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Pulp Blotter Book Club #22 - My Gun is the Jury · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody! Welcome back to the Pulp Blotter on 22 panels. I'm joined by Sean Harklrode and Mark Pratt, Chicago area actors.
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: Mark wrote the, the four-color trilogy, for which he is, he is sporting the fantastic, fantastic TeePublic t-shirt.
• 0:22
  Mark Pracht: With, with…
• 0:23
  Tad Eggleston: The, posters of all of them, you can, you can, pick it up.
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: At Tee Public.
• 0:32
  Tad Eggleston: Slash lick.
• 0:34
  Tad Eggleston: or I guess it's t.pub slash lick slash 4colorPlays.
• 0:40
  Sean Harklerode: And leave the last K off for savings.
• 0:43
  Tad Eggleston: That's right.
• 0:48
  Tad Eggleston: we… we… we went… we went a different direction this week, because… because I had an advance of a book that, literally came out for the public last week of…
• 1:00
  Tad Eggleston: My gun is the jury and other stories. It's the… it's the… the panic work from…
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: Jack Davis and Wally Wood. So, so, like…
• 1:11
  Tad Eggleston: When Mad Magazine had its in-house competitor, this is what it was.
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: And this is the Jack Davis and Wally Wood parts of it, and… I laughed. I had fun.
• 1:23
  Tad Eggleston: I like Jack Davis, and I love Wally Wood.
• 1:28
  Mark Pracht: I wouldn't even call it an in-house… I wouldn't even call it an in-house competitor, an in-house copy.
• 1:34
  Tad Eggleston: would be. That's true.
• 1:38
  Mark Pracht: I mean, look, I'm gonna be out front. I couldn't finish this.
• 1:42
  Mark Pracht: Okay. And I think, I think…
• 1:46
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, I laughed at some of it.
• 1:49
  Mark Pracht: And some of it, I was just sort of like, okay.
• 1:51
  Mark Pracht: But I also think… this is… this is my thing. I think a… a comedy… doesn't…
• 2:01
  Mark Pracht: It's very hard for me to… it's sort of like…
• 2:04
  Mark Pracht: My wife and I, we always talk about this when we try to binge-watch a sitcom.
• 2:11
  Mark Pracht: Is that pretty soon you just start seeing, oh, okay, here's the formula.
• 2:16
  Mark Pracht: And it's like, formula, formula, formula, formula. And… and I just get bored.
• 2:23
  Mark Pracht: And, I made it all the way through the, Gone with the Wind parody, and then I was just like, I'm just tired.
• 2:30
  Tad Eggleston: That's hilarious, because that's where I made it to, as well, the more for time constraints. I did make.
• 2:40
  Mark Pracht: Well, that too.
• 2:41
  Tad Eggleston: I did make a point of flipping back
• 2:44
  Tad Eggleston: And looking at… there's some ads at the end.
• 2:48
  Tad Eggleston: So I looked at the stuff that was different.
• 2:55
  Sean Harklerode: I, I recommend, V-V-V-v-Vampires, for the art. It's incredible.
• 3:03
  Sean Harklerode: Wollywood art. I mean, all through, but…
• 3:07
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, I've seen this story, actually.
• 3:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and… and that's… that's actually where… where I was gonna go, is,
• 3:18
  Tad Eggleston: it reminded me how much Mad Magazine is a variety show, and that therefore putting this out in this format, where you're just focusing on the two artists, and the two artists tended to do the same sort of things.
• 3:36
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 3:38
  Tad Eggleston: meant that… You didn't get the same level of funny because you didn't get the variety.
• 3:45
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why I started focusing just more on the art. I started making certain that I was just looking at and enjoying and…
• 3:53
  Tad Eggleston: like, and this is how I fell to… I… and I understand people who would go the other way, but… but, like, I like Jack Davis, and I love Wally Wood.
• 4:06
  Mark Pracht: Absolutely.
• 4:06
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because… like…
• 4:11
  Tad Eggleston: I was able to really spend some time with how Wood lays out a page, how Wood deals with it when he's given too much dialogue, how…
• 4:26
  Tad Eggleston: Davis fills his backgrounds.
• 4:29
  Tad Eggleston: A lot of the time, not all the time, would…
• 4:33
  Tad Eggleston: If he does, it's cause he's got a joke to tell.
• 4:38
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
• 4:40
  Sean Harklerode: Sure.
• 4:41
  Tad Eggleston: I don't feel like there's as much in the background of a wood panel that's just there because I need to have a whole background.
• 4:50
  Mark Pracht: Well, and I think, you know, I'd be honest to say, I think that's why Jack Davis is a more successful comedy artist.
• 5:01
  Mark Pracht: Because I'm just flipping through some of these later stories, and, you know, it looks like most of the romance comic
• 5:08
  Mark Pracht: Parodies that they've got here.
• 5:11
  Mark Pracht: Seem like they're… Wood?
• 5:15
  Mark Pracht: And I'm like, oh, that just could be a romance comic. And granted, I'm not reading it, I'm just flipping through it.
• 5:20
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 5:22
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 5:23
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I mean, it seemed to… I don't know if you guys read the preface, you know, the…
• 5:28
  Sean Harklerode: At the beginning.
• 5:29
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't. I was… I was hoping to get back to it, but I didn't.
• 5:32
  Sean Harklerode: it seems like… Wood, may not have been…
• 5:36
  Sean Harklerode: The most interested in this material.
• 5:39
  Sean Harklerode: Which could also explain not filling in backgrounds.
• 5:45
  Mark Pracht: You know, particularly… That makes me love that guy more.
• 5:50
  Sean Harklerode: The fact that, that you both only got to,
• 5:55
  Sean Harklerode: Gone with the Wind, which I can't remember the name of the parody.
• 5:59
  Tad Eggleston: Widow, I think?
• 6:01
  Sean Harklerode: Go, yes. Which, in here, even they say that's the weakest one.
• 6:07
  Sean Harklerode: So, that you both stopped there.
• 6:10
  Sean Harklerode: Maybe.
• 6:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like.
• 6:12
  Sean Harklerode: Jason.
• 6:12
  Mark Pracht: Like, with St.
• 6:13
  Sean Harklerode: But…
• 6:13
  Mark Pracht: It was… it was just sort of, like, yeah, I mean, like, I don't… I don't want to belittle this stuff, I, like, it is…
• 6:22
  Mark Pracht: I think that it is… I think what… I think what Tad said Very, very true. Like…
• 6:29
  Mark Pracht: You know, when I think of… when I think of reading Mad Magazine, you know…
• 6:35
  Mark Pracht: It's like, oh, okay, here's the movie parody, but then here's Spy vs. Spy, here's snappy answers to stupid questions, here's… and I think that…
• 6:45
  Mark Pracht: the… parody stuff…
• 6:53
  Mark Pracht: I mean, even as I was thinking about it, as I was reading this, I'm like, oh, well, okay, this is… this is very much like the…
• 7:02
  Mark Pracht: This… it's similar to MAD, obviously.
• 7:07
  Mark Pracht: But I also was like, man, ugh, this… it… oh, it's just, like I said, it got a little tiresome after a while. I was like, okay, yeah, alright, alright.
• 7:17
  Mark Pracht: And this sort of… Yeah, go ahead.
• 7:20
  Sean Harklerode: Very similar, but however, you know, the early ones, especially all the Jack, just about, Were written by,
• 7:29
  Sean Harklerode: by Al, Feldstein, as opposed to,
• 7:34
  Sean Harklerode: Harvey writing, for MAD. So, for me, it was interesting, you know, seeing that, and I feel that Harvey…
• 7:45
  Sean Harklerode: I hadn't… more of a…
• 7:48
  Sean Harklerode: comical feel, whereas Al's stuff is very funny in the horror books and everything, but…
• 7:54
  Sean Harklerode: It didn't seem quite as natural, some of the… Some of the paragraph.
• 7:59
  Mark Pracht: Nope.
• 7:59
  Sean Harklerode: so specific.
• 8:02
  Sean Harklerode: Which I think, also, we're 70 years on from when this was published, and we don't know the source material for a lot of this as well as would have been, so it's hard to judge.
• 8:17
  Mark Pracht: Well, you know, the other thing that… the other… I mean, it's… and I hate… I hate to be negative about it, but I just really… I did… I did…
• 8:25
  Mark Pracht: sort of, like.
• 8:27
  Mark Pracht: trying to push through this thing, trying to get it done for today, I was sort of like.
• 8:32
  Mark Pracht: It felt a bit tiresome to me.
• 8:35
  Mark Pracht: But,
• 8:37
  Mark Pracht: that's, you know, like, I… here's the one thing, is I think Feldstein, there's a meaner streak to some of this parody.
• 8:46
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 8:48
  Mark Pracht: Like, the… the, the one that I… I sort of was like, oh, this could be interesting, where he's doing the,
• 8:55
  Mark Pracht: the parody of, like, Streetcar and, like.
• 8:59
  Mark Pracht: all these other, you know, Tennessee Williams plays and stuff, all wrapped up into one. And… but it's so… it's so, like, almost angry.
• 9:10
  Mark Pracht: about these plays, and… I mean…
• 9:14
  Mark Pracht: Like, nothing is for everybody, but…
• 9:18
  Mark Pracht: like, I always felt… when I was reading Mad, I always felt like even when they were doing the most…
• 9:24
  Mark Pracht: pointed parodies of, like, a movie or something. There was always some love for it.
