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Heavy Metal Book Club #37 - Metal Hurlant (2025) #2 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody! That's right, I almost said morning, because I took an afternoon nap, so it feels more like morning to me. Good evening, everybody! Welcome back to the 22 Panels Heavy Metal Book Club, where today we will discuss
0:19
Tad Eggleston: The relaunched Metal Ehlante.
0:23
Tad Eggleston: Issue 2.
0:25
Tad Eggleston: Which was so good.
0:27
Tad Eggleston: And… and I just… I gotta start off, right off the bat. Dylan, how happy were you to see
0:33
Tad Eggleston: the… the crisp… well-lettered Gale.
0:37
Dillon Gilbertson: Oh, man.
0:39
Tad Eggleston: I was in the comments.
0:41
Peter Eggleston Connor: on that, actually. That's funny.
0:43
Dillon Gilbertson: You know I love music.
0:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: Who cares?
0:45
Tad Eggleston: And I also am gonna just toss out, right off the bat, another one of the classic stories they had, was they had Exterminator 17, but it was in color, and we haven't seen it in color before, and I like it so much better in color!
1:01
Peter Eggleston Connor: I figured that, that was gonna come up, and that you… you might like it a lot more in color. It seemed like it was a lot better…
1:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: enunciated in color.
1:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's one of those weird things, because I love black and white comics, but I think that…
1:21
Tad Eggleston: I think that artists work differently when they're intending to work in black and white.
1:25
Dillon Gilbertson: Yep.
1:26
Tad Eggleston: Versus when they're intending it to be colored.
1:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
1:30
Tad Eggleston: Handing it to be colored, particularly with some of the… I mean, some of the really…
1:36
Tad Eggleston: impressive colors that Metro Erlant and really just… It's a bad day.
1:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Let me just say… Is that black and white, you know…
1:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: I've done a lot of art recently, but in my experience, black and white, when you're intending to work in black and white, and you're working with
1:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: black and white type things. You sorta have to, like, think about
2:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: like, how to get that shading, and how to get that crisp quality out of black and white, compared to if you're intending to work in color, you don't necessarily want to put all that in there, because it makes it harder to do the actual color. Right.
2:16
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
2:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: album.
2:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: at least that was my experience, like, when I was in art classes, was…
2:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: like…
2:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure, there were times where it was nice to ink things, but, you know, if you were adding color, you didn't want to, like.
2:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: Add shading, or too much shading, because you'd want to do that in color instead of doing that in, you know…
2:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Ink, or whatever other medium you were using to do your black and white, so…
2:48
Tad Eggleston: So, without further ado, though, let's, jump into Jerry Friesen and Afif Khalid's David William Hughes, 2007.
3:00
Tad Eggleston: to 2053.
3:04
Tad Eggleston: Nice Martian story. Well, or at least a Martian.
3:07
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
3:09
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't know, I don't know, I didn't… I didn't look too deeply at the cover of this issue. Did it build…
3:15
Tad Eggleston: I can go back to the cover.
3:17
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, let's check it out real quick, because I didn't look really…
3:20
Tad Eggleston: Space stares back.
3:22
Dillon Gilbertson: Star stuff… well, so this is all a big deal. Space stares back. Okay, so nowhere on here does it bill itself as a Mars-themed issue. No, it is…
3:31
Tad Eggleston: base theme.
3:32
Dillon Gilbertson: Almost every story…
3:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
3:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: Bottom of ours.
3:36
Dillon Gilbertson: The large majority of the stories are…
3:39
Dillon Gilbertson: The first quarter of the stories are specifically set on Mars, and they…
3:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: Make that section very… Mars Base? I might be wrong about that, but I…
3:51
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I…
3:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: in the… some of the discussion, they were saying. Yeah. I think this part, we're actually diving a little bit into, like, Martian stories, not necessarily Martian, as in, like.
4:02
Dillon Gilbertson: Mars…
4:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: there are aliens from Mars, but Martian doesn't, like, take place on Mars. It's the world's backup planet. And then, it is true that this entire episode is very space-focused.
4:16
Matt: I loved it. I loved that common thread. It was great.
4:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, and the next one is Monster Focus. I mean, I like that they're… they're doing themes with their… their…
4:27
Tad Eggleston: And, like, we discovered that there's continuing things, but as I think about it, both…
4:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the two… the two… the two,
4:40
Tad Eggleston: continuing things that I know already, you know, the Exterminer 17 and the…
4:48
Tad Eggleston: Gale fit into both a space and a monster theme, so it makes them really great.
4:55
Dillon Gilbertson: This was a good start, too. I enjoyed this one.
4:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, no, David William Hughes, 2053 is.
5:07
Matt: It was okay, it was a good start to the issue.
5:10
Dillon Gilbertson: I need us to discuss the ending so that it… so that I better understand it, but…
5:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, sure.
5:16
Tad Eggleston: I mean… the way I understand it, he's an architect, and, like, this is his…
5:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: artist, artist. He's an artist, for sure.
5:28
Dillon Gilbertson: There's a person commissioned to make these statues that were supposed to be their message to other civilizations if they encountered them? Right. But also rocket ships?
5:41
Dillon Gilbertson: And so he decides, so his boss… his bosses say that this mission is over, the plan's gonna be destroyed, everyone needs to leave, and so everyone leaves except for him, because he decides.
5:53
Tad Eggleston: He won't leave his artwork.
5:54
Dillon Gilbertson: He won't leave his artwork behind, so he's gonna be the messenger, the…
5:58
Matt: It wants to be part of the message.
5:59
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, he's part of the message, which is great, I love the sentiment so far, it's working on all cylinders for me, I love it.
6:07
Dillon Gilbertson: And then we… and then you go to the next page.
6:10
Tad Eggleston: And…
6:12
Dillon Gilbertson: Yup. So the rocket hits, and then he's… and then he's dead, right?
6:18
Tad Eggleston: Damn.
6:19
Dillon Gilbertson: And then… alright, so Mars is destroyed. The planet no longer exists, it seems.
6:25
Matt: Beautiful.
6:27
Tad Eggleston: But… Because…
6:30
Dillon Gilbertson: This is…
6:31
Tad Eggleston: comics and awesome.
6:33
Tad Eggleston: Like, the fragment that he was on.
6:36
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, so he's still there, effectively, I guess, still being, a messenger.
6:42
Matt: Sure.
6:43
Matt: And what destroyed the planet was someone else doing the same thing that got… his planet got destroyed, and then…
6:51
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:51
Matt: His piece of art slash whatever message.
6:55
Dillon Gilbertson: Okay, so is…
6:56
Matt: Mars.
6:57
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:58
Dillon Gilbertson: I see. So, okay, so that… so that's what this is. So, so now we're… so now we're going backwards in time, right before Mars got destroyed, and Earth is now looking at the… the…
7:08
Tad Eggleston: Right.
7:09
Dillon Gilbertson: the rogue meteor that's gonna destroy Mars, and they say, holy shit, what is this?
7:13
Tad Eggleston: With the artist on the front.
7:15
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, and it's an embarrass.
7:16
Tad Eggleston: Looks like an ambassador.
7:17
Dillon Gilbertson: Okay.
7:18
Dillon Gilbertson: Alright.
7:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
7:20
Dillon Gilbertson: That's great, I love that. I didn't understand it when I first read it, but now that I do, I love it. It's great.
7:26
Tad Eggleston: I also love the… the… the little time signature type thing that's…
7:32
Tad Eggleston: Just… so you can tell that you're watching their screen, even without making it…
7:39
Tad Eggleston: Overwhelming that you're watching the screen?
7:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this was a cool story.
7:47
Dillon Gilbertson: That's a good one.
7:48
Tad Eggleston: Really nice art.
7:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, they also added in, like, some of the… the… screen lining.
7:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
7:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: That you see.
7:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
7:58
Tad Eggleston: Slightly, slightly lower resolution.
8:00
Dillon Gilbertson: On the first issue of Erlant that we did, you had a timer for each story, because it's a very long issue, and we're trying to get… are we going to do a similar thing, or are we just going to try and…
8:11
Tad Eggleston: I think we're just gonna try. I didn't manage to put together a rundown.
8:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: If we decide that we need to, I can. We had a pretty… we were trying to strictly get done in that period of time.
8:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we, we, we, we had, we had, we had.
8:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: Obviously, you know… It would be nice not to spend forever, forever on this, but, you know… Yeah.
8:34
Tad Eggleston: Which is why I was gonna jump straight into elsewhere. The other thing is, I feel like we actually managed to pretty easily keep our clip last time.
8:43
Tad Eggleston: So… So, yeah, Amy DeJong?
8:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: I feel like I know from something.
8:50
Tad Eggleston: I feel like…
8:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: I do not.
8:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: But I felt this was another good story. Oh!
8:57
Matt: I loved this story.
8:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's amazing.
9:03
Matt: I love it because this is how AI would do it.
9:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, yeah, to some extent.
9:11
Matt: Yeah, like… our current AI situation, that's just lying, it's trying not to get turned off.
9:18
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I know her stuff, but she did a Lord of the Flies…
9:23
Tad Eggleston: Adaptation. Her art?
9:27
Tad Eggleston: Days of sand.
9:28
Dillon Gilbertson: If you haven't read Days of Sand, you should… That checks out.
9:31
Tad Eggleston: Days of Sand. Oh, and she did Blossoms in autumn, too. I like Blossoms in autumn.
9:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
9:39
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay, now I know who we're talking about.
9:41
Tad Eggleston: Yes, Amy… Amy DeJong is a outstanding DANDING.
9:48
Tad Eggleston: I'm pretty certain French?
9:53
Tad Eggleston: Artist?
9:55
Tad Eggleston: Definitely, definitely one of the reasons why we need to pay lots of attention to… Band-Aid Esnay.
10:09
Tad Eggleston: Let me pull this… you guys can probably still see the screen, but I can't, because I was looking at other stuff. And I love this… I love this story.
10:18
Matt: Yeah, I did too, it was great.
10:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: It says she was born in the Netherlands, I don't know if that…
10:24
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
10:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: She has French.
10:27
Tad Eggleston: Well, like, No, no, French is…
10:32
Tad Eggleston: French is the most comic… er, France is kind of the center of comics publishing for a lot of Europe, so even born in the Netherlands, there's a good chance that she'd be published first in France. I'd have to dig deeper.
10:46
Tad Eggleston: Because there's also a lot of Belgium comics, and pretty much every comic, or every country in Europe has their own…
10:56
Tad Eggleston: Their own native comics as well, but… but, like…
11:01
Tad Eggleston: There are a lot of like… like…
11:04
Tad Eggleston: less humanoids. There are a lot of… of French… Comics companies.
11:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah… Somebody refresh me on this story, because I remember liking it.
11:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, the story, in short, is that they go off… they're trying to colonize Mars, right? And…
11:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: They go off and they create this, complete, set of…
11:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: automatons, robots, if you will, to send to Mars for.
11:45
Matt: construction.
11:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Construction. Right. They essentially are like, go build us, you know, a place to live on Mars.
11:53
Matt: Right, and they're monitoring via video feed what they're doing.
11:56
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right.
11:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: So there's no humans on site whatsoever, it's all just… these robots.
12:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: Which are… which are run by AI, right? Right. You know, essentially, they're able to give feedback, but they give feedback via the videos that they receive.
12:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: That, essentially, are also… you know, thing, or essentially, tools created by the machines, right? So…
12:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: What's happening, and what they say is that the robots continuously, like.
12:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: Build more of themselves, and… or got better and better and better at, building .
12:44
Matt: Better versions of themselves.
12:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, not just better versions of themselves, but better versions of the constructs that they were.
12:50
Matt: Correct, right, Bill.
12:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
12:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: But…
12:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: you know, essentially, somewhere in here, they also mentioned that, like, they had created, like, the code for the AI was, you know, created for efficiency, and, you know.
13:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: being really, you know, advanced and blah blah blah, you know, kind of… kind of story that you keep hearing, like, in real life with AI, and…
13:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: There are some…
13:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Truth to it, and some… you know, obviously things where machines interpret things way differently than humans do, and that comes down to a lot of, like.
13:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: hey, how do you tell a machine to do a thing, right? But…
13:31
Tad Eggleston: Right.
13:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: And so, like, eventually, like, after a few years or something like that, you know, there's getting videos back of these glorious, cityscapes.
13:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: that the robots have built. So…
13:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, essentially, this was run by, or run by, or, like.
13:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: This was the project of some lady, and then, like, you know.
13:58
Peter Eggleston Connor: once the city was built, they all got onto some spaceships and ran off to Mars, because…
14:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: hey, like, you know, we can… we can now go live on Mars. We fucked Earth, but we can go live that
14:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: And… the short of it is, they get to Mars, and they can't find anything at all, and when they finally do.
14:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: it's like… A miniature diorama of…
14:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: A huge city, and, you know… blank.
14:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
14:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: They see the, like, little drones that are, you know, sending the videos, and the drones are, like, Hands-eyed.
14:37
Tad Eggleston: Also tiny, right. Right.
14:39
Tad Eggleston: The solution the AI came up with is, we're having trouble making this big, but we think we can make it little, and that will make them happy.
14:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, the whole entire point is that they could send feedback via video.
14:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: As long as they were getting positive feedback via video, like, of what they were sending, they were doing a good job, right?
15:00
Tad Eggleston: Right. How many of you…
15:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: They weren't doing it up to spec, because…
15:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, they were just accepting, you know, the humans were watching from a distance, and they were just accepting whatever visuals were being sent to them, right?
15:16
Tad Eggleston: How many of you have read Mark Russell's, and Roberto Mele's Traveling to Mars?
15:24
Matt: Nope.
15:25
Tad Eggleston: I read that.
15:26
Tad Eggleston: You should totally… I won't spoil it then, but it has…
15:32
Tad Eggleston: A similar conceit for a very different story.
15:37
Tad Eggleston: And not the same conceit. And just telling you this similar conceit probably spoils a little, but…
15:43
Dillon Gilbertson: But yeah, it's one of my favorite comics of the last couple of years, because it…
15:49
Tad Eggleston: Plays with a lot of things.
15:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: Unbeliev.
15:53
Tad Eggleston: East of which is…
15:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's not exactly a new concept.
15:59
Tad Eggleston: Oh, no.
15:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: We've been… I mean, even before we had AI, AI specifically, you know, we had the old monkey's paw and genie's.
16:08
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
16:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: All that sort of stuff, and it's the same damn thing, I mean…
16:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
16:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: You told it to do something, but… You know.
16:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: It decided how.
16:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, it figured out how, and, you know, you didn't really give it enough specifications. Now, the last thing I was gonna say is, yeah, so because of that, like.
16:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: they were trying to build that because the Earth was failing, and it was going to be underwater, and because of that, if you look at the last panel, you notice that
16:38
Peter Eggleston Connor: They are…
16:39
Tad Eggleston: Earth is…
16:40
Peter Eggleston Connor: In fact, Living underwater.
16:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, cause, cause the, the, the… the… Framing.
16:57
Tad Eggleston: Is a teacher teaching about this in the future?
17:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
17:01
Tad Eggleston: Which is also just brilliant.
17:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Their plan B turned into a, failure, so…
17:08
Tad Eggleston: Right.
17:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: Now they're on to Plan C, which is…
17:12
Tad Eggleston: D or E or F?
17:13
Matt: Yep, exactly.
17:14
Tad Eggleston: 3Z…
17:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: Who knows?
17:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Q?
17:20
Tad Eggleston: David Jones.
17:23
Peter Eggleston Connor: B, D, G… oh yeah, this is another one.
17:26
Matt: This is another…
17:28
Tad Eggleston: This… this is… both of these stories are very much in my running for a favorite story. I love this, you know, David Jones goes off to Mars, and…
17:39
Tad Eggleston: And… gets to party, and you got, oh, the Beatles are here, and… and… and… and…
17:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, it's just…
17:48
Tad Eggleston: All sorts of craziness.
17:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: So just to be fair, they're going back and forth between him going to Mars and, you know, him being influenced to go to Mars.
17:58
Peter Eggleston Connor: while on Earth.
17:59
Tad Eggleston: Right.
18:01
Tad Eggleston: Right.
18:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: And yeah, he's convinced to go to Mars because it's, like, an exploration, a new place to go, you go get experience, like…
18:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think it's kind of, like, in reference to, like, the Beatles going to India?
18:15
Tad Eggleston: Definitely.
18:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: tumor and…
18:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, and just psychedelia in general. I am a big, big fan of this page that has the Ziggy Stardust and has them in the…
18:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
18:30
Tad Eggleston: You know…
18:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, and then, you know, essentially…
18:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: you… essentially, the concept is that all these artists are being sold on this idea that you go to Mars.
18:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: And you have this experience, and you come back, and you can just be a legend.
18:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: When in fact.
18:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: Really happening.
18:54
Tad Eggleston: In general, they're being imprisoned on Mars, cloned and sent back, except for Ringo.
19:00
Matt: I don't think they're even cloned, I think they're being replaced by… Yes, exactly.
19:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
19:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
19:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: And Ringo, yeah, in the case of Ringo Starr,
19:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: They just figured he'd already been replaced, so they sent him back.
19:14
Tad Eggleston: Right.
19:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: with the aliens.
19:16
Tad Eggleston: Right.
19:18
Tad Eggleston: I loved that picture.
19:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: That is a great.
19:21
Tad Eggleston: Miss you, boys, kisses from the earth, Ringo.
19:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: But, no, it is.
19:27
Matt: It's a good likeness, too, which is…
19:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think, if you read the, like, little intermission slip.
19:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: I did. Orging of the Metal, The Art of the Abyss, they do…
19:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: talk a little bit about this, earlier on on page, on the page number here.
19:46
Tad Eggleston: It's at the beginning.
19:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, it's after the first comic. There it is.
19:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the, the.
19:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, they do… they do, some discussion on this. I think this is, like, one of the few I read.
19:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: I kinda, like…
20:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: I read this one, and then I kind of glossed over, or, like, skimmed the next one, and then, like, slowly I just…
20:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: More and more skip stuff, but…
20:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, they talk about this being, like, the reverse of,
20:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: What's it called when you steal, culture…
20:19
Matt: Appropriations.
20:20
Dillon Gilbertson: appropriation.
20:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
20:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Exactly.
20:23
Tad Eggleston: What… what I will,
20:29
Tad Eggleston: throw out. I understand skipping the forging the middle?
20:34
Dillon Gilbertson: But I also…
20:36
Tad Eggleston: Think that they… they are wonderful…
20:41
Tad Eggleston: In part because they can be skipped. You can choose to just read the comics.
20:45
Tad Eggleston: But Jake Thomas is doing a really good…
20:49
Tad Eggleston: Job of writing essays that both tell you a little bit about what you're gonna read, and tie this group of comics together as, hey, we're gonna do this thing.
20:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I…
21:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: I agree that, like, I do think they're valuable, and I think it's nice to have them in there. Again, for me, it's just, like, a matter of, like.
21:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: I… especially, like, during this season have been pretty time-crunched, so…
21:19
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, no, no.
21:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: The first one, it was like, okay, this is kind of interesting. The next one, it was like, okay, I, like, kinda read through the first paragraph and skimmed the rest.
21:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: And I don't know if I read much of the ones beyond that or not, but I just know that it's, like, sort of one of those things where it's like, okay, I have an idea of what this is.
21:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
21:41
Peter Eggleston Connor: you know, I can get, like.
21:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: You can kind of just, like, the nice…
21:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: And it's probably a testament to how he's written it. You can kind of just skim it and be like, oh, okay, I get, like, what he's talking.
21:53
Tad Eggleston: Or, if you…
21:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's also good for going back. If you, like, love a comic, you know that you can go back to the beginning of that section and maybe get some more insight into it.
22:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, sure.
22:04
Tad Eggleston: Cause sometimes there's stuff about how it's made, sometimes there's stuff about the period.
22:11
Tad Eggleston: you know, right. There's… there's a… Readable, but scholarly nature.
22:18
Tad Eggleston: To the essays that he's writing.
22:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
22:23
Tad Eggleston: And that, that, I appreciate a lot.
22:27
Tad Eggleston: The Enigma… Lawrence Seifer.
22:34
Tad Eggleston: I love the art on this.
22:36
Dillon Gilbertson: Yes, it was great.
22:38
Tad Eggleston: I do.
22:38
Matt: I didn't.
22:40
Tad Eggleston: No?
22:42
Dillon Gilbertson: I liked how… if it was very minimalist, it also felt,
22:48
Dillon Gilbertson: I mean, hot button topic, but it looks… Russian?
22:53
Dillon Gilbertson: If that makes sense? Like, Russian propaganda, like cartoons? Yeah, I get that.
22:59
Matt: I don't know why, but I… yup.
23:01
Dillon Gilbertson: I mean, the content of all that stuff aside, like, it's an interesting art style.
23:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
23:07
Tad Eggleston: There was somebody in this, and I forget if it was… C for…
23:15
Tad Eggleston: Was it the Geiger S, or the…
23:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, I like it.
23:18
Tad Eggleston: Recently.
23:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: yard of it. I don't know if I'd want a whole, like, series of comics in the yard.
23:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Per se.
23:27
Tad Eggleston: No, I think it fits for the story more than…
23:33
Matt: I will agree with that.
23:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know?
23:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, that's…
23:39
Tad Eggleston: I'm a big fan of doing art Like, adapting art to story.
23:45
Tad Eggleston: And I feel like it, like I said, I feel like it does that well.
23:50
Tad Eggleston: It's got a little Jeffrey Allen love to it,
23:58
Tad Eggleston: we just did news from the fallout with… with… with… er, and, like, I…
24:04
Tad Eggleston: I'm not saying it's influenced by that, because he's relatively new, too, and I don't… I don't know if Seifert's new or not, I don't know Lawrence Seifert.
24:12
Tad Eggleston: But they've got… Only… Only Love works more black and white. I like the color scheme, the… the… the black and… and red and… and white. Well, it's monochromatic, right? Right.
24:26
Tad Eggleston: But,
24:32
Tad Eggleston: like, this page that I've got up, page 31, reminds me of Darwin, Cook and New Frontier.
24:40
Tad Eggleston: with the three wide panels on top of each other, I thought really fit well for…
24:47
Tad Eggleston: This part of the story.
24:51
Tad Eggleston: But then I like that we shifted to the… I like that they were gridless, or that they were, borderless panels.
24:57
Tad Eggleston: you know…
25:04
Tad Eggleston: The story itself… I didn't dislike it.
25:11
Tad Eggleston: I don't know…
25:12
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
25:12
Tad Eggleston: Felt like it had that…
25:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting.
25:18
Tad Eggleston: Huge, powerful message that some of them have had, and it's more straightforward. No twist or whatever, but I thought it was just really well done.
25:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of just, they find this amazing artifact, and then they're told, leave it alone, because we don't know what to do with it.
25:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
25:47
Tad Eggleston: And that's it. Like, literally, there's no more to it.
25:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
25:50
Peter Eggleston Connor: you're listening to this, this podcast and wondering if I just got cut off or something.
25:54
Tad Eggleston: Right, and then we kinda… the next section is in space, everyone can still hear you being a prick.
26:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: That was a great title. I also… It is.
26:04
Matt: Who won.
26:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Club titles.
26:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
26:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, that definitely helps set a tone.
26:09
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, and this is the section that's like, just because you're in space, doesn't mean you're not still an asshole.
26:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, and I definitely remember It's a Small Universe, we've read this one.
26:20
Matt: Yup, we did.
26:22
Matt: black and white.
26:23
Tad Eggleston: Has anybody here, like, a Saturday Night Live guy?
26:28
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, on and off.
26:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: I love it.
26:30
Tad Eggleston: Has anybody… Adam Sandler came back to host recently, and he did, like,
26:37
Tad Eggleston: an ad for a travel agency that was full of, if you and your wife don't get along at home, going to Italy is not going to make you stop arguing.
26:54
Tad Eggleston: We can provide a beach and sun, we cannot make you look good in a bikini.
27:00
Matt: Oh, that's right, and is that with the one where they had the…
27:03
Dillon Gilbertson: their kid was also there, right. They had, like, a… it was, like, a goth kid or whatever that was trying to hide from the sun the whole time.
27:10
Tad Eggleston: But, but, yes, so, so…
27:14
Tad Eggleston: like, that… this made me think of that, is like, okay, we're gonna… we take very human stories and set them in space. You know, just because you get to go out in space, particularly in this version of space, doesn't mean that you're not human, doesn't mean that you're some sort of hero, doesn't mean that you're anything spectacular. And this one's just, like.
27:33
Tad Eggleston: great, you know, you've got the guy, oh, wow, I've been found! Oh, you asshole!
27:41
Peter Eggleston Connor: Girl has a lot more brown skin in, like, one of these earlier pictures, and then, like, you see her more in full, and her skin's much paler.
27:56
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
27:58
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, it's still great art, it's just something I noticed randomly.
28:02
Tad Eggleston: Well, I think he didn't color her as deeply in…
28:08
Tad Eggleston: the non-close-ups, but I think that's true of… All of the characters.
28:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Does that make sense? The weird island of Stranded guy is pretty well colored in all of them.
28:21
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
28:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: We've talked about this one, though, this time I…
28:30
Matt: Black color last time, or is it black and white, right?
28:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, last time it was black and white. This is another one that got colored.
28:36
Dillon Gilbertson: How did, how did the color of the shape on the planet change in black and white?
28:45
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't think there was nearly the same definition, because he's doing so much of his definition through color.
28:52
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, but I mean, isn't that supposed to be, like, a plot point, like, at the end of the story? That, like, because at the beginning, the S shape is, like, blue, and then all this crazy murder happens, and now it's red.
29:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you know, I didn't even really notice that.
29:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, I mean, also, the beginning, you're looking at it from, like.
29:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, looking at it from… from the…
29:14
Matt: Orbit.
29:14
Tad Eggleston: surface level.
29:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: Orbit, yeah.
29:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wait, that's right, you gotta go all the way. Yeah, it's almost an entire planet of water.
29:24
Dillon Gilbertson: And then this little bit…
29:25
Tad Eggleston: And you're still outside of the… I think, I think as much as anything, here you're outside of…
29:32
Tad Eggleston: the atmosphere… And for this final one, you're inside the atmosphere?
29:39
Matt: Could be.
29:40
Tad Eggleston: But I agree that there is an element of…
29:44
Tad Eggleston: It's supposed to be symbolic of that, and no, that symbolism didn't come through at all in Black.
29:49
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
29:50
Matt: But, but, if you look at all the other panels previous to the last one, the land is red.
29:57
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
29:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: Before that isn't… it's always red, I guess. Yeah, no, it's always red.
30:04
Tad Eggleston: Which is why I think that, like, this has more to do with atmospheric interference.
30:09
Dillon Gilbertson: Beautiful.
30:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: But, you know…
30:10
Dillon Gilbertson: That's a weird detail to try to get across here, but…
30:14
Dillon Gilbertson: That week.
30:15
Tad Eggleston: Well, but again, I…
30:17
Tad Eggleston: I don't… I think that's, like, the technical reason that we'd put it. That's how you can… you can… I think that… I think that Mobius DID it!
30:28
Tad Eggleston: For the symbolism.
30:30
Dillon Gilbertson: Sure, yeah.
30:31
Matt: Yeah.
30:31
Dillon Gilbertson: Fair, okay, fair enough.
30:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
30:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: And for that.
30:35
Tad Eggleston: No matter, though.
30:36
Matt: I know what you're getting it.
30:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: On purpose, where you have the blue at the beginning, and then the red at the end.
30:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm… I mean…
30:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: not in relevance to, like, the actual physics of it. I mean, like…
30:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Obviously, there is physics that could explain it, but, you know.
30:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, but you'll also notice that the only time that, like, everything isn't reddish, other than from orbit, is when they're coming down into the sea, and you've got…
31:03
Tad Eggleston: closer to… and there's kind of a purple to go along with the red. So, I mean, there's definitely… it's definitely a symbolic thing as well.
31:15
Tad Eggleston: But it could have also some…
31:18
Tad Eggleston: Like, if anybody cared enough to ask him to explain it, he could probably go, well, there's atmospheric whatever.
31:24
Dillon Gilbertson: Sure, sure.
31:26
Tad Eggleston: I don't… I'm guessing that people didn't question Mobius that much. Just like I…
31:31
Dillon Gilbertson: Rightly so.
31:34
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I think, like… It's a mixture of lighting, close-ups, and when you're farther away, particularly on…
31:44
Tad Eggleston: the two characters coming from space, you can't get their expressions as well as you get them if you're adding color to.
31:53
Dillon Gilbertson: I think… I think the explanation of it's there for the symbolism is justification enough. Right. It works well.
32:04
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this was…
32:08
Dillon Gilbertson: I like this one a lot.
32:09
Tad Eggleston: this was.
32:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: Funky comic.
32:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Mobius is… Mobius is Mobius, you know?
32:15
Matt: There's not a better way to say it, Ted.
32:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's a small world, I mean, it's a small universe after all. Well, there's no after all. Well, whatever.
32:26
Dillon Gilbertson: There is in our heart.
32:27
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
32:28
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this was… this was fun on lots of levels.
32:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, it's great, and I think seeing in a color is really beautiful. I mean, it was beautiful even without the color, but it definitely punches up a notch.
32:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
32:43
Tad Eggleston: Resource.
32:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: I thought this one was, like, I was…
32:47
Matt: I was very amused by the story in this one.
32:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
32:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not.
32:52
Matt: Predictable, but good.
32:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I don't think…
32:55
Matt: that Russian feel to it? Russian propaganda feel to it?
33:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, I feel like there's at least one, and maybe it was bizarre, I feel like there's at least one artist in this that is not only Russian, but, like, left Russia after they invaded the Ukraine.
33:12
Matt: Good for them.
33:13
Tad Eggleston: I feel like we even…
33:18
Tad Eggleston: So let me… let me scan back again. I feel like that was even something that was said about.
33:23
Matt: Oh, Matt, I didn't read this stuff, so…
33:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
33:25
Tad Eggleston: Right.
33:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: professor of… Yeah, Nikola puts her, it looks like.
33:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: left Russia when it began its war with Ukraine.
33:38
Tad Eggleston: Right.
33:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep, right in that middle section.
33:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: Top part.
33:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, middle vertically, and then top part of it, or…
33:52
Tad Eggleston: Right.
33:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: middle column.
33:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right. It's like, I don't know, at least halfway down.
33:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: In that first paragraph.
34:00
Tad Eggleston: No, I see it, I see it. I'm just…
34:06
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this… like, it references Ennio Morricone, and I can hear that.
34:12
Tad Eggleston: But, but I also… this has, like, a,
34:17
Tad Eggleston: treasure the Sierra Madre feel to it, too. You know, it's again, oh, we're gonna get rich, oh, you're gonna try to steal it from me, I can't let you steal it from me, I'm gonna kill you!
34:30
Tad Eggleston: Only, you know… in space.
34:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
34:41
Tad Eggleston: You know…
34:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh my god, and…
34:44
Tad Eggleston: With the… the added…
34:47
Tad Eggleston: Like, when you get to the end, you realize that it's… it's like, not just them.
34:54
Tad Eggleston: This has been a thing.
34:55
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, people keep.
34:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, this is like…
34:58
Matt: If you're limited.
34:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: The treasurer that keeps trapping people, and essentially.
35:03
Dillon Gilbertson: Since nobody comes back, nobody knows how it's trapping people.
35:08
Tad Eggleston: Right.
35:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's set up to not really have anybody come back.
35:11
Tad Eggleston: Well, and is it trapping them, or is it just…
35:16
Tad Eggleston: like, the gold fever of a treasure of the Sierra Madre, that, like, there's certain times where humans are just overwhelmed by their greed, and they lose trust, and they…
35:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, that is a form of trap.
35:30
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I understand. No, I'm not… but what I mean is, I like that it could be mystical, and it could just be human greed.
35:40
Matt: Yep.
35:41
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, it could be. No, that structure suggests otherwise.
35:46
Tad Eggleston: No, but that's… I…
35:50
Tad Eggleston: This is exactly what I'm saying. I think it's supposed to suggest otherwise, to give it that whole…
35:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
35:58
Tad Eggleston: I wasn't saying that it was accidental, that it was ambiguous.
36:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, I'm just saying that I don't feel like there's a lot of evidence that's solely human greed. I know human greed plays into it, because that's how they got here, right?
36:12
Tad Eggleston: Right.
36:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: But… Once they're here, it's like…
36:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: It doesn't even fully seem like he's just overwhelmed, it just seems like he's completely, like… Hmm.
36:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: under a trance.
36:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: Or a spell.
36:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right. He's, like, putting this piece that he brought with him, like, of this incredibly rare, expensive thing into this, you know.
36:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: pyramid-like structure.
36:41
Tad Eggleston: That just has me thinking about DuckTales and the…
36:45
Tad Eggleston: the, the first six-part episode, and that, that guy… MY GOLD! MY GOLD!
36:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I don't know.
36:57
Dillon Gilbertson: I was gonna go Lord of the Rings, and the Rings sort of…
36:59
Tad Eggleston: No, but that does have mystical powers.
37:02
Dillon Gilbertson: It does, but the way people usually behave around it, like… That's true. Especially with men, it's like, yeah, men are just greedy assholes.
37:09
Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
37:12
Tad Eggleston: And we have Overload!
37:16
Dillon Gilbertson: This one, I… I…
37:17
Tad Eggleston: base station.
37:18
Dillon Gilbertson: I… I like this one, and I think this is just a me thing, but, like, technical and military instructions and jargon, like, ugh, I can't… it's very… it's rough. It's hard for me to get through.
37:32
Tad Eggleston: Right.
37:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, it's this one with, like, the… Ghostly ending is pretty amusing.
37:41
Dillon Gilbertson: It was cool, yeah, I liked it. Once it picked up, I finally got on board with it, but…
37:46
Dillon Gilbertson: It's hard to… it's hard to start.
37:48
Matt: It was, I agree.
37:57
Tad Eggleston: It was… it was…
37:59
Tad Eggleston: It was good, I agree with everything you said. I like the countdown timer. I like how long it takes to figure out, oh, a human being, a child.
38:10
Tad Eggleston: Man, because that's a riddle I know, so I saw it immediately.
38:15
Tad Eggleston: Now, I didn't manage to go watch the video that I sent you guys, but I did read this interview.
38:21
Tad Eggleston: Did you guys read the Science and Science Fiction interview?
38:24
Dillon Gilbertson: This is the one that I did read, yes.
38:26
Tad Eggleston: Okay, she's fucking cool.
38:27
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, cool as shit.
38:28
Tad Eggleston: And I need to take the time to watch the video, and more of her videos.
38:34
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
38:34
Tad Eggleston: She's fucking cool.
38:38
Dillon Gilbertson: Like, like, to have…
38:40
Tad Eggleston: Like, like… I mean, to put it in easiest terms, it's like, if… if…
38:49
Tad Eggleston: if you're watching Big Bang, and Penny actually did have
38:54
Tad Eggleston: Leonard's level of knowledge, maybe not Sheldon, because she admits that some of this is hard for her, but she's just fascinated, and she plows through it, right? But… but, like…
39:06
Tad Eggleston: But she's all tatted up, and she clearly, like, enjoys…
39:11
Tad Eggleston: Life, and geek stuff, and… yeah.
39:14
Dillon Gilbertson: No.
39:14
Tad Eggleston: This was, like… The interview is worth watching, her channel…
39:22
Tad Eggleston: Oh god, what is her channel?
39:25
Tad Eggleston: I should just go to our text thread. I texted everybody the…
39:29
Tad Eggleston: And I should say, her name is Dr. Aaron McDonald. She's the Star Trek Science Advisor, educator, and astrophysicist, and there was just a really cool interview with her.
39:41
Tad Eggleston: That I'm gonna say, particularly if you're geeky, but frankly, even if you just love, like, science or Star Trek, this is almost worth the price of the book.
39:50
Tad Eggleston: right here.
39:55
Tad Eggleston: I thought.
39:58
Tad Eggleston: It was just… it was just a fun… Fun interview.
40:03
Tad Eggleston: And maybe I sent it in an email. Yes, she has a YouTube channel, so just look up Dr. Erin McDonald.
40:10
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I remember you getting the email, and then I saw it, and I saw the interview, or the video was, like, 30 minutes or an hour, or something like that.
40:17
Tad Eggleston: That's why I didn't manage to get to it yet.
40:18
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I was like, I don't have time for this right now, I'll get to it later, and then forgot about it until I… Right. Until I read this issue, and I was like, oh, wait, I gotta go back and watch it.
40:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
40:27
Tad Eggleston: Oh, Dr. Aaron Explains the Universe is the name of her.
40:33
Tad Eggleston: Channel.
40:34
Tad Eggleston: Aaron McDonald.
40:36
Dillon Gilbertson: Cool.
40:37
Tad Eggleston: at Aaron McDonald on YouTube. I totally, totally recommend it, and I know that I will be falling down some rabbit holes with that.
40:45
Tad Eggleston: But, on to Serge Klerk with Beyond the Stars, which has a very, Irish.
40:58
Tad Eggleston: And tintin feel to some of the art.
41:01
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, it's like Tintin meets, meets 1996.
41:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, a little bit.
41:07
Matt: Yeah!
41:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
41:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, I remember this.
41:15
Tad Eggleston: Tintin meets 1996.
41:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: This is a solid ship.
41:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: And then, you know, it gets voiced off on a robot, security robot.
41:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: And then…
41:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, right, the ship crashes, and then some space freighter picks them up.
41:51
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
41:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: And they're the only survivors of the Antares, the original ship they were on.
41:57
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:00
Tad Eggleston: And then this next section is…
42:04
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely a Martian section, but it's a… it's… ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, so it's like a mixture of horror and…
42:12
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, this is… this one, I…
42:14
Tad Eggleston: Family.
42:15
Dillon Gilbertson: I really liked this one.
42:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this one was good.
42:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, this one's.
42:19
Dillon Gilbertson: It was… it was nice, it was serene, it was dark.
42:22
Matt: I don't get it. Why is she killing and burying the babies?
42:27
Dillon Gilbertson: She's not killing them, she's trying to grow them, but they keep dying, so she has to keep going on bearing.
42:32
Matt: Whoa.
42:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not killing anybody.
42:34
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
42:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: just… she keeps trying to grow, grow them, and instead of them growing and then, you know, coming out alive…
42:42
Tad Eggleston: being dead.
42:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: They end up dying before they can…
42:45
Matt: What did I miss?
42:46
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't know.
42:47
Tad Eggleston: It's…
42:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't get…
42:50
Tad Eggleston: So you can see… It's starting with a burial.
42:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: It starts with the burial, but the part that you really need to go, go forward another page, go forward another page. Okay, so this is the part where we're seeing her doing the stuff, and then she comes out of this lab where we see these babies growing in these pouches. Yeah. Hold on, hold on, go back one, go back one.
43:08
Dillon Gilbertson: So I think what tips you off that it's not purposeful is that she goes to sleep, and then an alarm goes off, and she wakes up in a startle, and then she goes out to find that the reason the alarm is going off is because one of them is dying.
43:25
Matt: Right.
43:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, and when I showed that, like, the reason the alarm was going off is because one of them's dying, because if you look at this, go back to that one. Previous page.
43:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, if you look at the…
43:35
Dillon Gilbertson: Nope. Go… there you go.
43:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: Thank you.
43:38
Peter Eggleston Connor: If you look at this, essentially what you have here is that she comes in, and there is, like, this baby that's, like, sort of got this green glow to it, while all the other ones are in red, and, like, it looks like a fairly healthy baby, and, like.
43:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, she's checking Europe's vitals and doing something on here, and then suddenly it shrivels up and dies.
44:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: So, theoretically, you know, it could be that you should do something, but…
44:05
Matt: You know what, you know what fucks me up on this? It's the use of green and red.
44:09
Dillon Gilbertson: Sure.
44:09
Matt: No, and red means stop.
44:11
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm like, oh, shit, this one's alive.
44:13
Matt: Yeah, right! Better get rid of this one. Yeah, yeah.
44:17
Dillon Gilbertson: No, I could…
44:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I can see, because…
44:19
Dillon Gilbertson: In that page, too, when she's got her iPad and she's doing stuff, like, you could easily interpret that as she's doing stuff on her iPad to kill it.
44:29
Matt: Right!
44:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I mean, I guess now that I see it, like.
44:33
Matt: This one's called to go.
44:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: I interpreted it originally as something went wrong, and it, like, shriveled up and died.
44:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: But it is possible that what you're saying is actually.
44:43
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah. I liked this one a lot. I think it…
44:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, and looking at it, it does seem like what she has here is, like, a biome. Like, if we look at some of the other stuff, there's clearly water.
44:55
Matt: there's food.
44:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: She's growing food!
44:56
Matt: That's successful.
44:58
Peter Eggleston Connor: But then, like… But then she's burying it outside, so I don't know why she would be…
45:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: Intentionally killing it.
45:06
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm confused.
45:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: It just seems like…
45:07
Matt: We could use it.
45:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: There's kind of lots of failures, is what it really seems like.
45:11
Dillon Gilbertson: Feed their seeds.
45:12
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think…
45:15
Tad Eggleston: Like, there is a sense of both urgency, and even in her hands, I feel kind of a sadness here.
45:23
Dillon Gilbertson: and I.
45:24
Tad Eggleston: I look at this dripping from the tubing.
45:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know?
45:28
Tad Eggleston: As symbolic of tears.
45:30
Matt: Sure, yeah, yeah.
45:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, sure.
45:33
Matt: Yeah.
45:33
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I think… I think she… I think the intention is that she… she's not… she's trying to keep them alive and is failing at it.
45:41
Tad Eggleston: Body language in this panel when she's, like.
45:44
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
45:45
Tad Eggleston: The drone is just… it's… it feels very defeated.
45:49
Dillon Gilbertson: It's defeated, it's somber, but it's matter-of-factly, it's like, oh, here we go again.
45:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: At no point does it seem like it's menacing, or…
45:57
Dillon Gilbertson: I… yeah, I think the intention is…
45:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: comes with…
46:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
46:03
Tad Eggleston: she's a scientist, and I think on some level, what she's doing is as much science, and that might be one of the reasons that she's not carrying the babies.
46:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, and I mean, for me, like, the last… the last image says a lot, because it just feels like, you know, all this failure, right? Right. It's like…
46:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's not really, like…
46:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: It doesn't feel to me like what this is saying is, oh, she did this devious act.
46:35
Dillon Gilbertson: No.
46:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: She's a scientist, and she's had to do this a lot of times.
46:41
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, right. I think… I think we're all on board. I think the intention is that she… she is trying to keep them alive, she's trying to grow them successfully, but they keep dying, and so she has to go out and bury them, but I… to Matt's point, like, I… I can see some… some panels and pivots in the story where you.
46:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
46:59
Dillon Gilbertson: could be misinterpreted.
47:00
Matt: Like, she doesn't.
47:01
Peter Eggleston Connor: I didn't bother you with that.
47:02
Matt: Something to be born into this awful world that she's living in.
47:07
Tad Eggleston: Right.
47:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, I could see that too, but then the question.
47:10
Matt: That's how I interpreted it.
47:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: But then the question is, why does she even have this growth machine?
47:16
Matt: Exactly, yeah, well, maybe I'm the psychopath of the group.
47:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
47:20
Dillon Gilbertson: Anyway…
47:21
Tad Eggleston: I like this next one a lot, too, the olene flower.
47:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, yeah, this one was… It was okay.
47:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: Bong.
47:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know, I thought it was…
47:31
Matt: It makes me wonder if… Maybe they just… the…
47:36
Matt: The location does nothing, it's just, hey, we got this guy and this girl to get together and do it, and now she's pregnant.
47:43
Tad Eggleston: I, I mean… Yes?
47:51
Tad Eggleston: But it was still… I like the art, I like this dancing here, I like…
48:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, also, it's kind of like this whole, like, concept of a future where things are so strange, and I mean, like, she's talking about, like.
48:12
Peter Eggleston Connor: They're talking about their age, and, like, the youngest of them is, like, 90-something, and she looks like she's…
48:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know, 20-something?
48:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right. And the woman we're following is, like, 190-something or whatever. Right. I don't know. And then, like, apparently, like.
48:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: The new, like, end age limit is 350, and it's like, they can take 20 years to just sort of have children and not work.
