us with a song.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Um uh so many people just walked in and I've uh listen. Um we are the escapist, and we love to read comic books. We are the escapist, and we have a podcast too, and we are the escapist, and we love you. Okay, uh getting right back into it. Um Wow, I thought I was gonna get away with it that time. Yeah, you're never gonna get away with it. I'm locked in.

SPEAKER_05 11:35

We'll always remember D.Va.

SPEAKER_04 11:37

Um, I wanna talk about the only book that I think I read that no one else read. Um, which is this random book that I just like pulled off the shelf just because I was kind of like looking around and this caught my eye. Uh it's called Brownfield Action Family by Ted May. Um issue one just came out this week.

SPEAKER_06 11:59

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

I flipped through it. I was very intrigued. It's uh not printed on like legit newsprint, but like on non-glossy white paper, uh, or like semi-gloss white paper, it's all in black and white.

SPEAKER_06 12:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 12:11

Um I heard nothing about this book. Don't know who Ted May is. Mm-hmm. Still don't know who Ted May is, because I did no research. Um I was I was very uh I was very charmed by this uh Wii issue of uh of the funny books, if you will.

SPEAKER_05 12:28

What exactly is it? Because I noticed it on the shelf, but I had no way to contextualize it.

SPEAKER_04 12:32

What I think it is so far, it's got like um It's got like a bit of a kind of uh noir mystery kind of thing going on. Uh, but it's also very much like a love letter to a whole bunch of different classic comics. Um so it's got like it's got some like uh Charles Burns sort of vibes in here, and it's got some uh it's got a lot of like kind of silver agey stuff going on too, and like the layout, and uh like there's little there's these little panels with like his head floating in the in the gutters and stuff, um, that feel like very kind of like Silver Agey Spider-Man or something to me. But then it's also drawn in this like very cutesy style that um makes me think of like a Seth comic or something like that, or um what were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_05 13:35

I was just saying, I'm seeing the the the burns in the panel right there.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Yeah, there's a lot of burns in it. Um and like this doesn't have like the darkness of like of like black hole or something, but like there's a visual kind of aesthetic that feels really burns-y to me, or like this guy feels like really Dan Claus to me. Oh, like ghost world character right here. Yeah. Um and then similarly there's like there's like a lot of kind of like Street Fighter-y, like, kung fu sort of art feel to it, and then there's like the occasional like family circus circular panel.

SPEAKER_05 14:15

Oh wow, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_04 14:16

Which is like really strange and interesting, but like he's like hung over and like passed out on the couch, but it's in like a little family circus bubble. So it's like it feels really hard to parse so far, but like not in like a bad, confusing way, and like a really charming way.

SPEAKER_05 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:30

And it's sort of like it's about this guy who it's about this like young guy who's like depressed and unemployed and like drinking a bunch, um, and he likes to like climb all over buildings, which has like a real superheroic vibe to it, but he like doesn't have superpowers so far, as far as I can tell. Um but he like used to be really good at martial arts as a kid, um, and then he was like trained really well by his like karate master dad or whatever. Um, and then his dad like up and left them, and his family kind of fell apart and he abandoned karate. And then this mysterious figure shows up and is like, hey, like uh so you're like a failure and stuff, and like your girlfriend don't love you no more because you're hungover all the time and you don't have a job. Um but your dad left you this building in this like rundown neighborhood, and a developer wants to buy it because he wants to buy out the whole area and like develop it into something. And this guy's very sinister. He's got this like Daniel Klaus thing going on. Um and it opens up this kind of like strange mystery about uh his dad that we don't really like find out a ton about yet. Like we we don't know a ton about it, and all we know is that he kind of abandoned their family, but he has like there's little mentions of like all of these kind of capers that his dad was involved in, all of which like end up a mess. Um so it's kind of like a setup for this mystery. Uh it's like a lot of like character work and it like it does like hook you pretty well, and the characters feel um cartoony but real. Um and there's like it almost has like the sort of sweet melancholia of like a Tilly Walden book in here, too. Like there's so much going on here. Uh it also feels like a kind of campier, pulpier thing that like like a a bizarro verse silver sprocket might put out or something. Um it's being put out by Revival House Press, which I like don't know anything about. Never heard of them, no. Um it might be a vanity press, like it might just be Ted May's press. Um, but it was like it wasn't on our small press shelf, it was on our like normal issues shelf. Um but like I am so intrigued by this random comic that I just picked up out of curiosity, and it's a second printing. Oh, that's fucking weird. Okay. So like it sold out of its first printing. Um but it's like really, really competently made, too. Like it's made by someone who really understands how to make a good fucking comic. Like it's lettered really well, the layouts are really good. Um yeah, like it seems like Ted May has been around for a while, and I just like don't know anything about him. Um And he's like, dude, like I don't even know. Like it I'm just like I feel like I fucking stumbled on like something really cool without expecting it at all. Um please buy this. Like, I need people to come in and buy this so that they can then talk to me about it. Um Yeah, like what the fuck is this? This is so good. I don't get it. Um It has like it's got like a pulpy thing going on too that like Ezra Kane has where it's like mystery ooh.

SPEAKER_06 18:15

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 18:16

Um I don't yeah, dude, I God dang it. Uh I wish someone else had read this.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

I mean I It's so not on my radar, even barely. And not many things are, so I know, like I was- There was no chance.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

Like I was just like walking, like I literally I was just like walking by trying to find the Adidia Abitakar uh in your skin book because I had forgotten what the title was, so I like didn't know where on the shelf it was, but I was like, I'll just look for the cover. Um and then I stumbled on this thing. Um yeah, I don't even. There's like so many other influences in this book that I'm like that are like just on the tip of my tongue, and I like can't like name them. It's really weird.

SPEAKER_05 19:05

It's almost rapid fire, like, in the same way that like some artists like Mike Huddle uh not Huddleston. I maybe just Huddleston. There's there's some artists who can like change their style like every panel or every page. Yeah. What happening here is like subtler than that, but every page or every panel I'd flip through, you'd were flipping through and I'd see something and I'd be like, oh, that kind of reminds me of like Michael Avon Oming a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

That reminds me of like a wheeler. Brian O'Malley, Scott Pogram in here, too.

SPEAKER_05 19:29

That's such a Brian Lee O'Malley face.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Yeah, and like this stuff in the back too feels very like um. It feels like very much like something like you'd see on a Silver Sprocket book, and there's like stuff in here that feels like Yeah, almost a Passmore. Yeah, I was gonna say, like, Ben Passmore, you could totally see him like having an influence on this book. There's like so much in here, and it really feels like uh Ted May, Mystery Man that he is, is like you can feel how much he loves comics, like you can feel how much of a nerd he is, but it doesn't feel stupid. Because sometimes you read like independent books written by like huge comics nerds, and you're just like, Wow, like you just really wish you had made Spawn or whatever, or like you really wish you had made like frickin' whatever Rob Liefeld made or something, you know, and it's like that's like I'm glad that you made your like fanzine that you're pretending isn't a fan comic, but like this feels like very much its own thing, but made by someone who like adores comics. Mm-hmm. I will be getting the second issue and reading it, because this is like stupid good. Um yeah, worth reading. What a curiosity. Uh yeah. Ah, I don't I don't even like know what else to say, but yeah, I was pleasantly surprised here. I'm glad I'm glad you read it, because it's the title again. It's called Brownfield Action Family by Ted May.

SPEAKER_05 20:56

I'm gonna have to check that out again. Because yeah, I remember when this came in and I was like, am I gonna get this? Am I not? Like I was curious about if there's just too many things, and so I just kind of bumped it down the list, but that I probably I I feel like I should read it now. Yeah, you should read it.

SPEAKER_04 21:10

It's a quick read, too.

SPEAKER_06 21:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

Um anyway, yeah, that's uh that's the other book that I read that only I read. Um do we wanna we can talk about We're we're kind of discomblated today. Oh, do you want to talk about Spider-Man and Superman?

SPEAKER_05 21:27

Yeah, I can okay. I can talk about this because I did notes on all of them. So first the main story. Main story's bad. Um Bret Meltzer. It's Brett Meltzummer and Pepe LaRaz. So Breton Meltzer, a note here. If you have an artist as strong as Pepe La Raz, why the fuck did you set the first half of it in a dark cave? That's insane. Like, what is the fucking matter with you? You get like a top shelf like Marvel artist and two of the like like some like really fun, vibrant. Like characters that just like have really interesting ways of like moving. Really interesting cast of characters. Breaking news, guys. And then Bethany's angry at Marvel. I mean, it's it's not. No, you're right. No, you're right, though. And I'm like, Marvel, step your step your pussy up, Marvel. Step your pussy up, Marvel. Wash it in the sink. But no, main story's bad.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

I mean, you gotta at least wash it in the sink.

SPEAKER_05 22:24

Like, Pepe La Raz's heart's not even in it because he recognizes that Meltar's script is garbage, the character work's not good. But immediately after that, Dan Slot and Marcos Martin come in. Perfect four-pager. The Spider-Man Noir Superman thing that Dan Slot and um Marcos Martin do. Actually, maybe like a perfect four-page mini-comic. Like, maybe is like the epitome of like what you can do with just like four simple pages. Like, it's not anything super complex, but it's just like very well drawn and very well, like. Like, it's gorgeous. It's it's a genuinely gorgeous comic. It merges the worlds well by like taking like the kind of like late 30s, like early genesis of Superman and combining that with Spider-Man Noir. Like, it's smart work. Um, it's gorgeous work, and it just makes the the uh first story all the more embarrassing for how like how much the first story fumbles when the story immediately after that is like Chef's Kiss exceptional. Like Dan Slot and Marcos Martin, congrats on just like knocking it out of the fucking park. It's great.

SPEAKER_04 23:43

Yeah, the Marcus Martin looks awesome. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 23:46

And it's so well written, too. Like, but like Dan Slot and Marcos Martin just like perfect. Like, like they get like four pages and they just knock it out of the park. Yeah, yeah. It's exceptional.

SPEAKER_04 23:55

They need to just like give Spider-Man. If they're not gonna give Spider-Man to a new really good artist, they need to give it back to Dan Slot. Like the the best thing that they could do is give ASM to a new really skilled, talented writer and artist. But if they're not gonna do that, they should at least take the like quality coward's way out and be like, we're giving Dan Slot ASM again. And honestly, they should give Marcos Martin the Spider-Man spot. Like this looks awesome. It's so good.

SPEAKER_05 24:31

The fucking the the panels which are the bang of the gun in Slowmo. Chef's Kiss. It's so good.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

Like this is the coloring is amazing.

SPEAKER_05 24:39

This is one of, if not This is one of, if not, the best stories in both volumes. Or both, like the DC edition too. Like it's so excellent. And it's crazy that this comes after the main story, which sucks shit. Like it like, and then you just turn the page and it's excellent.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

I can't believe we've got enough issues of this to get a one in fifty.

SPEAKER_05 24:58

Yeah, and it was crit for you. It was a Frank Miller Steel 1 in 50, which was even crazier. Who got it?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Uh Worley got it. Oh. Yeah. Really? It was still here? No, no, we we held it for. No, we held it for him. Yeah, we held it for it.

SPEAKER_05 25:14

We normally don't, so any we normally don't do this. Why did we do this?

SPEAKER_04 25:20

Because He's he's been he's been around for a long time, and we like to reward that.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

But what about Camp? What if Camp wanted it?

SPEAKER_05 25:29

Hi. Oh, this is Sam Camp, Friend of the Pod, Sam Camp. I I like to be that. Friend of the Pod?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:36

We like for you to be that as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

If you had a chance to get the one in 50 Spider-Man Superman, and that was like.

SPEAKER_05 25:43

Which one was that? It was Frank Miller's uh.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

Best man in comics. Frank Miller. Least controversial man. Controversial.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Hottest, too. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 25:59

Yeah, sexiest. He's really biggest daddy in comics, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

I think it's uh I think there's a there's a choice in uh going with the the disco spidey suit. The disco spidey suit is awesome. Yeah, it is tight. Oh, and when I was in college, I actually saw the original issue that came out on, and I'm just like, please may have it, and they're like, no, fuck you. I'm like, I don't expect anything less.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

Yeah. Yeah. So we don't want to make people happy here at the comic shop, so we we we said we hate reading here.

SPEAKER_05 26:37

We hate people who read, and we only want to sell speculator comics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

This is me, unironically.

SPEAKER_04 26:45

Yeah, Pearl hates reading. Pearl wishes she could forget how to read.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

I do! It's it was a it was a terrible choice I made in kindergarten.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Y'all y'all uh y'all keep the new uh clayface trailer?

SPEAKER_05 26:58

Not yet, but I do I do need to see that. I have something. Promising, okay. I do like that the DCU, we're we're pausing the the Spider- Super Spider-Man, Superman. I love that the DCU currently is like Superman, or no, sorry, uh the the the creature commandos, Frank and Superman, Supergirl, Clayface.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah. I mean there were supposed to be so much more, but I guess there just was issues with the Paramount merger. Yeah, weird. But you know, I'm I will commend James Gunn for allowing their creatives to do whatever the fuck they want. Yeah, to actually cook. Yeah. And for both good and for bad. Yeah, for both for good and for bad.

SPEAKER_04 27:41

But I feel like that's what needs to happen, though, is yeah, the the like Marvel Coward's way out is like we're gonna go right down the middle and allow you to like take no swings and thus have no misses and no home runs, you know? Yeah. It's just like you're gonna do whatever the fuck we want as your fascist overlords.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 27:59

And what we want is middling inoffensive garbage. Yeah. Whereas at least with this, it's like you get the Superman movie, and then you get whatever like Peacemaker Season 3 is or something. Oh, I forgot about Peacemaker.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

I feel I feel like soon we'll be referring to that as Lantern Season 1. But Yeah. I'm excited for the Lantern series. I'm excited too, just to see what the fuck they're doing.

SPEAKER_04 28:24

I know, I just like I want to see what a gr what a 2026 Green Lantern product is. Yeah. It's like, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

My hope would have been a continuation of the animated series, but yeah, I don't know that that's gonna happen though.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

No. Is it it's not Guy Gardner and it's not It's Jon Stewart and older Hal Jordan? Yeah, it's old Hal Jordan, yeah. It's like Hal Jordan is like Green Lantern sensei, right? Old Man Hal.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

And they're they're going buddy cop with it, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for lanterns. Yeah, I think the lanterns are all stronger as like some kind of team. Yeah, with how they're team. I'm surprised there isn't like an ongoing like a lantern's team. I guess there is Green Lantern, but there's no.

