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With Great Power #269... 22 Panels with Matt Wagner & Kelley Jones · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody! Welcome back to 22 Panels, the podcast where we…
0:08
Tad Eggleston: Explore, examine, and elevate the medium of comics. This is episode number 206!
0:17
Tad Eggleston: Across the interwebs from me.
0:20
Phil: It is. Phil?
0:23
Phil: Good morning, Ted.
0:24
Tad Eggleston: And, in a little bit, we're gonna talk about, a work.
0:29
Phil: Each of us will talk about a work, and I looked at it, and I haven't read your work, so I'm looking forward to talking about it.
0:36
Phil: I… it's been a while since I've read your work.
0:38
Tad Eggleston: That was… that was formative in… in…
0:42
Tad Eggleston: In making us the comics people that we are today.
0:47
Tad Eggleston: But we'll start out with some news of note.
0:51
Tad Eggleston: One piece of comics news that is very sad, but we don't have a lot of details yet, is Humanoids has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 7 is the
1:02
Tad Eggleston: the, like, sudden death bankruptcy, not the reorganization bankruptcy.
1:09
Tad Eggleston: The one weird thing for me is…
1:12
Tad Eggleston: the day after I saw that they filed bankruptcy.
1:17
Tad Eggleston: their Kickstarter campaign shot out pictures of the hardcover of the next metal or lot, so… I'm kind of hoping that at least Volume 3 is far enough down the pipeline that it will go out to the people who have paid for it already, and…
1:34
Tad Eggleston: and go out to stores to help pay for their bankruptcy, or something.
1:41
Phil: Real quick, I saw, like a real… a short summation, not… not full details, but they were saying that.
1:50
Phil: So Humanoids has, an American division and a French division, and it's the American division that declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and looks like it's probably going away.
2:02
Tad Eggleston: the… the French division was already in…
2:05
Phil: Yeah.
2:06
Phil: That… I was getting to that, unfortunately. Yeah.
2:09
Phil: But they… it looks like they're not going away quite as sooner right now, so maybe…
2:16
Tad Eggleston: because French laws are different.
2:18
Phil: Yeah.
2:19
Tad Eggleston: I don't know… I mean, the new medal or lot, though, is… From… from humanoids, not…
2:25
Phil: Oh.
2:25
Tad Eggleston: humanoids.
2:27
Tad Eggleston: So…
2:29
Phil: Oh, sad day. Sad day.
2:31
Tad Eggleston: I do not know. I also do not know what will go on with their back catalog, and they've got…
2:38
Phil: Boom.
2:39
Tad Eggleston: So, like…
2:40
Tad Eggleston: Now is the time, when you're out at your local comic shop and you see that Humanoids book that you've been thinking about for a while, to grab it.
2:49
Tad Eggleston: Cause who knows… How long it will be before… Or… Various…
2:57
Tad Eggleston: Wonderful books are easily available again.
3:00
Phil: Yeah.
3:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
3:04
Tad Eggleston: things could still happen. I mean, you could still have some sort of angel investor who's smart enough to look at as a long-term investment and go.
3:12
Phil: Right.
3:13
Tad Eggleston: is not a catalog that you can lose money on over time unless you're stupid.
3:17
Tad Eggleston: Mobius. Makes money. Right, it sounds like there's a lot of this is, like, tied up in money owed them by Diamond.
3:29
Phil: Oh, that's a shame. That's a damn shame.
3:31
Tad Eggleston: So it's, it's, it's one of the, it's one of the diamond dominoes. Yeah.
3:38
Tad Eggleston: So… yeah.
3:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's our sad piece of comic news. So before we get into sad world news, we're gonna go into some really, really happy news. First of all.
3:51
Tad Eggleston: I know it's almost like rooting for the Yankees, but I refuse to think of any, any, team that includes Shohei Ohtani as… as… as, like, in any way, shape, or form evil.
4:06
Tad Eggleston: So, I was quite happy when the Dodgers clinched the National League pennant last night. I was even more happy because
4:13
Tad Eggleston: Shohei was the starting pitcher.
4:16
Tad Eggleston: In the first inning, It was in LA, so he pitched before he hit.
4:24
Tad Eggleston: In the first inning, He struck out 3.
4:28
Tad Eggleston: Ran off the field.
4:31
Tad Eggleston: didn't even go into the dugout, because he's also the Dodgers' leadoff hitter. So ran off the field to meet the bat boy, to get, like, his batting gloves, and his arm guard, and his foot guard, and his helmet and whatnot, and get up to the plate to hit.
4:50
Tad Eggleston: Where he hit a 440-some-odd foot home run.
4:54
Tad Eggleston: 116 mile an hour exit velocity.
4:58
Phil: Wow.
5:01
Tad Eggleston: Over the next 6 innings.
5:07
Tad Eggleston: He struck out 10.
5:09
Tad Eggleston: And hit 2 more home runs.
5:14
Phil: That feels… So, why wouldn't anyone want him to hit? That's the question.
5:20
Tad Eggleston: Why, why would…
5:21
Phil: No, no, sorry, sorry, that was me asking an obscure… well, not obscure, but the baseball, how one league has pitchers hit, and the other league has designated hitters for pitchers.
5:31
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, there is even, at this point, what is called the Otani Rule.
5:36
Phil: Oh.
5:37
Tad Eggleston: Which is, if you start the game as the designated hitter and the starting pitcher, you don't have to come out as the designated hitter when you come out as the pitcher.
5:51
Phil: Okay. I'm not…
5:52
Tad Eggleston: This is why he came out of the game.
5:57
Tad Eggleston: With nobody out and 2 on in the seventh.
6:01
Tad Eggleston: And hit his third home run in the bottom of the seventh.
6:05
Phil: Oh, okay.
6:08
Tad Eggleston: His second home run… Left the building.
6:15
Tad Eggleston: 462 feet went over the roof and left the building.
6:21
Phil: Wow.
6:21
Tad Eggleston: Like, the 8th or 9th time that's happened in… all of history.