• 9:31
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. And some of this feels like…
• 9:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, when I talk… we've talked on the main episode, or the main… we went through both…
• 9:46
  Tad Eggleston: Astro City and… and Black Hammer, and we went through Astro City and Black Hammer because they're really superhero deconstructions, but unlike…
• 9:54
  Tad Eggleston: say, an Alan Moore And Alan Moore, you can tell that he loves superhero decent constructions, but he's like…
• 10:02
  Tad Eggleston: He's ripping superheroes apart.
• 10:05
  Tad Eggleston: like… like… Buseiak and Lemire are lovingly showing us how they work.
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense? And I think that that's kind of the difference between the way…
• 10:28
  Tad Eggleston: Ertzman and Davis seem to be attacking their parodies. It's like… Davis is like, or not Davis,
• 10:42
  Tad Eggleston: Feldstein. Feldstein.
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: is, is, like, it's almost like he's got a chip on his shoulder. I'm stuck.
• 10:50
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 10:51
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 10:51
  Tad Eggleston: I'm struck writing comics, and these… these guys are getting all the credit and whatnot. Well, let me just…
• 10:58
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 10:58
  Tad Eggleston: show you why they're terrible, whereas Kurtzman's more like, oh, this is amazing, but let's be funny with it.
• 11:05
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, it's like, let me…
• 11:12
  Tad Eggleston: let me show my love the way I know how to show my love, which is… is… is…
• 11:17
  Tad Eggleston: being humorous.
• 11:18
  Sean Harklerode: Right. Well, I don't think, at least at that point, Kurtzman really hadn't… Aimed his lens at…
• 11:26
  Sean Harklerode: You know, kind of highbrow stuff.
• 11:29
  Tad Eggleston: Not a lot.
• 11:30
  Sean Harklerode: like this, right? Right. We're tackling, you know, at that point, contemporary literature, Mickey Spillane, and…
• 11:40
  Tad Eggleston: And then… Right.
• 11:41
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know that I've ever seen MAD do parodies of Broadway plays.
• 11:47
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I have either.
• 11:48
  Sean Harklerode: So…
• 11:49
  Tad Eggleston: So, I did want to point out that the one story in here that is credited to Kurtzman is the vampires that you…
• 11:58
  Tad Eggleston: You.
• 12:00
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah.
• 12:03
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, that art… there are so many times in this, and I don't mean to take a tangent, but so many times in this, when I'm not thinking, I'm reading it, and I was like, wow, this is a really good example of 22 panels.
• 12:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 12:14
  Sean Harklerode: And then I was like, oh, because it's Wallywood, or…
• 12:18
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 12:19
  Tad Eggleston: Also, like, I think that I like the Mendelson, I mean, like… I hate to wind up…
• 12:27
  Tad Eggleston: digging on Al Feldstein, because there are Feldstein things that I liked.
• 12:33
  Tad Eggleston: and there are Feldstein things that I like.
• 12:35
  Mark Pracht: What?
• 12:36
  Sean Harklerode: I, I… Nope.
• 12:37
  Tad Eggleston: But I think half the story… like, I liked the Shaggy Dog ones. I liked the… the… the… if this movie was made in… and those are Mendelssohn.
• 12:47
  Tad Eggleston: You know… Where.
• 12:49
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, yeah, Mike.
• 12:50
  Mark Pracht: I actually like those. I found the,
• 12:56
  Mark Pracht: and again, I'm, you know, I feel kind of unprepared, because I only read about half of it.
• 13:01
  Sean Harklerode: Kyle's editing still, so…
• 13:03
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, I think that, you know, like, when Al took over MAD, he was the editor.
• 13:10
  Mark Pracht: Right. He wasn't writing.
• 13:12
  Mark Pracht: If that's my memory of it, right?
• 13:15
  Mark Pracht: So, I mean, and I don't… I think, you know, I think Al Feldstein is…
• 13:23
  Mark Pracht: great. Like, his horror books are amazing, right?
• 13:27
  Mark Pracht: I think that the way he works is amazing. I know Tad thinks he uses too many words, but that's a different thing altogether.
• 13:34
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, when I, when I learned…
• 13:36
  Tad Eggleston: when I learned the how and why of there's so many words, it's like…
• 13:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, I wish there'd just been that extra step where you wrote your stuff down, and they put their art, and then the words went on the page.
• 13:50
  Mark Pracht: Well, you know, like.
• 13:52
  Tad Eggleston: Because some of them wouldn't have made it.
• 13:55
  Mark Pracht: Well, the Stan Lee process, you know? Right. Like, bring me the art, and then I'll put the words in it.
• 14:00
  Mark Pracht: Right. And you learn, oh, I don't need to write so much here, or I don't need to do this, or I don't need that. But, I mean, yeah, I… I don't know, the one… the one I… I literally just stopped reading, was the art one.
• 14:16
  Mark Pracht: Where they had the classical art pieces, With the little…
• 14:22
  Mark Pracht: sides and people talking in the paintings and stuff, and I was just like, I don't even think this is funny.
• 14:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 14:29
  Sean Harklerode: But, counterpoint, it was…
• 14:34
  Mark Pracht: Please.
• 14:35
  Sean Harklerode: No, I, I…
• 14:37
  Sean Harklerode: it was not… maybe it wasn't the funniest thing, but it was very… I mean, I enjoyed it, and to see Jack Davis recreate those works of art, that's… that was one of the highlights of this work for me.
• 14:53
  Mark Pracht: No, no, no, I mean, and…
• 14:54
  Mark Pracht: Like, conceptually, it's a great idea.
• 14:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's what I was about to say. I'll also say that that is something that became a… whether it was in artwork or other things, it became a mad gag for a long time.
• 15:10
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah.
• 15:11
  Tad Eggleston: That often worked really well.
• 15:13
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 15:14
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I…
• 15:15
  Tad Eggleston: So, it could be that we're just seeing the first example of it, and…
• 15:19
  Mark Pracht: Absolutely.
• 15:19
  Sean Harklerode: Betty, right?
• 15:21
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 15:22
  Mark Pracht: I also…
• 15:22
  Sean Harklerode: Bumetti, right? Sure.
• 15:24
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:25
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I also think that that particular piece just went on way too long.
• 15:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 15:31
  Mark Pracht: There was weight…
• 15:32
  Tad Eggleston: It would have been great as just a two-page spread.
• 15:35
  Mark Pracht: Sure, because I kept turning pages, and I'm like, this isn't fucking finished?
• 15:39
  Tad Eggleston: I think in most mad magazines, it would have just been a two-page spread.
• 15:44
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this… this is the sort of thing that looks like…
• 15:49
  Tad Eggleston: the sort of thing that's in mat… it's like a lighter side of. It's either 2 pages or 4 pages, you know. Actually, it probably would have been, like, panic peeks into some old underpaints.
• 16:00
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 16:00
  Tad Eggleston: It would have been the one page on the right, and then you would have had a two-page spread, and then maybe a fourth page on the left, and that's it.
• 16:09
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. Or, it could have been split up through the book.
• 16:12
  Sean Harklerode: That too. Yeah.
• 16:14
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's true. Well, I mean, I also…
• 16:16
  Tad Eggleston: I've done, like, one or two a page, rather than five a page.
• 16:20
  Mark Pracht: I also think… that… that also speaks to, I think that this collection
• 16:25
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I understand why they do things this way, but it also may have benefited from splitting things up, and not having, you know, 7 movie parodies right in a row.
• 16:37
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 16:39
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 16:41
  Tad Eggleston: Go ahead.
• 16:42
  Mark Pracht: No, no, I just, I think, like, as a reader, and as trying to get through it, I mean, and in a way, these are sort of designed to be almost like reference books, right?
• 16:52
  Mark Pracht: Like, you're like, oh, I want to read that story. So you pull it out and you read it, and then you put it away, right? I don't necessarily think that these books, in general, are designed to be like, I'll sit down for, like, 8 hours and read the whole thing.
• 17:05
  Tad Eggleston: That's exactly where, you know, as I've been doing more stuff with Fanagraphics, one of the things that's been percolating in the back of my head is I'd love to talk to…
• 17:16
  Tad Eggleston: Somebody heavily involved in how these collections are put together.
• 17:20
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:21
  Tad Eggleston: Talk about how they envision them, because I agree with you. Most of them…
• 17:26
  Tad Eggleston: Most of them feel more like…
• 17:29
  Tad Eggleston: Here is your academic reference book.
• 17:32
  Mark Pracht: 100%.
• 17:33
  Tad Eggleston: this. Yep.
• 17:34
  Mark Pracht: I mean, we just…
• 17:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's also a great thing to have, but it makes it a different way, a different lens to look at it through. Yeah. Because from that lens, where it's like, oh, here's my one-stop shop, A, I've got a couple of good essays, I didn't read them this time, but I've read enough of the essays that go in this book to know that they put really thoughtful.
• 17:55
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah.
• 17:55
  Tad Eggleston: together.
• 17:56
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 17:57
  Mark Pracht: It… but I… it's… it's… I had somewhat the same feeling when we did, Corpse on the Imjin.
• 18:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 18:05
  Mark Pracht: that I felt like… It became a bit of drudgery to, pardon me.
• 18:16
  Mark Pracht: My laundry's done.
• 18:19
  Mark Pracht: It became a bit of drudgery, because there was no,
• 18:25
  Mark Pracht: The stories were all so similar, And it was, like, If it…
• 18:34
  Mark Pracht: I've been using… I've been using this analogy, a lot in my life recently. It's sort of like trying to drive a hammer into a… or drive a nail into a piece of wood with your forehead.
• 18:44
  Mark Pracht: Like, it's like, I get it, I get it, I get it. And you just want something to break it up. And that's… look, that's not… that's not… that's not me saying that these stories suck.
