Episode 21: Absolute Power Rangers vs. Ultimate Gig Economy

This week the escapies introduce a new segment to the show, and it is STACKED! Also hear about some excellent recommendations from Persephone about new graphic novels to start off your May! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Absolute Ultimate Escapist Comics Podcast. I think this is episode 21. We're joined in the studio by Absolute Aldo, an incredibly sleepy Dr. Pearlberry, and Perseveny.

SPEAKER_05 0:18

And unfortunately, Acacia is not here today.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Magic cards ate her. She was eaten by the blue eyes white dragon.

SPEAKER_05 0:28

I'm pretty sure that's a magic card. That is a magic card. Is that a Digimon? No, that's a Yu-Gi-Oh! It's a Yu-Gi-Oh! It's a Yu-Gi-Oh! I knew it was a Yu-Gi-Oh! I was just playing into the pit. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

I was just testing Yu-Gi-Oh!

SPEAKER_05 0:42

I watched a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up. I don't know what to tell you. What's the Yu-Gi-Oh theme song? Is there a theme?

unknown 0:49

Yu-Gi-Oh!

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Pokemon.

SPEAKER_05 0:51

No, no, no, it does the it's like the it does it does the like the the the wavy sound effect where it's like yummy yu-yu-yu. I don't know how to do it. I don't even think human voices can perfectly mimic it, because it's definitely a digital effect. They do at some point. It's like an echoey reverb-y, like, Yu-Gi-Oh! Oh, oh, oh. And then it's like mostly kind of like a kind of like a like a very early 2000s like like kind of beat. I don't know how to describe it. Um, but anyway, we are really a field of we this is not a Yu-Gi-Oh podcast. Contrary to.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

I was just gonna sing the song for the Yu-Gi-Oh! podcast, but I'll just do Pokemon. Um I want to be on a pod. Like no one ever was. Doom doom doom doom. Teach listeners to understand the comics that we got. Escapist bup.

SPEAKER_05 1:53

Escapist podcast. Escape is pod. Da-da-da-da-da. La la la. A heart so true. You're polist. Your polis will bring us through. You read me and I read you, D. Va. Escape. Escape is pod. Escape is pod. Escape is pod.

SPEAKER_04 2:15

Gotta read 'em all read 'em all.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Are you guys work shopping the theme song?

SPEAKER_04 2:20

Yeah. Um The fact that you think I don't instantly work shop it as it's coming out of my mouth. You so clearly, you so clearly have it for like a side. You just kinda look at you look at me in the eyes and you say, Pearl sing a song, and whatever's in my mouse comes out.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Boy, if you guys could see the the live stream right now. All of us naked. Naked. Crazy random things falling out of Pearl's mouth. Small, small reptiles mainly. Yeah. It's worker bugs, lizards. We're gonna open this uh episode of the podcast with what uh Walter thinks we should call Tate Stacked. Um and we'll try to talk about what I bought this week. Um, a new segment!

SPEAKER_05 3:08

Yeah. To to just give some background for people, we all here at the Escape's podcast buy way too many books, and we put them in stacks in our house, and then we sometimes get to them, and sometimes we get to them in two years.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Um I'm definitely the worst of you. You are definitely the worst of you. Yeah. Um I currently have a stack next to me that's mostly comprised uh that's mostly comprised uh DC stuff. Um mostly composed of DC stuff. It's not comprised of, it's composed of DC stuff. Um mostly composed of uh the current run of Green Arrow, which I've been waiting on, because I popped open a trade of the Chris Condon stuff, and the art just looked really good. I also have this very exciting hardcover collection of Superman Crypto Knight Spectrum. Um, and a Bill Sinkevich artist edition that includes uh stuff from Electra, uh stuff from New Mutants, and stuff from Moon Knight, which I'm very excited about. Other stuff I bought this week is the third compendium of Chuck Dixon's Nightwing, which I've been very much enjoying. Um and I've been reading through it pretty religiously lately. That's been like my main comic. Um I think it's the best Nightwing I've read so far, including like the Grayson stuff, which I think is Tom Taylor, not Tom King.

SPEAKER_05 4:35

No, no, no, no. The Grayson stuff is Tom Taylor. The Grayson stuff is Tom King. And and Tim Seely. Yeah, yeah. Weirdly.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Weird group of uh good guys. And that stuff is really good, and it's definitely leans further into the horny stuff. Whereas the Chuck Dixon stuff is, I think, better comics, but it's much grittier, kind of like late 90s crimey. Yeah. The art's great. Um a lot of people die in those comics. Um the main villain's whole thing is he like twists your head around so hard that you're like looking in the opposite direction.

SPEAKER_05 5:08

Always looking forward to the bottom.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

And there's like a guy who like survives it and becomes like a villain, and he has like specialized glasses so that he can like look forward even though his head's on backwards.

SPEAKER_05 5:19

That's the most comic book thing.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah, it's like it's awesome. Like, it's so cool. Um, and like the art's really good, um, and it's really funny. It's just like not it's like not soft core yaowie enough for like the main Nightwing nerds now, you know? Um like that contingent of kind of like younger, extremely horny comic book readers who like need their superheroes to like be totally infallible and also like hot as hell. Yeah, very beefcake. Yeah, like uh I don't know, this is just really good. Um I was kind of bummed because the storyline that I'm right now, Dick Grayson like becomes a police officer in Bloodhaven. Yeah. But they're actually writing it really well. Um they're doing a lot of interesting narrative stuff with it, and like it's like not pro-cop at all either, because the Bloodhaven police are like so bad. So like it it's very interesting, and I was I was bummed that he was becoming a police officer, and then happily surprised that he wasn't, and then the biggest purchase that I made was without doubt the two Batman No Man's Land omnibuses. Umnibussies. Damn it. Um yeah, that's like that's what I've got going on right now. I also have 920 London by Remy Boydell, uh cartoonist behind the pervert. Um, which I'm reading right now. I'm like I'm like a third quarter through it. It's very interesting. A lot of really dark humor. Um, and I'm also reading frickin' Hobtown mystery stories. I I just bought those volumes two and three of that because we're out of volume one, but it's coming. Volume one is coming to the store. Uh, and we have volumes two and three, and you can read two pretty self-contained. Don't know about three yet. Three, absolutely not. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 7:11

Um, three, three, like, even having read one and two already, I popped into three and I was like, oh fuck. I need to like refresh myself a little bit even with the previous Leon. But number two is very self-contained.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Previously on. Um But uh yeah, I I loved Hobtown Mystery Stories. Um I think there's a four coming soon-ish. They they announced it, but they haven't said when it's coming.

SPEAKER_05 7:37

Okay. But they did say a fourth one is in production. Um we will probably talk a little bit about it because yeah, I love those books and I'm so happy you're reading them.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

I'm sure we'll talk about it when the fourth one comes out. I will be, once we get number one in, I will be reading number one and then reading number three so fast. So excellent. Um as of now, the only ones I'm planning on keeping are the Hobtown Mystery Stories, the Nightwing, uh, and then the Batman Omnibuses and the Kryptonite Spectrum book. Which is one of the best Superman books since Allmar. We've talked about it a lot. It's excellent. I'm just really excited to have it all collected. I was gonna keep it all in the issues, but I didn't have issue one, so I was just like, I'll put all the issues back and keep this. Yeah. Umce we get more, I'm gonna get one too, because it's so good. And I'm also excited for the uh Deadman Martin Morazzo Maxwell Prince Deadman, which I could not think of a better creative team to do that book, and that's kind of like the I guess nice little fluid transition into comics news. The most exciting piece of comics news I read from the prestigious uh periodical DC Connect uh is that Martin Morazzo and Maxwell France are gonna be on Deadman, uh, which is just so exciting.

SPEAKER_05 9:00

And I think it's an ongoing too. So it's not gonna be. Well, some of the next level are just a six issue. Uh like Badgirl Breakout or Bow or sorry, Barbara Gorgon Breakout is I think a six issue, and like some of the other ones are six issues. I think that but this one is a full. Hell yeah. Which I am yeah, I agree with you. Couldn't be a better team on that. Um and I think they are so well suited to the weirder sides of the DC universe. I'm just fucking hyped, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Yeah, it's it's gonna be great. I've been saying for a while that we need a uh a good Deadman book, and uh Deadman's kind of I feel like Deadman gets like really fun, like side character-y vibes. Like he's really fun in Jail Dark. Uh he's got like some really fun character moments in it, and he becomes really compelling, but like because it's a team book and it's like mostly focused on Zatana and Constantine, he doesn't really get like time to shine. Yeah. Here's Deadman, written by like people who are weird enough artists and writers to suit a character as weird as Deadman.

unknown 10:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Who is like if Dick Grayson was a horny ghost. Like Or sorry, more like if Dick Grayson's parents who died on the trapeze became horny ghosts.

SPEAKER_05 10:24

Yeah. Um we've had so little of him over the last long like the last thing I can think of was like there's probably one sooner than this, but like Batman Damned.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah. I'm sure he's popped up in like one of the Justice League books or like JSA or something randomly in the last like few years, but I think people just don't really know what to do with him. So I think Prince and Morazzo are gonna be a a good choice for this, especially after the Smash Hit that was Kryptonite Spectrum. I'm sure DC is like itching to put them on more stuff. Um as weird as this book was, it was massively popular. And uh I think I'm sure Deadman's gonna be weird, but I doubt that it's gonna be like as not inaccessible, but like experimental. Experimental, yeah, as Kryptonite Spectrum is. I mean, this is a weird comic.

SPEAKER_05 11:15

Yeah. I I hope they let them go crazy as crazy as they done in Kryptonite Spectrum with the supernatural corner, but it is gonna be a mainline title.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

I mean, I I also think if it's gonna be a long-running series, it can't be this consistently weird either. Like it would just start to wear a little bit. Um yeah, I'm I'm I'm supremely excited for that. What other news do you have?