48:36
Tad Eggleston: Right.
48:38
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's interesting, it's like…
48:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, I feel like that it could be flushed out a lot more, too, and I'm not saying that, like, they… like, they could do it in these… these pages.
48:50
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm saying that, like, they could take this and sort of build a universe around it.
48:55
Tad Eggleston: Right. Also, I…
48:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: The only thing that I have about the twins, because she's… she's one of two twins, and she seems to be the only one who survived, right? We get that at the beginning.
49:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: Is that, like, it seems like she's having twins at the end, but other than that, it's sort of like, okay…
49:14
Tad Eggleston: Right.
49:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: What?
49:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Damn.
49:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: It was confusing me a little bit.
49:22
Tad Eggleston: I think that… One of my favorite… Forms of comic short story.
49:32
Tad Eggleston: Are the ones where you can… FEEL.
49:37
Tad Eggleston: That there's a well-developed universe that you're just visiting.
49:43
Tad Eggleston: And yes, it could be fleshed out a ton, but really, like, you're being given a simple story, and you're supposed to ponder what it…
49:54
Tad Eggleston: What it means…
49:56
Matt: Both in the car…
49:57
Tad Eggleston: context, well, at face value, but what it means in the context of the universe, and what it tells you about what that universe that provides it context is. So, like, it's supposed to inspire you to think about, okay, how…
50:12
Tad Eggleston: Like…
50:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
50:17
Tad Eggleston: I'm thinking about this on and off with our.
50:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: Or a movie club.
50:20
Tad Eggleston: club.
50:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: In terms of…
50:21
Tad Eggleston: What?
50:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Go ahead.
50:23
Peter Eggleston Connor: What I was gonna say, I'm not saying they have to, or absolutely need to, or even really should go do more. What I'm…
50:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm saying, one, personally, if they did more, I would be interested in it.
50:38
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely. No, no, I…
50:40
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, yeah, all I was trying to do was elaborate a little, and second, that…
50:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: that, you know, there is definitely, like, I'm not saying that they should reach in and take every concept that they had and, like.
50:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: really elaborate on a lot, but, like, to kind of give more of the feel that they're giving here, and give it in, like, sort of different expressions would be interesting to me, and I think that's all I would say.
51:06
Tad Eggleston: No, no, and I wasn't, I wasn't trying to be, combative or, or, or… Sure.
51:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure, sure.
51:11
Tad Eggleston: Or, I was just…
51:13
Tad Eggleston: I was just building on it in terms of some of the stuff that I've been thinking, because I even recently saw somebody write about how movies are often to send a specific message, whereas novels are often
51:27
Tad Eggleston: To make you think about things without giving a particular…
51:35
Tad Eggleston: Actually, I even remember where. It was Audrey Sitterson when he was talking to…
51:42
Tad Eggleston: Spencer Ackerman about Free Planet, which, if you guys aren't reading Free Planet, you should definitely read Free Planet, too.
51:48
Tad Eggleston: And that he was really trying to capture in his comic that novel thing where, where… you…
51:58
Tad Eggleston: you try to inspire as much thought as give answers. And I really, actually, I appreciate the comics medium's ability to…
52:11
Tad Eggleston: both.
52:12
Tad Eggleston: Inspire huge questions, and… Tell stories or give answers, and sometimes both at once.
52:22
Dillon Gilbertson: Yep.
52:23
Tad Eggleston: In a way that I think…
52:31
Tad Eggleston: is… Not unique to comics, but, like, very special about comics, where you can tell some really different…
52:41
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I love this because on one level, it's a story about
52:46
Tad Eggleston: Do I want to try this whole parenting thing?
52:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, for that matter, the man clearly does. He, like, wants to be a father, mother, because, like, we seem to be in a world that he can…
52:59
Tad Eggleston: he can have his own kid, right?
53:03
Tad Eggleston: Whereas she's like, yeah, I'm gonna give it a shot, and if it works out, it'll work out, and if it doesn't work out, I'll probably go do this for the next 30 years.
53:15
Tad Eggleston: You know…
53:17
Tad Eggleston: But also, like, in having that story, it opens up this whole world of, like, oh, if this… how would… how would that… if this scientific advancement or this world change happened, how does that…
53:35
Tad Eggleston: affect our societal structure, which I think
53:41
Tad Eggleston: Well, I don't think humans change, and I love…
53:44
Tad Eggleston: I love that with a lot of sci-fi, in that…
53:48
Tad Eggleston: or sci-fi, or historical fiction, or whatever, in terms of humans feel like humans, I think that often technology changes… er, technology will greatly wind up changing societal structure.
54:02
Tad Eggleston: And I think that that's sometimes undervalued, and that's… that's part of what I see in this comic that I love, is, like, I'm… I'm thinking about all of the ways, you know, where, like.
54:15
Tad Eggleston: Is it because they live so long that there's, like, almost no thought of, oh, let's have… let's build a nuclear family? I mean, that's not even discussed.
54:28
Tad Eggleston: you know, is it just unimaginable that you would, like, get together with somebody and raise a family together? Is it just because it's unnecessary, or is it because…
54:40
Tad Eggleston: It's way different to spend 300 years with somebody than it is to spend 50 years with somebody.
54:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, for sure. I do have to admit, the first…
54:50
Peter Eggleston Connor: Half page is still fairly confusing.
54:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: Boy, they crash.
55:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: Just… All I'm saying is, like, this… I mean, like…
55:13
Tad Eggleston: Then she wakes up.
55:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, she wakes up, and she's Jade, and we find out, but…
55:18
Tad Eggleston: Right, so I feel like…
55:24
Tad Eggleston: All of this is… yeah, I don't know.
55:27
Tad Eggleston: I wound up not.
55:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm thinking about…
55:29
Tad Eggleston: That a lot happens.
55:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: After all.
55:30
Tad Eggleston: Moving into it.
55:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: Figure out how… How it fits in the story, and that's not, like.
55:36
Tad Eggleston: Well, actually, how about this?
55:38
Tad Eggleston: Because she does say that she's done this before.
55:41
Tad Eggleston: But that it didn't take.
55:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
55:47
Tad Eggleston: So maybe she's imagining what it would have been If it had.
55:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: Mmm… no.
55:55
Tad Eggleston: No?
55:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: by that.
55:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, okay, so the woman says, Jade, Iris, I'm sorry, and then we learn that the woman's name, the one that we're following, is Jade. Which, to me suggests that the woman that's in the spaceship piloting it, who says, we can't live like this, is Jade's mother.
56:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, that's where my trouble with that concept… comes from, I guess.
56:21
Tad Eggleston: Well, but this… I'm gonna… I'm gonna push back on that a little, in two ways.
56:28
Tad Eggleston: First, there are Europeans that…
56:36
Tad Eggleston: It is more prominent in some…
56:40
Tad Eggleston: European nations to name daughters after mothers?
56:45
Tad Eggleston: than it is in Anglo-Saxon?
56:50
Tad Eggleston: And that's always been something that I've been puzzled by in general.
56:57
Tad Eggleston: Like, we regularly name sons after fathers. Why is it so…
57:05
Tad Eggleston: Out of the… you know, so…
57:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: So I…
57:08
Tad Eggleston: I don't know that just naming one of the characters after her…
57:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: I just feel like that seems like…
57:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, we… how do I put this? It's like, you talk about characters in any story, right?
57:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: Anytime you have two characters who share a name, there's always sort of this minor plot point of distinguishing the two of them and figuring out, you know.
57:40
Peter Eggleston Connor: How you can know…
57:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: the difference between Matt, you know, our heavy metal, metal, enthusiast, and Matt, you know, the guy that, you know, me and Dylan knew at college, I'm sure there was a Matt.
57:58
Tad Eggleston: Well, and the second page and the hologram from the necklace also leans towards yours, because you've got the…
58:08
Tad Eggleston: The… the twins coming up.
58:11
Tad Eggleston: And that's something that the kids are wearing, not the adult in the early…
58:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
58:18
Tad Eggleston: picture.
58:20
Tad Eggleston: Oh… And you've got… she passed away by… accident.
58:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, there's that, too.
58:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know. Again, it was… it was just something where, like, and maybe, like, if I re-read it in the head that kept it more in mind, it might make more sense.
58:41
Peter Eggleston Connor: Clearly, at the time when her mother goes off and crashes into some sort of asteroid or… whatnot.
58:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, her… There's something strange going on in their lives, and her mother's…
58:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
58:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: Dealing with something.
58:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: And it does seem like there's sort of this… strange,
59:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, this culture is interesting to us, but it's very much, like, completely different from anything that, like.
59:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, we currently live, right?
59:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, and here, here's, here's, here's a, you know…
59:23
Tad Eggleston: A possibility, because other than the fact that it's not really referred to specifically, like, if this was a car.
59:34
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, like, if you took just this top part, and you turned it into a car, and, and running into a,
59:43
Tad Eggleston: like, telephone poll or whatnot. Based on the dialogue… what?
59:48
Matt: a boulder.
59:50
Dillon Gilbertson: Sure. That's the detail to get hung up on, Matt.
59:53
Tad Eggleston: Right. Based on the dialogue, based on…
1:00:02
Tad Eggleston: the mother's expression, that sort of thing, based on the fact that the girls look scared, I would wonder if they were fleeing an abusive father.
1:00:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: I would also wonder that as well.
1:00:16
Tad Eggleston: So, I wonder if the then-going…
1:00:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: those lines, I mean…
1:00:21
Tad Eggleston: The then going forward, and the fact that she has limited interest in… Extended interpersonal relationships.
1:00:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right. I did not get that deep.
1:00:38
Matt: With my thoughts on this.
1:00:41
Tad Eggleston: I…
1:00:41
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know that I, like, intentionally got that deep, but I think subliminally, like, I captured some of that.
1:00:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, there's… she definitely has a very aloof nature, where it's like, she… she meets this man, and she has sort of this…
1:01:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sexual intercourse type thing, and clearly that, you know, there's some amount of bonding between them, but she's also not, like.
1:01:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, we should go off and get married, or whatever.
1:01:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:01:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know…
1:01:13
Tad Eggleston: If anything, he seems more… Attached to her.
1:01:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
1:01:21
Tad Eggleston: And the other way around.
1:01:26
Tad Eggleston: you know, would you like to see me again? And, like, she kisses him and walks away.
1:01:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
1:01:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, like, that's also, like, a kind of masculinity that we just don't even see. I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't exist in our real life, but we don't see it.
1:01:52
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:01:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's not the one that's portrayed a lot, especially in media.
1:01:55
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, you took a story that I liked, you made me think I like it even more, and it's deeper, but it also goes back to what I was saying, is, like…
1:02:05
Tad Eggleston: Particularly with the mixture between, like.
1:02:08
Tad Eggleston: acting and still-form acting, and being able to put in the abstract and whatnot. Comics are just such a great form to…
1:02:20
Tad Eggleston: Tell the tip of the iceberg, and let you… Really explore on your own.
1:02:30
Tad Eggleston: You know…
1:02:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
1:02:35
Tad Eggleston: Outcasts of Space. Benjamin Fogel and Damien Cavalar.
1:02:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, this one was… I liked it. I was the best one.
1:02:46
Matt: Come on.
1:02:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: This is kinda a little ridiculous, and I… it's almost a little bit too close to home, but…
1:02:52
Matt: The only word they didn't put in here was carbon footprint.
1:02:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yup.
1:02:58
Matt: I was like, oh, I get this.
1:03:01
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, it's like that, and then, like, the division of, like, the… essentially the rich and the poor.
1:03:06
Matt: Yep, yep, this is totally classist.
1:03:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: No.
1:03:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, and also the, like… I mean, we've recently had… oh, yes, you were allowed to come here when you got on the plane, but we changed our mind while you were in the…
1:03:21
Matt: In the plane, yep.
1:03:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
1:03:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:03:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, it sucks for these, like, pilots, because they're just doing this to try and help the kid, and then…
1:03:33
Matt: Right.
1:03:35
Tad Eggleston: They're doing this to hopefully get their kid to be able to move to Mars. They don't even have delusions that they're gonna be able to do it themselves.
1:03:44
Matt: Yup.
1:03:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
1:03:47
Tad Eggleston: But then, because of the way the society, like, is set up, he gets… Fuck. Given… their… debt.
1:03:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yup. Their debt, which was caused from, essentially, some guy, you know, forcing them to…
1:04:04
Tad Eggleston: bright.
1:04:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: Land.
1:04:06
Matt: Yup.
1:04:07
Tad Eggleston: Right. Which also all, you know, the fact that they couldn't land is because of a law change between when they left Earth and when they got…
1:04:17
Matt: Yeah, I really like this story.
1:04:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this was… and I like the art, too. It reminds me some of,
1:04:26
Tad Eggleston: Michelle… er, Mikel Fife, and poor fucking kid.
1:04:31
Matt: Paul Pope here.
1:04:33
Tad Eggleston: Definitely some Paul Pope here.
1:04:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I love the art style, the art style's.
1:04:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:04:37
Matt: Yep.
1:04:40
Tad Eggleston: You know, a certain amount of detail, but also a certain amount of quickness.
1:04:45
Matt: Yup.
1:04:46
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
1:04:47
Matt: Yes, it totally does.
1:04:49
Dillon Gilbertson: We're gonna make.
1:04:50
Tad Eggleston: I'm certain this detail gets in, but we're also gonna… boom, boom, boom.
1:04:56
Dillon Gilbertson: Do you guys know who Scott Morse is? He's.
1:04:59
Tad Eggleston: Like, I've heard the name.
1:05:00
Dillon Gilbertson: He's a writer and artist, he does a lot of work with the Alan Spiegel Arts Foundation, but he works mostly in, like, traditional ink and stuff, and every page of this looks a lot like his work as well. I actually had to go back and look at the art, to see who did the art, to see if it was him or not.
1:05:19
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
1:05:25
Tad Eggleston: I love it. His Instagram, father of two, husband of one, storyteller, GN author, EP, writer, director, absolutely no AI inquiries.
1:05:38
Dillon Gilbertson: Good man.
1:05:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this was… This is heartbreaking, and cool, and… Yep.
1:05:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: I, I like…
1:05:54
Tad Eggleston: The use of hot and cold colors?
1:05:57
Matt: Yup.
1:05:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: Those are the best.
1:06:01
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like each panel is mostly monochromatic.
1:06:09
Tad Eggleston: Except that, really, the interior is one monochromatic, and the exterior is another monochromatic.
1:06:16
Matt: Another account.
1:06:17
Tad Eggleston: And, like, that's why I love this panel with the screen, because you have… inside the shape, the ship is still…
1:06:28
Tad Eggleston: It's more blue, and outside is still more red, like…
1:06:32
Tad Eggleston: The colors are just really well done.
1:06:35
Matt: Yeah.
1:06:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, definitely.
1:06:37
Tad Eggleston: The news flash is crazy.
1:06:43
Dillon Gilbertson: I love this.