• 18:54
  Mark Pracht: That's not me saying that these books suck, it's just that I don't think they're designed to be read the way we're reading them.
• 19:01
  Tad Eggleston: Not…
• 19:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think this vol… yeah, no, I don't even think this volume is designed to be read the way we're reading it, where we're reading it straight through, or…
• 19:13
  Mark Pracht: Right. And the original…
• 19:15
  Tad Eggleston: One of the reasons that I started falling to paying attention to the art, because I don't…
• 19:19
  Tad Eggleston: like, you give me a hard time for it, particularly because we're both writers, and we both love words.
• 19:25
  Tad Eggleston: But… but I don't think these books are as designed for you to go through the words. It's why it's not the… the panic stories of Alf Eldstein, it's the panic stories of…
• 19:36
  Tad Eggleston: Jack Davis and Wallace Wood. They've stripped away the color, they've gone to strictly the inked pages, they, you know.
• 19:45
  Mark Pracht: Well, and the thing is, is like, even the original books weren't like this.
• 19:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 19:51
  Mark Pracht: You know, the, like, it wouldn't have been a… like, you wouldn't have had a parody of…
• 19:58
  Mark Pracht: Gone with the Wind, and then immediately after it, a parody of, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You know, it wouldn't have been that, it would have been something else.
• 20:07
  Mark Pracht: And I think that it just makes it difficult to read, and I… for me, personally, and… and that… I still… I think it's awesome that these books exist. I think that this series is incredibly good, but I… it just… especially with the comedy thing, because I… I don't know, it…
• 20:25
  Mark Pracht: It's just… it felt very non… varying.
• 20:31
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, I'll shut up now, because…
• 20:33
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, I think, again, you know, pouring through these, you know, trying to get through them in a shorter period of time probably harms it. I think also, again.
• 20:46
  Sean Harklerode: You know, nothing kills a joke like having to explain it.
• 20:50
  Sean Harklerode: Right. Right. And, like, say, we don't… I'm not as familiar with a lot of this stuff.
• 20:56
  Sean Harklerode: As people may have been at that point, right?
• 21:01
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, there's one movie… there was one parody in here where I was like, I have no idea what movie this is.
• 21:10
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, you know, like, them, they're those, I'm like, okay, it's them. But it's the one before that, where… and I'm… somebody's gonna… somebody's gonna shoot out what this movie is, and I'm gonna be like, oh, I should have known that. But Executive Seat?
• 21:25
  Mark Pracht: I was like, I don't even know what this movie is.
• 21:28
  Sean Harklerode: I just assumed it was Executive Suite.
• 21:32
  Mark Pracht: Jesus Christ.
• 21:36
  Mark Pracht: You know what, I'm just gonna… I'm gonna bow out now, because…
• 21:41
  Mark Pracht: I have nothing else to add. Thanks.
• 21:47
  Sean Harklerode: Yes, the 1954 film, Executive Suite.
• 21:51
  Mark Pracht: Nice.
• 21:54
  Sean Harklerode: Starring William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Frederick March, and June Allison.
• 22:00
  Mark Pracht: Well, I've… I know of that movie, but I've never seen it, so…
• 22:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I haven't seen it either.
• 22:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 22:09
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, Hindu with, I mean, there are, you know, there are some… Culturally, sensitive issues.
• 22:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Mark Pracht: Sure, but you know what?
• 22:23
  Sean Harklerode: Jane shows up.
• 22:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, change shows up.
• 22:27
  Mark Pracht: But at least two.
• 22:27
  Tad Eggleston: of them.
• 22:28
  Mark Pracht: Al Feldstein definitely had something… something about Shane.
• 22:33
  Sean Harklerode: Yes.
• 22:35
  Mark Pracht: Shame? Shame? I'm like, okay.
• 22:41
  Mark Pracht: My next playwriting project, for those who don't know.
• 22:45
  Sean Harklerode: And if…
• 22:48
  Mark Pracht: Self-promotion.
• 22:50
  Mark Pracht: Go ahead, sir.
• 22:51
  Tad Eggleston: So, wait, wait a minute. See, I knew you were doing Shane, but I didn't realize, so are you re-adapting the…
• 22:59
  Tad Eggleston: the… original source material, like…
• 23:03
  Mark Pracht: Novel, yeah.
• 23:04
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay, very cool. Yeah.
• 23:07
  Tad Eggleston: See, I guess I didn't realize… anytime that there's already a movie, I assume that there's already a play, which is a dumb assumption, because, like, movie scripts and play scripts work differently, but…
• 23:23
  Mark Pracht: There is, there is a, there's at least one other stage adaptation of it.
• 23:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 23:28
  Mark Pracht: I know very little about it, I read a couple of reviews.
• 23:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 23:32
  Mark Pracht: But clearly, I didn't want to look at it, so…
• 23:34
  Tad Eggleston: No, obviously. So, in my head, you were only directing an existing thing rather than writing, and I…
• 23:45
  Mark Pracht: It missed…
• 23:46
  Tad Eggleston: That, that, that part.
• 23:48
  Mark Pracht: Oh, no.
• 23:50
  Tad Eggleston: And now I'm more excited.
• 23:52
  Mark Pracht: Come back, shame! Come back!
• 23:56
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 23:57
  Tad Eggleston: A lion.
• 23:57
  Mark Pracht: And that is not in the book.
• 24:00
  Tad Eggleston: I believe it.
• 24:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just, just like I, I, particularly because there, there is… it went along with the, the more recent film adaptation, which is more accurate to the book.
• 24:15
  Tad Eggleston: but still not quite right for, True Grit. There was, like, a first chapter in comic book form. I would love to see a straight comic adaptation of True Grit, because…
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: like… How'd I put it?
• 24:30
  Tad Eggleston: the… what I… what I think of with True Grit is… is… is kind of what happened with… with Oz. Like…
• 24:39
  Tad Eggleston: the Oz books were Harry Potter before Harry Potter, not just in terms of
• 24:45
  Tad Eggleston: you know, oh, you've got these magical books. They were worldwide bestsellers. Sure. They were massive, you know…
• 24:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right. She couldn't stop writing them, because…
• 24:57
  Tad Eggleston: There was too much demand. He could stop writing them, because he didn't need the money anymore.
• 25:02
  Tad Eggleston: But he couldn't stop writing them because there was too much demand.
• 25:08
  Tad Eggleston: But then the movie came out, and particularly with its… it was all a dream thing.
• 25:14
  Tad Eggleston: like, the movie actually kind of flopped initially. It didn't become a big thing until color television, because people went, this is the perfect
• 25:25
  Tad Eggleston: way to, like, really show that, hey, you've got a color TV, because…
• 25:33
  Tad Eggleston: But… but somehow, not only it… Did it not…
• 25:38
  Tad Eggleston: hit with the audience, because they were expecting somebody… something else. For the people who hadn't experienced the Oz…
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: books, it wound up diminishing them. And that's kind of what happened with True Grit. True Grit was apparently an instant classic. True Grit was apparently for… for a period of time, taught in schools right alongside
• 26:01
  Tad Eggleston: Catcher in the Rye, and… and…
• 26:05
  Tad Eggleston: The Great Gatsby, that sort of thing.
• 26:08
  Mark Pracht: It's a magnificent novel. It is. And it is.
• 26:11
  Tad Eggleston: It is. It's a brilliant, brilliant novel. And then the movie came out…
• 26:15
  Tad Eggleston: And it got its fanfare and whatever, but… It wasn't…
• 26:23
  Tad Eggleston: it didn't hit in the ways the book hit. It was entertainment versus meaningful. I mean.
• 26:30
  Tad Eggleston: The novel's entertaining, too, but, like, it didn't have that… Oh, this is…
• 26:39
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, that's, like, wait a minute, wait.
• 26:42
  Mark Pracht: here we go, here we go on a sideline conversation. That's… that's the John Wayne factor, you know?
• 26:47
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 26:48
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it's… that's, you know, and also that the girl, you know, who's it, it was Natalie Wood in the original movie, I think, you know, and she was, like, in her mid-20s, and that changes that story immensely. I mean, and
• 27:05
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I think… I mean, like, Rooster Cogburn is an amazing character, but so is,
• 27:15
  Mark Pracht: The girl's name just escaped me. Yeah.
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: It's escaping me.
• 27:18
  Mark Pracht: Maddie, I think.
• 27:19
  Tad Eggleston: Batty. Yeah.
• 27:20
  Mark Pracht: Maddie, it's just, like, I mean, but that character is amazing, you know? And the thing is, is, like, both of them got…
• 27:27
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 27:29
  Mark Pracht: What, you know, like, when you're reading that book, when you're reading that book, and he says, fill your hand, you son of a bitch, you know, like, they both got that, so…
• 27:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 27:41
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, you know, and that's… that was the role, you know, it was in the sequel, but that was the role that got Wayne his Oscar, you know, so…
• 27:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 27:51
  Mark Pracht: The… the created Whole Cloth sequel.
• 27:55
  Mark Pracht: But anyway.
• 27:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 27:57
  Mark Pracht: But I digress.
• 27:59
  Tad Eggleston: No, no! Again, this is a book club, it's about digressions, particularly… particularly when we're trying to figure out, like, I mean, because I feel like we're all percolating on this book as we talk.
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: You know, we're, like, we're having to go from our initial reactions to thinking about
• 28:19
  Tad Eggleston: What it's supposed to be.
• 28:21
  Mark Pracht: I will tell you the one thing I learned reading this book.
• 28:24
  Mark Pracht: that I had no idea about.