6:26
Phil: Wow, Dodger Stadium.
6:28
Tad Eggleston: It was a performance for the ages.
6:35
Tad Eggleston: And just for those who haven't been paying attention, and, like.
6:40
Tad Eggleston: This is truly… I mean, Shohei Ohtani is truly, like…
6:46
Tad Eggleston: a unicorn in so many ways, and like, anybody who likes baseball at all needs to be paying attention to him right now, because I don't know that we'll ever see this again. We certainly have never seen it before. In his 8 seasons.
7:00
Tad Eggleston: So far, in Major League Baseball. He has 280 home runs.
7:06
Tad Eggleston: 165 stolen bases, a 282, 374, 582 slash line, that's batting average on base percentage and slugging percentage. If you want explainers, Phil, I can give them to you, but that's up to you.
7:22
Phil: That's okay, I just did the math, that's an average of 35 home runs per season, over 8 seasons.
7:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:28
Tad Eggleston: And…
7:31
Tad Eggleston: He has 670 strikeouts with a 3ERA, 1.08 whip, and 11.41 strikeouts per inning in 100 games started as a pitcher.
7:45
Tad Eggleston: To put it in… Like, geeky, geeky statistical terms, but some of them are ones that might actually be…
7:54
Tad Eggleston: More understandable to… laypeople.
8:02
Tad Eggleston: And I have a couple sets of stats here, baseball reference and fan graphs, because they use slightly different equations.
8:09
Tad Eggleston: To, to, to, to determine similar sets of numbers.
8:12
Tad Eggleston: Via baseball reference, he has a 160 OPS+. The way OPS Plus works is an average hitter
8:24
Tad Eggleston: Like, perfectly league average hitters should have a 100 OPS plus. Oh, that's awesome.
8:29
Phil: Sounds good, then.
8:29
Tad Eggleston: Over his career, he has been 60% better than the league average hitter.
8:36
Phil: Wow.
8:38
Tad Eggleston: A 143 ERA+. Again.
8:43
Tad Eggleston: It's the pitching version of the staff. An average pitcher would have a 100 ERA over his career. He has been 43% better than the average
8:55
Tad Eggleston: And then Winds Over Replacement is, is essentially…
9:00
Tad Eggleston: It's working from what is, like, 75-80% of a Major League player, or an average Major League player. It's essentially if somebody was called up from AAA to replace you.
9:11
Phil: What's the difference between you and them?
9:14
Tad Eggleston: Over his career, via baseball reference.
9:18
Tad Eggleston: He's contributed 51.5 wins above replacement, 35.3 with the bat, and 16 on the mound.
9:26
Phil: Wow.
9:29
Tad Eggleston: Fan graph, similar numbers, their weighted runs created plus. He's 56% better than…
9:36
Tad Eggleston: the average hitter, they use ERA minus, so that it's, it's, it's like… like, ERAs, you want to be lower, and batting averages, you want to be higher, so they wanted to go… so at a 71 ERA minus, he's roughly 30% better.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: Then the average pitcher.
9:54
Tad Eggleston: And that, that makes him at 49.7 fan graphs.
9:59
Tad Eggleston: wins above replacement. Now, mind you, My bar… For a Hall of Favor?
10:06
Tad Eggleston: Is 50 wins above replacement.
10:10
Tad Eggleston: That's not quite the way it always plays out. There's certain positions where it's lower, there's certain positions where it's higher, because it's an elected thing, there's… there's all sorts of… but, like, to me, if you have 50 wins above replacement, I… I think you belong in the Hall of Fame, period. End of story.
10:28
Tad Eggleston: Right?
10:29
Phil: Yeah.
10:30
Tad Eggleston: He is barely in his 30s.
10:34
Tad Eggleston: into his Major League career.
10:36
Phil: Wow.
10:37
Tad Eggleston: and is right at 50 war. And just put up…
10:41
Tad Eggleston: What is arguably the most impressive
10:47
Tad Eggleston: Single game performance in baseball history.
10:51
Phil: Wow.
10:52
Tad Eggleston: 3 home runs, and 10 strikeouts as a pitcher.
10:57
Tad Eggleston: And he did it in a pennant-clinching game.
11:00
Phil: Yeah, that's even more impressive. Yeah, damn. I mean, this is where…
11:05
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, for that matter, like, and this isn't the first time that he's been crazy like this, because…
11:11
Tad Eggleston: Last year, He be… you know, last year he didn't pitch, because he'd had…
11:17
Tad Eggleston: elbow surgery. Like, he's only actually pitched in 6 of his 8 seasons, because he's had 2 elbow surgeries, but he always comes back, like, because he's a workhorse.
11:26
Phil: Wow.
11:27
Tad Eggleston: Right? So last year, he didn't pitch. What he did do was hit more than 50 home runs and steal more than 50 bases, for the first time in baseball history.
11:34
Phil: Wow, overachieving!
11:36
Tad Eggleston: Right. The game where he got both his 50th home run and his… 50th stolen base.
11:44
Tad Eggleston: He actually hit 3 home runs, drove in 10.
11:49
Phil: Ow.
11:52
Tad Eggleston: And the Dodgers clinched the National League West.
11:55
Phil: Wow.
11:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, frankly, when I think back to that, I mean, that was the game that, like…
12:04
Tad Eggleston: In our baseball roundtable last year.
12:08
Tad Eggleston: I think at least 4 of us listed that game as…
12:12
Tad Eggleston: our favorite highlight from the season, and that was despite the number of Mets fans, and, like, the Mets had a great season last year.
12:19
Tad Eggleston: Right?
12:20
Tad Eggleston: So, like, Two years in a row.
12:25
Tad Eggleston: On top of being just this general unicorn, He has put up… Games… Absolutely.
12:35
Tad Eggleston: for the ages.
12:38
Phil: This is where, as a non-baseball person, I have to ask, would calling him the 21st century Babe Ruth be, an undersell?