SPEAKER_04 29:06

There's like a lantern tour title, isn't there? Yeah, there's Green Lantern core.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Is that like a team up?

SPEAKER_04 29:11

Yeah, it's a team book, yeah. It's like a I don't think it's very good though. It's like John.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

What I'm what I'm fucking uh what I'm kind of pissed about with the lantern show is that Atrocitis was seems to be in a human disguise primarily.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

Yeah, there's one thing that uh I really hate about modern superhero comics is like, dude, make them look freaky. Give them alien designs. Yeah. Like uh I'm trying to think of like a good example. Um yeah, what is a good example of that right now? Of like a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Uh you're gonna have to choose which one to choose. That's uh.

SPEAKER_05 29:49

Like if we're are we talking about good like examples of like this like dog shit design principle from the 2000s where they like made everything look like, you know, quote unquote more realistic? Are we talking about like good design?

SPEAKER_04 30:03

I think we're talking about bad. We're talking about bad examples. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:06

Examples where they took like really insane-looking characters from the comics and like I mean every version of the Fantastic Four movies did that to their to their characters, like every version of Galactus, particularly the first.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

I guess hot hot take Yondu.

unknown 30:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

He's fairly accurate to but like a little too accurate, and they don't really account for it. Yeah, he doesn't have like the big ass. Yeah, and they don't give him that until the second movie, and then he dies.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Yeah. Spoiler alert for 2000.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

To a 2016 movie. 2016 movie. Oh my god. Oh yeah. Oh wow. I remember when I could just sit on that. I know, I do too, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:46

Fleet Fleetwood Mac, I'm getting older too.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

Oh yeah, Walter says uh the nasty Metamorpho in the new Superman movie is is a is a good version of Yeah, like Metamorpho looks weird in that movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:03

Um maybe hot take about that one, I think he's maybe a little too overdesigned with the like crevices and stuff. Like I think they should have brightened up those colors. He has crevices in the comic though.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

He does, but that's more of a newer um edition. Yeah. Would you have liked it better if it was just flat?

SPEAKER_05 31:22

I think I didn't have to be completely flat, but I do think even bright, like go even further with it. Like I like what they did. I I do like it, but I think they should have gone. Oh shoot, I was turned backwards. Um I do like what they did with it, but I think they should have gone even farther with making him just like they should have just really brightened that purple and that and the orange, and they should have just like really leaned into it. Because most of the movie does lean pretty hard into its like specific aesthetics. James Gunn is not a coward about just like actually wanting these things to be comic movies.

SPEAKER_04 32:00

What else is like I'm trying to think of other good examples. I looked up MCU villains.

SPEAKER_05 32:05

Just all of them. The CGI Modoc is pretty atrocious. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Um Ultron. I guess Ultron's kinda cool, but like you don't get the uh you don't get the get the Jack Kirby um power particles in the mouse.

SPEAKER_04 32:20

I know, I want the like, yeah, like all of the Kirby stuff I feel like is like erased from the movies because it's too weird.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Well, I mean they're obviously going more Stan Lee with anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:31

Normami's pretty weird looking. Yeah. It's just like if you're Vulture. Vulture's a good example where it's like, bro, make him look like a man who wishes he was a vulture.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Even then, isn't Vulture from uh Isn't Vulture supposed to be taking inspiration from Vulture 2? Yeah, but I think like the Vulture in the movie, he's like He's all mechanical and like wearing a jet helmet.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

Yeah, like give him like a weird like green skin suit. Like what do you guys do? Let him fly.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

I definitely I definitely agree, but I always I always get angry when they take inspiration from later incarnations of a villain or a hero. Yeah. And then put it on to the uh to the first or something. The first version of it, yeah. Which I do I just never I don't understand it at all.

SPEAKER_05 33:20

Um Yeah, it's like if you're going to steal all of Jack Herbie's work and all of the work of like, you know, multiple different artists, and you're not even going to use it, then why did you steal all their work? Like, I'm not saying they should have stolen all their work, but like if Marvel was going to be a bunch of like thieves, at least use the shit that you stole. Like, what are like what is what is this disgusting CGI slop? Like, I don't like I w I wanna see Vulture look like a nasty dude in a green suit. Why do the Eternals exist?

SPEAKER_04 33:54

Yeah, yeah, like why like if they're not gonna look weird as hell, like why have you made an Eternals movie?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Yeah, why why are you not gonna put the why are you not gonna have their the glowy bits of their costume that made them look unique? Yeah. And instead give them what gold inlays?

SPEAKER_04 34:09

Yeah, exactly. It's like Well the other like the another example I feel like is like uh Heathers your Joker or Scott Snyder Joker is like or sorry, uh Zack Snyder Joker, like he's not goofy enough. No. Like give him a flower that shoots acid and like a gun that like shoots a uh a bang flat. Like he should be You're the Joker. Make me laugh at the end. Weird and like funny, yeah. Like uh I've I've been watching the the Batman animated show. Not the bat not Batman the animated series, but the Batman.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:40

Um no, not the Prime World. Not Caped Crusader. Not Caped Crusader.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Is that the 3D CG one?

SPEAKER_04 34:46

No, it's uh it's like a 2000 it's kind of like a 2000s era, it's like same era as Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon.

SPEAKER_05 34:53

Oh, is this the 2004 one that was on like Cartoon Network and it's like No, this is a WB, it's a Warner Brothers uh cartoon, but it's not Batman Beyond.

SPEAKER_04 35:04

It's called The Batman.

SPEAKER_05 35:05

No, that's the one I'm talking about, the 2004 one.

SPEAKER_04 35:07

Yeah, because it popped up on my HBO and I was like, what the hell is this? And then I clicked on it and it's like actually insanely good. But in that, the Joker is like goofy as hell, and it's awesome. Yeah, this one, right? Yeah, that's the one.

SPEAKER_05 35:22

Yeah, this cooks. Um this show, this show goes crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Isn't that supposed to be the the season where the Teen Titans robin comes from?

SPEAKER_04 35:31

I think so, yeah. There's a lot of like Bat family stuff in here. Yeah, yeah, that's the Joker in that one. And like, obviously that's not like a comics accurate joker or whatever, but he looks all goofy and weird, you know?

SPEAKER_05 35:41

He's like on a like a straitjacket. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 35:45

But this so this series is to Batman the Animated Series what Spectacular Spider-Man is to like the 90s Spider-Man show, and it's so good. It's so excellent. You should watch it.

SPEAKER_05 35:56

It's really good.

SPEAKER_04 35:57

This is the thing that I'm really hyped about right now is the Batman cartoon.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

I'm gonna I'm gonna flex on you real quick. Uh I used to watch that show at Blockbuster.

SPEAKER_04 36:08

This this is the Batman? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Yeah, that's awesome. I didn't I didn't realize which one we were talking about. That's so fun. Which goes to show how many animated Batman shows there are.

SPEAKER_04 36:17

Yeah, and some of them are really bad, and some of them are bad, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

The the clayface specific to that show is excellent. I won't say anything more, but it's excellent.

SPEAKER_04 36:26

Yeah, it is really good. I just watched those two couple episodes where the I like the Joker turning him into Clayface is really good. Yeah, it's a good idea. Because I I feel like it that's more interesting than like an industrial accident or like I feel like the the like actor storyline is very played out at this point. Like I don't need to see him be an actor again.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

I feel like they could go with the original, original version of Clayface before he was a proper Batman villain. Yeah. And just as like one of those uh one of those Twilight Zone-esque uh interesting characters because I think the clayface we know of is like Clayface 3.

SPEAKER_04 37:05

Yeah, it's clayface 2 or 3. Yeah. I think Clayface should be the next Matt Reeves Batman villain.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah, we're it's kind of unknown whether the clayface movie is Reeves or DCU.

SPEAKER_04 37:18

Yeah, I think that it I think that regardless of what the Clayface movie is, I think that the Clayface should be the villain in the Batman 2, because I think he's a good villain for a detective movie. Because he's like he's like an untraceable criminal. And then Bruce Wayne could be like, I'm gonna track him down.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

I've always been uh an avid supporter of Mandat for Batman Tale.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

Mandat would be awesome. Yeah, but I don't know how that would fit for uh I don't think it would fit because it's like it's like it's rounded and then it would be like okay, like Batman's gonna have to like face something that's like not rounded.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Um that's awesome. He just goes throughout the the city in his own homemade Batman suit and eventually gets to the point where he kind of just sews it on to himself. Oh, okay. Like a skin suit. Yeah, kind of like a skin skin suit. And then maybe eventually goes into a Vata Toxic Ways.

SPEAKER_04 38:19

Because that's kind of like his like his neuroses in this Batman cartoon is like he wants to be a better like bat than Batman, and so he turns himself into a bat, which I feel like is like a similar vibe. Yeah. Anyway, we should talk about comics. Yeah, we should we should go back to the I'll leave you to it.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

I haven't read my comics for this week. Thanks for chatting. Thank you, of course. Always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Um sorry you didn't get that one in fifty that you wanted.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

Walter says he thinks that Reeves is producing the Clayface movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Uh rep beneath the trees where nobody sees, read it.

SPEAKER_05 38:54

Good shit. It's really good.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

It's a great recommendation. Thank you. Also, do a power bomb.

SPEAKER_05 39:00

Yeah, do a power bomb fucking rocks. Actually. Well, okay, no, I can't I can't talk about the bit of news. Well, we're we're gonna get to in the weeds. Um so just to go back to Superman, Spider-Man, whatever the fuck. Um the next story by Joe Kelly and Umberto Ramos. Ramos Innocent. Rambo Ramos does some good art. Joe Kelly, I have some questions, which is that this is like a weird exact mirror to the really bad Tom King, Jim Lee story from the first one, where it's just like two women from Batman or Superman and Spider-Man's lives, in this case, um Lana Lang and um and Gwen Stacy instead of Lois and and um and Mary Jane, doing this thing where they like don't have personalities and they only talk about the men in their lives, and that's the entire thing. And with a lot of like really bad faux feminist dialogue, like it's so much my tiny girl's stomach couldn't possibly before she throws it. It's it's very like man trying to write feminism, but then spends most of it just having these women talk to talk about their like the men in their lives the whole time. Doesn't pass the Bechtel. No, it's like it's aggressive. Like, look, the Bechtel is not the end-all be-all of your thing, but if you cannot write a story about Lana Lang or Gwen Stacy that actually treats them as characters, then why did you write them? You could have just written a Superman, like a Superman-Sper-Man story without them, because you're clearly just not interested in them as people. And it's weird that Tom King and Jim Lee did the same thing last volume, too. I will say the gag at the end, Joe Kelly, is pretty funny. That that's a good funny gag at the end, but um. Anyway. Shockingly, Jeff Johns and Gary Frank, one of the best ones in this this issue, he kind of just gets these characters, he kind of just understands the assignment. Um, it's fun. I like it. Gary Frank does some good art on it. There is some kind of weird centrist dog whistling thing that Jeff Johns inserts in here with just like, what do you mean? I don't have to to pick a team, and like everybody's arguing so much with each other these days. It's the thing that like centrist men do when they think they're interesting. Other than that, though, good. Like it's kind of weird that he put some like weird stuff in the thing's mouth, but other than that, really good. Um, Louis Simmonson, Todd Newak, really lovely little throwback one. It just reads well. It's fun, it feels very classic, but in like a good way. Um I just, yeah, I just think Steel and Hobgoblin are fun. It looks really pretty. The um Supergirl Ghost Spider one is aggressively bad because Stephanie Phillips does that thing that like straight cisgirl writer, like women writers like to do where they make the women like hate each other and like say like make fun of each other the entire issue. Like it's just kind of ghost spider being like super girl, that's lame, and super girl being like, what are you, like the third girl spider? And that's like 90% of the the story. I'm just like, it's like you don't even know what what is this? Like like it's just like it's just weird women catfighting stuff, and I'm just like, who is this for? Like, you don't seem to like either of them, like, and they don't like each other, and then kind of at the end there's like a passing begrudging respect thing to each other, but they just like show off unremarkably. Come on, man. It's a weird it's a weird thing that like cistrate like writer, like women writers like to do where they're just kind of like these women are hate each other and make fun of each other, and that's inherently interesting in of itself. And I'm like, it's it's not. Um Bendis Picelli, I don't really have much to say about it other than it's like it's really sweet, gets both of these characters well, it's well drawn. Um The Jason Aaron Dodderman story, a lot of fun. A lot of good respect on Jane Foster Thor. It looks gorgeous as fuck. It's one of the only ones that like actually does something interesting with merging these two universes together with like what is fourth world, like what is like what is smashing Kirby's like fourth world and like Asgard stuff together actually look like and what does that do for like you know, all father dark side? That's fucking cool.

SPEAKER_04 43:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:36

Like actual interest.

SPEAKER_04 43:38

It looks really good.

SPEAKER_05 43:39

Yeah, Donnerman just comes back like he was never gone and just like slays it and just makes me th like makes me want to read more Jane Foster Thor. It's just delightful. It's a good it's a good run. Like you can just have women characters that respect each other and are interesting.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

It's crazy too 'cause it's like a man writing it, but like just really well. Yeah. You know? Like he just cares about his characters.