• 28:27
  Mark Pracht: that Hondo was in 3D.
• 28:30
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 28:32
  Mark Pracht: I… like, that that was… that was John Wayne's foray into the… the… the 3D fad of the 1950s. I had no idea. Not… not a single clue about that.
• 28:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's almost as if the 3D fad of the 50s was just that, a fad that…
• 28:58
  Mark Pracht: Well, it didn't.
• 28:59
  Sean Harklerode: man of the 2010s.
• 29:00
  Tad Eggleston: Work, right?
• 29:03
  Mark Pracht: Why, at least the 3D fat of the 2010s It worked, mostly.
• 29:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 29:10
  Mark Pracht: I remember watching, Creature from the Black Lagoon on TV with
• 29:19
  Mark Pracht: the 3D glasses that I got from the grocery store, and I was like,
• 29:27
  Mark Pracht: For anybody that… I guess… this is an audio podcast. Sorry, everybody, I was miming, taking the glasses on and off, going, what the hell is happening?
• 29:36
  Mark Pracht: But… You know.
• 29:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, look, look…
• 29:43
  Sean Harklerode: For a 3D picture, that had great music.
• 29:46
  Mark Pracht: It's true.
• 29:47
  Mark Pracht: It is true.
• 29:48
  Sean Harklerode: Great soundtrack.
• 29:51
  Sean Harklerode: Preacher from the Blackbeard.
• 29:52
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, this is… Colleen and I want…
• 29:56
  Tad Eggleston: matters so much. You guys… I didn't inform you fast enough, so you guys weren't out at,
• 30:03
  Tad Eggleston: at, at,
• 30:07
  Tad Eggleston: Shank on Wednesday night, and oh man, did I love that movie. But one of the things that totally made it work
• 30:16
  Tad Eggleston: On the low budget was the soundtrack and the sound design.
• 30:23
  Mark Pracht: That's the shank, that's Jim Terry's…
• 30:25
  Tad Eggleston: The Jim Terry movie, yeah.
• 30:28
  Mark Pracht: Jim Terry, who… I shouldn't probably say anything, there's no contract.
• 30:32
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. But yeah, no, I've been describing it as, imagine Jim Jarmouche and Kevin Smith got together and made an action movie with no money.
• 30:43
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, cool.
• 30:46
  Tad Eggleston: That's the… you know, it's got kind of the Kevin Smith witticism and…
• 30:50
  Mark Pracht: So there's a lot of smoking and fucking? Fuck F-words?
• 30:55
  Tad Eggleston: I was… I was talking more, like, with Jarmous, what I like is, like.
• 31:02
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes you watch a Jarmouche film, and you feel like you watched a film in negative.
• 31:06
  Tad Eggleston: Because he showed the stuff That's normally cut and didn't show the stuff that's normally in… the movie?
• 31:15
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, it has special attention to some of that stuff in between.
• 31:22
  Tad Eggleston: And it's got kind of Kevin Smith's…
• 31:25
  Tad Eggleston: self-deprecating, you know, clerk's level Kevin Smith, self-deprecating humor.
• 31:31
  Tad Eggleston: But then it's also a very…
• 31:36
  Tad Eggleston: like, 70s and 80s B-movie inspired action flick that, like, makes up for… lack of… Budget and or…
• 31:48
  Tad Eggleston: Choreography with… with good sound effects.
• 31:55
  Tad Eggleston: I… I… it… it was… it was a joy. I'm still…
• 31:59
  Sean Harklerode: I'm still…
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: Mark's laughing at me.
• 32:03
  Tad Eggleston: It's not.
• 32:05
  Mark Pracht: I'm glad.
• 32:05
  Tad Eggleston: smiling with me.
• 32:06
  Mark Pracht: Look, there's all sorts of stuff that I have wanted to go see or do that, my life situation right now.
• 32:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 32:14
  Mark Pracht: very difficult. So, that was one of those things. I would have loved to have gone and seen it. I talked to Jim about it a little bit, and said that I really wished I could have come, but I.
• 32:24
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just… I'm hoping that he finds some way to do some… Some kind of distribution.
• 32:31
  Tad Eggleston: whether, you know, digital purchase, DVD,
• 32:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, honestly, it feels like it should be a VHS cassette, but then we'd all have to find our VCRs.
• 32:45
  Mark Pracht: Well, that's the hot thing now, you know?
• 32:48
  Mark Pracht: the kids, the kids are all into the VHS. Anyway…
• 32:51
  Tad Eggleston: Are they?
• 32:52
  Mark Pracht: Apparently so.
• 32:53
  Tad Eggleston: I knew that they were into cassette tapes, I didn't know they got into VHS now.
• 32:59
  Mark Pracht: Well, yes, I ran all over town trying to find the new Johnny Blue Skies record on CD so I could
• 33:06
  Mark Pracht: Rip it and actually have it on my player.
• 33:12
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 33:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 33:16
  Sean Harklerode: And did you find it?
• 33:17
  Mark Pracht: I did.
• 33:18
  Sean Harklerode: Okay.
• 33:19
  Mark Pracht: But what's… here's what's funny. So, I… for anybody, Johnny Blue Skies, which is the new,
• 33:27
  Mark Pracht: band project that Sturgill Simpson alternate… alternative country…
• 33:35
  Mark Pracht: guy that I love to death. Sean and I went next to zombies.
• 33:38
  Tad Eggleston: Not a comic.
• 33:40
  Mark Pracht: I do.
• 33:41
  Tad Eggleston: Don, one of his, yeah.
• 33:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I actually have a copy of it, right?
• 33:45
  Tad Eggleston: too.
• 33:46
  Mark Pracht: Over my left shoulder here. But, yeah, that's my favorite album of his anyway. But,
• 33:53
  Mark Pracht: He put out an album,
• 33:56
  Mark Pracht: About 2 weeks ago now, I think. And, no digital release.
• 34:01
  Mark Pracht: for at least 4 to 6 weeks. So it's only on vinyl, CD, and cassette.
• 34:07
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 34:09
  Mark Pracht: all of the… all of the normal record stores that I haunt in Chicago, none of them got their copies.
• 34:17
  Mark Pracht: on release day.
• 34:18
  Mark Pracht: So I emailed a bunch of places, and Lori's Planet of Sound actually came back and said, we have some CDs now, do you want us to hold one for you? And I'm like, I'll be there in 10 minutes.
• 34:30
  Sean Harklerode: Laurie's is the best.
• 34:34
  Mark Pracht: They don't, you know, but they don't have a website, I think that's weird.
• 34:38
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I think that's…
• 34:39
  Tad Eggleston: Makes it.
• 34:39
  Sean Harklerode: page, right?
• 34:41
  Mark Pracht: They got a Facebook page, but I mean, like, I… you know, like, Rattleback, which is up here in Andersonville, that I normally, I go to a lot, you know, they have an online thing where you can actually type in, and they'll tell you if it's in stock, and… and…
• 34:55
  Mark Pracht: You know, everything.
• 34:57
  Tad Eggleston: I think that, that, like, when it comes to that sort of thing, sometimes… It's a… if…
• 35:08
  Tad Eggleston: if we can survive without it, like, it's an aesthetic thing… an aesthetic choice as much as anything else. They'd rather get the email, they'd rather have the more direct.
• 35:18
  Mark Pracht: Oh, sure.
• 35:19
  Tad Eggleston: They'd rather not wind up getting too busy.
• 35:23
  Tad Eggleston: Because they're making it…
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's like, it's like the high fidelity, if you insult the customers, we'll have no customers. Oh, well, he was asking for a record that we don't have.
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: You know, when you're talking about records or comics or whatnot, they're so…
• 35:48
  Mark Pracht: I just froze.
• 35:50
  Tad Eggleston: Motivations, and money's not always… Well, yeah.
• 35:55
  Mark Pracht: I always remember there was that guy, over on Western, just south of… Lawrence.
• 36:04
  Mark Pracht: Who was, like, in the… the…
• 36:06
  Sean Harklerode: Variety Comics!
• 36:08
  Mark Pracht: the garden level…
• 36:10
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah!
• 36:10
  Mark Pracht: That dude was… I…
• 36:13
  Mark Pracht: grumpy bastard, and every time he walked in there, he was like, why do I want to talk to you? You know, and I'm just like.
• 36:20
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, I'm in here looking at comics, what do you want me to say?
• 36:23
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, at least he said that to you, rather than just ignoring you.
• 36:27
  Sean Harklerode: It's always nice to me!
• 36:30
  Mark Pracht: Sean, everybody's nice to you. No one is nice to me. No one.
• 36:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you're shifty-looking.
• 36:36
  Mark Pracht: I know him.
• 36:37
  Tad Eggleston: You're gonna shove a bunch of comics under your shirt and walk out.
• 36:41
  Mark Pracht: Well, yes.
• 36:44
  Mark Pracht: Everybody should come and say…
• 36:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's so weird when you, like, walk in
• 36:51
  Tad Eggleston: carrying your trench coat and put it on as you walk through the door? Like, you really should put it on before you get to the shop, Mark.
• 37:01
  Mark Pracht: I have, you're right. You're so right. I mean, and if anybody wants to know how shifty I look, you know, it's a week from today, we will be at…
• 37:11
  Mark Pracht: C2E2 during our…
• 37:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 37:13
  Mark Pracht: Cool people talking about comics by, panel. Hey.
• 37:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 37:18
  Mark Pracht: Look.
• 37:19
  Tad Eggleston: Where I'm so happy to have a couple of actors, because it means that we'll have a lot of fun while we're reading the scripts together.
• 37:26
  Tad Eggleston: But.