1:06:51
Tad Eggleston: I love this, this… Ships in space.
1:06:56
Tad Eggleston: Procedure denied page.
1:07:00
Tad Eggleston: You know, the, the, the… The…
1:07:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, no.
1:07:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: That's fucking dumb. It's like, he had a 3.5, and then he's down to a 1.9, cause…
1:07:15
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:07:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:07:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
1:07:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: It is gorgeous, if you will ever get a chance to look at it.
1:07:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: Or even go by this, issue of…
1:07:32
Tad Eggleston: Metal Erlan. I mean, I, I, like, I can't… People should subscribe.
1:07:39
Tad Eggleston: I, I know that…
1:07:41
Tad Eggleston: It's got a little bit of a hefty price tag, but, like, you're getting 200-some-odd pages for each one, too, so, like, when you look at it that way, it's… it's not that bad.
1:07:51
Tad Eggleston: Egg. From Yang Whelan.
1:07:56
Tad Eggleston: another… This is very, very 2000 AD?
1:08:04
Matt: Can I just say, I really appreciated the number of.
1:08:09
Dillon Gilbertson: Stories with no words. There were a lot of silent stories.
1:08:13
Dillon Gilbertson: For sure.
1:08:14
Matt: I really dug that.
1:08:16
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm not… I'm not one to, like, scoff at,
1:08:21
Dillon Gilbertson: at Verbose Comics, with a lot of lettering and a lot of words in it.
1:08:25
Matt: I mean, there's obviously a line to cross with too many words, but…
1:08:29
Dillon Gilbertson: But, like, I always appreciate…
1:08:32
Dillon Gilbertson: A good silent comic, and then.
1:08:34
Matt: Absolutely, 100%.
1:08:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I love, love that there's one word balloon in the whole thing, and it's just got a heart in it.
1:08:42
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah. Yeah, I did like that. I like the design overall, like, if you go back a couple more, this first one here with him, that first reveal panel of this dude who pops out, and he spreads his wings, he looks like this insect man.
1:09:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: That was sick. I mean, it was just sort of like…
1:09:03
Dillon Gilbertson: It's a cool design.
1:09:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: First, like, that it's just, like, this weird insect, and you're like, what is this weird… pod-like insect.
1:09:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: And then it, like, shoots through some…
1:09:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: I guess it shoots a thing through it, right?
1:09:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: Okay.
1:09:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think I misinterpreted that the first time, but that's okay.
1:09:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: But… Yeah, and then he just comes out and starts wrecking havoc.
1:09:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: You're not even really sure why she's in prison, but that's not the point.
1:09:41
Dillon Gilbertson: Because she's an insect monster, and they're human.
1:09:44
Matt: I think it's a prison.
1:09:45
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:09:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean… It seems like a prison of some sort. She's being used for something.
1:10:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: At least that's how I interpreted it. It seems like…
1:10:02
Dillon Gilbertson: I do, I think…
1:10:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: You can use to power or run this Strange, organic creature.
1:10:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: Damn.
1:10:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: And then… that was pulling their stuff, so I guess that's why, you know…
1:10:21
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:10:22
Dillon Gilbertson: She was, she was a fuel source for their car, effectively.
1:10:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, something like that.
1:10:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: Or the brain of the car, one or the other.
1:10:32
Tad Eggleston: Well, and positioned as its eye.
1:10:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
1:10:38
Dillon Gilbertson: That's way more interesting than just her being biofuel for this creature, that if…
1:10:42
Dillon Gilbertson: she was functionally its brain? Like, that'd be… that'd be crazy.
1:10:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah. Functionally his brain, or functionally his eye, even.
1:10:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
1:10:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: But… She's clearly being used for something, and… it doesn't feel like it's to her will, so…
1:11:05
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, he rescues her. And then they have a little… she goes to see their little grub babies, or…
1:11:11
Matt: Little grub baby, yeah, that's what it is.
1:11:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't grow up babies.
1:11:15
Matt: And it's all alone!
1:11:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, Governor of Mars.
1:11:21
Dillon Gilbertson: Yes.
1:11:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Listen.
1:11:22
Matt: That might be my thing.
1:11:23
Peter Eggleston Connor: Wait, wait.
1:11:24
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, this was a great…
1:11:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Society extend to the heavens?
1:11:27
Dillon Gilbertson: here.
1:11:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: section.
1:11:28
Tad Eggleston: Pillars of society extend to the heavens, yeah.
1:11:31
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah. This was a… this… the governor of Mars was very on-the-nose for current times. Oh, yeah!
1:11:37
Tad Eggleston: Well…
1:11:37
Matt: I mean, I did not.
1:11:38
Dillon Gilbertson: I did not hate it.
1:11:39
Tad Eggleston: Way.
1:11:40
Dillon Gilbertson: I thought it was great. I loved the art in it, the art was…
1:11:44
Matt: Hmm?
1:11:44
Dillon Gilbertson: Terrific.
1:11:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: Mark Waid and Fabian Grelu.
1:11:49
Dillon Gilbertson: 5 stars across the board. Yeah.
1:11:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: We've got, we've got a,
1:11:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: Serious. It's 50 out of 5 stars. Matt, get it right.
1:11:59
Matt: Right?
1:12:01
Tad Eggleston: It takes it to 11.
1:12:03
Matt: Yeah, for sure.
1:12:05
Dillon Gilbertson: Rip.
1:12:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: I definitely like the.
1:12:13
Tad Eggleston: the failed son…
1:12:15
Matt: the coff…
1:12:17
Dillon Gilbertson: Go off.
1:12:19
Dillon Gilbertson: He goes up there, he insists that everyone's wants are stupid, and that he just makes cuts for money reasons, and…
1:12:27
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:12:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: everybody gets sick.
1:12:31
Tad Eggleston: Poor people don't need my stuff.
1:12:34
Dillon Gilbertson: He makes the central pillar of the outrageous sculptor of his body, but then it starts to fall apart because it's made out of the cheapest metal.
1:12:41
Tad Eggleston: I love that.
1:12:43
Dillon Gilbertson: I do love that, yeah.
1:12:48
Dillon Gilbertson: This is fun. I enjoyed this one a lot.
1:12:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: And then they replace him with the janitor.
1:12:55
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:12:56
Matt: Which is a very… History of the world.
1:13:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:13:04
Matt: Boy, I love that! That's so fucking funny!
1:13:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah. It's good to beat the kid. I love that part, and I love the end part, where he's like, he betrays them, and, like, starts… goes off-script, and then they're like.
1:13:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, like… you still need us! And he's like…
1:13:24
Matt: Fuck I do!
1:13:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, I'll think of something, and like, you can see that they're replaced… he's replacing them the same way that they replaced the person that.
1:13:34
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:13:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: Stepped in for… play. Right.
1:13:40
Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
1:13:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Mark, Mark Waid has dessert, like, and, and this, this shows… and he's, he's… I mean, Mark Waid is actually the, the, I want to say U.S.
1:13:53
Tad Eggleston: publisher of humanoids? He's, he's got, he's got, like, a,
1:13:58
Tad Eggleston: high editorial job at humanoids, and has for a while.
1:14:02
Tad Eggleston: While still writing DC comics and whatever.
1:14:08
Dillon Gilbertson: Sure.
1:14:09
Tad Eggleston: But, like, Mark Waid has long been known, not just as a comic writer, but as… like,
1:14:20
Tad Eggleston: One of the nerdiest… Most read comic… Scholar slash fans?
1:14:30
Tad Eggleston: in the world?
1:14:31
Tad Eggleston: And, like, he shows that here, because he takes very American sensibilities and still crafts a hairy European comic.
1:14:41
Dillon Gilbertson: Fair enough.
1:14:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Fair.
1:14:43
Tad Eggleston: You know? And this is a guy that, like, is known for his Daredevil run, and his Justice League run, like…
1:14:52
Dillon Gilbertson: And those…
1:14:54
Tad Eggleston: feel like they're supposed to feel, too, I mean… Yeah, this…
1:14:59
Dillon Gilbertson: Also, real quick, I want to point out, too, that I love the detail that from the moment he makes the water change.
1:15:06
Dillon Gilbertson: That everyone else except for him progressfully gets more and more boiled.
1:15:10
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:15:11
Dillon Gilbertson: on their faces.
1:15:12
Tad Eggleston: And he's always drinking Earth water.
1:15:15
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, but everyone else is not, and so everyone else gets progressively more disfigured.
1:15:20
Tad Eggleston: Right. Because of the water.
1:15:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:15:22
Dillon Gilbertson: Oh, there's nothing wrong with it! Great detail.
1:15:28
Dillon Gilbertson: This is a nice history article.
1:15:32
Tad Eggleston: I thought it… I thought it was pretty cool to throw…
1:15:35
Tad Eggleston: like, the German history of the V2.
1:15:39
Tad Eggleston: into…
1:15:40
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:15:42
Matt: What's the next story in this? Okay, so there's a story in here, and we'll get there when we get there, obviously, but about the guy who…
1:15:51
Dillon Gilbertson: They leave trapped in, like, a landed spacecraft, and he feels like he's burning up in there.
1:15:58
Matt: Yeah…
1:15:59
Dillon Gilbertson: So there is a story that I wrote, years ago, called Albert 7.
1:16:06
Dillon Gilbertson: About, like, the history of… Americans' attempts to…
1:16:13
Dillon Gilbertson: basically bring people to the moon and, like, the testing V2 rockets and stuff, where they had… Albert was a rhesus monkey that they launched into space, or they tried to launch into space and basically see what its effects are on biological life.
1:16:28
Dillon Gilbertson: And, like, they launched up to 7 of these monkeys up there until they changed the name, midway through for whatever reason.
1:16:35
Dillon Gilbertson: But a couple of them survived their flight into space, effective space, and then they landed in the middle of the desert, and then they died in the middle of the desert.
1:16:49
Dillon Gilbertson: And so, like, when that story started.
1:16:52
Tad Eggleston: I was…
1:16:53
Dillon Gilbertson: like, I was like, oh, is this, like, a weird twist on…
1:16:57
Dillon Gilbertson: the story of one of the Albert monkeys who, like, had to die in this superheated capsule in the middle of nowhere. And then I… because I didn't read any of the prose in between these stories.
1:17:10
Dillon Gilbertson: it was interesting to see that that one is actually about the V-2 rockets.
1:17:14
Dillon Gilbertson: Stuff, anyway. Long story short… Interesting.
1:17:20
Dillon Gilbertson: Anyway, Space Mirage.
1:17:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Basepranoters. This is the second time I've read this one as well.
1:17:26
Dillon Gilbertson: Yes.
1:17:28
Tad Eggleston: Though, again, the first time in color.
1:17:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
1:17:32
Tad Eggleston: And again…
1:17:34
Tad Eggleston: like, this actually reminds me of… so I don't know if this was an original color story, because the coloring here… the coloring here is fantastic, but have any of you read Halo Jones? The Ballad of Halo Jones?
1:17:50
Matt: Thanks so much.
1:17:50
Tad Eggleston: Right. Oh, okay. Another book…
1:17:53
Matt: That…
1:17:54
Tad Eggleston: A, I'm sad that Matt, in particular, and a little bit Dylan, haven't read.
1:17:59
Dillon Gilbertson: Because, like, it's early Alan Moore.
1:18:03
Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
1:18:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, I am.
1:18:05
Dillon Gilbertson: the, the, the Ballad of Halo Jones.
1:18:09
Tad Eggleston: is… It's Alan Morin, who's the artist.
1:18:17
Tad Eggleston: Ian Gibson.
1:18:19
Tad Eggleston: And it was originally only color on, like, the covers. It was black and white, but when they put out the most recent edition, it was colored, and it was colored in a style that this reminds me of a lot.
1:18:34
Tad Eggleston: That also just worked Healy will.
1:18:38
Tad Eggleston: And I like it… like it better with…
1:18:42
Tad Eggleston: in the color version than I like in the… Original version.
1:18:55
Tad Eggleston: So I don't know whether, you know, we have to do… I guess that's all to say, that this… this would mean that I'd have to,
1:19:05
Tad Eggleston: Do way more research to be able to figure out if this was originally color or…
1:19:10
Tad Eggleston: or black and white, but I think the coloring was fantastic.
1:19:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
1:19:16
Matt: We seriously read this before? Because I do not recall this story.
1:19:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yay!
1:19:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: I was, like, on the edge of… first of all, this story is not a super memorable story if you.
1:19:27
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:19:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: read it.
1:19:28
Tad Eggleston: I am certain that we've seen that last panel before.
1:19:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right. The reason that, that, I was like, oh, we've read this before, is we got to the end, and I was like, oh, that's the only memorable part that I have. Not just, like, the panel, but, like.
1:19:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: like, there's… I mean, it's not… I guess it's not the only memorable part. I kind of remember this guy on the fourth page?
1:19:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: With this weird-looking hat.
1:19:58
Peter Eggleston Connor: like, Captain Hat, so go forward another couple pages.
1:20:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: There it is. Yeah, that guy on the top panel there, I kind of remember that guy, and…
1:20:12
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, like, yeah, I don't remember it being super memorable as a story the first time we read it, but…
1:20:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: like…
1:20:23
Peter Eggleston Connor: I do remember this last page and panel really well, and he's like, nowadays, I'm married, and have a son, and blah blah blah blah, and it's, like, very…
1:20:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: very hickish sort of space story, and I or… I agree.
1:20:39
Tad Eggleston: Oh, dude!
1:20:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: What?
1:20:44
Tad Eggleston: The, the writer-artist… is, Valyrian and Loreline.
1:20:55
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, the guy who did Billionaire one.
1:20:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Jean-Claude Mazarius.
1:21:02
Tad Eggleston: does… does, valyrian?
1:21:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, but it's very much like this whole military sort of, like…
1:21:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not saying it's good, like, it's… I think it's definitely better in color.
1:21:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: But it's sort of just a weird sort of comic in general, so… and I think the words here are better than they were in the Virgil version 2.
1:21:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: There also might be more of them.
1:21:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, yeah.
1:21:37
Tad Eggleston: It was definitely originally in Metal Erlance 7?
1:21:43
Tad Eggleston: I have not found any…
1:21:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: In heavy metal yet?
1:21:49
Tad Eggleston: Any.
1:21:52
Peter Eggleston Connor: I wonder if it…
1:21:53
Tad Eggleston: of the heavy metal… crossover yet, but I agree with you that, like, at least…
1:22:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I wonder if it was one of those where we didn't get the whole story?
1:22:05
Tad Eggleston: Because every once in a while.
1:22:06
Matt: That'd be.
1:22:07
Tad Eggleston: I feel like… I feel like they do weird…
1:22:16
Tad Eggleston: They do… they do weird, truncations in heavy metal?
1:22:29
Tad Eggleston: But…
1:22:35
Tad Eggleston: Selected publications.
1:22:40
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I remember at some point.
1:22:42
Tad Eggleston: It's YouTube.