SPEAKER_05 44:03

Yeah. It's like it's like turns out sometimes, like, just because you have an identity doesn't mean that like you can't have empathy enough to write a story about another identity. Yeah. And and inversely, like, just because you have that identity doesn't necessarily mean that like you have the idea the like empathy or interest to like engage that way. Like there is like. I think it's infinitely more feminist to write like a smart, thoughtful story about how Jane Foster is like heroic because of who she is. That is more inherently fem quote unquote like feminist to me than just like a woman writer just making like Supergirl and Ghost Spider just like quip at each other how much they hate each other. Yeah. Should we talk Flash? Uh let's talk Flash. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:52

Um, so we both read uh I guess it's this Flash issue 32, but in my mind it's Flash issue two, because it's the second issue in Ryan North's Flash run. But it is issue 32 of the like current DC run of the Flash. This is like a continuation of the storyline started in the first issue. I think this is really good. I'm really excited for North's Flash run. It's um This is like the same way that I felt when he started writing The Fantastic War where I was like, I feel like I haven't been excited for a Flash storyline in a long time, and like this has injected some like excitement into it for me. It's um it continues to be like one of the sweetest superhero books on the shelf. Like it's just like Flash, it's like literally like the the supervillainous plan is to make Flash save so many people that he's too distracted to stop the supervillain's master evil plan. Yeah. Which is awesome because it bakes in the superhero saving people right into the story. Um and I think a while ago Walter was saying like he thinks it's one of the best engagements with like social media that a superhero book has had in in a really long time or like ever. And I think it continues to be that. Um the storyline is basically like someone says they'll give $10,000 every day to whoever can get the best footage of Flash saving them from dying, and so all of a sudden all of the citizens of Central City are like throwing themselves off buildings and shit to like get the flash to save them. Um and it's really fun. I also love the Captain Cold appearance in this book. Um I love how many ice villains DC has. Um, and I love this like begrudging relationship respect between the Flash and Captain Cold. It very much gives like the occasional moments when like Spider-Man and Doc Awk have to team up to do like some kind of science thing, or like uh the Tinny and Detective Comics era where the Riddler was a private detective. Yeah. And uh no, no, that was the Pauldini, sorry. Uh in the Pauldini comics, when Riddler becomes a private detective and reforms, and he and the Batman end up like working the same cases a lot of the time, and they like they have this like begrudging respect for one another as like former adversaries who are like also able to recognize each other's intelligence and competence. Um and that happens here with Captain Cold and the Flash, and it doesn't feel like super cliched or anything, because like it does feel like two independent characters like interacting with agency, and it's a really good time. It's really fun, yeah. Yeah. This is like a comic nerd who loves the flash, writing the flash, and it's a great freaking time.

SPEAKER_05 47:49

Yeah, I love it. I like I'm on record for you know having been like a person who likes the flash more in theory than in practice, but like this puts in practice a lot of what I love about the flash in theory, which is just like his inherent kindness. Like, he is genuinely one of the kindest and most personable of like DC stable, like most of the time. Like, this really puts that into clarity. Like, I really appreciate that it's like it's a weird science hero book that doesn't feel too convoluted. Like, he like he um sorry, Ryan North is like a science guy who's really good at explaining science in a way that's really approachable and finding creative, silly superhero situations through the specifics of like a a weird science fact of like here's how cold interacts with the air in this particular way, and that's gonna like.

SPEAKER_04 48:41

And he's also not too concerned with like make like convincing you that like this is actually how it would work, either, which is very nice, because like people can get a little too in the weeds of being like, oh no, like I promise you this is how it would actually happen. Like it's it's all silver age goofy nonsense, you know, because it's like he's Captain Freakin' Freeze or whatever, you know, but it's like or Captain Cold, but like it's it still feels like grounded enough that you're not like, oh, things are just happening in this universe, you know? Yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 49:15

And it's just like it's nice to see Linda West be like a really like even she's not in a ton of the book, but when she is in the book, she feels like a person with her own like ideas and agency, and like Flash really respects her as like a partner and as just also as like a person, and like he comes to her for advice pretty regularly, and like they love each other too.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

It's really clear that they love each other as two people actually do love one another. Yeah. You know, it's not just like oh, they're married. Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_05 49:48

Exactly. So this is like quietly one of the best books DC's put on. Well, art is great too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:55

Um it's Gidry. Gidry, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:57

Gidry just continues to be just like a really sharp cartoonist. Like, he's not doing anything like super explosively wild with his line work, but he's but he's just like such a competent cartoonist.

SPEAKER_04 50:09

Yeah, his work really fits for the flash too, I think.

SPEAKER_05 50:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:12

It's a great cover too, honestly. It's I mean again, it's like really simple, but it's just like it's just a really good cover, I don't know. Yeah. He's just saving some kids from a big ass train. The composition, like, is really good. I don't know. I'm I'm all around a really big fan of this. I'll probably be picking it up in trade and returning the issues. But I'll probably like keep the trait, honestly, just because I mean uh well, maybe I will, maybe I won't. I returned my Fantastic Four trait, but um Hello, hi Mark.

SPEAKER_05 50:41

How are you?

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Good, have you? We gotta use code names on the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 50:47

I know for the millions of people listening.

SPEAKER_05 50:50

We could get docked. The first appearance of Absolute Sam and Absolute Mark. You can't dox Mark.

SPEAKER_04 50:56

Let's talk about In Your Skin by Aditya Biddakar. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 51:00

Um so I'm gonna try to like not talk too many specifics because you haven't read it yet. No, I have read it. Oh no, you did read it. Okay. Um I would like to hear your thoughts first, actually.

SPEAKER_04 51:10

Okay. Um, well, this is the first book from what it seems like is some version of a studio from Rom V at Image. I don't really know like.

SPEAKER_05 51:21

This is actually a Tiny Onion book. I didn't realize that until the second time reading, but I was like looking through, and it's actually a Tiny Onion.

SPEAKER_04 51:27

Yeah, I thought it was Tiny Onion. Isn't it Rom V's label too though? Is it Rom V's label too? Or is it Tinian?

SPEAKER_05 51:34

It's just Tiny Onion, as far as I can see, but I mean, but it but like the influence of Rom V as a frequent collaborator.

SPEAKER_04 51:40

I'm pretty sure he's uh I'm pretty sure he has a production credit on it.

SPEAKER_05 51:44

Um He's definitely like included in like a background. Like he's like drawn into the background of this book.

SPEAKER_04 51:51

Um when he Yeah, Rom V's first DC publication. No, fuck, what the heck. Um Rom V posted about this as something from his label though. Um, okay. Well I mean that's cool. I've like yeah, I think he's like a some version of like he's like the comics version of a producer on this, I think.

SPEAKER_05 52:10

And that makes a lot of sense. Like he's a free him and Biddakar are frequent collaborators. Um they've worked on I think most of Rom V's comics have been lettered by Biddikar.

SPEAKER_04 52:19

Yeah, I guess, yeah, maybe it is just Tiny Onion. Huh. Weird. I thought that I was seeing Rom V post about this. Maybe I got Rom V and Tinian mixed up. Anyway, um I thought this was really good. I'm really curious to see where it goes. Um this comic, uh, without kind of getting too in the in the weeds about it, uh, is a comic about a woman who is obsessed with a Bollywood star, um, and is kind of obsessed with her to the point of desperately wanting to be her and feeling kind of like deeply angered by the fact that she isn't her. Um and it's unclear kind of like what she does to become her, but basically the first issue follows her literal her vr her pursuit to literally become this woman. Um and there's there's um there's a lot going on here to the extent that like to the point that you don't really know everything that hap you don't really understand everything that happens in this first issue just because it's a lot being thrown at you all at once. Um and you're not really fully sure the timeline of events in the first issue. It feels very much kind of like a story told by the garbled mind of a kind of mad person. Um the art on it is beautiful. Um it's really kind of fittingly strange and wild feeling, and you can turn the page and have like a really really insane kind of like nice house on the lake-asque uh set of images, and then turn the page a few more times and have this like really weird idyllic layout, and then you'll get like this really intense sex scene or something. Like this is not a book for the faint of heart, I would say. Um really good installment in current horror comics, I think. Um I struggle to see this being like really good past like a 15th issue or something. Like, I'm not really sure that it's a it's a four issue, I'm probably. Okay, it's it's a mini, okay. I was gonna say, like, I don't think this has the juice for like a prolonged series. I also think like it's gonna be really dependent on how the rest of these issues kind of pan out, but I I think he's like set this up to be really, really good. I also think it's going to be interesting to see how women are written in this book, because I think it's it would be really easy to go down an unfortunate path, or not necessarily an unfortunate path, but just like a less well thought out path than the first issue is maybe suggestive of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:28

Um and I do think the first issue gives a really strong indication to me that like they will be written well.

SPEAKER_04 55:35

Yeah, there's some there's some storytelling that I found like a little more blunt than it needed to be, like her interactions with her mother. I was kind of like, this is really intense, and like I get what you're trying to do, but I also am like this is not like the most subtle form of writing or characterization. Um I wish it had been a little more legible, not like literally legible, but like I wish I had a better sense of what was going on in issue one. Um just because like I think if you're gonna put something out in issues, I would like to feel like I know what's happening in each issue. Um I don't know, like part of me is like, would this be better as a graphic novel? And I'll have to read the next three issues to be sure. But I will definitely be reading the next three issues. This is something I wish that DC Vertigo was printing. Yeah, this feels actually this should be a vertigo book, and then like Peril the Brutal Dark. End of yeah, like end of life should be an image book. You know, like uh this is like the kind of things that I associate with image, I mean with uh Vertigo, uh, and it's being put out by image. This is definitely the most interesting image book coming out right now.

SPEAKER_05 56:49

You can you can tell this is not one of the image speculator books because in like because I was t I was telling Corinne this because Corpse Knight came out this week, and there's like 10 covers or whatever, and who gives a fuck? And then like In Your Skin has two covers, and it is a book which features like a nuanced portrayal of like industry sexual violence, and that's just not something you can market as like you can't make that into like a spec book. It's got like two covers and it's like dark and really sp and also very culturally specific. Like um Bedakar's um because in the in the the um the the uh full issue that they sent me when I read it the first time did not have the back essay.

SPEAKER_04 57:36

Oh, I haven't read the back essay yet.

SPEAKER_05 57:38

The back essay, I don't know if I would say like it tells you anything wholly new, but it does put this like book's specific focus on obsession in a particular context. Because there have been a lot of books about obsession and like stardom. This one in is like very, very specific to Bollywood, and like I think Bitacar does a really strong job of like explaining why that's like critical for this book and why like Yeah and what Oh sorry go ahead. No, you go ahead. Oh, and just like what what effect that like has on like obsession is a different thing entirely when you're talking about like these cultural figures revered as gods, at least in their heyday, like even revered in the same tone. Yeah. Um they they talk uh extensively about the way that their father explained Bollywood figures to them and like the cultural context that Bollywood figures existed in and like the kind of changes over time. And it does help put the book in a particular context that really makes it because I'm not usually a stardom obsession. That's not usually a uh type of story that I'm particularly interested in.

SPEAKER_04 58:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:50

But I think Bedicar does a really strong job of like making it specific. I do like also that this protagonist is like both very unlikable and victimizes people in certain ways while also being a victim in other ways. Like, there is like a nuance to these kind of like complex like social dynamics and social violences.

SPEAKER_04 59:13

Yeah, I mean, even though kind of like social violence of her sex with her like friend, who's also a producer, is like far more complex than I think uh less intelligent or less dedicated writer would have made it. I mean, there's like Because I think it's the same per the same person who like bandages her up in like the first or second scene is the person that she sleeps with, no?

SPEAKER_05 59:38

Yeah, and that he like implicitly kind of is like uncomfortable. Well he's explicitly uncomfortable. But also he does is is like he pretty strongly implies to her like you sh need to sleep with me to get this thing that you want. And then when faced with that reality, he becomes uncomfortable, and she's like, no, if you're gonna like if you're gonna if you're gonna fuck me, take me like a man. Like, which is really strong and striking, like, writing, but also really upsetting.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:09

Um This is not a book for the fan of heart. Uh no. I'm curious to see where this goes. I could see it being really amazing. I could see it being a bit disappointing. Um obviously I hope it's the former. Um yeah, this is what I was hoping Vertigo would be. This is really interesting. Yeah. The art's gorgeous, too.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:31

Yeah, the art's gorgeous, yeah. Somli um is yeah, I've I've never seen their work before. I know they've done a couple other things, but they're really really striking. They remind me a little bit of like a less frenetic Anon Darquet. Particularly, you notice some of the hands or the way like a certain uh supernatural potential potentially supernatural thing is drawn with like this these like very small noodly kind of like towards the very end of that. Like gives me a little bit of anon-darque. Um, the paneling is is really striking and strong. Like, I do appreciate that it's like J Lee kind of does paneling like this sometimes too, but it's often a little too jagged, a little too unfocused. Whereas like I think the jaggedness of this actually does work really well in a propulsive kind of sense. Because it's it's not too much, it's not like overwhelming legibility. Um yeah, it's and like really the the the color palettes where it's like sometimes it's like much more expansively uh much more expansive in its palette, and other times like the way that it like kind of bleaches out the color here and then goes right back to it and kind of these like I don't know what that would be. Is that like a wash?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:42

Yeah, I guess a wash. Yeah. Um yeah, this is just like really interesting new feeling comics. I it feels new in the same way that like eating hearts or something felt new. Where I'm just far more intrigued to see where this goes than I am for most comics on the shop right now. Yeah. I'm uh Yeah, we should talk about all the cameras in my room uh before Pearl passes out from the sheer exhaustion of hanging out with us.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

It is exhausting.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:16

Lo and behold, happy, happy uh day to gay people everywhere. There is a new Michael DeForge graphic novel out in the world, which Pearl and I have read. It's called All the Cameras in My Room. It's another one of his short story collections. If you're not familiar with Michael DeForge, he was the character designer for Adventure Time. Um he then went on to do a lot of really, really good gay anarchist comics. Um they're all honestly really excellent. Uh Pearl and I both read this one for um for the for the podcast. I'm definitely keeping mine because I Michael DeForge is my boy. Um he's one of my like top three working cartoonists. I just love this guy so much. Um Pearl, tell me about your experience reading this book.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

Um was it gay? It's so casually gay. Just like, oh, there's a sex scene, they both have wieners. Um you know, like it it goes unremarked. And it's just like I don't know. It's nice.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:21

It's just out on the shelves.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

It's just out on the shelves. Where anybody could see it. It's just a world where being gay is kinda normal. Which is nice. Um it is a collection of short stories, um, and they range from like, I don't know, two-page diddies about a man with too many cameras in his room, to like, you know, twenty-page uh screeds of anarcho-punks becoming informants for the government.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:54

You called them anarcho-informants, which was really funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:59

Yeah, they are Well, they start out as anarchists and then they become informants, and then they kind of do more anarchy while they're in being informants, and then they uh in it you gotta read it. Um What's really cool about this book is that it comes with a zine. I know this is amazing. That as soon as you open the front page, there's a little pocket in there with its own little zine in there, with its own little story in the zine. Bravo drawing quarterly. It's it's such it's yeah, it's very much the drawn and quarterly touch.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:33