12:50
Tad Eggleston: So…
12:50
Phil: Okay, yeah, that… I had a feeling that's what it might be, yeah.
12:53
Tad Eggleston: I mean, a lot of people have been doing it, but, like, Babe… Babe never…
12:59
Tad Eggleston: Never was really a pitcher and hitter at the same time.
13:03
Phil: Oh, interesting, okay.
13:04
Tad Eggleston: When he was pitching, he tended not to hit on the days in between. When he was hitting, he tended not to pitch.
13:10
Phil: Okay. Oh, yeah, so that is… that is…
13:14
Phil: Surpassing the common man legend.
13:17
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, he was a very good pitcher, and obviously he was a very good hitter.
13:22
Phil: I don't think he was as good of a baserunner.
13:25
Phil: Yeah.
13:26
Phil: I think that slows you down.
13:28
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, Babe was actually a much better baserunner than most people give him credit for.
13:33
Phil: Sure.
13:34
Tad Eggleston: But, like, Otani is an outstanding baserunner.
13:37
Phil: Yeah.
13:38
Tad Eggleston: Ohtani hasn't played a lot of outfield?
13:41
Tad Eggleston: But when he has, he's played it well enough that I would be curious as to what… to see what happened if he…
13:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't think that even if he wanted to do it, any team would allow him to play outfield in between starts, just because they're increasing the likelihood of injury that much more. It's like…
14:03
Tad Eggleston: this investment! Yeah.
14:09
Tad Eggleston: But, like… No, I mean… the only…
14:19
Tad Eggleston: real… comparisons that I know of in U.S. baseball.
14:28
Tad Eggleston: Sounds like… I mean, I haven't dug enough into Japanese baseball, and it sounds like there was maybe a guy in the 50s that played both ways.
14:38
Tad Eggleston: But not at nearly the same level.
14:41
Tad Eggleston: Is… there are two guys in the Negro Leagues.
14:50
Tad Eggleston: who are considered among the best pitchers and among the best hitters in Negro League history.
14:57
Tad Eggleston: You know, so you have Bullet Rogan in, like, the… the teens through…
15:04
Tad Eggleston: late 20s, early 30s, and you have, Martin De Higo, in…
15:14
Tad Eggleston: Like, the late 30s to the 50s.
15:18
Tad Eggleston: Digo is actually in Hall of Fame, 5 different Hall of Fames. He's in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he's in the Negro League Hall of Fame, he's in the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame, he's in the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame, I think he's in the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame.
15:32
Phil: Wow, good for him.
15:35
Tad Eggleston: My favorite… my favorite Martin Digo story, and, like… it, it, it,
15:46
Tad Eggleston: it gives last night's Shohei story a run for its money.
15:50
Tad Eggleston: is in, I forget if it was a playoff, or… or…
15:57
Tad Eggleston: or just a pennant, consequential game in the Mexican League.
16:02
Tad Eggleston: in, I think, the 30s. Now I've… now I actually have to look it up.
16:06
Phil: Are you okay?
16:08
Tad Eggleston: because it was, it was written up very… there's a, SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research, most people think of as…
16:23
Tad Eggleston: like, mostly a stats thing, you know, the advanced stats are often called saber metrics, that sort of thing.
16:31
Phil: and well…
16:33
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
16:34
Tad Eggleston: That is true.
16:37
Tad Eggleston: It's so much more. They're just massive baseball historians.
16:43
Tad Eggleston: And one of their projects is the… the… the Baseball Biography Project, where, like, they're… Diligently to have…
16:54
Tad Eggleston: Some sort of biography for every baseball… everybody who's ever played.
16:59
Tad Eggleston: You know, so, like, sometimes I'll just go through and I'll find completely random names of people that I've never heard of, and wind up, like.
17:06
Tad Eggleston: Being able to read a page, not just on their career, but on their life, you know, really…
17:11
Tad Eggleston: research stuff, right?
17:13
Tad Eggleston: So, the one on Martin Dego starts by Peter C. Bjorkman.
17:19
Tad Eggleston: Starts this way. A league pennant was squarely on the line under the brutal Mexican sun on September 5th, 1938. A team known as Agrerio, led by the legendary Satchel Page, battled Aguila for the championship of the summertime Mexican circuit.
17:38
Tad Eggleston: A league recently strengthened by the importation of such frontline Negro League stars as Josh Gibson, Ray Dandridge, and Willie Wells, and the redoubtable Paige. For eight tense innings, agelet Satchel had battled pitch for pitch with his rival, an equally tough.
17:56
Tad Eggleston: Cuban ace on the hill for Aguila. Page's formidable opponent that day would eventually amass an 18-2 record and microscopic .92 ERA, and a league-best 184 strikeouts before the wrap-up of the same summer season.
18:14
Tad Eggleston: Both aces dueled for 8 innings of a 1-1 deadlock before Paige became the first to succumb to the relentless heat.
18:23
Tad Eggleston: In the ninth frame, the league's leading hitter brought his .387 average to the plate against yet another imported Cuban hurler, Ramon Brigania.
18:33
Tad Eggleston: who had just relieved the wilted page. The tension was quickly erased when the star Aguila batsman crushed one of Bragania's best offerings over the distant center field wall for a dramatic walk-off homer.
18:46
Tad Eggleston: If one were to spice this story by announcing that the league-leading pitcher and the league-leading hitter were twin brothers, a reader could not be blamed for dismissing the veracity of the tall tale. And yet the truth, in this case, is even more incredible than almost any imagined Hollywood-style plot.
19:03
Tad Eggleston: The star Cuban hurdler and the 387 hitter, not to mention the pennant-winning manager, were in fact all one and the same remarkable athlete. The hero of this tale, and so many more like it, was in truth Martin Digo, black baseball's true immortal.
19:22
Tad Eggleston: As he was dubbed back home in Cuba.
19:26
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
19:28
Phil: That's awesome. I…
19:29
Tad Eggleston: That would be the one guy in baseball history
19:34
Tad Eggleston: And this is where it's such a shame that, like.