1:22:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: found a… I had found a…
1:22:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: A page that essentially had every…
1:22:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:23:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: Every heavy metal that had, come up.
1:23:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: But I don't remember if I still have that link.
1:23:15
Matt: I feel like for people like us, there should be a footnote to say, previously…
1:23:21
Matt: Previously displayed in issue X, Y, and Z.
1:23:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, also, this is Metal Hurlant, so it would be, like…
1:23:29
Matt: Exactly, that's the problem.
1:23:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: It would… it's… yeah, I don't even know if, like, they would say that for the… this one, or even if that would help us, right? Because they'd tell us how.
1:23:40
Matt: We don'.
1:23:40
Peter Eggleston Connor: Mel Harlana was in, but…
1:23:48
Tad Eggleston: I will… Keep looking some, but we should… we should move on.
1:23:55
Matt: It was a good story. I just… I don't understand.
1:23:59
Dillon Gilbertson: why it was 10 years in prison, or 15 years in the military. I feel like they should have…
1:24:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: I also don't understand that, like, why is 15 minutes, why is it longer than the military than it is the prison?
1:24:10
Matt: Right.
1:24:11
Tad Eggleston: Well, because you don't have to be in prison.
1:24:15
Dillon Gilbertson: More… be more of a fun critique or commentary if it was less years in the military.
1:24:20
Matt: Right.
1:24:23
Dillon Gilbertson: Anyway, we got a lot, we got a lot of… we got a lot of issue to go through still.
1:24:28
Tad Eggleston: Some Enki Bilal, Exterminator17, we talked about this a little at the beginning.
1:24:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I mean, like, one, we've talked about it so much recently, I mean, we should talk about, like, what's changed in it, but I don't feel like…
1:24:42
Tad Eggleston: blur.
1:24:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: The car.
1:24:43
Tad Eggleston: I'll make such…
1:24:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh my god, the color is so gorgeous.
1:24:46
Matt: That's likely.
1:24:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: Look at this, like, right here on this page, that looked a little redder than… go ahead, Matt, sorry.
1:24:51
Matt: No, no, no, it's fine. For as much as I love this the first time in black and white.
1:24:55
Matt: It just doubled down. I was like, this is awesome.
1:24:59
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:24:59
Tad Eggleston: Well, and…
1:25:00
Dillon Gilbertson: better.
1:25:00
Tad Eggleston: And I was lukewarm.
1:25:03
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I remember you not really being super idle.
1:25:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: white, and, and, and…
1:25:08
Tad Eggleston: Adding the color, I'm all on board.
1:25:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, no, the color makes that amazing. Yeah.
1:25:15
Matt: Yeah.
1:25:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: It just, like, really kicks it up a notch.
1:25:19
Tad Eggleston: Well, I think, I think, and I think we've discussed this once or twice, but not a ton.
1:25:26
Tad Eggleston: I feel like one of the biggest differences between European
1:25:34
Tad Eggleston: color and U.S. color, particularly in
1:25:41
Tad Eggleston: the 70s and 80s, is the Europeans do…
1:25:46
Tad Eggleston: A lot more of their definition through color than inking.
1:25:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
1:25:54
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
1:25:55
Matt: Yep. Yep.
1:25:56
Dillon Gilbertson: Maybe.
1:25:57
Tad Eggleston: You know, stuff where the definition would have been… would have been…
1:26:03
Tad Eggleston: there, from the inking, and I mean, I'm just gonna use this as an example, the cheek down here, in the bottom right corner.
1:26:13
Dillon Gilbertson: here.
1:26:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yup.
1:26:14
Tad Eggleston: Like, the inking, you just have light…
1:26:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Hmm.
1:26:18
Tad Eggleston: But, but, but you get the rosy cheek.
1:26:23
Tad Eggleston: from the coloring.
1:26:25
Matt: Yep.
1:26:26
Tad Eggleston: And I think in the U.S, rather than having a…
1:26:32
Tad Eggleston: The brownish tint, it would be more likely that it would be slightly differently inked in there.
1:26:41
Tad Eggleston: With the same face color.
1:26:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: Right.
1:26:45
Tad Eggleston: certainly, again, in the 70s and early 80s. You know, our coloring has changed, but, you know, in the more… in the more exclusive four-color era, I feel like…
1:27:00
Tad Eggleston: A lot of this spatial definition would have been done
1:27:05
Tad Eggleston: Via inking rather than color, and it's… It's often the reverse, and… European comics.
1:27:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: Is there any, particular panels we want to bring attention to?
1:27:19
Matt: Well, go back 2 pages.
1:27:21
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm copied.
1:27:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: I love that too, how they just use the white space.
1:27:27
Matt: Exactly! The negative space is not colored. They're like, where are we? This is like… I loved how they used color. Here.
1:27:37
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:27:40
Matt: It was like, the background is not important.
1:27:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, sorry, that's lick.
1:27:47
Matt: No, you're good.
1:27:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: I was gonna say, a few pages later, they have the weird, like, death guys.
1:27:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: That was kinda fun, I liked that bit.
1:28:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:28:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: But…
1:28:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: And, I mean, I just kind of like the art style of it, and the colors of it are…
1:28:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: They're muted, but they're, like…
1:28:10
Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, I love this red and blue motif that I don't think I imagined at all.
1:28:16
Matt: Oh, no, man.
1:28:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: No.
1:28:17
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, no.
1:28:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: The fact that they… it's red and blue, it's just so very distinct.
1:28:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, it helps it stand out so much more with color.
1:28:26
Dillon Gilbertson: God, the design of this dude… I remember when we first read it, the design.
1:28:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh my god, is that Bart and Mickey Mouse?
1:28:34
Dillon Gilbertson: What?
1:28:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: Look at those eyes!
1:28:38
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:28:39
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't think it's Bart, it looks more like, like Big Bird, or maybe Donald Duck or something.
1:28:44
Tad Eggleston: Maybe, yeah, sorry, like, I had to figure out if I've got a Zoom.
1:28:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: Don't worry about it.
1:28:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know that I want to take too much time on it anyway.
1:28:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:28:57
Dillon Gilbertson: I can zoom, I can zoom on. It's Donald Duck, I can zoom on my screen. It's definitely Mickey Mouse, and it's probably…
1:29:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: Some sort of duck-like creature, yeah.
1:29:08
Dillon Gilbertson: Probably doesn't.
1:29:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: model.
1:29:12
Peter Eggleston Connor: That makes sense. That's what I'm seeing.
1:29:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, you know, this next page I was talking about with the weird guy who comes out of, like.
1:29:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: the wall.
1:29:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:29:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
1:29:28
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, Exterminator 17, way better in color, I think.
1:29:33
Matt: Oh, yeah!
1:29:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: the big…
1:29:35
Tad Eggleston: takeaway. We've talked about it before in previous episodes of the book club. Definitely run there, as we've got, like, 40, 50 pages to go, and we're…
1:29:47
Tad Eggleston: Nearing our second hour already.
1:29:50
Dillon Gilbertson: We got, we got more, so much more booked to get through.
1:29:54
Tad Eggleston: Now we're going into the inconceivable unknowns of the cosmos. I love neighbors.
1:30:01
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I'm trying to remember the end of November.
1:30:03
Tad Eggleston: I just love the art.
1:30:05
Dillon Gilbertson: Oh, that's right, the end of Monsters was us.
1:30:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:30:10
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, that was fun. This was a really fun comic. I liked this a lot. Like, it was weird, too, that,
1:30:17
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't know, I… for some reason, when they started speaking, they don't speak until the very last page. And then when they speak at the end, like, it… I was trying to find some…
1:30:26
Dillon Gilbertson: some narrative meaning that they were in this different world where, like, they can speak, or that speech exists? I don't know. I don't think that's part of it. That might have just been the mind space that I was in when I started reading, but…
1:30:39
Dillon Gilbertson: But yeah, I… it was a… it was a really… it was a really fun little… little twist at the end there, it was cool.
1:30:46
Matt: Ew.
1:30:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: I, that was, that was the fourth wall break.
1:30:52
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, kinda, yeah.
1:30:55
Matt: Yeah.
1:30:56
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:30:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I mean, it's very much worthwhile, like, it's.
1:30:59
Dillon Gilbertson: I mean, it's… it's…
1:31:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: You're technically looking out at us.
1:31:02
Dillon Gilbertson: It's like a 3… it's like a 3.5 wall break, I guess? Yeah, it's a 4th wall break. Because normally, when I think of 4th wall break, I imagine that the person…
1:31:11
Dillon Gilbertson: breaking the fourth wall knows that they're in the media that I'm consuming.
1:31:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Fair enough.
1:31:17
Dillon Gilbertson: Whereas these people are very much still in their own world, and just happen to see me. But yeah, I guess, I mean, they're both different kinds of fourth wall break, I guess.
1:31:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: -Oh.
1:31:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: I like the… it's got a very anime style, I like the fish.
1:31:34
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, that foot… that foot panel, I don't know why, but I love it, when they discover this giant humanoid foot.
1:31:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: the, like, bottom one, or the middle one? Probably, like, the bottom one, especially with that, like, weird growth on the toe.
1:31:48
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, it's cool. It's so cool.
1:31:52
Matt: It's reminiscent of Alien.
1:31:54
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, yeah.
1:31:55
Matt: movie.
1:31:56
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:31:58
Tad Eggleston: There's another mostly silent that just works on so many levels.
1:32:01
Matt: Yep.
1:32:02
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I like it.
1:32:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: I still like FishEdman, it makes me think of, gumball? Is that the show?
1:32:10
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:32:15
Dillon Gilbertson: It's very Gumball or, Umbrella Academy, one of the two, take your pick.
1:32:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: Nope.
1:32:22
Tad Eggleston: And I do, I like this, I like this last panel.
1:32:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, the very nice panel.
1:32:29
Tad Eggleston: I see a huge face. Oh!
1:32:32
Dillon Gilbertson: I wish they…
1:32:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: and their guns, oh my god, I forgot to bring that up.
1:32:37
Dillon Gilbertson: Their guns? What about their guns?
1:32:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: guns! They've got these, like, little squid tentacles at the end.
1:32:42
Dillon Gilbertson: Oh, yeah, I didn't even notice that when I read it.
1:32:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, like, it's the keys throughout the entire thing, it's like, what the hell is that?
1:32:51
Dillon Gilbertson: Yep.
1:32:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's not even like they're shooting, like, the tentacles, they're just…
1:32:55
Dillon Gilbertson: They're just there.
1:32:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: There's…
1:32:57
Dillon Gilbertson: Part of the gun.
1:32:58
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, if you look at, some other pages, the… the mount, or, like, the hole where, like, they fire from doesn't even quite look like
1:33:08
Peter Eggleston Connor: a gun hole, it looks a little bit, like, off. I don't know, it kind of depends on which one you look at. Like, that one looks more like it, but, like, if you look zinc… or, like, look closely at the one on the page that you were just on, 189…
1:33:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: In the bottom, bottom right corner, it looks…
1:33:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: A little bit like a mouth?
1:33:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: As if it's just, like, a squid?
1:33:30
Tad Eggleston: It looks like a tongue.
1:33:32
Dillon Gilbertson: Beautiful.
1:33:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah. I mean.
1:33:33
Dillon Gilbertson: Don't squid eyes kind of look like that? Like, these flat things?
1:33:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: I, yeah.
1:33:38
Dillon Gilbertson: Maybe they don't, I don't know, I'm…
1:33:40
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, no, I think… flat thing? A little rounded with, like, the little.
1:33:44
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, like, the pupil's kind of flat?
1:33:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, no, exactly.
1:33:49
Dillon Gilbertson: Google Squid Eye right now.
1:33:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: Manitas.
1:33:55
Dillon Gilbertson: No, squid eyes are pretty round. No, there's, this one looks pretty flat.
1:34:00
Dillon Gilbertson: Turns out it depends.
1:34:01
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, there you go.
1:34:04
Dillon Gilbertson: Remarkable camera.
1:34:05
Tad Eggleston: Because… Nice.
1:34:06
Tad Eggleston: Carl Johnson.
1:34:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: She abandoned her life to go.
1:34:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: Shine.
1:34:15
Dillon Gilbertson: I… like the art in this one more than the story.
1:34:18
Matt: Murray, yes!
1:34:19
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah. This, like, this page here is incredible. I love, I love the way she looks.
1:34:27
Dillon Gilbertson: I love the ship in the back, I love everything about it.
1:34:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: Are you living.
1:34:30
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, it's really cool.
1:34:32
Dillon Gilbertson: It's almost water to…
1:34:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: Torias.
1:34:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:34:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure, it's just gonna…
1:34:36
Tad Eggleston: Watercolor feel.
1:34:37
Dillon Gilbertson: she abandoned…
1:34:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: the mother… I mean, like, it's very,
1:34:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think I was into Greek myth and lore, like…
1:34:48
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:34:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: Because they're talking about… I do, I do love…
1:34:54
Tad Eggleston: This inset panel.
1:34:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: The, woman who, like.
1:34:58
Tad Eggleston: 2 or 3.
1:34:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: darkness.
1:35:01
Matt: to me, This is one of the sad instances where the art does not save the story.
1:35:11
Tad Eggleston: There's some great pages.
1:35:12
Matt: Oh my god, yes! But… There's no way that would be my favorite story, no matter what.
1:35:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
1:35:22
Dillon Gilbertson: This one was cool, too, yep.
1:35:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: What's this one called again?
1:35:27
Tad Eggleston: Red. Red. Virginia Augustine.
1:35:30
Dillon Gilbertson: This one was really cool.
1:35:33
Tad Eggleston: It's silent, isn't it?
1:35:35
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, it's another silence… I mean, until the end. Mostly. Right? So it's all these… all these civilizations on Mars leave for…
1:35:41
Dillon Gilbertson: Whatever reason.
1:35:43
Dillon Gilbertson: And then maybe it's the fact that they were all on Mars, and then after they got to Mars, that's when the pathway to stars opened up for all of them, all of those other civilizations? Is that the idea?
1:35:54
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:35:56
Dillon Gilbertson: Like, they all… all those civilizations also got to the Red Planet one day.
1:36:02
Dillon Gilbertson: and then continue the Ray Bradbury quote, and once we do, the stairway to the stars or whatever opens up. Halfway of the stars will open up before them.
1:36:13
Matt: This really… this was my favorite story.
1:36:15
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, it was really cool.
1:36:17
Matt: Yeah, and I love how we just miss the detail when our rover lands on Mars that, oh, yep, civilization, it was there.
1:36:25
Dillon Gilbertson: comparison.
1:36:26
Matt: Alien life, there's more to this.
1:36:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
1:36:28
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
1:36:29
Matt: And you just missed it, because…
1:36:31
Matt: Your impatient little rover just… zoomed right past it.
1:36:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
1:36:41
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I was like…
1:36:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: strange-looking Mars aliens, too.
1:36:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: They're like, oh, that looks like a guy, and then, like, they took the binoculars down, and it's like, oh, what is going on there?