You know, like one of the comics houses that Walter is unfamiliar with.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:38

One day we will drawn in quarterly pill him. Um what's your favorite story in here? Uh, my two favorite stories in here for completely different reasons. Um are this call is being monitored for quality assurance, which is a story that kind of like links all of. It's a guy who is simultaneously like a phone sex operator, a like call center service agent, and like a suicide hotline like guy, and he's doing kind of all of these jobs at the same time, and it's kind of merging all of the ways in which like a hu like a human telephone operator job like kind of like merges into this kind of one same job where he's like talking someone down from suicide while also like asking them if they're like hungry for cum. Or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

My favorite was is like when he's like it tell me what you think about my cock. Um by the way, these are verification questions uh to ensure the security of our customers. Um now tell me how you want to be it's just like it's a it's a really it's it all melts together like all these different phone jobs.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:54

It's a really smart, like kind of like because we a lot of not all of them, but a lot of the In this collection are kind of about the ways in which like technology is kind of like removing the human from like our daily lives. And so this story in particular, the um this call me recording.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:15

I'm an algorithm booster, algorithm fan.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:18

I'm an algo.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:20

Yeah. I think we should fucking put that in our brains. I love ads.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:27

I love talking ads speak with the boys. Yeah. I love reels, I love reelin'. I love Salesforce. Realin and Dylan.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:35

But uh but this job, or sorry, this story like merges those kind of like what does it actually mean to have hu like a human being on the other end of the line and kind of combines them all into one insane little piece. So that's that's probably my favorite one, but the other one is the Universal Stor uh Universal Monsters story where Dracula and the Wolfman are like gay boyfriends who are going to their other like monster friends and being like, hey, like I'm having some trouble with my boyfriend. He like kind of fucks me weird, or like he said this thing, which was like kinda hurtful, and I don't really know how to talk to him. And so they all kind of like have these like gay relationships outside of their their primary partners, and they're trying to figure out how to be like gay monsters in love. It's really good. It's also really hot. Um, there's a lot of really this like Michael DeForge has always been a pretty explicit creator, but like this is some of his most sexual and his most violent work. Um It's just really horny and really funny. Uh Pearl, what were you telling me about the his like his like dry irony earlier in the car?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:47

Okay, all the almost all the stories have just this Michael DeForge, uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:55

Deforginess.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Deforginess, yes. Um just like I don't know. Uh like a man is famous for the movie that he made, but he's not that impressed by by the movie, nor does he think it is like the best quality of his work. Um or um or or like the the anarchist kids who are all doing like direct action when really they're also all becoming informants, like against each other. Um like there's just this sort of like ambient, ironic energy to or god, this the library one was so strange.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:36

Oh, the library simulator? Or I think about like leaving Richards Valley, there's like a whole protagonist who's like whole deal is he like really, really wants to be like good at noise music, and he thinks he's thinks he's really good at noise music, and everyone fucking hates his noise music, but then like a cult forms around how important noise music is to your soul, and he's like the leader of the cult, but all the cult members hate noise music. Like I he's just like he's like one of the funniest people out there. Really is, yeah. But it's like it's not about gags at all.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:08

No, it's it's not remotely a gag comic at all. Like, there's one in here where it's like a mother.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:18

Like that. Yeah. There's a Walter upvoted you.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:22

Nice. There's there's one in here about a mother lamb or like a lamb-like thing whose like kids die, and the mom's just like, uh, oh fuck. It's spread into a bunch of other weird little things and they're making noises, and it's my weekend, and I have to go back to work, and I don't I don't know how to handle this. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave, and it keeps trying to run away. That one was so strange. She like kills one of the things. There's a there's a there's one in here that's like Johnny Appleseed, but for cum.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

Oh, the the Johnny Appleseed cum is so peak.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:52

And I just I'm just gonna read some narration from DeForge for this one page because I think it gives you an idea of how Michael DeForge like writes. Um at the height of his popularity, he was invited to the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Zurich as a keynote speaker. He admonished his audience of politicians, executives, think tank consultants, and NGO celebrities for profiteering off an extinction event. His speech was excori excoriating. The crowd went wild with applause. This is a process climate scholar Andre Flew describes as the depoliticization of Larry's cum. Flew and Larry collaborated on the disruption of the Pine Rail's pipeline. Larry's powerful cum was used to halt the project's construction. It was later used to destroy railway and highway infrastructure and seal the entrance of an Eagle Ferrar weapons plant. The economic impact of the Larry Flew cum disruptions was estimated to be upwards of 500 million.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:47

Yeah, his cum really changes the world. This one where they are obsessed with like the K-pop star, so they like break into his home and like tie him up and steal all his money so that they can buy more tickets to the K-pop show.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:03

It's like he's so vulnerable when he's tied up like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:06

That's cra That one was so crazy. Anyways, it's just a lot of Michael DeForge fuckery. Um and I kind of can't get enough of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:18

He's so freaking good. Everyone needs to read him.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:21

If you haven't read Michael DeForge, just read it now. Like he's so fucking funny. His like he writes some like he can write some like pretty smart heady like science fiction concepts too when he wants to, but also in a way that's like not overwhelming or intense. Like there's like an almost chainsaw man-esque bit with the little zine that has like some kind of wild, like, sci-fi world building implications for something that is objectively very silly and ridiculous, and he just kind of plays it out for like 10 pages in a way that's like way more s like like way smarter and more thoughtful than like you'd ever expect this like very silly ice skating concept to be. He's a good sci-fi writer, he's an excellent comedy writer. He's just one of the best cartoonists doing it right now. Um read Michael DeForge or else uh we'll have words. Me and your mother uh will have words with you. And your dad too. And your dad too. And your little dad too. It's called a polycule. Ever heard of it? Fucko. You wanna start a polycule with your parents?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:29

That's something that would happen in a Michael DeForge comic. It is.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:32

That might have even been a Michael DeForge comic at some point.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:35

I can see it. Like some some gay boy getting bullied at high school, and then he's like, I wanna start a polycule with your parents, bully. And the bully comes home and he started a polycule. You should make that comic.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:50

And then it goes on for 10 pages longer than you expect it to.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:54

You can see a Nancy in Hell comic. Sluggo starts a polycool with one of their bullies' parents.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:01

Filing that away for later. Anyway, um, should we finish it off? I got I think one more thing to talk about. Not nearly as indefinitely.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:09

Watch out for Nancy in Hell, by the way, this uh May 2nd. Yeah, free comic book day. Free comic book day. Free comic book giveaway day.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:17

I will never I'm going to deadname it. I'm not- I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:20

Sorry if that's not woke, but I'm uh The newspapers will refer to it the same way they refer to Twitter. The comic book giveaway day. Formerly free comic book day.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:29

The artist formerly known as free comic book day. PRH doesn't get to fucking tell me shit. Like, PRH doesn't get to say a damn thing. I'm I'm sticking with it. What's Rabagoo Race? The Rabagoo Race, um, this is created by Goresh. I knew kind of nothing about it when I first came in, other than like this is Gresh's first um graphic novel. They put out like a big zine-like thing called Disco Levante a couple years ago. That's like a really good, it's kind of like if a non-Darke drew Blame, like the manga blame. This one is just like an extremely like psychedelic, like, boat racing story. Where's like these th it's like this legendary boat race where a hundred boat racers are trying to like race against each other to get one wish. It's very one PC, and all of them but three die. It's just like these two bigger ships, and then this one kid and his dog who are running this tiny rig, and they're just like out on the high seas, just getting blown about. It's not always clear what's always necessarily happening, but it's what's literally happening is not always the most important thing about this comic. These are like walls of texture and color and noise. The lettering is like all hand done in these like extremely gorgeous ways. It's non-stop color and fury and noise. It's the prettiest coloring I've seen all year, and some of the prettiest lettering I've seen all year, too. It's unbelievable how good this book looks. Part way through it becomes a much different thing that I won't get into a ton, other than it's like an exploration of grief in a way that doesn't necessarily feel far off from like um it's lonely at the center of the earth in a weird sort of way. Um, while still kind of also being this this like psychedelic boat racing comic. It's really good. I really enjoyed it. Um I think it's fucking gorgeous. Um I don't really know how to talk about it deeper than that, other than it's it's great. Like I think Resh is really t like really talented. Um even in black and white with like Disco Levante, like it was just clear that this guy had just unbelievable levels of juice. Um, and so I've been eagerly awaiting his like psychedelic boat comic for a long time. It's it's fantastic. Um The only thing that's like kind of odd about it is it's like dedicated to both like his dead dog and Ed Pisker, which is odd. I didn't really know what to do with that. Whereas like the the stuff about his dog is like really beautiful and really thoughtful, and it's just like what's Ed Pisker doing here?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:16

Yeah, I wonder if they were friends or something.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:18

They probably were. A lot of indie comics guys were Did something happen to Ed Pisker?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:24

Same thing that happened to Dave Pilke.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:26

Oh my god, they were in cahoots.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:33

I just wanted to make that noise.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:36

That was impressive.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:38

I was a little turned on.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:40

Um stick us out.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:43

I am a woman, and you are the audience, and together that makes us a podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:55

Also, maybe a polycule.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:59

Subscribe to the Patreon, and you'll be entered into our polycule here.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:51

Uh I'm Tate. I'm Persephone. I'm Dr. Pearl. And we're joined by Acacia a woman who's quickly becoming uh a standard character. Uh at the very least a B-List hero in the absolute ultimate escapist universe, uh, Acacia. I'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

All my favorite heroes are B-listers.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:15

Yeah, you're at the very least a Hawkeye. Hell yeah. In the best way of Hawking. At best in America Chapis. Yeah. Or Ms. Marvel, perhaps. Yeah. Ooh, Miss Marvel is a B Lister. I take. Well, she doesn't have a run. She's there's no there's no Ms. Marvel floppy on the shelf right now. Uh, tragic. I know. That's why like in two years. She shouldn't be a B Lister. She's she's being forced into the B category. I did just watch a comics video essay that fully agreed with what you were saying the last time you came onto the comics podcast, which is the essay tagline is just Storm has outgrown the X-Men. Oh, yeah. And I clicked it because we had just had the whole conversation and I was like, holy shit, like, there's other people saying this. Yeah, like people are on the same wave as Acacia. Um, remorse it's time to move Storm out of the X section in the new comics room and put her under ST. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:06

If you're trying to put her on a team, you've already done a bad job. Like at this point, she just like is above being on like a traditional Avengers X-Men team.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:16

I would love to see like a Storm Jane Foster Thor team up comic. Oh, that would go. I feel like that would be fun. I'd read that. Like traveling through space or some shit. Like, I feel like that would be cool. Why is Spider-Man in space?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:30

Where's where's Jane Foster in comics these days? I haven't heard anything about her. I have not been reading Mortal Thor, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:36

She's not in Mortal Thor. No one's done anything with her. The last time she showed up was actually in that um Spider-Man Superman issue, and and lo and behold, it was Jason Aaron and Russell Donnerman that that brought her back.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:49

Um That's the last run of Thor that I read is that Aaron run, which is very good and is also like the most Jane Foster focused thing that I've read. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:58

Jane Foster shows up a bunch in his X-Men, I thought his X-Men, sorry, his um Avengers, from my understanding, but Marvel's kind of just canned her, which really sucks, because she's a cool and interesting character. Like, even that little story in in Spider-Man Superman, like, put a lot of respect on her name and like really, like, was an interesting. I actually hate women in comics.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:20

I know. I don't think that women should make comics, I don't think that they should have opinions on comics, much less record them in any kind of archival, audio, visual, even text format. And I hate when there are women characters in comics, I don't think they belong in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:34

I mostly agree because I think women should be the CEOs of every comic company, and we should let them in do the gromp. Like making the comic.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:48

The only real work in comics is the work CEOs do.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:53

Oh my god, and they're all women and they're like in Dominatrix outfits too. Like that one dream sequence in 9 to 5.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:02

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:03

I was listening to a podcast recently, and they said that the glas the glass gutter is just as important as the glass ceiling. And that we should allow more women to break the glass gutter. Oh my god. Need more trash ass women, and I fully agree with this.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:18

Um, we've got some comics news today. Um that's gonna be led by Persephone.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:23

It's gonna be kind of a quick roundup on this one. Um Jim Lee reported some health issues, uh, pre-diabetes, I believe it was, which is why Hush 2 has been so delayed. Um, they should probably stop asking him to do a million fucking interlocking covers. Um, because I know that Hush 2 has like I think they've got 20 covers. 20 covers and like 10 of them are like various interlocking covers that they're asking Jim Lee to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:49

They're trying to be asserted crisis event so bad.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:52

They just don't have that. Um look, a Jeff Lowe book did come out this week, Batman Wonder Woman Truth. None of us read it. It's the little bit of it that I read was bad. We're not even gonna talk about it because it's kind of beneath our notice. Um speaking of much better writers, actually sorry, Jim Chung innocent. The Jim Chung art's really, really pretty. Um, but speaking of much better writers, um Jerry Conway um passed away recently. Um Gail Simone was doing some some good obits on him just because um he was a huge influence on her work and she talks pretty regularly uh online about uh how much Jerry Conway's work like meant to her. Um I'm not well versed enough to really be talking about Jerry Conway, so I won't, but um yeah, he seems like a really interesting, unique dude. He was like, you know, pretty s you know, like right next to Marv Wolfman in this in the 70s is like a pretty like important figure in like Marvel comics work. Um similarly, Roger Sweet, the creator of He-Man, also died in this last week. Um I also don't know enough about him, but maybe this is when we should have Corinne on the podcast. I was just about to say, like, I think Corinne should be on the podcast to talk about this because she she's much better at it than than I am.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:08

Yeah, I mean she just knows more about frickin' He-Man than any of us. Yeah. I don't really know anyone who would know like as much about the Energon universe.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:25