• 37:29
  Mark Pracht: I'll take up a collection from the audience to have my talents be on display.
• 37:37
  Mark Pracht: John and I need 20 bucks each to do this, so… We're professional actors. Thank you.
• 37:44
  Sean Harklerode: I get paid for… I got you into the…
• 37:45
  Tad Eggleston: con, man.
• 37:52
  Sean Harklerode: I get paid to do the wild thing.
• 37:56
  Mark Pracht: Bam, bam, ba-baum.
• 37:58
  Sean Harklerode: Anyway.
• 38:00
  Mark Pracht: Sean wants to get back to talking about panic.
• 38:03
  Sean Harklerode: You know, back to panic.
• 38:05
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was actually about to go back to panic, because I think the other thing that this…
• 38:10
  Tad Eggleston: like, Panic and Mad were running next to each other, so I think it's fair to talk a little bit of Mad as we go here. And for that matter, I'm gonna give a quick plug that… that… that…
• 38:23
  Tad Eggleston: the next big, huge set that I desperately want that…
• 38:29
  Tad Eggleston: Fanagraphics is doing is they, they have a, a…
• 38:34
  Tad Eggleston: Harvey Kurtzman's mad years, so, like, all of the issues from the time that he was done, done in Facile and hardcover ball…
• 38:44
  Tad Eggleston: They also have the complete Zap comics coming out. That looks pretty cool as well.
• 38:49
  Tad Eggleston: But, like… mad, and… and…
• 38:55
  Tad Eggleston: And it's so funny to me that it was even before they had the rest of their line hit with
• 39:02
  Tad Eggleston: with the Wertham hearings, they were doing this new thing. They… they were…
• 39:07
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't know my TV history well enough. I mean, were there already…
• 39:14
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, when I think of the TV variety show, I think of the 70s, I think of the Smothers Brothers, or Hee Haw, or whatever.
• 39:22
  Tad Eggleston: Like… the Variety Comedy Magazine
• 39:30
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like it was created at EC, and Mark's the historian, or Mark and Sean are both more historians when it comes to comics than I am. Like, am I dreaming this? I mean, are they just the ones that popularized it, or were they doing something new? Is part of the reason that we're looking at this, and…
• 39:51
  Tad Eggleston: And, like… Not immediately gravitating to all of it, that, like, it's actually experimental.
• 40:05
  Sean Harklerode: So I… I mean, there was Variety TV in the 50s.
• 40:11
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 40:11
  Sean Harklerode: show of shows, Capricate Stars, the… Colgate.
• 40:16
  Mark Pracht: I mean, that's where the…
• 40:17
  Sean Harklerode: Dean Martin.
• 40:18
  Mark Pracht: Monument started, you know, was on a variety show.
• 40:21
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 40:24
  Tad Eggleston: So, so in that sense, the entire magazine is a, a, a parody and or…
• 40:33
  Tad Eggleston: Aping of the variety show format.
• 40:37
  Tad Eggleston: of the 50s.
• 40:40
  Mark Pracht: I don't… I don't… I wouldn't necessarily say that. I mean, I think that it's… it's, you know, variety shows in the 50s on TV were…
• 40:50
  Mark Pracht: you know, very personality-driven, you know? Okay. It's like…
• 40:54
  Mark Pracht: can we get Uncle Milty into a dress, you know?
• 41:01
  Sean Harklerode: I don't have to stop here twice.
• 41:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, another thing.
• 41:04
  Mark Pracht: Nor do you have to ask him about what he's packing under that dress. He'll tell ya.
• 41:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 41:09
  Mark Pracht: But, look, I don't know. I mean, like, I think…
• 41:14
  Sean Harklerode: My money's on Forrest Tucker.
• 41:20
  Sean Harklerode: Wow.
• 41:21
  Mark Pracht: Okay.
• 41:22
  Sean Harklerode: Good!
• 41:24
  Mark Pracht: Good night, everybody!
• 41:27
  Mark Pracht: But no, I mean, like, I think that, you know, you have to say that Mad was… Mad was a…
• 41:35
  Mark Pracht: Kinda… I mean, it was a new idea.
• 41:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 41:38
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think that it was also tied into, because, like.
• 41:41
  Sean Harklerode: I think… Are you… are you talking about Mad Comic, or are we moving into Mad Magazine?
• 41:48
  Mark Pracht: Meg.
• 41:48
  Tad Eggleston: Both?
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Mad Magazine would be, like, after this, so I'm talking more mad comic.
• 41:57
  Sean Harklerode: Okay.
• 41:57
  Tad Eggleston: But there's… there's a lot of through-line between the two.
• 42:03
  Mark Pracht: Well, sure. I mean, look.
• 42:06
  Mark Pracht: look, I… this is not my…
• 42:11
  Mark Pracht: deep, deep dive thing. I mean, I know… I know why it became a magazine instead of a… they transitioned it from a comic to a magazine for very specific reasons, having to do with the code.
• 42:22
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, I think that there was something happening in the culture in the 50s that was…
• 42:32
  Mark Pracht: Tied to a certain sort of… Cultural…
• 42:42
  Mark Pracht: Did I just say culture twice? I'm very tired.
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: I would play.
• 42:46
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like, it has to do… it has to do with Playboy coming out, it has to do with,
• 42:52
  Mark Pracht: Just this idea of… of… A more satirical voice in the world.
• 43:00
  Mark Pracht: That was rising in the 50s.
• 43:04
  Mark Pracht: Probably out of the… the sort of…
• 43:08
  Mark Pracht: milquetoast version of society that, you know, like, TV was giving us and things like that.
• 43:14
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I… I… I would hazard to say that Mad comics, even.
• 43:21
  Mark Pracht: gave us a little more biting satire than what you would see on anything on television. Variety show.
• 43:28
  Sean Harklerode: Yes.
• 43:30
  Mark Pracht: But you could say the same thing about Playboy, you could say the same thing about…
• 43:35
  Mark Pracht: That actually, this conversation does, trigger something. I was, the vampires?
• 43:44
  Mark Pracht: has to be, A kind of a…
• 43:50
  Mark Pracht: early run at a little Annie Fanny strip.
• 43:54
  Sean Harklerode: Hell yeah.
• 43:57
  Mark Pracht: So… Yeah?
• 43:58
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 43:59
  Sean Harklerode: Sorry.
• 44:00
  Mark Pracht: I just…
• 44:02
  Sean Harklerode: I think, kind of leading from where you're talking, I think it's important to note, the first story in this, My Gun is the Jury.
• 44:11
  Sean Harklerode: so… The first issue of Panic, was banned in Boston.
• 44:20
  Sean Harklerode: Because of the, Night Before Christmas parody.
• 44:25
  Sean Harklerode: But it was, my gun is the jury.
• 44:28
  Sean Harklerode: that prompted the cops to raid the EC office.
• 44:33
  Sean Harklerode: Because of the violence, calling cops dumb, there's, cross-dressing.
• 44:39
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 44:40
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, that's… that's what led to Shirley Norris, being arrested.
• 44:48
  Mark Pracht: Yes, I changed it for the play. Thanks for pointing that out.
• 44:52
  Sean Harklerode: No, I… no.
• 44:53
  Tad Eggleston: He didn't say anything about the place, Mark.
• 44:58
  Sean Harklerode: You know, that's the first story in here, and…
• 45:03
  Tad Eggleston: Color Trilogy, available in print at your finer bookstores.
• 45:08
  Tad Eggleston: Go to mark-prot.com if you're looking to license them for your local theater.
• 45:17
  Sean Harklerode: Look for me in the, in the original cast, you know, credits.
• 45:21
  Mark Pracht: Of all three of them, yes. But no, no.
• 45:23
  Tad Eggleston: Including as Bill Gaines. So, I mean, you should channel some Bill Gaines for us here and talk about panic.
• 45:32
  Sean Harklerode: Well, Al… I trust you.
• 45:36
  Sean Harklerode: No matter.
• 45:40
  Sean Harklerode: Get my eyeballs on this thing.
• 45:46
  Mark Pracht: Do you use live models?
• 45:48
  Sean Harklerode: You lose live models?
• 45:50
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I think that… I think that…
• 45:55
  Mark Pracht: I think… I think mad… I, like, look, panic…
• 46:01
  Mark Pracht: I think panic is a pretty crass…
• 46:06
  Mark Pracht: extension of a brand that was working for EC. Right. Bill Gaines definitely did not turn his nose up at money.
• 46:15
  Mark Pracht: Right. So, like, MAD was working.
• 46:19
  Mark Pracht: So he wanted to do something else, because they thought maybe they could sell more comics. So they, they created panic. I do think… I mean, like.
• 46:28
  Mark Pracht: Reading these stories, there's very few of them that I thought were as good as what I would read in MAD.
• 46:34
  Mark Pracht: But that's my… that's my personal opinion.
• 46:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and also… That doesn't make the…
• 46:39
  Mark Pracht: bad, it just.
• 46:41
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 46:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's head.
• 46:43
  Tad Eggleston: It's another place where I wonder, like.
• 46:46
  Tad Eggleston: If we took those same mad stories and separated them by artist, rather than reading them as an issue, how would that change how we were feeling about them as we read them?
• 46:56
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 46:57
  Mark Pracht: It would probably… it would probably have a similar… similar…
• 47:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 47:02
  Mark Pracht: But I also think…
• 47:05
  Mark Pracht: I also think there's probably more of a market for, like, here's a whole mad issue.
• 47:11
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Right? I don't… I don't know that…
• 47:15
  Mark Pracht: I don't know if you tried to sell, like, here are facsimiles of panic.