19:37
Tad Eggleston: there's very little Negro League film.
19:41
Tad Eggleston: There are… thanks to a lot of really dedicated researchers, we now have a much better collection of
19:52
Tad Eggleston: Stats and box scores, you know, from scrounging newspaper archives and microfilm and whatnot all over the country.
20:02
Tad Eggleston: But, like, any official league records were, were…
20:06
Tad Eggleston: Destroyed at various times, and various means.
20:11
Phil: Yeah.
20:13
Tad Eggleston: Like, the level of play they got to…
20:17
Tad Eggleston: and joy was… it was greatly variable. They're living and traveling, but on… on the flip side of that, they're living… living and traveling.
20:28
Tad Eggleston: Conditions were also.
20:30
Phil: ridiculously variable.
20:33
Phil: Yeah.
20:34
Tad Eggleston: You know, I, you know, finally, Negro League…
20:40
Tad Eggleston: you know, the stats that are tied to the actual league games have been considered Major League stats, which is why Josh Gibson is now considered the all-time leading hitter, rather than Ty Cobb.
20:54
Tad Eggleston: But none of them come close in the… in the counting stats, because…
20:59
Tad Eggleston: There aren't enough official league games for them to come close.
21:05
Tad Eggleston: But, like, if they played 40 league games in a season, there was a good chance that they played 200 non-league games.
21:11
Phil: Wow, that, that's, that's a really fascinating, like, hypothetical lost history there. Also, while…
21:18
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. And for years and years and years, and this is one of those white privilege things, right? For years and years and years.
21:26
Tad Eggleston: like, the whole argument on how we couldn't… we couldn't say that the Negro Leagues were…
21:32
Tad Eggleston: equal to the major leagues, blah blah blah was, you know, well, they didn't have to face Babe Ruth, and it's like, yeah, and Babe Ruth didn't have to face Satchel Page.
21:42
Phil: Right.
21:43
Phil: Right. Oh.
21:46
Phil: Yeah, no, I couldn't help but imagine, while you're on that saver page, how cool it would be to have a project like that for comics, of having.
21:54
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I desperately want one.
21:56
Phil: Yeah, everyone who's ever drawn, been involved in comics, you know, that would be so cool.
22:02
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, I want that too. Actually, that…
22:05
Tad Eggleston: I'm surprised you don't know about this.
22:07
Phil: O?
22:09
Tad Eggleston: Lambiac.
22:10
Phil: Oh, interesting.
22:12
Tad Eggleston: Actually, a comic shop is…
22:15
Phil: There we go.
22:16
Tad Eggleston: It is a comic shop in… Somewhere in Europe, I forget.
22:28
Tad Eggleston: Wow, my, my… My TV that had been frozen for hours decided just…
22:34
Tad Eggleston: start playing behind me. Oh, I didn't hear.
22:37
Phil: any of it.
22:37
Tad Eggleston: No, that's because it was… I'm certain it was…
22:40
Tad Eggleston: Lambiak is actually a comic shop in… let's see… Amsterdam?
22:48
Phil: Okay, very cool.
22:49
Tad Eggleston: A very old comic shop, but their website also includes the Comiclopedia, including the Artist Compendium.
23:03
Phil: Yeah, it says, welcome to the Comic Cloppedia, an illustrated compendium of over 14,000 comic creators from around the world.
23:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, obviously not all of them are in-depth. This is all it's got for Greg Land.
23:14
Phil: That's all you need for Great Land.
23:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, Greg Land's pretty cool.
23:18
Phil: He is, he is, but I think you can take the same things about Correct Land and reuse them, and you'll get the gist.
23:26
Tad Eggleston: But, like, let's look at…
23:31
Phil: Oh, this is… this is a hell of a rabbit hole to be tempted on the exit.
23:35
Tad Eggleston: Let's… let's go with a friend.
23:36
Phil: Yeah!
23:37
Tad Eggleston: Bob Sikoriak.
23:38
Phil: Heck yeah, Bob!
23:40
Tad Eggleston: Bob Skoriak gets…
23:42
Phil: Oh, yeah. Yeah, this is… that's…
23:45
Phil: That's a good amount for Socoriak, heck yeah.
23:48
Tad Eggleston: You know… Let's look at… One of our first… Comic Strip Club.
24:06
Tad Eggleston: Roy Crane.
24:07
Phil: Boy, crane.
24:09
Phil: Oh, I think I've heard the name, but I… wow, these are really incredible.
24:13
Tad Eggleston: is outstanding.
24:14
Phil: Yeah.
24:15
Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's actually not as steep as I expected it to be.
24:18
Phil: Oh, yeah.
24:20
Phil: But…
24:20
Tad Eggleston: Only, it looks like two, three pictures. So pick one of the people that he's an.
24:24
Phil: Right? Oh, John Severin's the first one that jumps out at me.
24:30
Phil: Yeah, oh my gosh, this is… you've… you've given me a great gift here, Tad.
24:34
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
24:35
Phil: I'm going to be popping around on this for a good while.
24:37
Tad Eggleston: Like, this might be something that we have to spend more time with.
24:40
Phil: Oh.
24:40
Tad Eggleston: another time, yeah, lambic.net.
24:43
Phil: I already have a tablet for it.
24:46
Tad Eggleston: very much.
24:48
Tad Eggleston: And I, I mean, I initially discovered on accident, because if you Google almost anybody.
24:53
Phil: Huh.
24:54
Tad Eggleston: not far… far after their Wikipedia will be their Lambiic.
24:59
Phil: Interesting.
25:00
Tad Eggleston: matter, half the time, they're Wikipedia, if you pay attention to the sources.
25:04
Phil: Yeah. Scythambia?
25:06
Tad Eggleston: significant…
25:07
Phil: Oh, that's funny.
25:08
Tad Eggleston: parts of it are sourced to Lambiic.
25:11
Phil: That's really cool.