I'm gonna choose to call it the Energon Universe because I respect that more than G.I. Joe. Is that that's right though, right? I think so. That's that's about accurate. Um jumping off from that, we're gonna talk about the uh Dennis Camp dartboard incident. Which after um a certain president was not assassinated um at the White House correspondence dinner, Dennis Camp posted a uh tweet which just said, damn, missed again, sad face. And when fans got upset about this, uh he posted a picture of a dartboard that was uh badly thrown at, and he said, No, I'm just like a big darts enthusiast, guys. I didn't do I I'm just talking about darts. Somebody else then figured out that obvious like obviously it was just a stock image of a dartboard. But there's there's a little bit of a minor controversy going right now. Um minor because he's not a trans woman, so like and and then yet, yet. Keep hope alive. Give me five. No. Um shouldn't have said that. Um but um you know that the only thing I'll kind of say to continue that is just like we're gonna be talking a lot more about comic book controversies a lot later. Um, but we used to have creators who fucking believe things and said it with their full chest. Um Jamie Delano would have would have said to kill Margaret Thatcher any day of the week if you asked him, and he regularly did, and the pages of Hellblazer. Um there was that 70s Captain America comic where it's implied that Richard Nixon is the leader of Hydra and shoots himself in the head. Um we used to believe things, uh, for whatever that's worth.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:10

Even like the Giffen Justice League International has like a lot of uh just like pretty overt I mean not like Delano Hellblazer level overt, but like pretty overt criticism and mockery of Ronald Reagan.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:27

There's just it's like it's very thinly veiled. And that's like a that's like that was the Justice League title at the time, which like you would just never see now. My god. Yeah. You would never I cannot imagine a Justice League comic now where they like shit talk the president. No. I j it just wouldn't happen. We really want something, truly.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:49

Like, we and so and one sense we've gotten better on kind of like religious stuff, it's like you can have Swamp Thing 89 now, um, in a way that you couldn't at the time, but yeah, now that we just nobody can have political beliefs. Corinne did also point out to me that it was a lot harder to know where you lived uh back in the day.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:09

Like Jane like no one was like turning up to Jamie Delano's house to send him death threats, whereas it's vit like other comics creators have talked about how many like death and rape threats they've gotten for anything and everything, including having a woman or a black character in something, or being a woman who was born with a penis and a la comics gate. Or, you know, wishing for the death of Charlie Kirk, which was correct. Um Gretchen Falker Barton was right.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:37

Um Yeah, I'm a I'm a Gretchen truther. As in she told the truth and she was correct.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:44

It was literally that fucking uh chick-tract, like they th they yelled at Jesus because Jesus spoke the truth.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:51

Yeah, dude, that's that's been my favorite soundbite lately. I'll say something like really out of pocket, and then when people look at me like a crazy person, I just go, they they killed Jesus because he told the truth.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:59

Why would you say something so controversial and yet so brave, etc. etc.? Um, but that's kind of all about that. Um jumping into kind of the last thing, um, which is going to lead into our first book, uh, we'll talk about briefly. We're gonna talk about Marvel Pride 2026. Um because they finally announced what the stories are gonna be, and look, I've long joked that Marvel that that uh Hulkling and Wiccan are the only two gay people that are like actually real in Marvel. Um they're the only ones Marvel will like allow out of the out of the gate. And that seemed like maybe a little bit too far, because it's like, okay, there's other ones, like there's North Star and there's Mystique and and um Destiny is a Destiny username. Um there's other ones, and then Marvel Pride 2020 26 said there's there's just not other gay people. There are four stories in Marvel Pride 2026.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:52

That's a really poor showing.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:54

Wait, there are four total stories total? There are four stories total. One of them is about video. Vision. The other ones are, and I quote, a Hulkling Wiccan story, number one. Number two, a Hulkling and Someone Else story, and number three, a Wiccan and Someone Else story. Uh featuring an interview with Tegan and Sarah, God's least offensive lesbians.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:16

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:16

Um this is this is what happens when you want some of that, like you want some of that gay money, but Gym Shooter's ghost is shouting too many slurs in the office for you to put through anything. Um Stephanie and her Gym Shooter's ghost. Until Marvel like has like actual gay people around, like, I don't want to hear it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:36

Like, like, Jim Shoot like Gym Shooter's just there. That's so funny because I'm wearing my like gay X-Men t-shirt today. Yeah. And I can count on one hand like the number of characters on this shirt who are currently in a Marvel comic.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:53

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

Like, there are gay people in Marvel books. That are B listers at best. I know. Oh no, it's like even to me. I'm reading the book with all the alliterations, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:05

The B list stands for the batty list. But this is what I'm saying, is like Marvel has gay people. They've just decided that, like, God's least offensive gay men are like the only ones they can trot out. And then Tegan and Sarah, just so those dykes will give us some fucking money.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:22

They're trying to get a cut of the Harley and Ivy cash crab.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:28

Which is actually just a which leads right into the fact that Marvel has nothing even close to a Harley and Ivy. No, seriously. Yeah. There's like no Just no lesbian lovers in Marvel comics allowed. There's just no girls kissing, much less fingering.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:43

You know what DC is doing for Pride? They're doing an entire mini-series with two trans women leading it. Oh, that's beautiful. What's the series? It's it's gonna be uh Justice League Dream War. Oh, hello. Which spins off from this Justice League Intergalactic, which is written by J uh Jazidia Axelrod.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:02

Okay, so I do I should read this.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:03

And Nicole Maynes, and I'm not gonna talk about it a ton. I think it's a good issue. I think it's really fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:08

Um I'll I'll I'll pick this back up because I put it back on the shelf, but I will read it knowing this now. I think you should. It looks good too.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:15

It's very it's very pretty art. Um a lot of the issue is like two trans women just getting to have a complex relationship with each other, and like it's not groundbreaking or anything. It's not like shattering any uh I don't know, I don't know what the transsexual version of a glass ceiling is, but like it's not shattering any of those, but like it's a it's good, well-rounded, well-written trans characters, two of whom are just trans women who are just leading it. Um I just wanna and like very bluntly too, like one of them says, I'm a wanted woman in three countries and a wanted man in six.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:54

That's so good.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:56

Like, and like it just allows these trans women to like exist and be like front and center and like have a complicated relationship to each other, and like Dreamer and Green Arrow have like complicated history and relationships, and I'm like, I can't even imagine a gay person in Marvel right now having complex relationships. Relationship with anybody.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:14

Like, Marvel is like severely cutting down on how many stories are in their Pride issue. Meanwhile, it's not even Pride yet, and we're seeing Harley and Ivy fucking in two separate series right now. Like there's two separate series in which they're pretty explicitly having sex, and it is April.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:33

Like they're just less sinister than Marvel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:39

And DC is not an infallible company, Greg Volker Martin, obviously, what they did to her. And yet, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:47

Somehow they're leaps and bounds more progressive than Marvel is.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:53

It's depressing that they're the that DC is the best of the big companies. Like it th there's more gay shit in DC right now than most of Image, which is weird and embarrassing.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:04

Yeah, I mean the gayest book I feel like Image is putting out as a sort of crisis events, which is like not even like really that gay of a book. It's just like a book for freaks. Yeah. You know, that like I do think there there are a couple there's a couple queer characters in that book. But like it's not, that's not what the book's about. No. You know, like it's not No. It's just that like Dennis Kemp is a normal enough person to be like, yeah, I can just have like two gay guys in my book.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:30

Yeah. Which is like, yeah, like once you stop having just like the same like five white dude writers doing things and like straight dude writers writing things, like you get a lot more writers who are just like, yeah, even if my book is like not about, you know, queerness or race or anything or like a disability or whatever, that like they just will have disabled characters, characters of color, queer characters who just like exist in the book and have like meaningful roles within it. And like that's that's good and beautiful, and that's much more interesting to me than like trotting out Hulkling and fucking Wiccan to just be like little puppet gay guys asking for your money. So yeah, check out Justice League Intergalactic. It's cute, it's fun, it's well written. Um, there's a fun um some like it hot bit in here. Umbody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. Exactly. Um to kind of bounce, I'm just gonna get out of the way. Tony Millionaire's oddball odyssey is it's alright. Um the art's very pretty. Um story didn't do much of anything for me, but it is nice seeing Tony Millionaire do weird shit, and it's nice to see Bad Idea being willing to put stock in a in a uh Tony Millionaire book right next to a like Joshua Dysar Bill Sinkovich book right next to a like I forgot what the other uh Ramon Villa Lobos, there we go. It's nice to see Bad Idea do what like what's that fucking Distillery do it to do what Distillery thought it was doing and just like put good independent creators in front of the in front of the uh in front of the page. Um Do you wanna go into some swamp thing historical background? Yeah, I think I think actually you should lead with the Tom Veich pre-history stuff, and then we'll get into the like what led up to this uh this issue. If you feel up to talking about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:35

Yeah, I mean I think I don't know I don't think I have like a really fleshed-out explanation of like what canonically leads to the Jesus issues. Um But just kind of like what the Tom Veich run is. Yeah, I mean I think like Veitch's run. What what Weich's run reads to me is so so Veitch picked up Swamp Thing uh directly after uh Alan Moore, the writer who uh made Swamp Thing the kind of uh comics legend and sort of canonical mainstay that it is. Uh so Veitch Veitch picked it up after Moore finished his run on Swamp Thing, which was much longer than Veitch's. Veich's is um probably like two or three trades, like not trades, but like paperback collections long.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:22

He was the he was the illustrator on a bunch of Moores.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:25

Yeah, so so Veitch was working kind of closely with Moore along with Bissette and several other um kind of I mean, honestly like legends of uh fantasy and horror illustration in their own right. Um and Veitch took up uh writing duties on the series after Moore. And in many ways I think it feels uh like a continuation of what Moore was seeking to do with the run. I think there's like it's it's definitely totally different uh from uh from Alan Moore's run. But it is um and he he writes about this explicitly in some of the front matter from uh some of the collections. It's basically like he's trying to keep up with uh the smash hit and kind of the I mean honestly the masterpiece that is Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Um and I think to a large part he really succeeds. Um I think that he starts to bring the character not necessarily into the superhero world, but more into what might recognizably be thought of as sort of a superheroic character. You start to see um much more of like a continuation of a canon that Alan Moore set up, so you start to see like uh real villains appear, and you start to see him interact again with uh John Constantine. Um, and then this is also the run in which uh Swamp Thing gets a kid.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:08

Um, so Swampthing has a kid with his wife, Abby Arkane. Um, and you're getting coffee. Okay, she's going on a coffee break, which she really adorably wrote on back and board for me. Drastically overestimating the formality of this podcast.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:27

This is a collector's item now. You can get it for $15 at the front register. Yeah. One of the kind. The coffee break board. Um one in one thousand variant. You'll find it on the fucking speculator sites tomorrow.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:41

Yeah. Um, and so uh this run, I think like there's a lot of kind of artistic uh through lines from this with Alan Moore, but he um I think as kind of creative director and writer of this series, he does all this kind of like crazy experimentation um than you might see in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Like, there's no there's no Blue Planet issue of this. There's no um there's no like him traveling through the bowels of like a god-like techno entity, you know? Um but th those things are kind of like referenced, so you start to see kind of like a historicizing of the character in Vite's run that you don't see in Alan Moore's run, because I think Moore was really not interested in creating a canon in the way that you might understand a canon for like a a Batman or a Superman or something. Yeah. Um and then you see that kind of carried on through like the Nancy Collins run or something where he starts to have even more recurring villains like uh Sunderland or um Abby's father, the like Arcane Arcane or whatever, Anton Arcane. Um it's in many ways like a sweeter version of the character. It's not naive, um, but it's it feels it feels more genuine and less deconstructive than Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Although I don't think that Alan Moore's Swamp Thing is really trying to deconstruct anything. Um But this is this is a much less experimental uh character. Um if you're kind of approaching Vichy's Swamp Thing after Moore's Swamp Thing, just know that like it's not gonna be as weird. Um but it will have kind of the same written tone. It will be like similarly dense. Um it's similarly like beautifully illustrated. Um it's also got, I mean, a lot of weird stuff, honestly, in its own right, just like not really formally weird stuff. Like there is uh there's a couple issues in which uh Swamp Thing um as like a microscopic piece of plant life in Abby's pregnant body visits his fetus in her womb. Um and then exits her body, and Swamp Thing has become uh biological woman. Uh his sex has changed to female. Um and at first Abby in here kinda like freaked out, um, and then Abby touches him and he becomes pregnant. Um and he starts to like give birth almost immediately. Um and there's some like pretty strikingly uh explicit images of Swamp Thing giving birth. Um, including Swamp Thing vagina. Um in one of these issues. And then he gives birth to himself, and he considers staying a baby for Abby to take care of and love. Transsexual, honestly, this thing is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:43

This is very, very relatable. I I've never related more to Swamp Thing. I do want to birth myself and be a baby forever. Um You should read Swamp Thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:51

It's fucking real.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:52

I don't like Swamp Thing for so many reasons, but you keep giving me more. It's so good.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:56

But yeah, so there's like there's a lot of uh like I I I don't I don't honestly think that that that's the kind of thing that Alan Moore would have written. I think that's like not really his bag. Um there's like a lot of kind of humor in the Vite run that you don't see in the Alan Moore run. Yeah. And that humor is like very much echoed later on in like Nancy Collins' run of Swamp Thing, um, where you get to see him as the kind of more humanly attached and warm character that he kind of needs to be in order to be compelling, because you can only follow a kind of cold Swamp Thing for so long, you know? Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:34

You start getting like him threatening to cause a a rosebush to bloom in a Nazi's asshole.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:40

Yeah, exactly. Or like uh he helps uh in the Collins run after s after Weich, which I I think her run is kind of just as influenced by Vite as it is by more like he helps some monkey wrenchers who are being chased away by like uh foreman constructing a toxic waste plant. Yeah. There's stuff like that where uh I don't know, he he has friends in the Veitch and the Collins runs in a way that he like doesn't in the Alan Moore run. Like he he has people.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:11

Um the Moore run kind of ends with him like just starting to really make connections and be like, oh, maybe I'm not this cold plant god thing, and then as you said, like Veich and Collins really run with that. Like because Collins is just like a beautiful soap opera. Like you're just reading and you're just like the character work here is fantastic and the relationship work here is fantastic, and it's the best part of that run.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:33

Yeah, I'm really enjoying that run right now. But yeah, at the risk of rambling too much, I'm gonna hand it over to Persephone um to talk some history about uh the something issues that are coming out right now, um, which were previously unreleased issues from Vitech's run, um, for reasons that we're about to learn about.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:55

So I'm gonna cover just a few bases here. I really do think uh if you want the full story, um Stephen R. Bassett gives a really, really good essay at the back of this issue going into it, and then Gizmodo um has an article called The Oral History of the Scrapped Swamp Thing story, 40 Years in the Making. There is a lot of overlap between those two essays, but there is there are some differences and there are some specifics. And the oral history one is from Veich's point of view himself, who is still alive.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:26

Um, sorry, one more thing about Oh yeah, please, please, please. The Veich Swamp Thing. Um So there's uh um one of the artists on the Rick Veich Swamp thing is um god, what's his name?