• 47:20
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I don't.
• 47:21
  Mark Pracht: 1 to 12.
• 47:22
  Tad Eggleston: people would be…
• 47:23
  Mark Pracht: Like, oh yeah, I gotta get that.
• 47:25
  Mark Pracht: Like, the general public.
• 47:27
  Tad Eggleston: I, I was… I was only commenta… I was only commenting again on… Sure.
• 47:33
  Tad Eggleston: different presentation, like, like, like, how…
• 47:36
  Mark Pracht: Yo, yo.
• 47:36
  Tad Eggleston: How much the things that we don't think about can affect how we receive something.
• 47:42
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 47:43
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 47:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, you're…
• 47:45
  Sean Harklerode: presentation.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: You work theater. I mean, I was… I was at a thing on…
• 47:51
  Tad Eggleston: Like, as you guys both know,
• 47:57
  Tad Eggleston: because I've sent you, sent you the applications if you ever wanted to, to, to do anything with it. The high school I work with does, like,
• 48:06
  Tad Eggleston: an arts program, where they'll have people come in, or sometimes it's internal, and they'll put together
• 48:12
  Tad Eggleston: Presentations or workshops or whatever, and… on…
• 48:17
  Tad Eggleston: Friday, I was at a thing where, where…
• 48:21
  Tad Eggleston: A math teacher and our, our, like…
• 48:28
  Tad Eggleston: backstage manager slash teacher of backstage things got together to combine
• 48:35
  Tad Eggleston: Geometry lessons with… with stage lighting.
• 48:39
  Tad Eggleston: to talk about, like, the different things that you do to, you know, and I was fascinated at the ways that he would talk about, like.
• 48:51
  Tad Eggleston: you'd often…
• 48:53
  Tad Eggleston: Use two lights for… for… for this, because you want one in one color and one in another color, so that it takes them across the…
• 49:01
  Tad Eggleston: it gives a different depth to the person. It gives a… you know, so, I mean, all of this stuff that I kinda knew.
• 49:11
  Tad Eggleston: because I've spent a lot of time around theater people, having it broken down and going, oh, there is so much that goes into…
• 49:21
  Tad Eggleston: The difference between Oh, this is a great…
• 49:26
  Tad Eggleston: Great words, and the actors are pretty good, to, this is a great production.
• 49:33
  Tad Eggleston: Because…
• 49:34
  Tad Eggleston: the music is right, and the lighting is right, and, you know… But again, your average theatergoer isn't thinking about, oh, where did they put the lights?
• 49:47
  Tad Eggleston: How did they.
• 49:47
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: to do this, but it matters a ton. For that matter, when I was talking to Stephan Frank, I brought up
• 49:58
  Tad Eggleston: another set of artists that I love are Ted Brandt and Rose Stein. And the last time they were on, we were talking about…
• 50:10
  Tad Eggleston: a particular house that they designed and done stuff in and crowded, and… and they started going down the rabbit hole on, oh yeah, we figured out all of this stuff, and I'm like, oh, so, like, did you, like.
• 50:22
  Tad Eggleston: And we're like, I don't know how to ask this question, so I'm just gonna… gonna… I'm gonna give an example of how a friend of mine does it. Like, because what Stefan does is one of the first things he'll do is he'll take every set that he's gonna use in the comic.
• 50:36
  Tad Eggleston: And he'll… design them 3D digitally.
• 50:40
  Tad Eggleston: So he's got that… He can find whatever angle he wants, and the set is…
• 50:47
  Tad Eggleston: And I explained this, and they're like, that, that, we do exactly that!
• 50:52
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, oh!
• 50:54
  Tad Eggleston: And I brought that up with Stephanie, he's like, yeah, because one of the other things they brought up is, like, we spent all of this time figuring out
• 51:00
  Tad Eggleston: oh, it's a Victorian house, so how… how high were the ceilings in Victorian houses? How high, you know, how much room was there between floors? And they… they had done all of that, and, like, 90% of all comic people, like.
• 51:15
  Tad Eggleston: wouldn't have known that they didn't, and what both they and Stefan said was, like, yeah, but you can feel it.
• 51:24
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so much. So, I think with the, the…
• 51:30
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I'd been looking for this, you know, with… when we were reading Corpse on the Imjin, or when I'm reading other EC library books, like, I'd been looking for, kind of, the… what is it that makes me not…
• 51:45
  Tad Eggleston: not feel like these are greater than the sum of their parts, and I think that's it, is these are designed to look at the parts.
• 51:55
  Mark Pracht: Sure, yeah, yeah.
• 51:57
  Tad Eggleston: They're not designed to… have the whole experience be an experience of its own. They're designed to help you…
• 52:09
  Tad Eggleston: dig into the parts.
• 52:14
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I think it's gonna change how I read an EC Library book going forward.
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right. To, to, like, kinda… Appreciate them.
• 52:26
  Tad Eggleston: Differently, or more, or whatever, because that's the other thing, like, in comics, like, all…
• 52:31
  Tad Eggleston: All mediums, the reader is the final collaborator.
• 52:36
  Tad Eggleston: Where we're at.
• 52:39
  Tad Eggleston: Where we're at, what angle we're looking at things from, that sort of thing, completely…
• 52:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, how often have you… Either… watched a movie, that…
• 52:53
  Tad Eggleston: You loved 20 years ago and gone.
• 52:56
  Tad Eggleston: oh my god, what did I love about this? Or the reverse, you know, had to watch a movie that you watched 20 years ago and said, oh god, I wasted 2 hours of my time, and gone, oh, this is actually pretty good. And, like.
• 53:10
  Tad Eggleston: digging into it, you gotta go, so why didn't I like it then, why do I like it now, or vice versa, and like…
• 53:17
  Tad Eggleston: It's as likely that you didn't like it because you were in the theater with a girl that broke up with you the week later and, like, completely tempered the wave, as it is that it was the movie itself.
• 53:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I just went on a huge tangent that I don't even know where I'm leading to.
• 53:36
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, you're talking about… you're talking about what we were talking about earlier, that, like.
• 53:42
  Mark Pracht: This is probably not the,
• 53:49
  Mark Pracht: The best format to read these stories in.
• 53:54
  Mark Pracht: As a… to enjoy the story.
• 54:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:01
  Mark Pracht: that… Or to enjoy the humor of it, or to enjoy the.
• 54:10
  Tad Eggleston: At least not if you're reading them one after another.
• 54:13
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 54:13
  Sean Harklerode: It's a reference.
• 54:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 54:15
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 54:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, I'm getting to do a little bit more writing on comics through…
• 54:21
  Tad Eggleston: American Nature Presents, and I'm thinking of other ways that I'd like to write about comics, and, like, I could see wanting to have a lot of these on my shelf.
• 54:32
  Tad Eggleston: as the reference, not just for what I'm writing about Wally Wood.
• 54:36
  Tad Eggleston: But for… for when something… and something else reminds me of Wally Wood, to be able to pull it down really quick, flip through, and be able to say.
• 54:45
  Tad Eggleston: you know… like in V-Vampires, when wood…
• 54:52
  Tad Eggleston: you know… They really do seem like… a fantastic… Research or critics tools?
• 55:05
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, no, no, no. I mean, like, like, look, both Sean and I have been in the EC,
• 55:12
  Mark Pracht: fanatics panels.
• 55:14
  Mark Pracht: I mean, these are books for those guys, really. Right. You know, the people who… who…
• 55:20
  Mark Pracht: Want to curate all of this material.
• 55:25
  Mark Pracht: And… Be able to, like, not have to go through, like.
• 55:31
  Mark Pracht: to be able to pick one up and say, you know, I want to see what Wallywood drew as far as comedy.
• 55:37
  Mark Pracht: for EC, and then there's this book, and it's right there for you, and it's what you're looking for. And that's…
• 55:45
  Mark Pracht: That has value.
• 55:47
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think this book is incredibly valuable.
• 55:49
  Mark Pracht: As a historical document.
• 55:52
  Mark Pracht: I just… Doing what we do on this podcast and reading it as… a…
• 56:03
  Mark Pracht: Experience to really understand what that book was.
• 56:08
  Mark Pracht: I think does… it… it doesn't.
• 56:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it was… it was…
• 56:12
  Tad Eggleston: We guess and check on this podcast, too.
• 56:15
  Sean Harklerode: I have a facsimile of, Panic 1 somewhere.
• 56:20
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 56:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was just thinking that, that, like,
• 56:24
  Tad Eggleston: dark… I mean, I think it's interesting that the EC…
• 56:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the EC license is really kind of in… in three places at this point, because Dark Horse does the EC Archive
• 56:40
  Tad Eggleston: additions. Right.
• 56:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 56:43
  Tad Eggleston: And, I mean, in that sense, in 2016, they put out a Panic Volume 1 that had issues 1 through 6.
• 56:53
  Tad Eggleston: Burn color, that sort of thing.
• 56:57
  Mark Pracht: And I think, just for myself, I probably would have gotten more out of reading that.
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 57:04
  Mark Pracht: Great.
• 57:04
  Tad Eggleston: But that's overall where I'm going, though, is that, like…
• 57:11
  Tad Eggleston: part… I mean, other than the color, I had kind of…
• 57:16
  Tad Eggleston: I kind of, like, wondered, how is there enough of a market for two different publishers to be doing
• 57:23
  Tad Eggleston: books that are roughly the same price. It's not like…
• 57:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's not like the Prestige editions are at one, and, you know, they're both doing hardcovers that…
• 57:34
  Tad Eggleston: Aren't expensive, expensive, but aren't cheap, cheap.