25:11
Tad Eggleston: So…
25:12
Phil: Any listeners out there worried about spelling, it is spelled L-A-M-B-I-E-K dot net.
25:21
Tad Eggleston: Good.
25:22
Tad Eggleston: I was… I was… I had been… they don't put it up top, but they.
25:26
Phil: Oh, okay.
25:26
Tad Eggleston: I do say at the bottom who the.
25:28
Phil: Oh, yeah.
25:28
Tad Eggleston: my.
25:29
Phil: That's really cool, too.
25:31
Phil: I like that. And, and last updated, stuff like that?
25:34
Tad Eggleston: for that matter, Marie Severin.
25:36
Phil: Of course! I mean, it's hard to imagine having…
25:40
Tad Eggleston: Do they also do, like, panels?
25:43
Tad Eggleston: ages.
25:44
Phil: Yeah, there's a lot of reference art in here to show these people's work, which is part of what makes it so incredible to look at, of…
25:53
Phil: You know, finding… finding things from people you've never heard about, and…
25:57
Tad Eggleston: Damn.
25:57
Phil: Looking absolutely incredible.
26:01
Tad Eggleston: But, but yeah, no, I, I, I find it an absolutely, essential research when…
26:10
Tad Eggleston: When I'm either talking to or about a creator that I don't know quite as well.
26:17
Phil: Okay.
26:20
Phil: The beginning of, of your cheat codes.
26:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. But, yeah. So, what kind of week has it been, Will?
26:28
Tad Eggleston: The Republicans continue to… to make the No Kings rally out to be the… the Hate America rally, so while…
26:38
Phil: Thanks for having me with a good time.
26:40
Tad Eggleston: I… I won't… I won't…
26:42
Tad Eggleston: this won't go live until afterwards. I sincerely hope that there is actually a lot of patriotism openly on display.
26:52
Phil: Oh, yeah. To make that narrative harder?
26:55
Phil: Sure hope.
26:55
Tad Eggleston: One of the most effective things being done
26:59
Tad Eggleston: in… in Portland, in Chicago, is, like.
27:04
Tad Eggleston: It's hard to get the visuals they want.
27:08
Tad Eggleston: when you're dressed like a frog, or a banana.
27:12
Phil: Yep.
27:13
Phil: Or Cookie Monster.
27:14
Tad Eggleston: Right. It's hard to get the visuals they want when it's a pastor clearly praying.
27:20
Phil: I… one of the… one of my favorite humorous memes that was posted was… was someone saying, look at these organized forces in… in Portland, or saying, look at these forces in Portland, this is a joke, and then trying to demonize them and saying, look, they're organized, they bought their own animal costumes!
27:37
Tad Eggleston: Right.
27:40
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, the… The part of successful non-violent movements.
27:55
Tad Eggleston: That's… Not talked about, because it's so painful.
28:01
Tad Eggleston: Is that a large part of their success is… often… The violence inflicted on them.
28:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And there…
28:12
Phil: That's been…
28:12
Tad Eggleston: ability to not… Retaliate.
28:16
Phil: Yeah, their ability to endure and, stand up to opposition, yeah.
28:21
Tad Eggleston: I… I wonder if…
28:25
Tad Eggleston: things like the frog costumes, you know. I wonder if making… making the threat of violence look so ridiculous.
28:35
Phil: It does.
28:35
Tad Eggleston: May finally be the key to a non-violent movement that doesn't require Having violence inflicted upon it.
28:47
Phil: Yeah. To…
28:50
Tad Eggleston: prevail.
28:52
Phil: I hope so.
28:53
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know.
28:54
Tad Eggleston: But, but, but, I mean, that's, that's my thing, is on one side, like.
28:58
Tad Eggleston: This is incredibly important, and I don't think we win it through violence. Not only do I not think we win it through violence, because violence begets violence, and, like, we might retake power, but that wouldn't really be a win. I don't think we win it through violence, because I'm not certain we have the firepower to win it through violence.
29:17
Phil: Yeah. I… as you were saying that, I was also thinking that, you know, in this situation, for… for violence to be considered the win, like, I feel like it's… it's… it's more of a…
29:30
Phil: It's a resolution, it's a… it's a… it's an ending.
29:33
Phil: But it's not a win, because…
29:35
Tad Eggleston: Well…
29:35
Phil: We don't want…
29:36
Tad Eggleston: You know what, though? It would be for them.
29:38
Phil: And that's the difference, that's the big difference between size.
29:41
Tad Eggleston: If it gets violent…
29:43
Phil: Yep. No, they are, they are…
29:45
Tad Eggleston: win.
29:46
Phil: they are actively wanting to win with violence. That is the main difference.
29:51
Phil: That's what they're based.
29:52
Tad Eggleston: ace wants. Yeah. If it gets violent, and they win.
29:57
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if we'll ever have an America that I want to live in again.
30:02
Phil: We're definitely at a point where it's easy to imagine. I mean, on one hand, yes, we have to acknowledge that we've had a problem with fascism for a much longer time than this century, but on the other hand…
30:15
Tad Eggleston: And that's one of the reasons why it's so important to acknowledge that.
30:18
Phil: Yes, yes.
30:19
Tad Eggleston: Because it's important to acknowledge that the stakes are really fucking high.
30:24
Phil: it's… it's not just…
30:27
Tad Eggleston: And that makes the manner in which you win That much more important.
30:33
Phil: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's huge.
30:36
Phil: It's absolutely huge.
30:39
Tad Eggleston: Bomb.
30:39
Phil: I was immediately distracted. My cat got very excited by a bird.
30:42
Tad Eggleston: No problem, because… because that, that, that'll… that'll keep us from falling too far down the rabbit hole. I'm happy that the only rabbit hole we fell down was Otani and Digo.
30:53
Phil: Yeah, those are good places to go.
30:55
Tad Eggleston: Good rabbit hole.
30:56
Phil: Heck yeah. I'm always happy to let you.
30:59
Tad Eggleston: I don't think this is in part… I don't think this is on purpose, but it would be a question that I would ask Ohtani.