SPEAKER_05 1:43:42

Um Are you talking about Alaka?

SPEAKER_04 1:43:44

Are you talking about Zuli or it's like um He's a Filipino. Um my god, this is gonna drive me crazy. Um It's not Redondo. Um TikTok. Hold on guys, stay with me. Um what I what I think is interesting about this character though is um about this about this artist is uh he's I think he's part of this uh wave of like Filipino comics artists who were brought in by DC who were like really, really talented fantasy and horror artists, um in a way that kind of to me mimics um mimics the British invasion uh of comics writers and also artists. Um and I wish I could remember this guy's name, um, because it's making me really sad that I can't. Um I'm getting old, y'all.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:00

Once you once you find it, please.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:02

Oh, it's Alfredo Alcala.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:03

Oh, that's why Oh, yeah. I said Alaka, I guess. Alcala.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:06

Yeah. I I was like, oh, Laka sounds right, but I know that's wrong. But yeah, so Alfredo Alcala is this like wonderful artist who does incredible work on this run.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:14

Yeah, he's a he's a really prominent inker as well for like you've seen his inks if you've read Sandman, you've you've read his inks if you've read Hellblazer, like he's a really prominent inker, he's a really prominent penciler in his own right. Um if you read like that kind of early era Hellblazer, or sorry, early era vertigo, he's inescapable. Like he is he is as much an inf like a much as as much a centerpiece of early vertigo as like Karen Berger is in a lot of ways. Um his his influence is all over all over that that era. Um but to quickly kind of talk about the the history, I do recommend you check out that Gizmod and this article and the Stephen Bassett essay, but I'm just gonna cover some kind of base notes. Um kind of an 88 when this was being published, the Batman movie by Tim Burton was just about to come out. Which has an ad on the back of this issue.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:04

Yeah, we'll talk if you noticed that. Oh, I did.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:07

We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that. Um with the quote original advertisement reproduction on the back. We'll we'll definitely talk about that. Um but um when this right before this book was about to come out, like DC was gonna do its first Batman movie and it put a lot of money into this, and so that, among a couple other reasons we're gonna get into in a second, like caused this increased scrutiny of DC. Um, some of this was that like graphic novels were starting to become a thing. This was like immediately post The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen in 85 and 86. So just a few years after that, like the graphic novel is starting to become a thing that people are like aware of. Like, there's a lot more money coming in than there previously was, but there was also a lot more attention. Um similarly, like the Reagan White House was doing its its thing. Um uh Enemy of the Pod, Ronald Reagan.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:03

Ronaldo. Ronald Reagan. And references to Ronald Reagan get me hot.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:09

Some like it, Reagan, um, as they say. That's so Reagan, if you will. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:16

I will not.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:18

But um, because of all of these things, um, DC decided to try to institute a classification board, which is what kind of led to the suggested for mature readers, but before that it was like closer to like a film PGR kind of thing. A lot of writers, including Veich, um, did not like this and protested against it because they thought, uh more as well, because they thought this would create like um this would create like targets on their backs, and to a sense it it did a little bit, where like now Republicans and like other kind of lobbyists like could could track down the like suggested for mature readers titles and be like, oh, there's icky gay stuff in there. Or or the or there's like, oh, there's like they're shooting up in there. They're shooting up in there, yeah. Whereas like there was a degree of like anonymity that or there was a degree of like you could do more things because nobody was like paying attention to Swamp Thing in the mi in between like fucking Green Lantern and Batman.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:20

Although I did learn recently that my grandma, when she was a young woman, was a huge fan of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. That's the grandmother. Yeah. I like sh I was like, I brought a Swamp Thing collection over uh because I was reading it during Thanksgiving last year, um, and I heard this like overjoyed exclamation of excitement. And I was like, what? Like, and she's like, oh my god, like this is Swamp Thing. Like I used to read these um as a girl. Um and I was like, these ones? She was like, yeah, like these Swamp Things. Um so yeah, my grandma, uh OG fan, reading them as they were coming out in pharmacy um and soda fountain spinorax. Um What a legend. I know. Yeah. She's cool. She's a she's a horror-loving badass.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:10

That's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Anyway, carry on. No, thank you, thank you for that interlude. I needed to needed to I needed to be reminded of that. That was beautiful. Um sorry, I'm spacing for a second.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:21

Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:22

Okay, yeah, but because of this increased level of like scrutiny, DC's parent company, Warner, which was actually this was during the the D the um the Time Warner merger as well. And so, like, there was so much more money and so much more scrutiny on kind of what was going on.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:38

I love mergers.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:39

We love mergers. Friend of the podcast, corporate mergers.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:43

I love when companies do evil.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:49

Ooh, monopolize me. Oh my god, monopolize me, you daddy Reagan. Um dear. So, like to qu to briefly quote uh Rick Veitch here, the problem was this. 80s were a cultural high watermark for Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, and the moral majority. National media panics over the corrupting influence of role-playing games and rock and roll had become become brief but hot scandals. For years, an internal debate had raged in comics over whether this small-time industry was especially at risk, and then it did. Everyone kind of says that he did it by the book. This is not a contested fact.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:32

Yeah, it seems like DC editorial was chill with it.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:35

Yeah, Karen Berger wanted to do it. Um, Karen Berger wanted to do it. Um there was a different group editor who wanted to do it, and then the president, whose name I'm forgetting of DC, was also willing to do it. Um initially. She signed off on it, she signed off, they all signed off on the pitch, they signed off on the issues, they even signed off on the cover, which or actually no, they didn't sign off on the cover, my bad. Uh, we'll get to that. Um, but um sorry, trying to find a specific thing. Um apologies for a second.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:11

Um And I I I do think that that gels with what I've heard from people about kind of the autonomy that Vertigo had, apart from DC, was like what I'd heard was until this period of kind of like for lack of a better word, satanic panic or whatnot. Um Burger had kind of successfully not gotten into the sights of like the big business execs at DC. She had kind of just been like publishing her stuff uh pretty like unsupervised and like it had been doing well, so no one had really been like messing with Vertigo and no one had really been asking questions. Um and then like two years before Burger left, someone like plopped a bunch of Vertigo horror titles on the desk of uh DC's CEO post-Warner buyout. Oh shit. Um, and uh was basically like, did you know we're like doing this? And the the the CEO had like kind of had uh bit of a corporate freak out. Um and that kind of did lead to the downfall of uh original Vertigo to a certain degree. I mean there were lots of aspects of it. Um but I was listening to uh I want to say it was a Karen Berger interview podcast, um, and she was talking about she was like kind of allowed to do her own thing for a long time, and her books were selling really well, and then yeah, like this real cultural shift happened. Um and all of a sudden it was like when people realized what they were putting out, DC had to kind of scramble to save their butts.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:49

Absolutely. Uh to briefly quote Veitch again, uh Veich concedes that the rejection didn't entirely come out of left field. In 1988, the release of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and the Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie had sparked renewed fears of religious controversy. Um and so like those things were both like very, very prominent in the minds of like DC CEOs and like also just like sat like higher-up staff at DC was that like the the controversy over the portrayal of Jesus and ascore says he's the last temptation of Christ, and then also that like Salomon Rushdie and his like Book of Satanic Verses was like they nearly assassinated the man several times. Bro, they almost got his ass recently, too. Yeah, like a couple years ago. How many years ago was it? They like stabbed him in the last year. Just last year they stabbed him in the face. Yeah, so things were things were pretty grim. And so DC kind of did a a hard backpedal. Veitch really tried to make amendments to this. He was like, what can I change? Like, I'll change the cover. Um the cover for context was the initial cover was uh swamp thing as the cross that Jesus is nailed on. Which we did have some of the store and then we sold out. Yeah, but no, no, no, no, no. I mean, no, no, no. It's not not this one. Oh, it's not that one. No, it's um Oh yeah, because it's included in it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 1:54:07

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:09

It's like as the cross itself. Um, and there's um, if you go to Vince Locke's um uh Instagram account, he uh inked and then colored that initial Veitch sketch, and it looks so good. My kingdom for DC to allow me to have that cover in my hands and on my wall. Um but yeah, like he he offered to amend that, he offered to amend it parts of the story. DC would not budge. Weich left the company, um, the two writers who were going to take over, I can't tell if they were like going to be back-to-back writers or if they were going to work together, that much is kind of unclear to me. Um, but the two writers that were going to follow Veitch up on Swamp Thing, which was gonna be Jamie Delano, uh Friend of the Pod and Enemy of the Pod, Neil Guiman, uh, were gonna be on the title. They both left when Vich did too, and so Swamp Thing got kind of an alert for a while until Nancy Collins picked it up. Um but yeah, that leads us to um this Swamp Thing 1989. It's gonna be four or five issues. I've seen different things, so I'm not entirely clear on that. Um Steven R. Bissett talks about how editor um where's his name? Alex Gaylor, who has been around in Vertigo and with Swamp Thing for a very long time, has been like a consistent advocate for this book to be re-released. It like if without Alex Gaylor, we would not have had this book re-released without his like advocacy, Stephen Bissett says as much. Um and when you crack open this issue, kind of just the very bare bones background is like Swamp Thing is falling through time for reasons that are not really important right now, but he's like falling through time and he ends up in the time of Christ. And kind of the thing that immediately stands out while reading it is it's just you could mistake it for a Christian comic. Like, it's pretty reverent of Christ. Like, it's not a sacrilegious book. It's not even a tenth as sacrilegious as, like, 1994's I believe 1994's preacher was, um, or stuff other stuff that Vertigo would later do. Um, it kind of shows that even there's like a lot more cas even nowadays, there's like a lot more casual of a relationship with like Christianity and the divine in comics and in pop culture than there used to be. Um though that said, in 2015 I think they were going to do a uh some Mark Russell thing or whatever, and Fox News got a hold of it. Um, and that put them off from re-releasing this back maybe like a decade ago. Um That said, here we are now with this book, and it's it's pretty reverent. Um it's kind of a beautiful little story about like Swamp Thing engaging with like Christ, and I don't really have a whole lot more to say about it, both because I don't want to spoil it, and also because it's kind of difficult to talk about like what makes it so interesting in that regard. So I'm just not gonna get into too much of the story details in specific, other than like it's sweet and it's nice, and I it reads like Vertigo comics used to read. Definitely a lot more like literary-minded, a lot more like historically minded, a lot more like poetically minded than a lot of even other mature readers' titles are to this day. Um Vince Locke um is the inker on this book. He um the pencils were initially supposed to be done by Michael Zuli. Um you probably know him from the very last mainline arc of Sandman, um, The Wake, he did the pencils for. He also did Puma Blues and some other stuff. Um Zuli worked on the pencils of this right before he died. Um, and my and Vince Locke in, I believe, the Gizmodo essay, um, uh on the in the Gizmode talks about how uh Michael Zuly talked about how emo or sorry, Vince Locke talked about how emotional it was to be like inking over Michael Zuly's pencils, and that he was penciling or inking over a dead man's work, and inking over the work of a man who was like making this right before he died, and how emotional that was for him. Similarly, Trish Mulvahill talked about how like she was trying to replicate the color of uh early Vertigo uh with the death of Tatyana Wood this this last couple months ago, very recently, Tatyana Wood died, and that uh Mulvahill was trying to like replicate like what her colors and what would look like and how it was like challenging to kind of work with a little more limited color palette, but um but that it was also very rewarding. Um kind of the last thing to really be said is like I don't know where the next four issues or th three or four issues of this are going to go from here. Um I've heard mostly three. Um I've heard mostly three, but then I've heard five today, so I'm very confused about that. Who told you five? I think Bassette did.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:20

I mean, I feel like Bassett would be the one to know. Yeah. I mean it would be cool if it was five.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:24

That sounds awesome. I will double check that. I it's possible that I could have misread what Bassette said in this in this background, but the point is that uh Baiche's work is going to be finished for the first time in 30 years. And it's gonna be really cool to get to see this, and where it's going from here, who fucking knows, dude. It could go anywhere. And that's an exciting thing to feel.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:45

Yeah, it's it's uh It's unbelievably awesome that this that this got published. Like, I'm so happy.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:55

Um DC, make it put another Swamp Thing book out. Especially if you can give it like in the on the vertigo side of things. Like. And and like if y'all really want to. Like, if somebody has like a really strong vision for Swamp Thing, put that out there.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:11

Hit my boy Walter Ub.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:13

Yeah, hit Walter Ub. Walter's Swamp Thing pitch is amazing. Genuinely would be buying it every single week.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:21

I wouldn't pay for that.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:24

I would pirate it with my mind. Yeah, we work at a comic book store.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:29

I mean, read it at readcomicsonline.com. I mean, forget you heard that. You don't know what that website is. Oh my god. And I mind trick. All the comics on that website are more expensive than they are here.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:42

We we should start our own scans website. Oh my god. Why haven't we done this?

SPEAKER_05 2:00:48

The escapes escapistscans.com. Oh, the scan piss. The scan pissed, there we go. Fuck we're gonna access we should be scanning. Stop this. Our bosses, if you are listening to this, know that this is satirical and for the purposes of comedy and humor. Um definitely not for business um andor theft reasons. Um anyway, what should we talk about next before we implicate ourselves further?