• 57:38
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, I think… I think that these books, the Phantographics books, are preaching to the converted.
• 57:47
  Mark Pracht: Right. These are for people who've already read these, you know?
• 57:51
  Mark Pracht: That's what I think.
• 57:52
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, I've got a few of them. I've got the Jack Davis ones, and a couple others.
• 57:59
  Sean Harklerode: I don't have this one yet.
• 58:03
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it just came out.
• 58:05
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 58:06
  Sean Harklerode: I… I feel like… you know, and I've got one of the…
• 58:12
  Sean Harklerode: The dark horse, which one is this one next to me?
• 58:15
  Sean Harklerode: Latest Two-Fisted Tales.
• 58:18
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 58:19
  Sean Harklerode: Volume 3.
• 58:20
  Sean Harklerode: they're… they're very different. I mean, this is… this is very much for the fan of the artist.
• 58:28
  Sean Harklerode: Right? Right. So you're picking up, you know, I mean, I'm sure there are people who pick up every single one of them, right? But there's probably people who pick up the woods.
• 58:36
  Sean Harklerode: And don't get other people. So if you're that person, these are great, because this is Jack Wood… Jack Davis and Wallace Wood, and you've got all of that that you want, that you need.
• 58:52
  Sean Harklerode: In this one volume.
• 58:56
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 58:56
  Sean Harklerode: Same with, you know, a corpse on the engine, you know, that gives you everything you need from him there.
• 59:03
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 59:03
  Sean Harklerode: So… Where?
• 59:06
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas the… the… the…
• 59:13
  Tad Eggleston: the… the Dark Horse ones are… are… Like, here is… frontline combat.
• 59:23
  Tad Eggleston: Or here is… .
• 59:27
  Sean Harklerode: Presented in or…
• 59:28
  Tad Eggleston: Bye. Confessions Illustrated.
• 59:31
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 59:31
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 59:33
  Tad Eggleston: Though they do have, and this is the one that I have digitally, they do have a collection
• 59:40
  Tad Eggleston: 75 years of EC, where they put together kind of a greatest hits.
• 59:45
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, shock, gasp.
• 59:47
  Tad Eggleston: Choke gasp.
• 59:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, I have that.
• 59:49
  Sean Harklerode: I have that.
• 59:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 59:53
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I mean, it's kinda…
• 59:58
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, but, like, Choke Gasp actually acknowledges a third A third aspect, like…
• 1:00:08
  Tad Eggleston: And one of the reasons why it was… it took me so long to get deep into EC, because…
• 1:00:14
  Tad Eggleston: Anytime when you're looking at Anthologies, when you're looking at… Long-running things, whatever, There are… there's greatness.
• 1:00:26
  Tad Eggleston: And there's filler.
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 1:00:33
  Tad Eggleston: if I'm in the mood to do Wally Wood research, then… then yeah, I want to look at everything Wally Wood. Or if I'm in the mood to really get a feel for what was it like to be reading an issue of this back then, then yeah, I want it all. But if I want…
• 1:00:50
  Tad Eggleston: Just to, okay, why do people love this?
• 1:00:54
  Tad Eggleston: Show me the best. It's like a Greatest Hits album.
• 1:00:57
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if I love an artist, their greatest hits album isn't that satisfying to me most of the time.
• 1:01:03
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 1:01:05
  Tad Eggleston: if I like a bunch of artists' songs, but have never liked a whole album, their greatest hits album might be, like.
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: Pure gold to me.
• 1:01:16
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:01:16
  Sean Harklerode: I just bought Linda Ronstadt's greatest hits from Laurie's Planet of Sound, people, and it is amazing.
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: And then also, I mean, like…
• 1:01:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is when we get into the inside baseball, and how much goes into making for a great experience. How you curate it, how you present it, still matters. Like, I don't…
• 1:01:39
  Tad Eggleston: I appreciate it when I feel like a Greatest Hits album thinks about how to make it an album, rather than just automatically going in
• 1:01:47
  Tad Eggleston: chronological order.
• 1:01:49
  Tad Eggleston: On the flip side, if it's somebody that I love, sometimes I love the chronological, but…
• 1:01:57
  Tad Eggleston: But that has a lot to do with, okay, who…
• 1:02:01
  Tad Eggleston: who is buying this album? What kind of grade is this album is this? Like, a Springsteen chronological makes way more sense than, okay,
• 1:02:11
  Tad Eggleston: This band doesn't actually have enough hits for a Greatest Hits album, but we're making a Greatest Hits album, so let's…
• 1:02:19
  Tad Eggleston: Try to make it into an album that happens to include the 3 songs that you want that had previously been on 3 different albums.
• 1:02:29
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  Tad Eggleston: You know… Oh. Yep.
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. No, that's the other thing I love about book clubs, is it gives me… I mean, like, what has come the most out of this is I would really like to talk
• 1:02:46
  Tad Eggleston: With the people who design these books at EC.
• 1:02:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, there are lovely graphics.
• 1:02:57
  Sean Harklerode: And, and.
• 1:02:57
  Tad Eggleston: They come.
• 1:02:58
  Sean Harklerode: annuity of design, that Phantographic has between these books, and then I've got, those two books that are interviews with the artists and writers.
• 1:03:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:03:08
  Sean Harklerode: It's all… it's all of a piece, and just looking at this, it reminded me of those books.
• 1:03:15
  Sean Harklerode: So… I appreciate that continuity.
• 1:03:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they, they are just… I mean, they are. They're really… and they're doing it with, with, Atlas comics, they're doing it…
• 1:03:30
  Tad Eggleston: with some of the early Marvel stuff, not always exactly the same way that they're doing it, but… but, like, Phantographics is really kind of carving out,
• 1:03:40
  Tad Eggleston: An area where they're putting together… like… master tools for… for…
• 1:03:49
  Tad Eggleston: For comic historians, or critics, or even just the…
• 1:03:56
  Tad Eggleston: The artists or writers that really like the deep dives into… Stuff.
• 1:04:05
  Sean Harklerode: Graphics is their middle name.
• 1:04:07
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 1:04:09
  Sean Harklerode: Well, not really, I guess, it's our last item.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of their last name.
• 1:04:17
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, I think…
• 1:04:20
  Tad Eggleston: Any… any last thoughts? Because I think… I think I've… I've shot everything that I have.
• 1:04:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right now, on the…
• 1:04:28
  Sean Harklerode: I enjoyed, you know, some of the survey, sketches, you know, about baseball jargon, and…
• 1:04:34
  Sean Harklerode: Making things literal, reminded me of Looney Tunes.
• 1:04:41
  Tad Eggleston: I think even… even most of the things that I didn't…
• 1:04:44
  Tad Eggleston: enjoy and joy, it's more the… what Mark said right off the beginning is that it was the same joke. So it was really, like, I was comparing it to what I just read more than…
• 1:04:57
  Tad Eggleston: on its own merits, I went, oh, this isn't good.
• 1:05:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:03
  Tad Eggleston: The art was consistently good all the way, because Davis and Wood are both absolute masters.
• 1:05:11
  Tad Eggleston: Sean, I did appreciate what you were talking about, is, oh, there's one of the 22 panels, there's one of the.
• 1:05:17
  Sean Harklerode: 2022.
• 1:05:17
  Tad Eggleston: panels? There's… I mean, even in my head, I'm like, I could give a digital copy of this to my wife and ask her to just throw together a 22 panels from panic.
• 1:05:29
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  Tad Eggleston: Which, I mean, that's something I've been meaning to do for a while. I mean, I love the Wally Wood 22 panels, but I'd love to put one together where it's…
• 1:05:44
  Tad Eggleston: finished Wally Wood 22 panels. Right. You know, showing, like, this isn't just what Wally Wood did.
• 1:05:52
  Tad Eggleston: But this is what he did.
• 1:05:55
  Tad Eggleston: But also showing… because, like, the people who don't appreciate the 22 panels, like, their biggest dig is either they're boring or… or repetitive or whatnot, and… and it's like, well, but here's the thing. They're repetitive in ways that make sense, so, like…
• 1:06:12
  Tad Eggleston: You don't feel like they're repetitive when you see them. And they're boring on the 22 panels thing, because
• 1:06:18
  Tad Eggleston: he wasn't, like, fully doing the panels, he was doing the thumbnail of the panel for… so let's go look at what it looks like in the wild, rather than in the laboratory, before we say…
• 1:06:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean, cause really, what it is, is it's a layout tool.
• 1:06:45
  Tad Eggleston: It's not, I mean, every profession has tools.
• 1:06:52
  Tad Eggleston: And they've got basic tools like hammers and nails, and then they've got more complicated tools like a blueprint, or…
• 1:07:00
  Tad Eggleston: Some… some sort of guide that's like, okay…
• 1:07:07
  Tad Eggleston: you know, if this is here, this will be there, and I don't have to go crazy to eyeball it or measure it or whatnot. No, I have this tool that just, like, shows me.
• 1:07:21
  Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean, just from the educator's standpoint, it's been my biggest problem with
• 1:07:28
  Tad Eggleston: How much of education is about memorization?
• 1:07:31
  Tad Eggleston: like… Once you're out of school, like, memorization is not the tool that matters the most.
• 1:07:40
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you don't remember it, you're expected to look it up.
• 1:07:45
  Tad Eggleston: You won't be in a science laboratory that doesn't have a periodic table close at hand.
• 1:07:51
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you're doing a complicated surgery, you don't have to do it from memory. You can reference photos, you can reference whatever the hell you need, and you're expected to. If you're building a bridge.
• 1:08:05
  Tad Eggleston: They don't want you to do it from memory, they want you.