SPEAKER_05 11:35

Um, just a couple of very small things um that I don't have a ton to say about, but the last comicsology employee has left the building. Um Comixology is is done. The last um the like all of the comic comicsology staff basically got laid off in the latest round of Amazon layoffs, but the final employee was reported. I'm uh reading this from ComicSpeat, to be clear. I want to cite my sources here. Um, but the last employee, Jeff uh D. Bartolome Bartolomeo, is gone. Like, Comixology is not anymore. It's been Amazon bought it up, it's stripped it for parts, and then left it by the side of the road. I'm not gonna belabor this because I know I can tend to be a bit of a negative Nancy on this show sometimes about the state of the comics industry, but like for all the problems there were with Comixology, it was a hugely accessible resource for people who didn't have maybe access to a local LCS or like wanted to get runs that like even before Marvel and DC started doing their like their websites. Yeah, with their like really extensive back catalogs, for a long time it was the only place you could get a lot of things, and so like for all of its issues, it is it is sad to see a strip mine by Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

I'll never forget where I was when I saw the planes hit the comixology towers. I was reading Cerebus. Oh no. It was by force in one of Dave Sim's many, many solitary confinement cells in his basement.

SPEAKER_05 13:09

According to Cerebus, it was in fact feminism which crashed into the tower.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Um Yeah, I mean that's yeah, I mean uh sad to see comixology go for exactly the reasons that you just described. Um Walter just said that Deadman is very me-coded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:30

As a C to D list DC hero.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Um He showed up in what I literally read him in He was in Nightwing. A few issues around. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was a Nightwing. Yeah, yeah. He was in some issue some late issue of Tom Taylor's Nightwing. Yeah, he takes over. Oh. He was in some late issue of Tom Taylor's Nightwing, but he's like, what's the city in the in the mountains, like in Nepal?

SPEAKER_05 13:56

Uh it's like Namba Parbah.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

Yeah, he's like living there and and only uh people who are there with him can like see and hear him.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah. Yeah. Um I like that like that's part of his character, is that he just gets to like show with the holiest of holies in like this city of enlightenment. It's very interesting. Um I'm so excited for this book, guys. But yeah, the the comixology thing, I mean, very sad that it's gone for exactly the reasons that you said, which is mainly that it kind of just provided access to people who uh wanted to just read like a huge amount of comics that aren't necessarily always accessible for financial reasons or geographical reasons, or just because like we don't have it, you know, and uh I work here uh and despite that I also have like a DC Universe Unlimited subscription because sometimes I want to read the Chuck Dixon run of Birds of Prey, and we don't have those trades as much as I would love to add them to Tate Stacked here. Um and no one has those trades. But am I gonna order them from Amazon? I mean from eBay because I need them in paper? Like, no, I'm not Walter. Uh the salute he just gave was very cute. Uh yeah, I just uh I I remember using Comixology as a kid. Um I mean I don't have like an emotional attachment to it. I just feel bad for all the folks who used Comicsology and liked using it to get their comics, you know, it's a bummer.

SPEAKER_05 15:33

Yeah, no, and like I similarly don't have like an emotional attachment to it, but yeah, if for the reasons you said it's a loss. And I remember back before they um for a long time, Doro Hidoro Volume 23, the very final one, was out of print, but the rest of the series was. And so when I was reading Doro Hidoro, even in 2021, I like had to get volume 23 on the the the scraps of comixology that were left, because it was still kind of semi-functional at that point, but like the decline of comixology has been a pretty gradual kind of situation. Um it was not like taken out back and shot immediately, it was just kind of siphoned and stripped for parts very gradually, so it was kind of semi-functional for a while, and so you know, we all kind of knew the end was coming. But um, yeah, just kind of a sad day to see that go.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah. It feels a little bit like the Death of Silver Sprocket, you know, where you're like, there were glaring flaws, um, and I'm not like deeply saddened by its passing. But at the same time, like, I'm always I'm always less happy in a world with fewer avenues to read comics than I am in a world with more. So that's kind of my take.

SPEAKER_05 16:48

Absolutely. And kind of the last bit of news. Um, I'm not gonna get into it super much because I still feel like I need to dive into this a little bit more. Um, but I just wanted to shout out Friend of the Pod, Anandar K. Uh, just won a 2026 Pulitzer Prize for journalism. He illustrated um some some he won the prize for illustrated reporting and commentary along with uh Suparna Sharma and Natalie Obiko Pearson. Um, and they did like a comics documentary strip uh trapped about um Dr. uh Rushika Tandon, who was uh an Indian neurologist held under digital arrest, quote unquote, via phone scam. Um I need to look much more into this. Um I'll probably just read the strip. Um, but I just wanted to shout out Anandar K for winning a Pulitzer. Um that's fucking yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Yeah, very few cartoonists have that award in anything.

SPEAKER_05 17:48

And I forget if it was it was either Rom V or it was Aditya Bidakar who was saying, like, our friend Anandar K has won both an Eisner and a Pulitzer now. Which is which is a crazy double double bill to have.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Um Yeah, let's see. Other award other Pulitzer winning comics, Mouse, unsurprisingly. Um Feeding Ghosts, 2025, a graphic memoir by Tessa Holes. Oh, I heard that was good.

SPEAKER_05 18:13

Corinne said that was very good. Okay, this makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning is its own category. So Jake Halpern one for Welcome to the New World. Um Wow, yeah, so there's that's interesting. Okay, that's big.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Um, yeah, very cool. Incredibly talented, uh creative and artist on Dark A. Um Yeah. Very exciting. It's cool to see cartoon journalism, comics journalism become recognized as a really valid form. I feel like Joe Sacco has like really set the bar really high. Yeah. Um it's cool that it's I think it's kind of neat that like the only cartoon journalism that people know about is like world-class cartoon journalism. It's just like the bar is always really high. Um because in order for people to like read your comics journalism, it like just has to be really good. Uh so yeah, super cool. I'm definitely gonna read that strip because how could you not?

SPEAKER_05 19:17

Yeah, how yeah, how could you not? Um yeah, congrats to Anandra K. Um, excited to see his work in Diocidium alongside um Evan Cagle and uh Rom V later this this year. And that's kind of about it, other than just to briefly mention that uh um Daniel Warren Johnson's got a new series coming out in the fall. He has not announced what the name is, he has not announced almost anything about it other than it's space related. It was just a tiny teaser on his Instagram this morning. Um so I'm sure we'll hear more about that soon. But excited to have another DWJ series like out in the world, his first since um The Moon Is Following Us was the Yeah, the Moon Is Following Us, I think, was the latest one. Yeah, and then he's I guess they're also re-releasing um uh Do a Power Bomb in Black and White, which I'm waiting that sounds cool.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:11

Yeah, they're re-releasing it in black and white. I think there's maybe a little too heavy of gray tone use in some of the preview images.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

I feel like just give me the inks. That's like all I want. It's like an artist edition, like just the inks.

SPEAKER_05 20:23

Yeah, I I feel like they overdo it with the the gray tones in the in the in the preview pages I've seen. I think there's just it's just a little it's just too much. I think they could if they scaled it back, it would be excellent. And I'm still gonna read it because it's DWJ Inks on what I think is his best book. Um it's so fucking good. All of us are uh huge fans of it here. That's kind of it for for comics news. Um so should we just jump into Well, I guess we should just say what we're gonna talk about, and then we can just jump into so you and I both read Batman, number nine. Um uniformly excellent, we'll talk about that later. Um I probably won't say much about Absolute Green Lantern, even though I read it and really liked it. Um and then I read the new image number one this week, if Destruction be our lot, I'll talk about that. Um Tate, what were you gonna talk about?

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Uh I was gonna talk about uh Amazing Spider-Man number 28, which I I just haven't talked about ASM in a while, and this is the first issue I've read in quite a long time, because the last couple runs of Spider-Man have made me wanna throw up a little bit. Um and I have a mixed but possibly tentatively lightly positive outlook on the issue. Um so yeah, I that's yeah, that's that's kind of the only thing other than uh the new Batman that I was gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_05 21:46

Um I'll talk about um Shin Zero, the new graphic novel out this week. Um I'm gonna give a very glowing review of that. Um that is pretty spoiler free. Um and then I'm if we Have time, I'll talk a little bit about. Um I'm getting pretty close to the end of the original run of um the Maggie and Hopi stories for Love and Rockets. There is a graphic novel towards the end in there called uh Wig Wam Bam that I'll probably talk about a little bit. Um, because I think it's just fucking stunning. It's so goddamn good. But anyway. Um, let's just jump into it.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah, um. Should we save Batman for the end? As like our grand finale? Yeah, I guess we can save Batman for the grand finale. Um Why don't we mix things up? Let's start with uh the square bound books that you read. Talk to me about uh Wigwam Bam. Okay. Uh Wigwam Bam, um.

SPEAKER_05 22:43

By this point in the story, like, Maggie and Hopi are kind of separated, and so there's about like a good hundred-page stretch where like this is some of the most things that happen in a hundred pages I have ever read. We touch on almost every single character across every possible tone, ranging from like old ladies with like littles fetishes to like specific intra-wrestling like ish like like fucking um, what do you call it? Um, drama. Inter wrestle inter-wrestling women's league wrestling drama to like sex work in the middle of like sex work in the middle of nowhere to like this woman kind of navigating her relationship with like, oh, I'm like a black woman doing sex work dating somebody who isn't black, and like navigating like objectification from like a man and a non-black person, and like is my boyfriend doing this, and this like really subtle portrait. Um, like there's a ton of stuff around like Maggie's like little cousins and stuff. There's a whole series of arcs where they're like trying to find the scary witch lady and like a very like almost Sunday strip level of thing. Um Izzy's just getting out of the hospital and is like desperately tracking down her lesbians while Penny Sentry is also trying to get her lesbians back together. There's like two different baby scares. Like, so much happens, and it would be very easy for this to feel overloaded.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

Babies are scary, I get it.