SPEAKER_04 2:01:22

Um, I can talk about the new Tilly Walden book real quick.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:26

Yeah, please, please do. And then let's talk about Zatana Zatana and new um Ultimates after that.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:30

Uh yeah, the the new Tilly Walden book, uh, I think it just dropped. Um I know she's touring it right now. Um it's called uh Sil I think it's called Sylvia and Charity. Charity and Sylvia, same-sex marriage in early America. Um so uh Charity and Sylvia is um It was originally published, uh Oh my god, I need to like get this right. Um, because I'm like reviewing it for the comics. Oh, it'll be out in uh June. Okay, it'll be out in June. But I I'll discuss it now because uh I'm not gonna spoil anything, but I I I wanna rave about it. Um Yeah, please do.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:15

I would love to hear it.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:16

So Charity Bryant and Sonic Drake um are two real uh I use the word lesbian now, um, but at the time that's like not a term that they would have used. Um they were 19th century uh American women living in uh the Northeast in Weybridge, Vermont, um, from 1807 to 1851. Um they're two real women. Um, and they're an early and very glaring example of same-sex marriage, uh, in the US. Um, at a time when I think uh kind of pop cultural wisdom has it that that was not a thing that existed. Um, which I think if you've read any kind of uh real critical queer history, you'll know that that is not and was never the case uh with Historical America. Um and that uh queerness has really only become more policed as it's become more defined over the last hundred and fifty so years. Um and so uh Sylvia Drake and Charity Bryant uh are the subjects of Tilly Walden's new book, uh Charity and Sylvia, which is coming out, you said June. June, yes. It's coming out in June. Um and it's I say this um with a great deal of seriousness. I do think it's one of the best works of lesbian historical fiction I've ever engaged with. Really? Um I put it up there with like portrait of a lady on fire or something as like a really amazing work of uh kind of historical lesbian literature. Um the other example I would provide here is um Audrey Lorde's memoir, Zombie. Um portrait of I think it's Zombie Portrait of My New Name, um which is a later time period, obviously. It's a depiction of twentieth century lesbianism in the US, um and largely a depiction of black lesbianism in the US in the 20th century. Um and so they they're real people, um, and this is it's a long book, it's like 250 pages. It's a capital G N graphic novel. Um it's beautifully illustrated, it's drawn in these kind of like brown inkwashes. Um and I I think like I I think that queer historical fiction and kind of queer writings about history in general are often really poorly done. I think there's a lot of pitfalls that you can fall into. Um I think like a great example of a queer historical fiction failure uh recently is Raging Clouds by Udori.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:12

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:13

Um, which I wrote a pretty negative review about in the comics journal a while ago. Um, which she did not post about on her Instagram. Um and I I think that book felt uh really cowardly in a lot of ways, especially um in the way that she took this weird out of like choosing not to depict these two women being like romantic together because uh the notion of like lesbian love was not present in the time period that she was writing about, which I think is just like such a kind of cowardly cop out. Um and I think that it falls prey to this really fallacious notion that like just because we didn't have like the notion of like LGBT or pride that these like women who loved each other and were sexually attracted to each other were not sleeping together.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:12

Um lesbianism didn't exist until Alice and Bechtel invented it with got with fun home.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:18

Yeah. Um and and instead, Tilly Walden does a really good job of um really uh unflinchingly depicting um not just uh lesbian relationship under the strains and pressures of oppressive violence um in the 19th century United States, but also under what I think is likely um a far more realistically complex and nuanced set of disapproval, but also approval and acceptance in their communities. Um I think that we greatly overestimate the nature of of like sort of phobic queer acceptance and uh queer like anti-queer violence in prior centuries. Um I think like what Tilly Walden is able to achieve in this novel is far more fascinating than some kind of over-simplistic story about two women surrounded by uh like only phobia or only hate.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:35

Can I can I add on to this? Because I have to go for it.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:37

I have not read any of the books you're referencing, sadly, but um You should read Zombie. You do like Zombie.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:42

Yeah, I know I Zombies. It's weird that I have I think I've read parts of it, but I've never liked it.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:46

I might have it in my apartment. If I have it, I'll bring it to you next time you come in because it's fucking crazy. Yeah, I'll totally read that.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:51

I mean, I fucking yeah. But um No, I think there there's an intentionality to that sort of like historical revisionism, whereas like if we act as if before the modern gay rights movement everybody was just phobic and terrible, it kind of posits like homophobia and these different types of prejudice as like naturalized in this way that's kind of fake. And it I think it's important for us to understand that these ideologies are also constructed and historically um historically located, you know what I mean, as far as their inception and whatnot. And yeah, a lot of the current forms of bigotry that we deal with are recent inventions, and I think we need to keep that in mind when we talk about the past.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:41

Yeah, I mean I think a lot of people, even trans people would be shocked to know, like the term transgender is like a creation of the mid-20th century, like created by like social workers to categorize a far more complex and like nuanced set of identities and expressions.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:59

And yet we all know that trans people have existed forever, so then the question becomes without the conception of transgender, which Yeah, without this taxonomy. Like without transgender as a as a cogent like um the sociological concept, is there any basis for transphobia as as a real phenomenon in society? You know what I mean? It's like certainly prejudices and you know personal pres prejudice at the very least still exist, but like one has to wonder, like, when when a trans person came to be known in times before we had all the modern terminology and understandings of the thing, how was that dealt with? You know what I mean? I guess the assumption is just like, oh, they're a witch, leave them in the woods somewhere, or whatever the stereotype is for whatever cultural background you're trying to refer to. But like, at the end of the day, I think we don't know a lot of this history. Yeah. And our our assumptions are very, very colored by recency bias.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:01

And a lot of the records that we have, I think, would indicate what we're discussing too, is like, like, I just read a really interesting book about like literally just like the history of trans misogyny. Um, and one of the chapters is about black trans sex work in antebellum American cities. And like, I think we have this kind of notion, which is very propagated both by people who are transphobic, but also people who kind of claim to be trans activists and allies, that phobia has kind of unequivocally accompanied trans sex work wherever it goes. Um, and like, of course, that is the case, but it also is far more complex. Like, antebellum American cities were actually like far less criminalizing and far more accepting of trans sex workers in cities. Um, occasionally they became celebrities, which is like crazy to think of now. And like there's certainly a lot of hate tied to these people, but at the same time, like, in many ways they were allowed to operate much more freely um than they are now. Um but anyway, back to Tilly Walden.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:10

Actually, yeah, before this is a a more contemporary example, but like I came out in like 2014, right? So, like right at the like right at the quote, like transgender boom or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:23

But right before you're a boomer. Technically, yes.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:28

But right um, but for some things like I grew up in this like small, very conservative, like rural Oregon town. Like a place that you would expect to be like extremely bated. And in some ways it absolutely was. But I remember being like a 17-year-old working at the cannery there, which is kind of the biggest like um place to work in town. And I remember right this was like right before I came out, like a month before I came out, when I was kind of starting to understand that I was a trans woman. I like was on a smoke break at the cannery and There was a bunch of men surrounding this person who it's I don't actually 100% know this for sure, but I'm like, I think they were a trans woman, and she was like the head of the pack. Like she like all these guys were like surrounding her and like laughing with her, and like she was kind of like the central like social force in this like smoke break with a bunch of like 40, 50, 60-year-old fucking factory guys. That's awesome. The kind of people that you would expect to be like militantly transphobic. And I remember seeing that as like a 17-year-old and going, like, oh, I can do that. Like that was a huge, like, m more than almost anything besides, we don't need to get that, but like, but one of the biggest things in like me coming out was like seeing that and being like, oh, that's it's not just like me against the world, like if I come out, like that, like everybody's not going to be like militantly transphobic against me. And that's kind of how it was, if anything, I'm gonna be real. I probably had more like transphobia from like inter-queer stuff than I even did from just like random people.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:07

Yeah. But I think I think this I think this book from Toby Walden does a really good job of like complicating these notions that we take for granted. Yeah. And these notions that I think allow queerness to be defined by this sort of uh this is like such a fucking this is such a ridiculous and nerdy uh comparison. Um but queerness I think is often defined in much the same way that New 52 Batman and Joker are defined. We're like we've just kind of decided that like queerness and phobic violence have gone hand in hand since the dawn of humanity. Um, which is like the same thing that we think of when we talk about race or misogyny, which is like we are so like steeped in this violent system that it's like almost impossible to like consider a past in which the system that we live in now was not active. Um and Tilly Walden does like a really wonderful job of depicting that in this book. Um there's like a scene in it where a new preacher comes to their town, um and he's like full of like fervor and um vim and vinegar. And it like the the his introduction takes on a lot of menace um because you know, like this new preacher comes to town, he's very passionate about Christ, and you're like, oh my god, like where the fuck is this going? Yeah um in this small town in this book about a lesbian couple cohabitating. Um and the twist is that they like realize that these two women are gay and they like don't care because like the two women are like good Christians. Um it's it's fascinating to see like a story where that's just the case. And there's it's it's like a sexy book too. It's not I mean it's not they're not like tits out going at it or anything, like it's not erotic. Um but she's so willing to depict physical and emotional love between these two women um that it's like almost impossible not to read it and like also feel kind of erotically compelled.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:22

Um it's it's so beautiful. I'm gonna write like a really thorough review about it for the comics journal. Um but this one is like definitely one of the best graphic novels I've read all year. Um it's really good. The art is incredible. Um and she also she manages to write about these white women in America without erasing sort of colonial and white supremacist violence in favor of this kind of like fairy tale white lesbian love story. Like it's very pervasive throughout the book. Um, which I mean, granted, should be a low bar, but it's not a bar often cleared in these kind of historical queer fictions. Um so yeah, uh when it comes out, like I really encourage everyone who's listening uh to read it. Even if you're like a superhero person or whatever almost entirely, like it's just it's one of those books that I read and I was like, it's important that people see a take like this um on Queer Love. Um yeah, it's like it's one of the best things I've read since reading Stonefruit, and uh Canon. It's it it is really good.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:43

Yeah, you guys you guys should all be done.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:45

Alright, day one, I'm locked in now.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:47

And if if if you haven't read any Tilly Walden at all, like like I'm excited for this big book just because it is Tilly Walden. Yeah, she's amazing. It's just every everything she touches, just be it autobiographical or her uh Walking Dead miniseries. Oh my god, it's actually so good.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:06

Yeah, like you can find something in any genre that Tilly Walden has probably done. Like her memoir, beautiful. Like her science fiction book, beautiful. Her Walking Dead stuff, excellent. Like, she's got a really robust body of work that is pretty accessible in a lot of like she has a store a short story collection, which is also great. She has a fucking magical realist road trip book, which is also excellent. She's not written anything that's anything less than excellent.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:32

Like Yeah, and she's just a beautiful artist, too. Like Yeah. I yeah, I don't know. I was I was so stoked to review this. I like the minute I saw her posting about it, I jumped at the chance. I emailed my editor at uh at TCJ and I was like, please, if you don't have someone already, let me review this. Um and thankfully she said yes. So Yay!

SPEAKER_05 2:17:56

Anyway, let's uh talk about some more floppies. Yeah, we'll talk about some more floppies, but please, when you get that book uh or sorry, when you get that article published, please plug it, send it to me. I'm very excited to read it. If you don't know, Tate is an excellent writer. Um, and I'm not just saying that because she's my friend, like she is genuinely a fantastic writer. Read her subsec, read her articles on the comics journal, they're fucking great. Uh Glazing Over. Um can we talk about Zekanna and the ultimates first?

SPEAKER_01 2:18:24

That's all we have left.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:24

I actually have to leave in 15 minutes. Oh my god. Okay, yeah, I'm so sorry. Which one?

SPEAKER_01 2:18:28

Is there anyone that you would prefer to talk about? Oh, they were both really good and they have some things in common that I want to discuss. But um I think I want to talk more first first about Zekanna. Okay. Because that's the one I read um more recently. Yeah. Um, but um, first of all, Jamal Campbell is has been one of my favorite artists since um Green Lantern Farsector. Um and this book is no exception. The art is fucking stellar. Um and his writing is also very good. Uh it's an interesting take on Zaytana, you know, which is a character I don't know terribly much about. So for me, this is kind of like almost an intro to the character. Like, this is for sure the first solo Zaytana book I've ever read, you know?

SPEAKER_05 2:19:17

It's interesting because he did do a solo Zaytana book six issue before this one, and this technically follows that up, but it's so excessively written that, like, unlike Batwoman, which I still really loved, but Batwoman, it's like you get in there and you're just like, oh god, there's like I'm trying to figure out where the fuck to even locate this. Jabal Campbell so expertly just like slots you into something that is following up on his other book, but like is so accessible. Like I haven't read it and I felt perfectly at ease.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:44

No, I am obsessed with how good of a single issue read this is.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:49

You know, and it's like not until the very last page where they do the whole like, you know, next week on blah blah blah blah blah, and they're like, no, kind of just like projecting, like, oh, these are all the things that are gonna happen in this run or whatever. But until I got to that page, I forgot that this was part of an ongoing comics run because it's such a good, just a day in the life of Zaytana. Here's what she's about, you know, here are her values and her ethics and you know, some of the challenges she faces, and it's really like I don't know, it's optimistic in this way that like I feel like superhero comics like lose that sometimes in recent years, you know what I mean? But like it really focuses on Zaytana as this person who really just like wants to help, wants to do good, wants to protect the world and help people, and like, you know, it really without making her seem like you know, flat or one-dimensional or whatever, you know, but it really like I don't know, I usually don't care about like whether or not I can root for like a main character, because I'd I'd like to think my taste in fiction has advanced to the point that that's not the most important thing. But reading this, I'm just like, I I'm I'm rooting for you, Zaitan. I I want to see you succeed, you know? Yeah, and that's good. Like I that's that's what attracted me to the genre like decades ago as a child, you know, is just being like, wow. And sometimes the good guys win, and you know, and then they're they win because they're good, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 2:21:23

Yeah, like she like to to your point, like she explicitly makes that her like thesis statement. She's like, you know, no person too small to save, no world like too dark to like come forward to and like meet and and bring light somewhere in the middle. Like like and and that she wants to help people first and foremost. She's like, yeah, maybe like the prime magist, whatever that means, but like first and foremost, I'm like going around and I'm helping people.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:50

Yeah, they even have the very like kind of classic or cliched moment where she helps somebody and they're like, Oh my god, thank you, prime magistrate, and she's like, it's it's just Zetana, it's fine. You know, and this idea of someone in a position of ultimate power who does not hold themselves above other people. You know, like that's like the heroic ideal. Like, I feel like that's not to put too much on it, but that's kind of core, the core of the very idea of the superhero. You know, it's very much like Superman Saves the Cat type energy, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 2:22:21

Mm-hmm. And Jamal Campbell is doing so so much, like, artistically here. Like, he's like pushing plague spirits through panel borders and like bending them. There's like Oh, the paneling is so so good throughout this issue. Really incredible. There's like definitely like a manga influence, like this bit where like the cat gets thrown or the the rabbit, whatever the hell this thing is, gets like thrown off of the the singing plague spear, and it just like is like a series of little balls rotating through the air.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:51

Yep, yep. And the design of the little cat rabbit is just so delightful. Like what a unique and novel little creature. Like it's it just very much looks like its own thing, you know, which is you know, there's only so many little critters, you know, you can come up with, and Jamal Campbell found another one, so good on him.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:10

Absolutely, yeah. And then like, even this like plague spirit bit right here, when I was rereading it, I noticed there's like so much like personality and character acting in like what is kind of like honestly the head of this thing just looks like a wad of gum.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:25

Like it's a wad of chewed gum and some tendrils, but it has more like character and emotive like presence on the page than like many artists doing like full characters with full faces to them out with.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:38

No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:39

Like, it's incredible. And then, um, like, what is this bit uh with this fucking guy? I love I don't know what his thing is. He seems like a new guy.