31:06
Tad Eggleston: There's not a lot of, of,
31:10
Tad Eggleston: good records on what numbers Negro Leaguers played and… or wore, and, like, half of the Negro League era was before numbers were… were common, and… and uniforms were more likely to be passed around at times, you know.
31:28
Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing. But one of the numbers that… that… Digo… is credibly…
31:36
Tad Eggleston: reported to have worn is the 17 that… that Ohtani now wears. So that's… that's just a cool, geeky thing for me, too.
31:46
Phil: That is fun. I like that.
31:49
Tad Eggleston: So, alright, we, we, we are near the end of the, the month, so this is our last batch of, of…
31:58
Tad Eggleston: new to order stuff before the next catalog, so it's gonna be a shorter one. I'm gonna talk about Donald
32:05
Tad Eggleston: Duck.
32:07
Tad Eggleston: The golden pineapple.
32:10
Tad Eggleston: It's, Legacy No. 389, number one of the new series from Phantographic. Gorm Transgard, Joe Torkivia, Peter Sneeberg, Thad Komorski, art by Giorgio…
32:23
Tad Eggleston: Cavazzano Marco Roda, the golden pineapple. You can't buy this eye-popping giant fruit at a grocery store. It's 24 carats, it's worth billions, and it's been lost in distant Costa Pena for 75 years… 750 years, despite 750,000 tourists effort to find it.
32:41
Tad Eggleston: -Oh, Uncle Scrooge hasn't found it yet either, and in an epic adventure from fan-favorite artist Giorgio Cavazzano, Donald is fighting to get…
32:53
Tad Eggleston: Air first.
32:55
Tad Eggleston: Then, in Be Happy, Jealous Donald always thought Gladstone Gander was Earth's luckiest duck, but a sadistic sea storm may prove otherwise.
33:07
Tad Eggleston: I love Carl Bark's duck comics. I love a lot of the later duck comics after Barks that, like.
33:17
Tad Eggleston: were clearly done by people that, like, understood their legacy. A lot of them were European.
33:24
Tad Eggleston: And I love that Fanographics is now bringing back the monthlies and using a lot of the European talent that has been doing great stuff with them as well. The first…
33:35
Tad Eggleston: the first, Uncle Scrooge… came out.
33:39
Tad Eggleston: what, last week, something like that, and it was outstanding. So, I'm definitely looking for Don… looking forward to Donald Duck, and even, at this point, looking forward to Mickey Mouse, just because they're doing such a phenomenal job with
33:52
Tad Eggleston: Donald and Scrooge, that it's like… I'll give Mickey a shot.
33:59
Phil: Alrighty, and next up, we've got…
34:02
Tad Eggleston: That's in stores on December 10th from Fanographics, sorry.
34:06
Phil: Oh, that's… there we go. Next up we have Chiller Shiver Suspense Stories, from writers David M. Boomer, Melissa Flores… what's that?
34:17
Tad Eggleston: Boor.
34:17
Phil: Bohr! David M. Bohr, Melissa Flores, George Northie, Ben H. Winters, artists Sammy Covella, Dan McDade, a cover from Dustin Weaver. As if the holidays weren't horrific enough, EC Comics and Oni Press are back to stab your sh-
34:34
Phil: You're stalking for the second year running with an all-new, all-terrifying tales of holiday horror and Christmas time catastrophe as Shiver Suspense Stories slays again.
34:44
Phil: In this year's giant-sized, 56-page tome of gruesomely gift-wrapped delights, we're trying…
34:49
Phil: Perpetual not-listers, David M. Boer, Melissa Flores.
34:54
Tad Eggleston: It's gonna be your list again.
34:55
Phil: people I just listed out. Go listen to them again. More great, suspenseful, coming from EC and Oni.
35:02
Phil: Never Fear, EC's newest annual tradition also comes complete with an extra added EC Comics classic, newly restored, back to its authentic, original coloring. And that is gonna be in stores December 10th.
35:17
Tad Eggleston: Alright, a couple of…
35:20
Tad Eggleston: Or, I guess, no, only one graphic novel. The Magnificent Adventure, The Perils of Giuseppe Bergman by Milo Manera.
35:31
Tad Eggleston: Young Giuseppe Bergman, thirsting for escape from the banal, soul-crushing boredom of his everyday life, answers a mysterious ad offering the adventure of a lifetime.
35:44
Tad Eggleston: But before he even gets a chance to understand what that means, he's swept up in a headlong rush of outrageously convoluted danger and fast-paced action for which he is absolutely unprepared, all at the behest of the enigmatic HP and an unseen television audience.
36:03
Tad Eggleston: Myla Minera skewers adventure comics, reality TV, and narrative convention itself in this absurdist, sophisticated satire that launches the innocent Giuseppe into the first of many adventures to come.
36:16
Tad Eggleston: The Magnificent Adventure, complete in one volume.
36:22
Tad Eggleston: So, this is out on December 3rd.
36:28
Tad Eggleston: A couple of collections.
36:31
Phil: Alrighty, there is Blue Palo Verde from Ray Fox and Ramonte at Mad Cave.
36:37
Tad Eggleston: Get… let me get the collection…
36:40
Phil: Oh, the collection, okay, there we go. On her first day out of jail, Christine Woods discovers that her father has disappeared into a mysterious, isolated town hidden in the New Mexico desert. Now it's up to her to find him and rescue him from a bizarre and unnatural threat, an atmospheric folk horror story of dread and redemption set in the American Southwest. That is in stores December 10th from Mad Cave Studios.
37:03
Phil: That looks really, really cool.
37:05
Tad Eggleston: I managed to read the first issue of this, and… and… it was fantastic, and it just, like…
37:12
Tad Eggleston: got lost in the shuffle from then, so… from there, so I'm looking… Too many good comics. Too many comics, yeah, yeah.
37:18
Tad Eggleston: far down below, from Christopher Condon and Gege Shaw, journey to the center of eastern Pennsylvania.