SPEAKER_05 24:23

Babies are pretty fucking scary. Um you see a baby, you cross the street.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Don't like those guys. Little round heads, gross. I know. Why is it soft in one spot? What's with that?

SPEAKER_04 24:35

You guys know that there's several babies that listen to this podcast, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Yeah, that's for you, babies.

unknown 24:41

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

I know it's not like the woke up. You see me coming, you roll away in that stroller. You roll away!

SPEAKER_04 24:49

We just lost, we just lost half our viewership.

SPEAKER_05 24:52

I know it's maybe not like the PC thing to say these days, but babies shit their pants. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

They do, it's true. I've seen it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:02

And you don't.

SPEAKER_04 25:03

I must be a baby. I must be a baby, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I don't shit my pants, I just shit my britches.

SPEAKER_05 25:10

Oh, that's fancy. Yeah. I can fart anytime I want, but I can't shit wherever. Land of the free my ass.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Cheeple when you try to shit your pants on the subway.

SPEAKER_05 25:24

Anyway, we're we are getting so far from anything that's happening here.

SPEAKER_04 25:30

I just wasn't gonna stand for the baby slander.

SPEAKER_05 25:33

We're always slandering baby. Yeah. It's really because I'm gay.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

Sorry, I'm a breeder.

SPEAKER_05 25:46

It shows. It shows. I think you need a plan B, baby. Anyway, we gotta we gotta stop this. This is already out of control. Um, but yeah, no, I like the podcast. I'm not gonna get too much into the this like every single thing that happens here, because I couldn't possibly begin to get into everything that happens here. It is, and I cannot stress this enough, some of the most things that have happened in a hundred pages. But it really all works because Jaime has like built such an extensive and fully realized cast. Everyone say bye, Aldo.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Bye, guys. Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_05 26:27

It was so good to see you. Nice to have you. Bye, Aldo.

SPEAKER_04 26:30

Aldo's bye.

unknown 26:32

Ah!

SPEAKER_02 26:34

Walter says gaga goo-goo. Walter was a baby the whole time. Takes hat, takes face off.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

Oh no, he's gonna be.

SPEAKER_05 26:46

I was trying to warn y'all. When I said Walter was an op, I meant baby. Secret baby. Am I the only non-baby on this podcast? No. This is how I feel hanging out with some of my friends sometimes, and they're all fucking littlers, and I'm like, am I the only grown-up here? But anyway. This is a little stan account.

SPEAKER_04 27:08

Don't quote me. You know me too well. Stop this. I love you, thank you. Um she used to say that like every she said that like every episode in the in the first podcast.

SPEAKER_05 27:20

And this and the secret, unlistenable podcast that Pearl and I did together instead of.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

Oh, it's still out there.

SPEAKER_05 27:25

Instead of dating, we did a podcast, which is very new. You can go listen to it. You you can. It is on the airwaves. And it's, you know what? I will say it's not half bad. I mean, like some of it's not half bad. Some of it's not that good. But some of it- I think we streamed it. We did. We were streamer girls. Nobody's streaming it.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Nobody watched us but chasers and debt accounts and uh It's very uh like what what's the what's the what's the word of uh what's the what's the name of the frickin' subscriber who like gets Werewolf Jones to do crazy shit in Crisis Zone? Jim Hemmingfield. Yeah. We're gonna be like, where we're Jim Hemingfield asks Werewolf Jones, where are your kids today, Jones? They're out back building a treehouse brothel, Jim. We keep them working. Thanks for asking.

SPEAKER_05 28:16

Take care of our kids here. Yeah. Anyway, Deep Lore, Pearl and I used to have a podcast. Some of it's good, some of it's not. Uh we did have, you know, Porncy Pichet Show uh was uh uh a friend of that podcast. He liked what we said about um fuck, the Deadboy Detective Dead Boy Detectives and a couple of others. Um but anyway, anyway, we also made enemies. We did make enemies. Kyle Starks. Um Kyle Starks hates us now. Kyle Starks does not hate us. We are so far from the fucking thing that we were talking about. Um yeah, Pearloka. Yeah, so we were, yeah, so um, in this graphic novel Wig Bam Bam.

SPEAKER_04 28:55

Does that stand for the crazy Pearl?

SPEAKER_05 28:57

Yeah. Yeah, I it could either stand for the crazy pearl or Pearl the Crazy. She's just like me for real. I'm still getting to that part because this seems to be another name for Maggie that only certain family members use, and they have not brought this up in hundreds and hundreds of pages. So I'm very excited about that. But there is a chapter that's gonna come up later called Maggie the Mechanic or Perla the Prostitute. Um Perla la Prostituta. Yeah, Maggie's having a bit of a potential sex work arc, but we're not gonna talk about that um at this moment, um, because that's a little bit later. Um What works about this What works so well about this is that like Jaime has built such a fully realized cast of people. Even people who like only show up very briefly over the course of hundreds of pages. Like Daffy shows back up, and I was like, oh fuck, it's Daffy! It's this is my Glup Shiddo is just like pointing at different characters and like Love and Rockets and being like, Oh, it's that guy from the second issue whose brothers like wanted their car fixed.

SPEAKER_04 30:02

Um I just can't help but love all the art in these books. It's impeccable. It's just so good, and the characters are also unique.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Their art makes me think of your art. I'm gonna be like I'm highly impressive. You've got like whatever they have.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

Which reminds me, if you want to see my art, you have to come by the store and pick up the our our newest zine. We have a free zine out right now, and it's got like three or four pages of Persephone written and Pearl drawn uh Nancy fan comics. Just putting it out there.

SPEAKER_05 30:43

We're really proud of these. You should check them out, and Pearl did an amazing job illustrating that. Pearl fucking chef's kiss.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Beautiful, incredible.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

It's it's the background on our work computer right now, not to brag.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Yeah. High bar too. We don't we don't just put anything. We don't put anything. We don't just put anything on the background of that work computer. We don't put fucking Hush 2 on the background of our work computer, I'll tell you what. Hush 2 could never Um to be clear though, Jim Lee has confirmed that uh My Blue Nancy, The Comics by Persephone and Pearl, is canon to the world of Hush. Oh. Yeah. Um Jeff Loeb said they're really good, and Jim Lee said they're canon now. I think we might have to stop.

SPEAKER_05 31:27

The Jim Lee thing was fine, but when Jeff Loeb got involved, I I don't like that. We held a seance. This is like when Republicans got really into like like Dave Chappelle, and then Dave Chappelle was like, why did they like my how could they like my anti-trans joke so much? I know. It's weird. I don't hate trans people or anyway, hold on.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Again, very afield point is this is some of the just like the most perfect comic art. Like they they're just like so on it. And what's incredible too is like how perfect it is from issue one. Yeah. Like flipping flipping through that facsimile issue one that we got, it's crazy to just see them be perfect the whole time. Yeah. Like, there's no other comic artist that I know of who's just been like that consistently good for that long, you know. And you listen to interviews of them, and it doesn't seem like they were like they were drawing comics as kids or s and stuff, but it's not like they were like 40 and having like drawn stuff without publishing anything before they put out Love and Rockets.

SPEAKER_05 32:24

Like It was the first thing they published.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, they just like went from being kids doodling to one of the masterpieces of modern comics. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_05 32:32

They were like 19 or 20. They were really little when they started the first Love and Rockets. It was 79.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

I am I am very curious though, pro, like what uh what are the inspirations from the Hernandez Bros, Los Bros Hernandez, uh, that you see in your own article.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

I I mean I love that they don't do it it's really the inking. The inking is just unstoppable. They don't do um like gray tones. You know what I mean? Like it is just straight black and white. If we need to convey shading, it's done through like light cross-hatching. Like the the black blocking and like the the way we outline characters like through the silhouettes of the inks is like so impressive to me. It's it's crazy the amount of texture we get out of just this the simple black and white pen and ink.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

I love their I love when they feel like solid black and honey pen. Like it just like No one else does it as well as them, like, other than Mike Mignola, maybe. Yeah, that's about it.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

Oh, it's so good. Their character design is flawless, too. Like, every character has just like a face and a hairdo that looking at them once, I feel like I get the whole story of this character.

SPEAKER_05 33:55

There are there are dozens and dozens of characters in Love and Rockets, and very rarely do I go, oh, who's that? Like, even if they come back hundreds of pages later, it's like, oh, that's that's fucking that's fucking Rand Race, or like that's fucking like that's the guy from like issue one involving the dinosaurs, or like it it's super easy to like go back and be like that's exactly that person and I know them instantly because of their design. There's a flawlessness to it.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

There's like a something that is something that is it feels effortless.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

I know, it just feels like it flows from them. Yeah. Yeah, god. Man, fuck those guys. And it's crazy how it's incredible.

SPEAKER_05 34:36

And it's crazy how tonally, too, like their art style doesn't change that much to fit whatever tone of story they're doing, because they're they run every possible tone.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yeah, you'll get like something really, really, really surreal, and then you'll get like what if wrestling in big boobs? Yeah. And then you'll get like lesbians chatting about their truck problems, you know. It's really interesting. Yeah, the amount of lesbians is heroic, and like the men riding lesbians, I mostly don't give a hoot, but uh Yo, kind of the only person that I like who writes lesbians as well as they do who are who's a man is Tinian. Yeah. It's like Tinian and that.