1:36:52
Dillon Gilbertson: I like to imagine that the idea of this story is that, like, there's just something about Mars.
1:36:58
Dillon Gilbertson: So, like, they all got there.
1:37:00
Dillon Gilbertson: All of these other civilizations got there, and then at that point, the pathway to the stars opened up for them.
1:37:08
Dillon Gilbertson: And now that we've gotten there, it will… we'll follow in their footsteps and…
1:37:13
Dillon Gilbertson: Be among them in that last panel.
1:37:15
Matt: Yep.
1:37:16
Dillon Gilbertson: Damn.
1:37:17
Tad Eggleston: Alright. This one was…
1:37:18
Dillon Gilbertson: It's wild. Whatever the hell's going on.
1:37:21
Dillon Gilbertson: Whatever the hell's going on in this story.
1:37:22
Tad Eggleston: George DeVos.
1:37:24
Matt: I want to talk to the writer, and be like, dude.
1:37:27
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:37:29
Dillon Gilbertson: Ask him if he's okay.
1:37:34
Dillon Gilbertson: So this guy, this guy looks like he's here to survey this planet, and he discovers this… Flesh Totem.
1:37:41
Matt: Monolith, yeah. Yeah, and then has sex with the monolith. And he decides to lick it.
1:37:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's just to be…
1:37:48
Dillon Gilbertson: Zoom.
1:37:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: Just to be perfectly fair, this monolith seems to have very much women…
1:37:54
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, sure.
1:37:55
Tad Eggleston: No, I, I, I.
1:37:57
Dillon Gilbertson: Frozen bird monolith, for sure.
1:37:59
Tad Eggleston: I feel like it's able to change to be what he desires.
1:38:05
Matt: Yes.
1:38:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. I'm just letting, you know, people know what to say.
1:38:11
Dillon Gilbertson: But the man… but the man is bait for the monolith? Okay. Because the monolith takes the bait, and then it goes to sleep or something.
1:38:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:38:20
Dillon Gilbertson: And then there… and then this little droid comes and, like, finishes…
1:38:24
Dillon Gilbertson: whatever the, like, the explosion, the bomb, or whatever they're planting, and they're like, alright, let's do another one. It's like, what?
1:38:32
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:38:34
Dillon Gilbertson: It is crazy.
1:38:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
1:38:37
Tad Eggleston: and then our… I think this is our final Forging the Medal. There's nothing new under the sun. Under Proxima Centauri, however…
1:38:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: That's broke.
1:38:49
Dillon Gilbertson: What was this one? Oh, this was the Space King.
1:38:51
Tad Eggleston: Vessel by Daria… Daria Schmidt, yeah, the space cat.
1:38:56
Dillon Gilbertson: This one was cool. I don't have… I don't have a lot of deep, crazy thoughts about this one, it was just… it was just a fun…
1:39:03
Dillon Gilbertson: Weird.
1:39:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Crazy thoughts, just… just… Fun for the ride, man.
1:39:08
Dillon Gilbertson: Like, if Anne Frank were a sci-fi comic writer, This might have been it.
1:39:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: They.
1:39:16
Dillon Gilbertson: Not Anne Frank. No, no, not Anne Frank. Who is the… I can't believe I messed that up. Who's the… who's the.
1:39:23
Tad Eggleston: You don't think she would have written this?
1:39:24
Dillon Gilbertson: I mean, maybe. Maybe she would have been. Who knows? Who's the person, that did, like, the colorful peachies, the folders? Lisa Frank, yes. Lisa Frank.
1:39:36
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, yeah.
1:39:37
Tad Eggleston: I love this yawn.
1:39:40
Tad Eggleston: I mean, as a cat I adore this cat, it's just so perfect.
1:39:45
Dillon Gilbertson: My wife is giving the most bewildered look. She's incredulous.
1:39:50
Tad Eggleston: This… this… and then when it turns out that there's just a whole…
1:39:55
Tad Eggleston: universe of cats. A whole… a whole belt of curled-up cats.
1:39:59
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:40:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is…
1:40:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's just so pretty. You slowly get more and more videos.
1:40:08
Tad Eggleston: I love this yawn.
1:40:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: Cat universe…
1:40:11
Dillon Gilbertson: Be careful.
1:40:12
Tad Eggleston: This yawn is… is…
1:40:15
Dillon Gilbertson: Her, like, wading into the pool of this cat's eye was really cool.
1:40:19
Matt: That bothered me!
1:40:21
Matt: He just made you feel uncomfortable.
1:40:25
Dillon Gilbertson: tryptophobia specifically to someone walking into your eyeball.
1:40:30
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yup, there is definitely, there is definitely… there is definitely the… this is amazing, and there is definitely the… this is scary as fuck.
1:40:39
Matt: That's part of what makes it so great.
1:40:43
Peter Eggleston Connor: Not at all, that's true.
1:40:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: It reminds me of Dead Space 2 and the needle scene. Anyhow…
1:40:51
Dillon Gilbertson: That was cool.
1:40:53
Tad Eggleston: S-O-S, Ellie Halt.
1:40:56
Dillon Gilbertson: I didn't fully understand this one either.
1:40:57
Matt: Yeah, this was interesting.
1:41:00
Dillon Gilbertson: Don't really know what happened.
1:41:03
Dillon Gilbertson: This little droid thing comes out of the gray.
1:41:05
Matt: Takes over the body of the dead astronaut.
1:41:09
Dillon Gilbertson: I… yeah… yeah…
1:41:12
Matt: I don't get it.
1:41:13
Tad Eggleston: Some sort of call for help.
1:41:16
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's the SOS.
1:41:18
Dillon Gilbertson: That's true, I guess, yeah.
1:41:20
Tad Eggleston: And I guess, like, it gets there, and it's like, well, here, here I'll just, I'll make it walk.
1:41:24
Dillon Gilbertson: Here's this, here's this giant ball. We did it.
1:41:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:41:29
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
1:41:30
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't… yeah, I don't, I don't fully understand exactly what.
1:41:37
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this remind… I mean, like, we've definitely seen absurdist stories like this before, so I feel like this is just kind of absurdism in…
1:41:49
Tad Eggleston: Space?
1:41:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: No.
1:41:52
Matt: So this is like the bus?
1:41:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, and then there's this whole moment where it looks like the robot is sweating.
1:41:57
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, that's… yeah, right here. Yeah, the robot's nervous.
1:42:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: Robots.
1:42:08
Tad Eggleston: Slash gumdrop?
1:42:10
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, it's a dot.
1:42:12
Dillon Gilbertson: Right. Candy dog.
1:42:14
Tad Eggleston: Candy, yeah.
1:42:15
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, and then it gets in the thing, and then the body walks away from the crash site.
1:42:21
Dillon Gilbertson: Back to the hole? He's walking back to the hole, maybe?
1:42:24
Matt: Is he walking back, or is he walking forward?
1:42:27
Dillon Gilbertson: He's walking back to the hole, because that's… the thing came out of the hole.
1:42:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: He walks back to this, like, big black ball.
1:42:33
Tad Eggleston: Back to the lunch site.
1:42:35
Peter Eggleston Connor: No.
1:42:36
Dillon Gilbertson: So he's rescued this body by… Like, taking control of it?
1:42:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:42:44
Tad Eggleston: I don't know, but it's pretty.
1:42:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: analysis. It's like, no.
1:42:47
Matt: Turdy is the only nice thing I have to say about it.
1:42:50
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm gonna pretend it's something about.
1:42:52
Tad Eggleston: But then, here we go, we gotta, we gotta hand it to Dylan now, though.
1:42:59
Matt: Oh, yeah.
1:42:59
Dillon Gilbertson: jail. I don't… I… I mean…
1:43:03
Dillon Gilbertson: It's fine. Gale is such a gorgeous book. It's such a gorgeous story. The art in it is so wild.
1:43:11
Dillon Gilbertson: And the lettering is…
1:43:14
Matt: It's… So well done, finally!
1:43:16
Dillon Gilbertson: Oh, the lettering… It's still harder, but it was way more readable here than it had been before.
1:43:23
Dillon Gilbertson: True, yes.
1:43:24
Matt: 100%.
1:43:25
Dillon Gilbertson: The kerning has not improved.
1:43:29
Matt: kerning.
1:43:30
Dillon Gilbertson: I still appreciate the font.
1:43:38
Dillon Gilbertson: I mean, it's exactly as it was… oh my god, this top…
1:43:41
Dillon Gilbertson: Little, little skull gadget creature thing at the top of the page there, so cool.
1:43:49
Tad Eggleston: I do like this page.
1:43:52
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:43:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: one where we had color before, or weaker?
1:43:57
Tad Eggleston: We did have color before.
1:43:58
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, yeah.
1:43:59
Tad Eggleston: But it wasn't as crisp.
1:44:01
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, that's fair.
1:44:02
Matt: This is where the difference is all in modern printing.
1:44:09
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
1:44:10
Tad Eggleston: Then we've got the remainder.
1:44:13
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, what happened in the remainder?
1:44:15
Matt: Okay, is it me?
1:44:17
Matt: Or does this guy look like the Phantom?
1:44:20
Dillon Gilbertson: I thought the same thing, yeah.
1:44:22
Matt: I was… it bugged me the whole time.
1:44:24
Dillon Gilbertson: He looks like, yeah, I thought it was gonna be a Billy Zane phantom type thing.
1:44:30
Dillon Gilbertson: So I… so I think there's something cool going on in this comic, and I don't know how to grasp it, and I don't know if it's right, or if I… if I don't know… understand anything. But so he wakes up, and he's talking about…
1:44:44
Dillon Gilbertson: Somebody that he fought, but, like, he was out of rage, and now he's thought about it for a long time.
1:44:50
Matt: You must deal with it differently.
1:44:51
Dillon Gilbertson: of a better punishment.
1:44:53
Matt: Okay.
1:44:53
Dillon Gilbertson: Because now he's not emotional about it, so he's planned it out. But then he's talking about, like, he goes to a past memory that's…
1:45:02
Dillon Gilbertson: I think a really cool idea, where he… the memory's been, like, chewed away by…
1:45:08
Dillon Gilbertson: ruminating on it. Like, memories themselves… like, if you think about a memory for too long, it starts to not really resemble what actually happened, which I think is a cool idea.
1:45:17
Matt: Bill?
1:45:18
Dillon Gilbertson: But then… and so, like, I think where he's at, near the end of this comic, I think he's in his own memories. Yeah. And in the last page, I don't know what the fuck happened. He's… so he's…
1:45:30
Tad Eggleston: I feel like it's almost like he wound up punishing himself instead.
1:45:34
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I mean, maybe.
1:45:35
Matt: Trippy.
1:45:36
Dillon Gilbertson: So yeah, so he's talking about this, and he goes back, and I… right now, I assume he's in his… he's in his memories.
1:45:42
Dillon Gilbertson: And these weird creatures that live there have led him to what are maybe his past self? I don't know?
1:45:50
Dillon Gilbertson: and showed me my countless thoughts had hidden. I don't know what that means.
1:45:55
Dillon Gilbertson: But I want to believe that there's something deep here that I could get some emotional value out of.
1:46:00
Tad Eggleston: Anchor pose here.
1:46:01
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I don't… I want very…
1:46:04
Tad Eggleston: like, almost like instead of all of this stuff we've seen, he's really just been thinking.
1:46:10
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah.
1:46:11
Matt: In thousands of years.
1:46:13
Dillon Gilbertson: He hasn't physically gone anywhere.
1:46:14
Matt: Anywhere.
1:46:15
Dillon Gilbertson: These are just him thinking about his memories. And I wanna…
1:46:20
Dillon Gilbertson: I… if I understood fully this last page, I feel confident this would be my favorite story. But I have no… I don't know what it means fully, and I…
1:46:30
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm gonna be thinking about it for way too long, so maybe it should be my favorite story? I don't know.
1:46:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, how does that make it worse?
1:46:36
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't know, because I don't… I don't know. I'd have to think on it longer, I don't know.
1:46:42
Tad Eggleston: The whole world will be watching.
1:46:44
Dillon Gilbertson: This was the story that I was talking about that reminded me of the Albert monkeys, when they launched into space, and then they… a couple of them died just, like, sitting out in the hot New Mexico sun.
1:46:58
Dillon Gilbertson: And I thought that's what was gonna be happening here, but then it turned out he was a weird squid man.
1:47:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: This reminds me of, I think it was Love, Death, and Robots?
1:47:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: Episode…
1:47:12
Tad Eggleston: Possible.
1:47:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: Where they, and it's not exactly the same, but it was like…
1:47:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: He's in this kind of, like, trance, like, I guess it's not really the same at all, I don't know why it reminds me of it, but…
1:47:25
Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, essentially, like, he's here, and then there's a shock of… It's not some…
1:47:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think in the Love, Death, and… I think it was Love, Death, and Robots.
1:47:37
Peter Eggleston Connor: Episode. Like, it turns out that he thought he was talking to a human female.
1:47:45
Peter Eggleston Connor: And when he actually wakes up out of this dream, he's talking to some space alien being, and she puts him back into the sleep at the end, but…
1:47:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, it's kind of a weird thing, where it's like…
1:47:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: You think he's, like, some normal human being, and then slowly he, like, in these last few pages, he just reveals himself to…
1:48:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not saying he was… wasn't human at some point, but currently now, he's got…
1:48:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, because it feels like he didn't know he was gonna look like this as he took.
1:48:12
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, he seemed very surprised when he took off his glove.
1:48:15
Matt: Yes.
1:48:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: And even more surprised as he slid out of the suit and tire,
1:48:20
Tad Eggleston: But I also love that, like, whatever voice is talking to him through the radio, this is what was supposed to happen.
1:48:27
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, they, yeah, they fully understood what was going on. He did not.
1:48:30
Tad Eggleston: This was.
1:48:31
Matt: This was mission accomplished.
1:48:33
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:48:35
Dillon Gilbertson: We've done it, they say.
1:48:36
Matt: In a George W. kind of way.
1:48:39
Tad Eggleston: Well, but… except that it's Russians, and they're coming at them with a heavily armed helicopter.
1:48:44
Dillon Gilbertson: I wanna know… I wanna know what they've accomplished, I don't really get it.
1:48:48
Matt: Yeah.
1:48:49
Dillon Gilbertson: That they've successfully grafted this man's head onto tentacles?
1:48:53
Matt: They've created their first…
1:48:55
Tad Eggleston: superhero.
1:48:56
Peter Eggleston Connor: I guess.
1:48:57
Tad Eggleston: We don't know what those tentacles can and can't.
1:49:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: They're their first technical author.
1:49:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
1:49:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: They certainly have.
1:49:10
Tad Eggleston: So… Alright, best ongoing, there's really only two choices.
1:49:17
Tad Eggleston: So we got Exterminator17, we got Gale. I have a feeling I know where Dylan is going.