37:29
Tad Eggleston: In the muggy Pennsylvania summer of 1983, teen friends Jeff and Brian seek escape from rainy day boredom by exploring Brian's abandoned and apparently haunted family home on the other side of town.
37:41
Tad Eggleston: When they instead find a secret that will unlock the doors to adventure and danger as they descend beneath the surface, encounter terrifying strange creatures, and journey far, far down below.
37:57
Tad Eggleston: to discover a strange new world and themselves for Mad Cave Studios, out just in time for Christmas on December 24th. This was outstanding.
38:10
Phil: Yeah.
38:10
Tad Eggleston: Last-minute shoppers out there. Oh, yeah.
38:14
Tad Eggleston: Final order cutoff for Monday, October 27th.
38:22
Tad Eggleston: Batman Deadpool number 1 from Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, Tom Taylor, Mariko Tamaki, G. Willa Wilson, Dan Mora, Hayden Sherman, Bruno Redondo, Amanda Connor, and Dennis Cowan from DC Marvel on November 19th.
38:41
Tad Eggleston: Capes number 1 from Robert Kirkman, Mark Englert from Skybound Image on November 19th.
38:47
Tad Eggleston: Drumsticks of Doom, number 1, from John Westhoff and Dan Doherty, part-time comics, December 3rd. Ferocious, number 1, from Luke.
38:57
Tad Eggleston: Pedrovsky and Emmanuel Ercoloni at Mad Cave on November 19th.
39:03
Tad Eggleston: the collection of the Comixology Comics Ghost Box from Mike Carey and Pablo Raimondo, at Mad Cave on November 18th.
39:14
Tad Eggleston: Which is 19th for comic shops.
39:17
Tad Eggleston: I was a fashion school serial killer.
39:20
Tad Eggleston: Doug Wagner, Daniel Hilliard at Image on December 3rd, Petra Shari from Atilio Meshaluzzi at Fanta Graphics on December 3rd, and Trigger Warning, a Stranger in Paradise story, one-shot from Terry Moore and Abstract Studios.
39:38
Tad Eggleston: on December 3rd.
39:42
Tad Eggleston: Currently crowdfunding, we have
39:44
Tad Eggleston: The Comic Shop Anthology from Lifeline Comics on Kickstarter through October 23rd. Dracula Book 3, The Count from Matt Wagner and Kelly Jones on Kickstarter until October 30th. Feeling Messed Up, David F. Walker on Kickstarter through October 30th.
39:59
Tad Eggleston: Our long national nightmare from Tom Tomorrow on Kickstarter through October 30th.
40:05
Tad Eggleston: The Dead and the Damn, number 3, from Sebastian Gerner, Kelly Williams, and Goats Flying Press on Kickstarter until October 31st.
40:13
Tad Eggleston: Halloween Special Number 1 from John Lee's Alex Cormac at Comics Tribe on Kickstarter through October 31st. The Comics Courier issue 3 from Tiffany Babb on Kickstarter through November 1st.
40:25
Tad Eggleston: And Rigsby, Wisconsin.
40:28
Tad Eggleston: Volume 2, Burn It Down from Essie Case and Iron Circus on Kickstarter through November 6th, and a mangaka, a Kaiju, and Omega from Juan Ponce, and Lure Noise on Zoop through November 7th.
40:43
Tad Eggleston: I didn't add it, but there's also a Kickstarter out there for Beneath the Trees, where nobody sees the game.
40:50
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah! That is exciting!
40:53
Tad Eggleston: So, maybe we'll add that in with more details next week.
40:57
Tad Eggleston: Anyway, 3 amazing books, and
41:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it was a… it was a good week, even though it was a little week, and… and I… and I realized that I… I don't even have one of… one of the great books… what… the one non-number one that almost…
41:15
Tad Eggleston: Made.
41:17
Tad Eggleston: my top 3. I had somehow not put on my,
41:22
Tad Eggleston: honorable mention that this was Good as Dead number 2 from David and Maria Lapham.
41:28
Tad Eggleston: Lucky Devils number 5 was also fantastic, Wonder Woman number 26, Tom King continues to kill. Don't forget your briefcase number 4 from Elliot Rahal at Mad Cave continues to be awesome, but… but the winners this week…
41:43
Tad Eggleston: save now for Matt Kent and Thomas Chiarello at Bad Idea. It's a character in the Milestone universe that can, like.
41:54
Tad Eggleston: Turn time back, like, 6 seconds, something like that, and we'll regularly do it in battles to…
42:00
Tad Eggleston: This takes that to, like, a greater level, and, like, there's… there's a character whose ability is he can turn back time as far as he needs to, and…
42:09
Tad Eggleston: he's the only one that knows. So he ages all the time that he lives.
42:15
Tad Eggleston: The other people only age normally, so he's part of a super team that always wins, because they get to replay it as often as possible,
42:27
Phil: That sounds really great, actually.
42:28
Tad Eggleston: But sometimes, like, aren't aware that they always win, because, like, He hits the reset button.
42:35
Phil: Yeah.
42:36
Tad Eggleston: they feel like they always win, but that's because when they lose, he hits the reset button. So this is kind of the…
42:45
Tad Eggleston: The… the setup of this story is, like…
42:52
Tad Eggleston: The apocalypse has happened.
42:54
Tad Eggleston: And he's like, look, I've replayed this every way I can, and like… We can't change it.
43:03
Phil: Wow.
43:05
Tad Eggleston: And them getting… we always win, he's like, you don't get it, you always win!
43:10
Phil: But somebody's playing.
43:11
Tad Eggleston: I am 30 years older than I was the last time I talked to you in your world. Yeah, holy shit.
43:19
Phil: Oh, that is fascinating.
43:21
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So…
43:25
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, it's… it's fantastic. Endeavor, that's from Matt Kenton, Tomas Chiarello at Bad Idea. Endeavor, number one, from Stephanie Phillips and Mark Lemming at Distillery. This has two wonderful things going for it. The first is that, like, it's a Stephanie Phillips, like.