SPEAKER_05 35:18

Yeah, easily. I was talking to a customer in the store actually, because Corinne, this customer and I were talking about Jaime, and we were talking about the way he writes lesbians, and it was like, it's very clear that he just hung out with a bunch of dykes. Like, there's there's like in that Wigwam Bam, there's like extended sequences of like intra-community dike drama that you're dropped into because like Hopi rolls up into it and then gets like embroiled in like several different people's dyke drama.

SPEAKER_04 35:48

Yeah, there's some real L-word stuff that happens. There's no way they didn't have some lesbi this some lesbian aunt. Yeah. Or series of lesbian aunts that they have that uh she hung out with or sorry, he hung out with lesbians, like he had to have.

SPEAKER_05 36:01

Like, there's no way the writing these like scenes of like these party scenes where these intradynamics are happening, and it's like you had to have been hanging out with these girls, like smoking joints together, or like having a beer, like whatever. Like, there's no way that you have this level of like ability to write these women if these were not women like you were in some level of community or at least proximity to, very consistently.

SPEAKER_04 36:25

Yeah, I would love to learn how they really sit down and do their inks because it's just beautiful work.

SPEAKER_05 36:33

And it's crazy to think that there's they they both are like there. I mean, all three of them are like this, but Gilbert and Jaime, because this is just all Jaime stuff, but Gilbert too is like an impeccable ink. They're both impeccable inkers.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

I wanna like just look over their shoulder. Because their inks too, it's like weird. Because it's all hand-drawn and all hand-inked, but it looks like like I was watching you fill in Nancy's hair on your iPad where you just like click with the iPad, like the Apple pen, and it's just like and it's like solid black. But like that's like And like obviously like scanning techniques and shit that they're doing, but like I mean, I they have up in the contrast or something. No, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 37:10

But it's just that crisp. That's really mysterious. You look at these like finer micro details, and it's like they have to be using like an extremely thin form.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Well, their paper's definitely way bigger than this, too.

SPEAKER_05 37:22

I mean, still, but even then, like, it's it's still like even blown up, it would still be like very thin lines.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

I do I bet there's a really good cartoonist K Fave episode about Loin Rockets where they like go through it in fine detail. Like, I know you guys don't like him. No, I mean like a very flawed, controversial indiv individual. Who? Piscor. Piscor with the room. Dave Pilke. Dave Pilke.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

Dave Pilkie. I will never watch a Dave Pilke YouTube show. Yeah, what we all know.

SPEAKER_05 37:52

You know what he did to those giraffes.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:54

I mean, in that Tiger King episode, oh my god, I just fucking And his involvement in the Rhino horn market and the boner pill market? And the Rhino boner market? Oh, I gotta laugh out of Pearl. I feel very proud of myself. Um but anyway, just to conclude, like, if you haven't popped into Love and Rockets, it's very intimidating. There is so much so much of it. It's prolific. Just if you look at the the paperbacks on our shelves, you can very easily it'll tell you, like, you find one of the brothers, and then it'll tell you, like, this one I have says the third and concluding portion of the Locust storyline from the original Love and Rockets magazine. And that's the that's the way, the best way to check it. Or you just get the Locust Compendium, which is what I've been reading mainly, and then this wait, this isn't in the Locust Compendium? This is in the Locust Compendium. I just didn't bring my Locust Compendium to work because it's big. And so I just wanted a smaller uh page to read off of. Um but um and then yeah, Gilbert's um uh uh Palomar stories or Palomar are gonna be in a uh compendium later this year. You can also just pop in on um I'm giving uh one of our subscribers cohetes, uh, which is just like random ephemera short stories. Like you can kind of just pop in and just vibe it out and just Yeah, you'll find something you like. Like it is intimidating, but it's way more accessible than you think it is. Like And there is something you will like in here, whether that's like the like the wrestling stuff, whether that's the more slice of life stuff, whether that's like there there's a whole art called the Death of Speedy Ortiz, where it's just like, what happened to Speedy? Why are the cops looking for him? Why is everybody in the neighborhood looking for him? What did he do? And it just goes on and on, and it's so thrilling and sad. It's honestly some of the best stuff that I've read from them. Along with uh Wigwam Bam, um, which is named after a song. Um when they actually get to why it's named that, and I won't reveal it, but when they get to why it's named that, so touching and so sweet. It's also fucking hilarious. The last thing I'll say about it is I just popped a story where like Vicky popped a story? I popped into a story.

SPEAKER_04 40:15

Like it's a drug or a pimple.

SPEAKER_05 40:17

Yeah, it's like a barbiturate. Yeah, it's like a barbiturate. A Barbie, if you will.

SPEAKER_04 40:22

It's like a it's like a uh uh lewd.

SPEAKER_05 40:30

A lewd. I'm alluding to my use. Anyway. The thing I just popped into, there is a page where Aunt Vicky in the wrestling ring is getting her shit rocked because she's too busy being like having a gay panic about how all the other wrestlers are dykes, and she's trying to figure out if she needs to quit, and she's so distracted, gay panicking, she just gets beaten up by the other women wrestlers. It's so good. Just check it out. It's it's a really excellent, excellent series. I cannot recommend it enough.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

We used to have a really great art book that I wish we still had because I feel like Pear would be really into it, but it was this like large format book of just uh Jaime's wrestling drawings. He just did like he really like it wasn't comics, it was just like like a drawing of like a moment in wrestling. And it was really good, but they didn't up the contrast, so you could see the pen strokes on the blacks and stuff, and it was really cool.

SPEAKER_04 41:33

Um I love that those like artist editions, you really get to see where they're whiting out and everything.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Yeah, but I I just kind of looked around and I don't think we have it. I thought it was titled Life Drawing, but it's not. Life drawing's a collection of comics.

SPEAKER_05 41:45

Um I will I will look later to see if we can somehow it's we had it years ago. It's probably out of print, but I'm still gonna try to see if it's available.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

I mean, I actually it might just it might Phantom might still sell it. But um What's this uh gross perversion of Power Rangers that you're reading?

SPEAKER_05 42:02

Oh, Shin Zero. Um I feel like I've been talking a lot. Can we Yeah, do you want to switch around? Yeah, I think maybe switch around because I feel like I've just been talking a ton, so I feel like we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Oh, I feel like we've been talking as a collective. I tried, I was trying to talk. Pearl was kicking ass. She was doing great. I'd love hearing about something.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

Um Thank God you said something you've got snowing during the podcast.

SPEAKER_05 42:26

Podcast listeners, if you want to hear Pearl talk more, tell her. Tell her how much you love hearing her talk.

SPEAKER_04 42:33

Yeah, there's no way for them to communicate to it. We need to set up an email for them to like send us a bunch of our listeners are subscribers.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Hello at escapistcomics.com.

SPEAKER_04 42:43

Yeah, but what about our like massive, you know, German viewership and what everybody listening to us in the baby viewership. Everyone listening to us in daycare. Yeah, we need we need those like microphones that attach to the baby cribs.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

Like like you can patch us into a a baby monitor. That's what we need.

SPEAKER_05 43:03

Um Walter just said that he's loving the increased pearl.

SPEAKER_04 43:08

As a baby. As a baby. We've yeah, we upped the pearl.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Um so, yeah, do you want to talk about Batman? Yeah, let's talk about Batman. Batman number nine. Oh my god. I have so much to say about this fucking comic. Um. So the first thing I want to say, just to get it out of the way, um, still, one of the best things on the shelf. Yeah. Uh just, period. It's better than Honest. I think this issue is better than any issue of Absolute Batman. Yeah. And I think that's true of the Joker issue of this run. I think that's true of other issues, but I think this really solidifies my fraction.

SPEAKER_04 43:45

Uh universe.

SPEAKER_05 43:47

The ghost machine guidebook issue too, which is out this week. I'm not fucking reading that.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

I think this solidifies, to me, what we've been kind of saying, which is that every issue it seems like they're just Getting better, and that he's like settling in more and more to his run. Because good god, this this to me feels like the best issue yet, but I feel like that's like every issue I pick up, I'm like, oh man, this is the best one yet. Um every page there's something I can talk about. Um so there's like I guess like some of the things I want to say is there's some we keep harping on it, and I feel like there's been like a lot of like good setup of the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Damien Wayne as like father and son, and I feel like there's a lot of payoff in this issue.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Um it's just like so thoughtfully written, and there's like so much care put into it. Um and I'd kind of forgotten that Alfred was dead, but there's this like really beautiful scene of like Bruce having an imagined conversation with Alfred, in which Alfred scolds him for kind of being a shitty father to Damien, and like he kind of decides to lock in with like love and care for Damien in a way that is really lovely, and then it's all like all this kind of like emotional weight is like super juxtaposed with like some just like super thrilling action. Um, rendered by is it Ryan Sook? Is that his last is that his first name? It's Ryan Sook, yeah. Yeah, so it's Ryan Sook, he's the guest artist for this issue. I mean he's he's nailing it. It's like not it's not a downgrade from Jimenez, which is saying something, because Jimenez sets the bar really high.