• 1:08:09
  Sean Harklerode: Well, synthesis is… is what we're looking for.
• 1:08:12
  Tad Eggleston: Synthesis is incredibly important.
• 1:08:15
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah… Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  Tad Eggleston: I do love the cover of the, the EC Archives Panic.
• 1:08:32
  Tad Eggleston: Which twin has the phony?
• 1:08:37
  Tad Eggleston: Melvina on the right has the phony because Irvina on the left has panic, the only authorized imitation of mad.
• 1:08:49
  Tad Eggleston: So they even acknowledged that they were an invitation to MAD, right there on the cover.
• 1:08:56
  Tad Eggleston: Also, I think it's interesting, and it meant I got to see it, the preview pages at the Dark Horse website for the EC Panic.
• 1:09:04
  Tad Eggleston: Our My Gun Is the Journey.
• 1:09:07
  Tad Eggleston: jury.
• 1:09:09
  Tad Eggleston: Only in color.
• 1:09:11
  Tad Eggleston: I think they recolored them?
• 1:09:16
  Tad Eggleston: And I know some people prefer the…
• 1:09:21
  Sean Harklerode: We're remote.
• 1:09:21
  Tad Eggleston: but these are nice colors. This looks nice.
• 1:09:25
  Sean Harklerode: As a comedy historian, it's… it's interesting. These are very interesting to see references, like, in the drive-in,
• 1:09:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:09:36
  Sean Harklerode: There… there's a, what happened?
• 1:09:39
  Sean Harklerode: Which I know most people think comes from, waiting for government.
• 1:09:44
  Sean Harklerode: But, you know, it goes back…
• 1:09:47
  Sean Harklerode: to… at least, I think, the earliest I've seen it is… well, this would be 54.
• 1:09:54
  Sean Harklerode: But I think it showed up in, like, 1950 and something.
• 1:10:04
  Sean Harklerode: God bless Fred Willard, though.
• 1:10:06
  Sean Harklerode: What happened?
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I just noticed that one of the…
• 1:10:13
  Tad Eggleston: I had noticed in this before, That, like, the… the…
• 1:10:19
  Tad Eggleston: the car with all the people piling out of it, it was Archie and Annie and Wimpy and Mickey Mouse.
• 1:10:28
  Sean Harklerode: Jughead.
• 1:10:29
  Tad Eggleston: Jughead.
• 1:10:30
  Tad Eggleston: But… but, like, on that What Happened page, the panel above it, where,
• 1:10:37
  Tad Eggleston: It says their tennis look after all your needs. There's a fellow who wipes the windshield, and the fellow who attaches a small adjustable speaker to the inside of the window, and the fellow who pedals soft drinks and sandwiches, and they're all on top of it, and that… there's a guy, like, flying out.
• 1:10:52
  Tad Eggleston: Upside down, holding a mad magazine.
• 1:11:00
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, there's lots of references to Melvin and Pozzarevi.
• 1:11:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:11:15
  Sean Harklerode: Cool.
• 1:11:17
  Tad Eggleston: Mark, we were just noticing some of the little things in a couple of the stories while you were gone.
• 1:11:24
  Tad Eggleston: You have to go get your laundry.
• 1:11:26
  Tad Eggleston: Mark.
• 1:11:26
  Mark Pracht: Mark is now fine.
• 1:11:27
  Tad Eggleston: Folding laundry. I love the multitasking.
• 1:11:30
  Sean Harklerode: Hey.
• 1:11:32
  Mark Pracht: I got stuff to do, man.
• 1:11:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well,
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: Speaking of which, I think… I think we're at a good stopping point. I don't have any other great…
• 1:11:43
  Mark Pracht: I don't…
• 1:11:44
  Tad Eggleston: On this or anything else.
• 1:11:46
  Mark Pracht: I… I have no insights on this, quite honestly. I think that…
• 1:11:52
  Mark Pracht: I have a great deal of respect for all the creators who worked on this. Tons.
• 1:11:56
  Tad Eggleston: and…
• 1:11:57
  Mark Pracht: It's just… man, it was hard for me. It was just really hard to get through it.
• 1:12:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:03
  Tad Eggleston: Did you get it through.
• 1:12:03
  Mark Pracht: through what I got through, so…
• 1:12:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, and, like…
• 1:12:08
  Tad Eggleston: We live in the world today, and we also have our own stuff going on in the world today, and this wasn't designed as I sit down and read it through and escape the world.
• 1:12:22
  Tad Eggleston: of today book.
• 1:12:24
  Tad Eggleston: And I, I know I felt that, and it sounds like you felt that too.
• 1:12:31
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I just… you know, I think it… it does… I'm like, I'm just reiterating things at this point, but…
• 1:12:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:37
  Mark Pracht: You know, it really did feel like trying to…
• 1:12:40
  Mark Pracht: binge-watch a sitcom. And it's like, okay…
• 1:12:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I binge-watch lots of sitcoms, but… I'm weird.
• 1:12:50
  Mark Pracht: Well… Maybe, but I wouldn't say that.
• 1:12:56
  Mark Pracht: You can say that.
• 1:12:57
  Sean Harklerode: Two things.
• 1:12:57
  Mark Pracht: It's…
• 1:12:58
  Sean Harklerode: group.
• 1:12:59
  Mark Pracht: Two things can't be true, that's right.
• 1:13:01
  Mark Pracht: But I mean, it's just like, when you… when you watch…
• 1:13:06
  Mark Pracht: like, when you watch something like Cheers, you can… you can intellectually understand how genius that show is, but then after you watch, like, 3 episodes, you realize, okay, here's the formula, and we see the formula stamped out every week.
• 1:13:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:13:23
  Mark Pracht: There's nothing wrong with that, it just makes it difficult to really get investing.
• 1:13:27
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it works better… I mean, it was designed for and worked better as a weekly show than as a binge thing.
• 1:13:36
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:13:36
  Mark Pracht: 100%.
• 1:13:37
  Tad Eggleston: Damn. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:39
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 1:13:39
  Tad Eggleston: And when I think of the sitcoms that I'm most likely to binge, they're the ones that, while they might have aired weekly, were also made in the era where binging had begun.
• 1:13:53
  Tad Eggleston: And therefore, their creators were probably more…
• 1:13:58
  Mark Pracht: or they just break the mold. I mean, like, I can binge-watch Arrested Development because…
• 1:14:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:14:06
  Mark Pracht: it… it actually has a continuing thread that I can…
• 1:14:10
  Mark Pracht: stay with… this is getting way off topic, and we're supposed to be wrapping up, but I mean, like.
• 1:14:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:14:15
  Mark Pracht: It also continually surprises me with where they go.
• 1:14:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:14:20
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 1:14:21
  Mark Pracht: A bunch of guys hanging out in a bar, saying funny things every week.
• 1:14:26
  Mark Pracht: kind of…
• 1:14:28
  Mark Pracht: that's formula, and you feel the formula. And… and while I… I love all of this stuff, and I love these parodies and things, there's a formula there.
• 1:14:37
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:14:38
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 1:14:39
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:14:40
  Tad Eggleston: Anything from Sean?
• 1:14:43
  Sean Harklerode: You know, I like to binge-watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
• 1:14:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:14:49
  Tad Eggleston: We're currently binging 30 Rock.
• 1:14:52
  Tad Eggleston: We just finished a binge on Parks and Rec.
• 1:14:55
  Sean Harklerode: If you like 30 Rock, check out the, Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.
• 1:14:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, that's totally on our radar. Fabulous. I love it.
• 1:15:04
  Tad Eggleston: Totally on our radar. Well, for Mark Pratt and Sharn Harkleroad, this has been the Pope Lotter Book Club on 22 Panels, where we promise that…
• 1:15:15
  Tad Eggleston: we have a greater appreciation and think that many people should buy my gun as the jury than maybe came across. But I think we've said that enough times that it did come across, that, like.
• 1:15:28
  Tad Eggleston: We value this object in very important ways. I have my hardcover, I'm pretty certain. The way Sean was talking, it's one that he may be getting. Mark, toss up.
• 1:15:45
  Tad Eggleston: But, also, go, go, go to, Da-da-da-da…
• 1:15:54
  Tad Eggleston: I closed it, because I bought it already. Go to TeePublic, slash 4colorPlays, and get your snazzy
• 1:16:02
  Tad Eggleston: Mark of Cain.
• 1:16:05
  Tad Eggleston: Innocence of Seduction and House of Ideas t-shirt. It looks awesome. I ordered mine while we were on air. I… I hope it comes in time for next Sunday's panel at C2P2. Cool people talking about comics. If… if you're in…
• 1:16:21
  Tad Eggleston: in Chicago and at C2E2 on Sunday,
• 1:16:25
  Tad Eggleston: it's… it's my experiment that… that I'm gonna bring as many cool people…
• 1:16:31
  Tad Eggleston: that are at C2E2 together in a room, and we're gonna read some comics and talk about them.
• 1:16:36
  Tad Eggleston: And… could be amazing, it could be a train wreck.
• 1:16:42
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know what there is in between. It should be memorable either way. It could be an amazing season.
• 1:16:49
  Sean Harklerode: Rick.
• 1:16:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:16:52
  Tad Eggleston: by the Bad Idea panel.
• 1:16:55
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 1:16:57
  Mark Pracht: like the beginning of The Fugitive.
• 1:16:58
  Mark Pracht: If things start going south, all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start going, I didn't kill my wife.
• 1:17:05
  Sean Harklerode: I don't care.
• 1:17:12
  Tad Eggleston: We will see you… After the next page.