SPEAKER_06 2:23:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:50

But I'm obsessed with it. Like, it's not a horror book, it's a fantasy book thrown through, but like, there's a couple of bits in here that are just like that's like some crazy ass body horror.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:01

It is, it is. Yeah, that's very like Alvaro Martinez.0, Nice House on the Lake.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:05

Also, it's done in this way that's very much like of the medium. Like, I struggle to imagine, like, a special effects department at like, you know, you know, Disney or whatever the fuck, recreating this moment where the man's face like appears out of the smashed up brain tendril situation. You know what I mean? But it's very much, and then the face is like two-dimensional on top of a three-dimensional body, which gives like this dissonance that you can only really get on, like, you know, a pictorial medium, you know, and it very feels like I don't know, I think that's important that that comics be comics, because I feel like so much like so much of what it's becoming is like comics as an idea factory for movies and television shows. Yeah. And it makes the comics worse, you know, whereas something like this is just like Jamal Campbell knows who he is as a comics creator, and he's not trying to be cinematic or you know, live-action-y with it. He he's literally making comic superhero comic books, you know what I mean? And just like sticking true to that in this way that's funny books.

SPEAKER_05 2:25:13

Yeah, exactly. Both uh both Zatana and and Ultimates, but especially Zatanna, yeah, are very much that way. And like we've we've talked about that before of just like these books that are, yeah, not idea factories for Marvel to make a movie about in in in 20 years or whatever, but as like textual objects unto themselves that can only exist in their medium.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:33

Like, reading this doesn't make me want to see a Zatana movie, it makes me want to read more comic books.

SPEAKER_05 2:25:38

Yeah, this is genuinely like one of the best first issues I've read in some time, and like easily the best of the next level stuff. I finished this the first time and subscribed immediately. I was like, put my little name down and I was like, I can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:52

That was my reaction after once I finished this. I was like, ugh, okay, I guess I need a pull list. I swore I was done with monthly comics, but here I go again.

SPEAKER_05 2:26:00

Yeah, she just like Jamal Campbell just eats it up. Like every project he's done, both with like uh um Farsector and then the little brief turn he did on Superman with Josh Williamson when he made the like the Janelle Monet Light Cowboy. Yeah, I A, I never saw the Janelle Monet Light Cowboy.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:19

And B, I never read that Superman run, but I just saw like pictures from it just floating on social media and ooh, that was a good looking Superman. I don't even like Superman as a character. But Jamal Campbell Superman, I want to know more about that guy.

SPEAKER_05 2:26:33

Yeah. No, Jamal Campbell, like it's it's like he he works in a kind of style that is like not dissimilar to Adam Hughes in the sense that it's like kind of semi-realistic, a little bit more glossy. But and like I think Adam Hughes is one of the better versions of this type of guy. Like a worse version of this type of guy would be like Frank Cho's, like but I think Jamal Campbell, out of kind of all of them, has this just unbelievable like life and charm to his work, and like the kind of gloss that he has on his on his colors and on his figures is not like plasticky, it's like some other kind of secret third thing that I struggle to articulate.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:16

But the way the way he uses it, it enhances the characters, yeah. You know what I mean? Like it makes them more emotive and more like alive, you know what I mean? Like it I don't know, it makes it feel less I don't know, like the last word I would use to describe Jamal Campbell's art is like flat or lifeless, you know what I mean? Like everything is so alive, all these scenes really feel like they're happening, you know what I mean? Like Jamal Campbell doesn't draw snapshots, like he draws fully animated scenes in panel form.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:54

Yeah, oh my god, like the mirror two of this, like kind of zooming like out kind of here and then zooming in with the with the kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:03

Oh, I didn't even notice that. That's so so good.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:06

I only notice that now. It's like it's crazy looking at this over with you and just being like, he's just doing all of it. Like, like he's just the one guy. I think he might even be doing the letters too. I need to double check.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:19

But like, even if he's not doing the letters, he's doing everything else, and that's crazy to be at such a high caliber. Like, we've talked before about how like monthly comics like force you to make artistic compromises. Um, even if you're like a really good artist, like Nick Dragada, for example, like if you're working, you know, absolute Batman, like you're going to have to eventually make some artistic compromises, and there's nothing about this that feels remotely compromised.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:44

Yeah. But also, like, I like the the trend in American comics of like taking these like proven artists and like giving them a shot at writing, you know? Yeah. Um, in this way that I haven't seen too many historical examples of in like American comics. Uh the only thing I can think of is like the Simmonsons on X-Men Comics forever ago, maybe. But but it's just like, and even that's slightly different because it's like it's kind of a singular vision, but because they're married, but there are two different people. Like, but like, no, this idea of just like like this is Jamal Campbell's book. And it's nice to see just like his vision in this way. Like it's like you said, it's it's not compromised.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:28

Yeah. And like that's it's a it's a thing that's a lot more common in like non-cape stuff. It's like having like a writer artist, but in cape stuff specifically, having a writer artist is so not common. Yeah. So it's really cool to see. Do we want to talk about ultimates really quickly? Because I do want to hear your your thesis about how they're connected. Because I there's some stuff I want to talk about with it, but I want to hear your thing first.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:50

Okay, so um, yes. Ultimates, beautiful, beautiful book. Like. Like, as much as Zaytana, like, reaffirmed Jamal Campbell being one of my favorite artists, reading this issue of Ultimates is like Stipend Morien. I need to know more about him. I need to read more of what he's done, you know, like, oof, it's oh, it's giving so much. Like, it's giving shades of uh Sinkovich, it's giving shades of that nigga that did the um that person you can say the word gear like Remember that um Wonder Woman book that was like retelling the mythos of the gods and Historia with Jimenez and Jean Ha and the third person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Jimenez is the one I'm thinking of that this art reminds me of a little bit. But um, yeah, yeah, such such good art, and it's such good art for the subject matter. So the whole book is just like this this cosmic battle between Asgardian deities of various sorts.

SPEAKER_05 2:31:07

It's uh it's Marvel's Ragnarok. Like it's like you can read this issue and not have read any other Ultimates chapter and be totally because it's just the Ultimate Universe Ragnarok. That's just tightly what it is.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:18

Yes, and I guess I shouldn't be getting too much into spoilers, but like Okay, but okay, so I think what these books have in common is the accessibility for a new or lapsed reader to jump in and get invested in the material. Like the Zaytana book is the number one, obviously, but it's not a number one that feels like a pilot episode of a TV show or something, you know. I mean, it's not like, hey, this is the part where we set up all the characters and concepts, and we'll get to the action next issue. It's more like, no, this is Zaytana, day in the life of Zaytana, you're up to speed, you know her. You know what I mean? And this ultimates issue is similar in that you just jump right in and it's like it's just telling you a story. Like this whole issue is a single story, and I know it fits into the greater story of the ultimates and the ultimate universe and the maker and all this. I read the blurb at the beginning, you know. But none of that matters. None of that matters, like not a lick of it matters. Yes. It's just a big epic retelling of Ragnarok, which is, you know, a story that I guess if you read Marvel comics, you're certainly familiar with at a certain point. But it's just like done in such a a unique way, you know, and it's just very much like how do I explain what oh, well, first of all, I have to mention the entire book is written in alliteration, and I love, love, love alliteration. And so that tickled me the whole way through. Um, but also it's just like it feels epic, it feels mythical. Like if Zaytana is like a prototypical cape book that reminds me why I love superhero comics in the first place, the Ultimates 23 is a classical myth, you know, retold in a fresh way, with art to match, because the art isn't isn't typical superhero art. No, not of this era anyway. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 2:33:30

Like it's Closest Contemporary would be like Kirby, or even a little bit of ster-there's a little bit of Starenko in here at times. Like it it's kind of just like this is what happens Marvel, Marvel, this is what happens when you let an artist cook on your book. And if you haven't offered Stippen Morion like five billion dollars to do a Thor book, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 2:33:50

Like, there's so many panels and pages on this book that I just stopped reading and had to just look at and just like appreciate as like an art piece. Yeah, like this one image I I'm looking at right now of Loki and Thor fighting. And I it's honestly this whole page, like this whole this whole battle is so expertly like illustrated, and but there's just this one picture at the beginning of their fight, and it's just like you really get like the characters, you know what I mean? Like, if I didn't know anything about these characters, and I looked at this picture, you know, based on the facial expressions, the physiques, the differences in lighting and shading, like everything is so laid out in this one image, and it's so like well thought out. You know what I mean? Like, like this is like the prime example of like an image in a comic book is not like an illustration in the storybook. You know what I mean? Like it's there's so much storytelling happening, you know, and this is just one issue, I just one image I just picked, you know, out of several that I had to stop and say, Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 2:35:04

Yeah, every single one is like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:35:06

And then the differences in tone, you know, like there's a consistency from the art style, but like, you know, the scene with like the the fire lord suitor, you know, attacking, you know, surrounded by flames, versus the scene of like the dwarf riding a warbear. You know, like tonally and aesthetically so different, but clearly of the same world, but not of the same world. Yeah. Because it's Asgard, and there's multiple realms, and each of the realms feels like its own thing. You know what I mean? Like this, yeah, and and the writing is really good too. I'm so obsessed with the art I haven't outside of the alliterations, like it's a really well-told story. Without getting to spoilers, like the framing of the story that's revealed at the end of the book is so like Chef's Kiss, you know? But like, just such a beautiful book, and like Oh, I feel like I started saying something and didn't finish it earlier. If Zaytana reminded me why I love superhero comics in the first place, the ultimates reminded me why. God, I don't have the wording for this. It's not a cape comic. It's not a cape comic, but within the comp the medium of cape comics, you can do so many amazing and beautiful things, drawing upon the history of like mythmaking and mythology and oral storytelling traditions, and none of this is about guys and tights punching each other. But it's in the guys and tights punching each other's story, and I'm sure if I pick up issue number 24, they're gonna bring it all back together. But like, for just a glorious moment, this was just a beautiful book about Ragnarok, a beautiful retelling of Ragnarok. And like it.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:54

I don't know. Yeah, we used to we used to keep things a little bit like universes used to be like a little bit more separate, whereas like you you would, you know, you would have like, okay, they're doing like Kirby Asgard shit over here, and then they're doing like, you know, more street level stuff over here, they're doing some kind of like supernatural ghostwriter-y blade stuff over here, and things were kind of allowed to be a little bit more distinct because they didn't all have to like tie into each other and have to cohere into a universe.

SPEAKER_01 2:37:21

They didn't have to be a part of the big crossover event of the summer every summer for decades and decades and decades.

SPEAKER_05 2:37:28

Which is funny given that this is like the penultimate chapter of the tie-in Avenger, like Ultimate Universe Avengers book, which ties all of the plot threads of the Ultimate Universe together, and the penultimate issue is not related to that at all. Exactly. This is like what if big event crossover books could be good. Like, this this is what that looks like. Exactly. It gets to just be its own story, like Stippen Morion, kind of as you pointed out, like has such a versatile style that, like, and because and this is true of every single one of his books, like he can go like really hyper detailed and hyper serious to something so much more like vague and abstract, even something really silly. There's a bunch of stuff in his like steampunk Santa Claus book, which I'll have to show you sometime, which is crazy. There's a panel of this girl like smoking a like a corncob pipe that is so funny. It's like it's just just her expression is so ridiculous. Um, but it all feels cohesive, and like that works especially well for Thor. Like, he can do these massive, like huge spectacle battle war scenes. You feel like blood and ash and like bone snapping. And that can be right next to like a wall of dwarves riding war bears. Um, yeah, and just like we we talked about on this podcast a week ago, I think, like if you were going to steal Jack Kirby's work, like why do and and why would you do absolutely nothing with it? Yeah. Like Marvel. And this is one of the first books in a very long time at Marvel that has like not only but just been like rock solid art, but has also been like actually doing something. And honestly, to just tie it into the writing again for a second, this book is so in conversation with Jack Kirby's legacy. Because um, like, other than like, you know, the Marvel work that he did, particularly like the Asgard, the Thor cosmic stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:39:19

It's giving new gods.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:20

It's giving new gods. They explicitly reference that because at the very beginning of New Gods, there was a time when the old gods died. Uh-huh. And this book is like directly responding to that. There was a time when the old gods lived, and then gives an I'm not gonna spoil it, but gives like an answer to why the old gods lived and what that actually means. And it feels like a call and response across history to Jack Kirby. It really is like a love letter to Jack Kirby in every conceivable way, and I found myself oddly touched by it too. Uh-huh. Um, yeah, this is just a really stunning example of what can happen if you just like let creators do their thing and don't worry about like marketing synergy or tie-in crossover bullshit. Like, when you just like let a good comic be a good comic and you put that out there, people are gonna love it. Like, we just raved about it for like 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_06 2:40:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:40:13

And with that, I must say my goodbyes, because I I got somewhere to be. That's okay, because we also have to wrap it up.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:18

So okay, I can take around for like two more minutes to wrap up. Um I think that's that's everything that we have. Pearl, sing us out.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:28

Uh there's a place called the Escapist, a place we know and love. If you don't shop there, I will send you above to heaven.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:41

Heaven because we love you. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:40:43

You'll be a heaven on earth. Like, you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:40:47

Isn't that a slogan of like the black Muslim bakery? Anyway, whatever. Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? Escapist Comics is a place on earth.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:54

Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? Escapist Comics is a place on earth.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:01

I can't believe you just stole that. From Stephanie. From a from a working blue collar trans woman at a time.

SPEAKER_05 2:41:07

From your boss and wife.

SPEAKER_02 2:41:09

I've only ever stolen everything I've ever gotten, so. I don't know why this one gets you so a woman's right to steal.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:17

Okay, y'all, we love you. We'll see you next week. Bye.