SPEAKER_05 45:25

Yeah, we were both worried when an art another artist got announced that we were like, is it gonna drop in quality? What's gonna happen there? But no, it's been a- No, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

Uh and there's some really funny parts of this issue too. There's like there's a great scene where um spoiler hears that Tim Drake is dating a new girlfriend, and she gets like really jealous and pissed off. Oh, boyfriend. He's he's dating his man. No, no, he's dating a he's dating a woman, I think. No, no, that's- Oh, is this is this a man? That's a man, yeah. That's a butch woman with a pixie cut. Um All men are butch women with a pixie cut, if if you believe. Um, but she gets jealous of of, I guess, Tim's new man. Um, and so she like diverts her like escape route to run over some some cop mercenaries, which is just good old-fashioned, like absolute Batman annual, cop-hating fun.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

Um, in the best way possible. Um It's all like one long action sequence, which is so freaking good. And I don't wanna I don't wanna ruin this because I just feel like the payoff is so good. So I feel like we should keep that under wraps. But what I will say is that uh Fraction uh continues doing his like fun little like uh bat technology labels um that say like I think like another really fun one is uh It's the frickin' the the burn bag. It's like these bags that they like drop off that like explode and like burn everything around them to like destroy evidence and stuff. Like it's it's just very I don't want to say like silver agey, because this is not really like silver agey, but it's it's camp. Yeah. In in a way that makes me feel the same way as like Silver Age comics, where it's like it's just freaking cool. Like Batman's got cool stuff. Um he's got gadgets and like he flies and stuff. Like I love that he's blue too, I suppose to everyone that I talk about this run with, but Batman's blue in this, and it's just better. Yeah, it's just better when he's blue. He can ha he can be shadowy because you can't shade black, it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_05 47:41

It all just becomes an amorphous blob, and it mostly doesn't work other than a there's a very few artists who can do like a pure black Batman, and it's like McKean and Mignola, and like there's somebody else I was thinking of. Uh, John Paul Leon, there we go. Yeah, but that's a duh.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

And not Deanny.

SPEAKER_05 47:59

Um Bruce Tim, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Yeah, Bruce Tim can do it. Um but for the most part, like blue is just better. Like it pops way better. And the other thing that I will say is that this has I like I squealed when I finished this issue because it reveals the setup for Barbara Gordon Breakout.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

And everyone's been talking about Barbara Gordon Breakout because it's one of the new next level books, and everyone's like, How did she get there? How did she end up in jail?

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

And this reveals it, and I fucking flipped because they actually did something right in DC editorial, and they put the Barbara Gordon Breakout preview ad at the end of this issue, so you get this cliffhanger, and then you get this like sexy little tease of like three pages of Barbara Gordon Breakout, and it's frickin' awesome.

SPEAKER_05 48:53

To be like a Barbara Gordon prison, like women prison book, and I'm actually very hype.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

It's like Bitch Planet, but Barbara Gordon is that bitch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:03

I was I was telling Pearl that like Barbara Gordon has a Stone Ocean. Yes, calling this Barbara Gordon Stone Ocean. Barbara Gordon Stone Ocean. Yeah, it's Tamaki too, so she's gonna she's gonna fucking kill it.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

I'm so excited. The art looks great too. I love I love this Amanse Noel Pond art. It's just really good and man, God! We got comics again! We got real comics in this country again.

SPEAKER_05 49:36

We're so fucking back. Like, I all of the character work is just uniformly excellent and like deeply emotional. Like, I'm very, very touched by like the the the father-son relationship in this. The father-son relationships, I should say. Because like the Alfred Bruce stuff is just as touching and striking as the stuff with Damien and Bruce. I don't want to get too much into the specifics of that, but it's genuinely some of the most emotionally effective superhero stuff in a long time. And happy to see Duke Thomas back. I'm happy to see someone fucking remember Duke Thomas exists.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

I know Duke Thomas and Spoiler are two of my faves, like who I always want to be in Batman comics, and they both take front stage.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

In this. Um It's nice to see. I also love that the Bat family is doing like all this like crazy dangerous shit, and then like Tim Drake is just like hanging out with his boo thing. Like. And like no one seems to care. They're just like, yeah, he found a hot man. Other than Stephanie being. I know Stephanie's like pissed off about it, which I kind of like I love that. That's like really, really funny.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

Um, yeah, it's just so good. Um, just made me happy, brought a smile to my face. Best comment, like, best single issue that came out this week. It it's just so dynamic. There's like Silk is doing something that I I'm always really happy when uh guest artists come on and do this, which is that he's he's copying the aesthetic tone of the mainline artist. So you have like these like f kind of cinematic framed action panels where like Batman's flipping through the air, you don't need they can't see it. I don't know why I'm like trying to flip to it. Oh no, because if we can look at it. But it's like like a lot of the stuff that makes Jimenez's art so awesome, which is like this way that he kind of breaks down the timeline of action through paneling and layouts. Sook does that as well. I mean, it's in his own style, because he's his own artist, obviously, but it just makes the book feel far more cohesive too, rather than like have it be really jarring that like, oh my god, the art looks so different all of a sudden, you know, and like it just feels so seamless, you know. I think just I don't know, just bravo to Sook, because I mean he really stepped up to the plate on this one and uh knocked out of the park.

SPEAKER_05 52:02

Um this is career best work from him too. Like he's been around a long time. He was he like did stuff on Morrison Batman, he did stuff on Seven Soldiers, like he's he did some early vertigo stuff at one point, or like middle vertigo. Like, he's kind of been around for a while and he's he's done a lot of good work, but this is genuinely some career best work from him. Um I kind of think the only thing I have left to talk about this issue at the risk of talking about it too much is like one of the first things that's said in this comic, so tonight we're going to lose, and then we're going to dictate the terms of our loss here, basically.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

Dude, I got chills. I was like, oh, this is gonna be some good shit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:45

And it's nice to see because like so many people, I was thinking about this last night, like, so many people have decided that like Batman never loses, and like people accuse Morrison of doing this, and it's like and that more they like say that Morrison's the one who set this precedent, which is like only true up to the point where Batman gets fucking murked in his run.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

So like Batman gets killed in his r in their run.

SPEAKER_05 53:10

Batman gets killed in their run, Damien gets killed in their run. They fuck up like a bunch of times, and like their I they're like has a plan for everything, because that's the common complaint, is like Batman has a plan for everything, and he's and he's like too perfect. Batman's plan for everything in the Morrison run was like I put a little backup personality in my brain from the Silver Age in case someone makes me like go crazy. Like he has to punch his way out of a coffin because he's not good at this um in that run. But anyway, the reason I the reason I bring that up is that like a lot of writers kind of just take it at face value that like Batman is like a god. Like, there's people will talk about like, oh, I'm I hate Bat God or whatever, that he can just kind of do anything. That he has that plot armor. This is a book in every capacity, both the plot and the characters, that is about Batman failing and trying to figure out how to do the best he can in the world. In many ways, too. In many ways, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:10

Batman failing as a father, Batman failing as a hero, Batman failing as a leader. Like, there's so many kind of facets to this. And what I think is really cool here, too, is like he fails as a superhero against Randall S uh Vandal Savage, but he succeeds as a father, and he overcomes failure, which I think is like really wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Um, and like far more nuanced than a lot of Batman is ever allowed to be.

SPEAKER_05 54:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

Um God damn.

SPEAKER_05 54:37

Genuinely nuanced like parental writing in general. Like, you know, like even a lot of independent books, like that are uh monthlies, I mean, like, don't have this kind of like relationship nuance and like it's beautiful stuff. I'm we we talk a lot about Matt Fraction being a a wonderful dad um on this podcast a lot, but it's it's really nice. It's nice to see such a human fucking book.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Um yeah, I think that's kind of that kind of sums up what I have to say about it. Um should we should I talk about ASM 28? Yeah, talk about ASM 28 and then I'll and then you can tell us about absolute uh Power Rangers. Yay. Um so I've been on record talking mad shit about Joe Kelly's um Amazing Spider-Man run. Um I am not gonna retract my statement, um, because there's no reason to, because a lot of Joe Kelly's run has been dog shit. Um it's been poorly written, poorly executed, um, oftentimes kind of drawn with uh mediocrity, and I think it is indicative of a editorial and publishing failure of Marvel as a whole. Um I think uh so I I decided to pick up this new issue of ASM, partially because I was like, I don't have anything else to read other than Batman 9. Um and partially because uh this was uh the first issue after the end of the frickin' Carnage 9 issue uh story event, um, which I just had I just had absolutely no interest in. Um because good lord, why would I? Um and uh so I picked it up and kind of braved the the waters, um. And uh I was pleasantly surprised. Um I think the art's pretty good, the Corey Smith art is pretty good, and um what I will say is that this opens up in a way that I don't particularly care for. The first couple pages are like uh um like a MacGuffin sent by Doctor Strange from the future to the past tells Spider-Man that he has to like save the universe. Um save the not just the universe, but the multiverse, and I was like, oh great, uh he he done fucked up again. Um he's not doing friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and that's stupid, and that's like what he's been doing wrong with ASM this whole time. Yeah. Um but then pretty quickly it becomes a much more recognizable Spidey story. Um he kicks some uh titania and absorbing man butt, um, and there's this like really great bit where he like launches Absorbing Man into a hot dog cart, causing him to absorb the essence of hot dog and turn himself into a hot dog man. And he loses all of his strength and stuff, which is just really fun. It's very like Ryan North Fantastic Four or The Flash, where you're like, this is the goofy shit I wanted. Um and then he joins up with the team that I kind of most associate him with, which is the Fantastic Four, and they do some Fantastic Four shenanigans. Uh and the other thing that I really like here is that they don't retcon or just kind of like quietly sweep the aliens that are his friends under the rug. Oh, yeah. They're like hanging out with the Fantastic Four in the Baxter building, and there's some like really funny banter um between a bunch of them. It's like like his symbiote suit thing uh is like annoyed at Reed Richards because Reed keeps like interrogating him about space and he's like, God, I just want a minute alone. Um and they get cleared to like live on Earth. Um and one of them is like uh and one of them is like, we're not going back to Peter's tiny apartment, are we? And all of them go, oh god, no. Um and it's just kind of it's kind of sweet and funny. Um I'm still skeptical of kind of the direction that Kelly's seems like he might be setting himself up to go with. Um just because it's unclear what the focal point of this next sort of run of comics in his broader run is gonna look like. Um but I'm I'm hopeful. Uh this feels a little bit like when I read the first uh kind of like relaunch of the Ryan North Fantastic Four. I was like just kind of pleasantly surprised by how n fun it was to read it, you know, after so much editorial failure on behalf of the Fantastic Four, and this kind of felt like the same thing. It's not groundbreaking, it's not even cracking like the top five or ten books on the shelf on the new shelf right now. Um but it just feels like it's done with like both more competence and more heart. Um, and that's kind of like the first thing that I really wanted to see. Uh and so yeah, that's kinda that's my take on it. I really don't have that much else to say. Um I do think the Corey Smith art is quite good. Um I think this is a pretty good cover. Uh yeah, pleasantly surprised by uh this whole uh situation with number 28. I really hope that they kind of lean into this little bit of like sweetness that they're kind of going for, and that that's like the main sort of tonal distinction of this new arc versus this the old arc. Um but I would encourage folks, if you're an ASM fan who's been off it for a while, like I was, um, in a similar way to how I was off of the Daredevil Ahmed stuff, to maybe flip through this, give it a chance. Um, I'll kind of keep you guys updated as more issues come out, um, about whether I think it's worth getting back into. Um That being said, all in all, cautiously optimistic about where this is going.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:54