1:49:23
Peter Eggleston Connor: I can't remember, the last time we did this, did we keep the ongoing, or did we, like, mix it up?
1:49:30
Dillon Gilbertson: I don't know.
1:49:31
Tad Eggleston: I know we didn't keep the ongoing, because we couldn't, because there weren't any.
1:49:37
Dillon Gilbertson: I think…
1:49:39
Dillon Gilbertson: I think the last time we did this too.
1:49:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Despite their…
1:49:43
Dillon Gilbertson: being a lot of really great original stories, I still picked whatever Dreye story was in there.
1:49:50
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, I just… I feel like it might be worth doing, like.
1:49:54
Tad Eggleston: I'm seeing if I can find the notes on the other one.
1:49:57
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, it was just like a, you know.
1:50:00
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm gonna chew on this page.
1:50:02
Dillon Gilbertson: And day, and a night, and 10,000 more before.
1:50:06
Peter Eggleston Connor: renew with, you know, replacement.
1:50:13
Dillon Gilbertson: Show me all my countless thoughts had hidden.
1:50:17
Peter Eggleston Connor: Actually, I think this front page kind of tells us what's new and what's…
1:50:21
Tad Eggleston: It does.
1:50:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: And I guess there's only 4… Bold.
1:50:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: Or things that they… they reused, right?
1:50:34
Dillon Gilbertson: I mean, all my countless thoughts are hidden.
1:50:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, Matt, they do tell us the, the metal hurl lot that they were originally in, I think.
1:50:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: They just don't tell us…
1:50:48
Matt: a couple of them.
1:50:49
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, they just don't tell us the, original heavy metal that they were in, if they were in a heavy metal ever.
1:50:56
Tad Eggleston: No, what we did last time is we just dumped ongoing.
1:51:01
Tad Eggleston: We just did story and panel.
1:51:04
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, okay.
1:51:07
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, maybe we should just do that again.
1:51:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not opposed to, like, doing all that.
1:51:14
Matt: Good.
1:51:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: Goodbye.
1:51:15
Tad Eggleston: I thought it would be funny to see who won between Exterminator 17 and Gale.
1:51:23
Matt: Okay, so for that, we're… I'm good. Let's do it.
1:51:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: to.
1:51:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, because among other things, like, I don't think I ever voted for Exterminator 17 in all of the other readings.
1:51:36
Tad Eggleston: And… that's my pick for ongoing right now. Suck it, Dylan.
1:51:41
Tad Eggleston: Same.
1:51:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, sorry, I gotta, I gotta go with that one, too.
1:51:50
Peter Eggleston Connor: I love Gail, but…
1:51:52
Matt: 3 to 1!
1:51:53
Dillon Gilbertson: If it were… if it were, oh man, I can't remember the name of it now.
1:51:59
Dillon Gilbertson: what's the one where, like, the other… I think it was another Trier story, where the guy was created by the gods, but basically created to be hated by the gods? Y'all remember this story?
1:52:10
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's degree, it's.
1:52:11
Tad Eggleston: I thought that was… I thought that was a later chapter in Gale.
1:52:15
Peter Eggleston Connor: Hell yeah.
1:52:16
Dillon Gilbertson: No, no, no, it's a whole other story on its own.
1:52:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: It was… I'm trying to remember the name of it. It was great, though.
1:52:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think it's still a Lone Sloan story.
1:52:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think it might be a long Sloan, sorry.
1:52:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, Gale is also a lone slug.
1:52:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: That's what I meant.
1:52:33
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think it might be the same person who did Gale.
1:52:37
Tad Eggleston: No, no. He was saying that it was.
1:52:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, okay.
1:52:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:52:42
Dillon Gilbertson: It was like, it was like Morb… it was, like, Morb the incomprehensible, or Morb the hated, or… it was some weird name plus a name that implies that everybody hates him.
1:52:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, something like that.
1:52:57
Dillon Gilbertson: My favorite ongoing is… is Gale. Of course it is.
1:53:03
Tad Eggleston: So the much harder… My favorite ongoing is Gale, my boat's worth 4, you guys are only worth 1 apiece.
1:53:10
Tad Eggleston: So, so the, the, the much harder question, best story, I right now have, for me, it, it down to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…
1:53:24
Tad Eggleston: 7, 8, 9 choices? Because I'm thinking between elsewhere, David Jones, It's a Small Universe, The Source, the outcasts of space, governor of Mars, Egg, Neighbors, and the vessel. I think I'm actually gonna go with the vessel. I love my cats too much.
1:53:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think my favorite images probably come from the vessel.
1:53:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but we're story right now.
1:53:53
Matt: Story for me? Red.
1:53:55
Tad Eggleston: Yep, I already have you down for it.
1:53:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know.
1:54:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: There's so many pretty good ones.
1:54:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's why I just read off all of my contenders, the notes that I've taken as we…
1:54:10
Tad Eggleston: have gone through.
1:54:12
Matt: while I was reading this, I thought, okay, really pick out your favorites, you don't have to be like, this, this, or this. And I was like, it's red.
1:54:19
Tad Eggleston: Which wasn't even one of my contenders.
1:54:21
Matt: And that's hilarious to me, but…
1:54:24
Tad Eggleston: But it also tells you how fucking good this is.
1:54:28
Matt: Yup.
1:54:29
Tad Eggleston: Because it's not that I don't like red, I like red a lot. I just looked at the other stories that I'd already put down as contenders, and I'm like…
1:54:38
Tad Eggleston: I don't like it enough to even add it to this list.
1:54:41
Matt: Yeah? No, I get it.
1:54:44
Tad Eggleston: Which is why, in some ways, it's not surprising that the last thing that I added to the list is the one that I took, because, like, in some sense, every time I was adding to the list, it's like, okay, is this as good or better than everything else that I've already put here?
1:55:01
Peter Eggleston Connor: You know, I'm not sure I would pick this, like.
1:55:03
Peter Eggleston Connor: at other points in life or history, but I'm gonna go with elsewhere.
1:55:08
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:55:09
Tad Eggleston: That was also… I mean, that was on my shortlist.
1:55:11
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's overly… yeah… Overly relevant to, like.
1:55:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: Well, it's overly relevant to my life right now, I'll say that much.
1:55:24
Peter Eggleston Connor: But… You know… also to society. It feels pretty relevant to society in general, so…
1:55:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:55:34
Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not sure it's where… completely duped by AI, and I don't think we ever will be.
1:55:41
Tad Eggleston: No, you should, pick up Mark…
1:55:46
Tad Eggleston: Mark Russell's Aggie one-shot from the AWA
1:55:50
Tad Eggleston: Herotopia's collection came out this week.
1:55:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
1:55:54
Tad Eggleston: He challenged himself to come up with a… A story where…
1:56:04
Tad Eggleston: AI dramatically improved the world, rather than…
1:56:09
Tad Eggleston: destroying it. And he had AI pretty much destroy it on the way to improving it.
1:56:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he did a good job. You should read it, it's called.
1:56:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sounds pretty good, I'll try and check it out.
1:56:25
Tad Eggleston: I'll be talking to Mark next week.
1:56:28
Peter Eggleston Connor: There you go. Dylan, what's your favorite story? Did you say that already?
1:56:32
Dillon Gilbertson: No, I think… I think… listen, I think the remainder… I'm gonna say the remainder… with an asterisk.
1:56:43
Dillon Gilbertson: The asterisk is… Until I figure out what the hell the last… the last…
1:56:52
Dillon Gilbertson: Word… word box, the last, caption box means. What the last words in the story mean.
1:56:59
Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, that's kind of like the what I said, like, today, it's this. I don't know if I would be this every day of my life, or, you know, but…
1:57:09
Dillon Gilbertson: Yeah, I'm gonna… I'm gonna… I'm gonna not stop thinking about this until I…
1:57:13
Dillon Gilbertson: Come to some conclusion about what the end of this means.
1:57:17
Dillon Gilbertson: And if I do, maybe it'll stay the remainder.
1:57:22
Dillon Gilbertson: But if I end up thinking it's dumb, and I hate it, Then it's gonna be red.
1:57:28
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's fair.
1:57:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: There are a lot of good panels on this one, too.
1:57:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. They are. I did a similar thing.
1:57:38
Tad Eggleston: with this, where I was trying to, like, take notes as I went, and as I'm going through and re-looking at them again, I'm shocked that I didn't… like, I'd already picked panels that were so good that, like, no Mobius panels got picked.
1:57:56
Dillon Gilbertson: All the Drury A panelists got picked, right?
1:58:00
Dillon Gilbertson: All the gale panels?
1:58:01
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:58:02
Dillon Gilbertson: Hmm…
1:58:03
Tad Eggleston: No, sorry. I like Drew A, but I'm…
1:58:06
Tad Eggleston: I'm not nearly the fan of him.
1:58:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: I think I figured out the panel I'm gonna choose, and it's from a comic that the story wasn't… we already mentioned the story wasn't… wasn't really there for, but I really like the…
1:58:19
Peter Eggleston Connor: the strange image, so… But there was a lot of good ones, so it's, like, not an easy choice.
1:58:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: Mine is on page 201.
1:58:31
Peter Eggleston Connor: The middle of, was it Thanatos? Yeah, Thanatos?
1:58:39
Peter Eggleston Connor: That one, yeah.
1:58:42
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:58:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, no, next page.
1:58:44
Peter Eggleston Connor: Because apparently this doesn't line up, next page.
1:58:47
Peter Eggleston Connor: There you go.
1:58:50
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know why I like that one, but…
1:58:54
Peter Eggleston Connor: It's kind of weird, and kind of creepy, and… it's… I mean, she's just laying with this, like, dead body.
1:59:01
Tad Eggleston: The part or the whole page?
1:59:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: top part. I mean, like, the bottom, like, little section is fine, too, but…
1:59:07
Tad Eggleston: Because that inset was on my shortlist. It's not gonna make it, but it was, it was on my shortlist.
1:59:14
Peter Eggleston Connor: Asher, yeah, I think I'll go with the whole page. I mean, like, it's just…
1:59:18
Peter Eggleston Connor: Even though it's, like, got two different panels on it, it's…
1:59:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:59:23
Dillon Gilbertson: I'm… I'm also gonna go with that story, but I'm gonna go, like, 2 or 3 pages before the splash page of her walking away from her spaceship with her gun.
1:59:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, that's.
1:59:36
Matt: That one? Yeah, it's a good one.
1:59:38
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yep.
1:59:46
Peter Eggleston Connor: So now it's just down to Matt and Tad.
1:59:56
Matt: You want me to go, Ted?
1:59:58
Tad Eggleston: If, if you're ready…
1:59:59
Matt: Sure. Page 3 and page 274 combined, because they bookend the entire issue.
2:00:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh my god, that's amazing.
2:00:18
Dillon Gilbertson: Which one?
2:00:20
Matt: Page 3.
2:00:21
Dillon Gilbertson: It's useless.
2:00:22
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, that's good.
2:00:24
Matt: That one right there.
2:00:26
Peter Eggleston Connor: Where you see him.
2:00:26
Matt: And 274.
2:00:29
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah!
2:00:32
Peter Eggleston Connor: That's amazing.
2:00:33
Tad Eggleston: Mobius… I think that's Mobius to boot.
2:00:36
Peter Eggleston Connor: I don't know.
2:00:37
Matt: But I loved that, I was like, oh my god!
2:00:39
Tad Eggleston: Damn.
2:00:39
Matt: I remember that from the other side! I was like, this is brilliant!
2:00:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that was…
2:00:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: Inside, front cover, standard edition, back cover, deluxe edition by Mobius. Yeah, I think you're right.
2:00:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:01:04
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I'm down to 4…
2:01:10
Tad Eggleston: I'm down to 4! I'm down to 5!
2:01:13
Peter Eggleston Connor: Wait, what?
2:01:14
Tad Eggleston: You're right, I'm down to 5.
2:01:16
Peter Eggleston Connor: Damn it!
2:01:20
Peter Eggleston Connor: You weren't supposed to take my joke and make it real.
2:01:24
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm not, because when I got to the fifth page, this is actually the winner.
2:01:29
Peter Eggleston Connor: But it is the whole page.
2:01:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, it's really more everything but the first two panels. The first two panels I can go either way on.
2:01:39
Matt: Yeah.
2:01:40
Tad Eggleston: But… but, her emerging, him… Cracking his shell, like, yeah.
2:01:48
Peter Eggleston Connor: That's a really good page.
2:01:49
Tad Eggleston: This is, this is from our, our, our, what was it? It was.
2:01:53
Peter Eggleston Connor: Another really…
2:01:55
Dillon Gilbertson: I almost, I almost picked that panel, this one, the go back a couple pages.
2:02:02
Peter Eggleston Connor: Go backboard.
2:02:02
Dillon Gilbertson: This one. I almost put this one on the bottom left.
2:02:05
Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, I was looking at that one, too.
2:02:08
Matt: panel, too.
2:02:09
Peter Eggleston Connor: There was… there was some stuff in here that I was like, oh, I kinda wanna, like, pick something from here, and then was like, I'm gonna go pick this up tonight.
2:02:19
Dillon Gilbertson: And…
2:02:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
2:02:22
Tad Eggleston: This… this was…
2:02:23
Peter Eggleston Connor: Great imagery, so…
2:02:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, metal… I mean, heavy metal's been doing a great job, so I almost hate to, like, say Metal Erlant has been hands down better than the new heavy metal, but I kind of feel that way, and I still think that the new heavy metal has been amazing.
2:02:41
Tad Eggleston: If that makes sense.
2:02:42
Peter Eggleston Connor: Great, but we haven't talked about anything other than heavy metal number one on it there.
2:02:48
Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
2:02:51
Peter Eggleston Connor: Teardrop. Anyhow.
2:02:52
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, you guys gotta get your own, cause they, they, they're not giving us easy… shareable thing.
2:03:00
Peter Eggleston Connor: No, I totally get it.
2:03:01
Tad Eggleston: The digital, you have to read it on their website.
2:03:06
Tad Eggleston: Which is weird, and it's a mediocre viewer.
2:03:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they've essentially…
2:03:13
Tad Eggleston: I will likely, when my one-year subscription is up, go to getting it through my comic shop rather than getting it direct, because the digital they give me isn't worth it.
2:03:27
Peter Eggleston Connor: Sure.
2:03:29
Tad Eggleston: Sure, sure. But yeah. No. Cool. Thank you guys so much, that was…
2:03:38
Dillon Gilbertson: It's a marathon.
2:03:40
Tad Eggleston: It was a marathon, but it was also such a fucking good comic.
2:03:43
Matt: It was fun!
2:03:43
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
2:03:45
Matt: fun! I'm so glad we added one to this month.
2:03:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:03:49
Tad Eggleston: So,
2:03:53
Tad Eggleston: for Dylan, and my brother Peter, and my buddy Matt, like, if we don't talk again before the holiday, thank you so much for going on this journey with me. Matt, take us out.
2:04:06
Matt: Alright, we'll continue after the next page.