Um I'd love to hear you briefly talk about the contrast between the cover and the interiors. Cause when you were talking because I remember before you read this issue, you looked at the cover and you're like, Spider-Man can only get the shit beaten out of him, and that's kind of the only thing Marvel let him do.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

But then now we're talking about the actual um Yeah, the interiors are drastically like the the tone of the interior feels drastically different from the tone of the cover, which is a little weird to me, but also like not uh foreign to comics, you know. I mean the number of terribly drawn interiors to a Hellboy title with gorgeous Mike Minuela cover art are uh in the thousands at this point. Yeah. Um I do kind of think it's like weird that they went with such a gritty cover, uh, for such a kind of like fun interior. Like I feel like the the covers on the Ryan North Fantastic IV have all been kind of like really representative of what you're gonna get on the inside, and this is like not really that. Um like uh he doesn't really get like the crap beaten out of him in this issue, which I'm like totally fine with. Like, I think he's like allowed to not almost die every issue. Yeah. Um but yeah, that's a good point. Um I would also just like love to see lighter covers. I don't know, like, why is he gotta be bleeding out on the cover of this one, you know?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:15

Like I wonder if Marvel Marvel's just like so locked in on this particular tone of Spider-Man that like, even if they're willing to maybe change the interiors, they're scared of like I don't know, scared of like a like pushing away some like imaginary person who like only reads Spider-Man because he just really wants a sadist. They're just like, I god, I love when that kid gets his shit rocked.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:37

Like, it's just so weird because I feel like I've never heard any like if if that person exists, they're such a rare comics reader, you know? Like I just feel like the internet is so populated with people just like so sad about the direction that Marvel has taken Spider-Man in the last like 15 years, you know? Like, when was the last time you saw like a a promising YouTube video recommended to you about like what Marvel's doing with the Spider-Man comics, you know? Yeah. Um I'll give you a hint, it predates the existence of YouTube. Um so yeah, I'm just uh It's just so funny because it seems so Marvel just seems like they're making editorial decisions based on like no connection to the fan base. Yeah. Which is really weird to me because like the fanbase is so vocal and so easily connected with.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

You know, like it's just not that hard to like know what fans want from Spider-Man, and like they're not asking for the impossible. Like, you literally did it in Ultimate Spider-Man. Yeah. Like, you've done it before, and you could do it again. It's comics, it's not building a a fucking skyscraper or something. Like, it's easy to just be like, what if we made Spider-Man good for the fans, you know?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:59

It feels like the flip side of like the internet thing of like making up a guy to get mad at, but instead it's making up a guy to sell to. Like, I I don't know who they're selling to, but some like imaginary person who just like hates fun and women. Um mainly fun and women, among many other things. Cause like, yeah, as you said, the fan base is very vocal. Like, significant chunks of Marvel, X-Men, Spider-Man have some of the most vocal fans in comics. Like, and that sounds like a snipe, but it's not. Like, they have these are some of the most like intense and passionate like fan base. The same with like FF to some degree, too. Like, these are really passionate fan bases who talk very openly amongst themselves and to the outside world about like what's going on and what they kind of want.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

And like, yeah, no one's no one's ever said that the comics community is is uh not online enough.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:59

Like and so it it just seems to me that yeah, as you said, like Marvel should be more able to just I don't know, just just be able to reach out a little better because they they see it, they clearly do. I just don't know why they won't respond to it. But anyway, that's yeah, thank you for talking about Amazing Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:17

We have not I just I care so much about the character, and honestly, it just makes me like sad. But this this gives me a little spark of hope. Yeah. Um please god, don't fuck it up. I just want my Spidey.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:37

Oh man. Yeah, one one day, one day Spider-Man will be beautiful again. Um consistently. Um same with the X-Men. We we were we were a little too lucky with Krakoa. Sorry for getting up for a second. I just realized Avery needs this volume five of Berserk on the shelf. Our friend is reading through Berserk, uh, so they're they're getting into. To the really uh rough stuff, and we'll leave it at that, but um we're not here to talk about Berserk. Uh, just got a couple more things to talk about. Um, I'm gonna talk about Shin Zero right at the end, but I want to briefly talk about Absolute Green Lantern, number 14, and if Destruction Be Our Lot number one, the new image title. Um Absolute Green Lantern, I probably have the least to say about, other than I continue to really like this book. Um, Sid Codian definitely has been stepping up even from the last couple of issues to be it's like not the art that I love the most, but flipping through here you can sense like a high a better range of like action and a better range of like character than he had previously been showing. I also think the color work is maybe just a little bit sharper, so that even if it looks a little bit 90s for my taste, it's still pretty solid. Um the characters continue to be a delight. I Baz is really fucking funny. I know so very little about Baz from the main universe, but I feel like I just have a rock solid sense of him here, like the faceless man who can't unwrap his face for fear of not existing. He's just a such a Persephone concept. It is such a it was actually as soon as I introduced that, I was like, fuck. I'm like, I'm locked in. That's so you. It's very me.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

As you were saying that, I was like, damn, I feel like I've heard you read a short story you wrote about this guy.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:27

Like I probably have a similar dude somewhere in me. But yeah, as as they're speeding away and getting shot at, he's just like, this car sucks. I could build a better car myself. I'm a car guy. But in a very like, like kind of like a little bit like faggy way, and I say this with love and affection, as as as a woman of the of the faggy persuasion myself, like it's it's uh it's a little bit like girl is car, ain't it? Um it's very good. Um yeah, the art's yeah, generally a lot better than it and a lot more expressive than it has been. Like, we get a lot more about this universe's version of Omar Re. There's both some very like sweet stuff with like the mom, a crazy bird aliens vomiting into each other map in into each other's mouth panel. Um, some crazy gore shit that like I'm kind of it's kind of some of the most grotesque stuff they put in any of these absolute books. Every now and then, Absolute Green Lantern will kind of throw something in there that's like, whoa, okay. It's not a consistently gruesome book, but when it chooses to be, it's like a very effective because of how limited it is. Um that said, as much as I kind of like a lot of the concepts in this book, I like a lot of the characters I really love in this book, the colors are a lot better, the Sid Kodian's art's a lot better. One area where it does really fail is unfortunately Kodian again, where like he just draws Omar Ree or sorry, Tomar Ree, a little too like maniacal bad guy announcing his master plan, and it kind of takes some of the nuance in the writing, or that may or may not be, I can't tell, to be quite honest with you, if like some of my feelings about certain plot developments are like problems with the writing, or like it's making me it's coloring the writing in a certain way because of how like cartoonish bad guy like smiling cruelly as he does bad guy thing. Twirling mustache. It's a little too like twirling mustache, a little too like the worst comic with um like Thanos or or Darkseid you've read is. Like, there's good characterization, there's good characters in this book, but like, and it's really only with him, like Tomari specifically, that like things get a little too like bad guy announcing yeah, twirling his fucking mustache. Um and I would like to see that addressed, especially if Sid Codyan stays on and it does look like he's gonna stay on. Um But he definitely, besides that, does step up here quite a bit, and like I am thankful for that. Um and yeah, I just think this is a really cool book. I think it's going really under the radar, but it does come with reservations, so I can definitely understand that. Um to If Destruction Be Our Law, I This is going to sound a little backhanded. But I mean this with like actual I I mean I mean this as like a sincere compliment. Oh no. No, is that like this this feels like what like an a like a middle or slightly above average image book would have felt like in its in the glory days. Which sounds like it's damning, but like back in back when image was like really cooking, even the stuff that wasn't that interest like even the stuff that like wasn't that good was like gorgeous or had some like unique angle on it or unique tone or style that like made it stand out. Like, even if you didn't read or like something, you could look at some, you know, a book and be like, I really kind of fuck with that idea. I fuck with what this is doing. Like maybe I'm not pulling this because there's too many other titles to read, but like there's a good book here, and I can recognize that. And that's kind of what this feels like, is like a above-average or m average to above average for like images heyday title, which a lot of image books have not been lately, other than kind of a sordid crisis and um which had a series of really, really excellent uh bright uh Javier Polito um reprint variants this week, which you should definitely check out. They're excellent. I got all of them. Same. They're fucking beautiful pieces of art. They're yeah, they're they're worth having just for the covers, which is not something I often say, but like but um yeah, so like other than that, and kind of in your skin, like there's not a lot from image that feels even even kind of like, oh, that was cool, that was neat. Like, and this is not going to blow your socks off, but it is interesting, and like I feel I don't know. I just like I while I don't entire socks off. You know, good for her. If if you're giving my mom a good time, good for her. God, why did I say that? My mom doesn't listen to this podcast, it's fine. Um, but I support all of her decisions. You know whose decisions we don't support? Babies. This is our anti-baby podcast. I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:37

I don't support babies' rights and I don't support their wrongs.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:41

Especially not their wrongs. This is what makes us such a trans podcast.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:50

We did say the word breeders one time on this, so yeah. But we, one of us said the word breeders. Yeah, one of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

I forget who, honestly.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:01

But uh fake news. Just gonna jump into it. This is this is Matthew and Mark Elijah Rosenberg. I don't know who Mark Elijah is, but I assume that he's Matthew's brother or another family member. Art by Andy McDonald, colors by Francesco uh Segola, and then our boy Hatsan Hassan Otsmain. Elho. Elho, thank you. Sorry, my brain just completely farted that one out. Um like skip moving on. Thank you, thank you, dear. Um, moving on. Yeah, this book is is actually really fun and interesting. It follows kind of this society where there are supposedly no humans anymore, and robots are kind of the only thing left, and they're performing their whatever their function is, they're just kind of performing it ad nauseum. And so the main characters of this book are an Abraham Lincoln uh animatronic, who at one point says, like, what do you do when like the most important things you've ever said or done were done said and done hundreds of years before your birth? Um, just echoing the past of a man he never knew, and a a mobile bus, like an AI system on like a city bus. And those are kind of our main characters for the first two issues or for the first issue. Um and I don't quite know where the plot of this thing exactly is going, other than Walter just texted, where the fuck are my cheesets and appy cheese?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:34

I don't like what we've started here. And frankly, I blame Biden.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:40

This is this is definitely a Biden-era problem. I know this is happening in 2026, but Biden definitely did it. Because the most important thing about Biden is to not be mad about the genocide he did. It's not to be mad about any of the like reversing COVID-era policies that are the early COVID era policies that are. Fuck the world, fuck community, fuck your neighbor. It doesn't matter what a guy actually did. Only get angry at things someone on the internet made up for you to get mad at. Anyway. That's what I've been saying. Anyway, that said, uh, Joe Biden can go fuck himself in hell, but like, that's for the genocide, not for the, I don't know, insane shit that right-wingers think is real. Um I just felt like I just wanted to throw that out there. But um, yeah, we don't really know where the kind of the plot is going. It's an extra-length issue, but the plot is kind of pretty open at this point where it's going. That's both kind of exciting, but also I wish I maybe had a little more solid of an understanding about the broader direction, other than like it's an existential robot book where robots figure out why they matter. Which, again, sounds damning, but the Rosenbergs have like a solid enough sense of of voice to like make it engaging to read, even if the broader kind of like it's not any more particularly deep than Wally on a broad s level, but on the kind of like nuts and bolts moment to moment, it is like pretty strong. Great, too. I'm really enjoying just like looking at this. Andy McDonald draws the fuck out of these robots, and they're all unique, distinct robots. Like they all have like a lot of them, like are very, very clear in their utility just from a glance. Like they are pretty thick robots. They are like Love that. We we do love a thick robot. We love this crazy fucking thing. That got me when I flipped the page on that.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:45

That's very cool. I was like, that scared the shit out of me. That's very like some of the best alien work in saga coded. Yeah. You know, where he's just like making stuff up, and you're like, oh, that's actually quite neat. Yeah, exactly Brava.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:01

There's a ton of that, like pretty much every new robot, and there is so many, I there's in uncountable new robots in this. All have different ways of or like all have different bodies, all have different anatomies, and I cannot stress this enough, they almost all have different lettering fonts. Hassan is like really the the kind of MVP of this book, as much as I think everybody's cooking here. Hassan's work on this issue alone is award-winning. This man makes new fonts for genuinely maybe upwards of 20 different characters. With really unique, like fonts and lettering. He plays with like He plays with the texture of the lettering, he plays with like the colors and shapes of the thing, he like plays with like layering it over each other. Just really masterfully guiding you around the page. But like even with pretty heavy exposition sequences, you can like look very clearly on like the page, the way the page is composed and really guided by particularly Hassan is excellent. Like, if he was doing no other work this year, he should be nominated for this book. And he's doing excellent work of this caliber on every book he's doing. Like, all of these robots and different effects just have their own unique textures. Like, there's different like robot swears that are like pictographic. That like, even if I think the like the robot swearing is maybe a little bit too cutesy, Hasan really sells it as like a a specific texture. So yeah, even though I don't entirely know where this story is going, I'm gonna keep reading this. Like it is a it is like an engaging like set of characters, like it is a weird kind of world, and so even if I'm not even if I think it's maybe going a little too traditional in a kind of like robots, are they human or are they dancer kind of direction where it's it's just like yeah, yeah, like robot like okay, yeah, robots learned how to like feel things, and like being an outsider in a rigid society, we've all heard this before, but it really does go to show that like the specifics are significantly more important than like the broad strokes. And I do think the specifics of this book do really sell it in a way that I'm not sold by kind of most of what image is putting out. So, like, I will probably keep reading this, at least for another couple of issues. Um and yeah, Andy McDonald just draws so many cool goddamn robots in this thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

I feel like that's enough to make me like pick up a book. I'm like, cool robots, like sign me up for at least a couple issues. You know, I don't know. I'm a simple gal.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:47

No, it's good. It is eye candy, which is like another thing that that image has kind of been lacking lately, is like some really distinct style from a lot of books, and like this has a distinct style, this has like a pretty like again, like even if the broad strokes are not there, the m the smaller banter strokes, like I cared about this bus. I this this this this lady bus who's a robot, I loved her, she's great. Like I'm invested in her a weird amount for like an oversized first issue. So I yeah, again, like I think this is great work. I I I do think you should check it out. Um it's been pretty hyped for a while. Uh we were getting some ash cans of it, and so I know it's like but it's also not been a speculator book, I don't think. Which is Yeah, I think it's like hyped because it's good, maybe. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Is like, and it's clear that like when the speculators aren't coming in for it, it's like, oh, maybe there's Yeah, that's like a good sign that maybe there's some merit to it. Yeah, I hate that that's true, but it but it is. Like. The books that the the speculator book this week was like fucking Benten. Um, which I cannot possibly imagine being good enough to need a Ben 10 series again. But anyway. Um that's kind of all I have to say about that. Um, but kind of the last uh trade that I want to talk about before we I don't know, kind of maybe end, or like, actually, would you want to talk about AIDS and superheroes a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:18

Oh or just even just kind of like introduce it. Um Yeah, sure. I can I can kind of bring it up. Um why don't we do that at the end of Shin Zero? Yeah, because I would love to hear from from from you about that. That's what I'm drawing right now.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:29

Yeah, she's drawing it in the studio.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:32

I know. I'm I'm I am become Pearl. Drawer of comics. You just you're so inspired right now. It's it's really fun to watch.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:42

I'm creating my version of uh the leader right now. I was I was overhearing you talk to Pearl or Walter about that, and I'm so excited. I really love the kind of like it actually reminds me a little bit of of Love and Rockets, your uh of Aids and Superheroes, where like you can have like a pretty wide range of tones going on. Um but anyway, we'll we'll talk about that more later because I want to hear more from you. Um But Shin Zero, um, the first of three graphic novels by uh uh Mateyu Bablet and drawn by uh Gileam Single and Friend of the Podcast, draw uh Artist of Frontier. Um the first of three graphic novels, kind of taking the for those who don't know um Shin Recently there have been some in the last like five, ten years, there's been like Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, uh Shin Common Rider, where they're kind of taking these like uh Tukusatsu kind of like or Tokusatsu uh properties and kind of putting like a more like modern contemporary spin on them.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:51

Tell us about Tokusatsu. Talk to talk to us a little bit about uh what that what that means for Yeah, it's uh viewers who aren't steeped in this specific corner of the nerd realm.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:04

Yeah, let's let's talk about that. So it encompasses like a pretty wide range of things. I'm going to be like referring back to an essay in the back, a pretty short one, that's just kind of an introductory primer. Um The direct translation is literally special effects, um, and it's a genre which started with the first Godzilla movie in 1954, um, and kind of encompasses everything from Godzilla to like Ultraman to Common Rider to Power Rangers, up to arguably even like Sailor Moon. Um, even though that's getting like more sub-sub genre at that point. Um it's a pretty wide kind of umbrella genre that covers like particular like mainly focused on kind of like these big monster battles and transformations robots. Like it it's it's the kind of like big mecha genre, it's the it's the kaiju genre, it's like men in rubber suits beating the shit out of each other, which is frankly the height of cinema, um, if I'm being quite honest with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:06

I know, it's kind of like uh it's like when you watch WWE and you're like, this is objectively an evil corporation, but holy shit, this is like better than anything. Like it's just pure mainline like like just like straight into your veins entertainment. Yeah. You know, it's just like how I imagine it feels to be like a deeply uncomplicated frat guy who's able to like crush a beer can against your forehead, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:37

The the wild, like, nearly sexual thrill of being able to crush things against your head with a Neanderthal head. Yeah. And so this is like and so in in in recent years, they've been doing these shin quote-unquote turns on these properties, and I'm to be clear, I I don't know enough about You're not a manga scholar, you're not a Japanese pop culture scholar. Not a Japanese pop culture scholar, so when I say that I don't entirely understand, I'm going to lead with that, but I don't understand because the idea is that there's supposed to be like modern recontextualizations of these kind of like older properties is the idea. Whereas like if you watch Shin Godzilla, for example, and it being about a like Japanese bureaucratic red tape during like the Fukushima disaster, it's like okay, but like a bunch of Godzilla films up to and including like early, early ones, even the silliest ones, are about like they're disaster films. They're disaster films, they're like very politically slanted almost all of the time. Like they are about things. And so, like, maybe the maybe the um the modernity of it is like Fukushima versus you know the Nagas uh the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Maybe that's the modernization, but I just kind of don't understand the idea that like Godzilla films, like but then again, I'm probably just misunderstanding something here. That said, the it leads us to Shin Zero, which is kind of a Shin update of Power Rangers and kind of a shin update of Ultraman, kind of at the same time. It's specifically about like the uberization of like Sentai, which are warriors who fight kaiju. It's like guys in big costumes who, like Power Rangers or Ultraman, who just grow big and beat the fuck out of kaiju. Whether they use robots or whether they use like growth superpowers or they're aliens, it doesn't really matter. It's just about getting big and kicking ass. Um Ultra Mega, for those who who were uh keyed into that, is like very much about that, very much pulling from that. Um and this this actually feels like a really this probably feels like the most of the Shin stuff that I have seen or read, the most that is actually like modernizing. Because what it's actually about is like what if Sentai didn't have kaiju to kill anymore, and they became Uberized, they became gig workers who were like rented out. It's it's it feels really bleak in like a broad scale kind of way. It's like, what if you were a Sentai and you like and the only thing you can do now is working gigs where like you like stand outside of bars and make sure people don't get too rowdy, or like you like do janitorial shit. It's gig work. It's it's gig work in colorful costumes, like calling upon like a a vaulted past that like just simply doesn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:32

And it follows five different kind of reminds me of like you ever do you ever do you ever follow these people on Instagram who are like our superheroes in the real world?

SPEAKER_05 1:27:42

Yeah, yeah, there's a couple in Oakland, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:44

Yeah, there's a couple in Oakland, a Kaikai, actually. Yeah, I love her. Friend of the pod Kaikai.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:49

Like there they're a couple like neighborhood patrol people um who like are like in the community, not like cops or or no, but they're superheroes.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:00

The ones in Oakland are very anti-cop. But they'll they'll literally just like bring food to homeless people, walk around in costumes. Wait, that's like awesome. That's so fun. Yeah. And like, but yeah, then they hang outside of bars and shit. I don't think they really like do gig work, but it I don't know. Yeah, it just kind of reminded me.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:19

No, thank you for sharing that. And it is kind of like that, but like the sadder version of that, where it's just like a bunch of like 18, 19-year-olds being like halfway between like a superhero and like a rent a cop. Yeah. Uh, making sure people aren't shoplifting. And so these are all kind of like young adults who are like not good at this. They're not particularly like, without getting too much into it, like one's one is like a mom who, like, for reasons we don't know, like fucked up when she was younger and is like trying to get go to law school and get custody of her kid. And so she's like trying to save money to go to law school, or like one starts doing like sex work in the costume so that only like so that way she can obscure her identity, but also play into like specific theming, like, and it and it just keeps it unfolding from there. Yeah, that's crazy. The the thing about this book is it is so much weirder and so much more willing to get into it than you would expect in any direction, both in terms of like fun shit, because it is a much more fun book than it sounds. It is a YA book in the best sense where like it is about young adults that takes those young adults seriously as adults and people with like real emotional, economic, and sexual concerns. Like, these are really like the first like hundred pages you read, and you're like, oh yeah, that's pretty good. I like these people, and then the last hundred pages, I was like, this is one of the best books I've read this year. It knocked me on my ass. Like, both as just like a piece of like spectacle fiction, but also as a piece of like, you know, young adult work about like have being in a fucking gig economy and having like very little hope other than like trying to escape it, or being trapped in like almost a fascistic urge to kind of like return to a glorious past. Every character is so richly realized, they all make really flawed, complicated decisions that are not spelled out. Like, this one's not even really actually no, I'm just not gonna say what it is, but like there's a character who like sneaks out and is doing a gig. And then when you find out what that gig that they're keeping secret is, you understand without that character having to give a speech about why they're doing this specific thing. You know exactly why they're doing this specific thing and what that kind of means for their character. Um that sounds awesome. It's really great.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:46

When you texted that like all of us would like it, I got kind of hyped. I do think all of you would like it.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:52

Like the art is stunning. My friend of the friend of the pod, uh Guillaume Singolin, and I would like to briefly kind of talk about that, where he like is almost as detailed as he is in like Frontier or PTSD or Citizen Sleeper, but he takes like a slightly cartoonier spin on it, which is a weird thing to say about because his like more hyper detailed stuff is chibi figures, and these are not chibi figures, these are more realistically proportioned people. Oh, this is the frontier guy. This is the frontier guy, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:29

Holy shit, that's so cool. One of my favorite books last year.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:33

Yeah, we w we should talk about Frontier at some point. Or no, we did on the We did, yeah, yeah, we did. We did, yeah. Excellent book. This is the Frontier artist um working with a frequent writing collaborator who has a very similar kind of like series of kind of like working class labor and science fiction interests, is like single.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:52

Yeah, that always seems to appear in uh what was it, Guillaume? Guillaume. Oh Guillaume. Guillaume's work.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:59

Guillaume Singlein. And so here, like, even though his characters are more like realistically proportioned than the chibi ones, there is still like a cartoony like smoothness to like certain things, or like a little bit of a shorthand where like spaces are still like hyper-dailed and packed, but like the texture is scaled back slightly, so that when things are more hyper-textured, it creates this like unbelievable pop. It is entirely black and white work, with the only color being the color of the uh centai's uniforms. And it's fucking insane how gorgeous it is. Like the the little use of color in this book is some of the most beautiful like color work I've seen all year, very simply done.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:43

Yeah, it's like mostly their their outfits. Yeah, I kind of love that it's super limited.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:50

It makes it pop really, really well. Um similarly, like in Flashback, there's like a a tinting of the the ink so that it's not black, but kind of like a darker brown. And it's the it's these little things that really make I mean it's a beautiful book, regardless, because he's just one of the most talented, like artists working today. Actually. But um, it's it's like recognizably different than any of his other books, too. And like the way that it is it is like pulling from like Shonen manga and uh Tokusatsu kind of works to like I don't know, I wish I was like more eloquent about speaking about that, because I every time I was flipping through this book and just reading all the pages, I was like it does feel really distinct in in what it's doing, but it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:44

Yeah, it absolutely is. No one's really doing what he does.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:49

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:50

No. It's crazy because he's like this kind of masterful manga artist, but then you read Frontier and it doesn't look anything as lifelike as this. Yeah. But it doesn't feel any less serious for how much more, and I think chibi is like the right word for it, but for how much more chibi Frontier is, it's still somehow like equally visually mature.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:09

And then in this way, yeah, it's like it's really hard to explain like why Frontier works unless you've got it like in front of you.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:17

Yeah. That is a frequent problem I have as like somebody who does not illustrate but has read a lot of comics, is like it's you when you try to like talk about a piece of art like this where it's like you just kind of have to see it.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:27

Yeah, because you say the word chibi and people think, oh kitty bullshit.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:30

But it's like not that at all. No, no, like and each of those three books, even the the two that have chibi art styles, quote unquote, have different visual paint textures and like textures to like the environment that create distinct feels, even though they're very similar styles. And similarly, here, there is a smoothening at certain points, especially in the kind of more YA sections and like not as much like the flashback sections. But yeah, it's just it's it's fucking beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful books I've read this year. And yeah, the characters are just exceptionally well crafted. I'm unbelievably excited that this is getting two more. Two more? There's two more, yeah. This is the first in a trilogy. Oh my god. And it's it j like, I'm so fucking psyched where this is going. Like, this book, again, with no details, is like willing to take some swings narratively with its characters, it's willing to like defy the conventions of any of the genres it's working in. It's willing to get like incredibly real in ways that don't feel too brutal to read. Like it's not like it does get into like serious subject matter, you know, but like from from policing to sex work and etc. Like, but in ways that are not super graphic or like super like fetishistic.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:59

Or fetishistic, like Which is not always the case for kind of manga in general. I think manga has like a an unfortunate track record of dealing with that kind of thing. The burying effects.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:14

This came out I think this actually came out last week.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:19

Oh this is on the this week's shelf.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:21

Yeah, or I guess what I I guess what I meant was that it came out beforehand, but we didn't get it. But then that but that's a silly distinction for me to be making when it's new to the store, so why am I making it? Um We love you. Oh, thank you. I like when you make silly distinctions. Thank you. Oh, that was that was really sweet, actually. That was actually really reassuring. Thank you. Um good. Aww. But yeah, no, this this book is just like I I could talk about it forever. I think it's so funny and smart, and like its characters make decisions that make you so fucking mad, but you can see why they do it, and other decisions that are just like, I'm so fucking proud of you, dude. Like, I'm like, I can't believe you're doing this, I can't believe you're going this direction.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:04

That's such a sweet way to describe a book.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:07

Yeah. Beautiful. It's it I was really moved by the end of it. There's a couple sections that I was yeah, it just continually surprised me by what it was willing to do. And again, I cannot stress enough, it does some insane shit. Like, there's some stuff in here that I'm like, I'm not sure I've seen something in this genre mix these elements in this way. Like, I'm I cannot recommend it enough. It's going to almost certainly be on my best of the year list. I'm gonna be making sure we order more for the store. Um yeah, we don't know when the second one's coming out, but like Hatoshi and Warren and Aloise and Nikki and oh god, there's one of them whose names I'm forgetting. Sophia. I've I could read ten more books of these characters. I'd lock the fucking. I should read this. You should.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:59

It's Wow, it's a hefty book, too. It's like it doesn't look it, but it's it's printed on like nice paper.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:05

Yeah, it's it's a very well put together.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:08

It's a very well put-together book. I will be reading this. I cannot take another book home right now, though. You guys uh my stack is uh a little out of control. Tate stack is always thick.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:23

She's a thick stacker. Um is that?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:27

Are we are we done?

SPEAKER_05 1:38:28

I kind of think we're done unless there's any other stare at her expectantly.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:34

Um The song that you've had written for months now.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:40

The escapist is a store, a store where we all work, and we're all gay, and we're all trans, it's the escapist, the place where we make the pod, it's the escapist.