43:46
Tad Eggleston: Creepy ocean adventure story?
43:49
Tad Eggleston: But the second is there's an explicitly autistic young girl in it, and I…
43:55
Phil: No, that's awesome.
43:56
Tad Eggleston: I dig that.
43:57
Phil: Yeah.
43:57
Tad Eggleston: That's great. Very much… and Endeavor is, like…
44:05
Tad Eggleston: And imagine you took the endeavor.
44:08
Tad Eggleston: And rebuilt it as a… a…
44:15
Tad Eggleston: luxury yacht, trying to give rich people the experience of going on the… because obviously the endeavors.
44:23
Tad Eggleston: And, like, I think some people thought it was actually going to be a story about the Endeavor, and I wonder if there will be more of that woven in, and, like, there's some of that. But, like, the main story is about, like.
44:35
Tad Eggleston: And this is so capital, I mean, it's like, let's rebuild the Titanic for people to go on!
44:43
Phil: Yeah. Yeah.
44:44
Tad Eggleston: Oh, oh, oh, oh.
44:46
Tad Eggleston: Only, you know, even less luxury of a ship, but, like, if you're gonna get the rich people to come, you gotta turn it into more of a luck… yeah, it's…
44:55
Tad Eggleston: It's fascinating.
44:56
Tad Eggleston: And I'm really, really looking forward to where Stephanie takes it, dr. Phillips is outstanding.
45:04
Tad Eggleston: With her storytelling. And finally, TerrorBytes, number one from Mark Russell and Felix Ruiz at Mad Cave. Mark is,
45:13
Tad Eggleston: Taking on, capitalism, politics, and technology in his typical, satirical and absolutely hilarious, while absolutely…
45:26
Tad Eggleston: You know how, do you know the term,
45:31
Tad Eggleston: like, Ride Homer, or… or next day joke. It's the joke that you don't realize that it's funny until…
45:40
Phil: I get the concept, because I've had… I've had that happen.
45:44
Tad Eggleston: Right. And there's also the reverse, which is, like.
45:48
Tad Eggleston: the… the one that you don't realize it's not funny. I've had those two, oh no. …or not funny for bad reasons. Now, what I think Mark…
45:59
Tad Eggleston: I think… I think what Mark Russell is the pro at is writing those things that are… that are funny.
46:08
Phil: And then when you sit with it for a little bit.
46:11
Tad Eggleston: You're like, oh, but this is not funny at all. And then you sit with it a little bit longer, and you're like, which makes it hilarious.
46:19
Phil: Yeah, yeah, I can… that's quite… that's the ride he takes you on, for sure.
46:23
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
46:25
Phil: Oh, yeah, heavy…
46:26
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense? I mean, you really…
46:27
Phil: traveling tomorrow.
46:28
Tad Eggleston: We're finally introduced to Mark Russell with Traveling to Mars. Isn't that, like, the purpose?
46:33
Phil: Example of… yeah.
46:34
Tad Eggleston: What it is, it's like, it's like, this is hilarious, and it's like, oh, wait a minute. No, no.
46:39
Phil: And that's the thing, is that I… I started…
46:41
Tad Eggleston: Horrible. And then it's like, oh, but, but it's also so real, so what the fuck are you supposed to do except laugh at it?
46:49
Phil: Yeah, I started a little bit of phase two of that, like, this isn't funny, this is slightly horrifying, and then… and then the humor became more apparent the further in I went. Like, traveling to Mars was great.
47:01
Tad Eggleston: It goes from surface funny, to horrifying, to, oh…
47:05
Phil: This?
47:05
Tad Eggleston: is.
47:07
Tad Eggleston: Biting satire.
47:08
Phil: To then, like, odd…
47:10
Tad Eggleston: This is, this is Jonathan Swift Eat Your Children.
47:13
Phil: Yeah, it was like, this is… this is an argument about nothingness and insignificance that makes me feel better about things, not worse. Right. Oh, it was beautiful. I recommended it to my dad and a friend of mine from work who loves sci-fi. Right.
47:28
Tad Eggleston: So, terabytes is very much off on that.
47:34
Tad Eggleston: level of Mark Russell wonderfulness.
47:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
47:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
47:44
Tad Eggleston: So, that was cool.
47:48
Phil: Next up, I'm sorry, I didn't wanna… Yeah. Cut you off.
47:53
Tad Eggleston: Let's take a walk with Phil.
47:54
Phil: It's walking time! This… these are, some honorable formative mentions. I had a lot of fun thinking about… about, formative comics, and realizing just…
48:06
Phil: What a weird, wide…
48:09
Phil: stretch of formative comics I've had in my life, in roughly chronological order of these honorable mentions. There's Calvin Hobbes, you know, a first favorite.
48:18
Phil: formative memories. I mean, newspaper comics in general were kind of a start. When I was a kid, my parents said, you need to be informed, you need to start reading the newspaper every day. And I said, okay, I'll read the comic section. And somehow that worked.
48:31
Phil: Then, of course, there is Watchmen from Moore, Gibbons, and Higgins. these next couple weeks, we're gonna be talking about, different
48:41
Phil: ways of different books have impacted you. There's a version of me that could have picked Watchmen for all three categories, but I'm not going to, because I am trying to not be that person. After that is the American translation of Battle Royale from
48:57
Phil: Koshun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi, that was actually the, the English adaptation was… was rewritten or touched up by Keith Giffen.
49:08
Phil: who introduced the element that, the Battle Royale game was a reality show, years before the Hunger Games existed. This was the series that I first, saw an exposed human brain, and immediately felt sick to my stomach.
49:25
Phil: But kept reading for some reason anyway.
49:28
Phil: And then, of course, this one is on the very last edge of formativity. You know, I think I was about 21, maybe 22, when I saw the cover of
49:38
Phil: Brubaker and Phillips Fatel, number one, the third printing specifically, had a gangster in a suit holding a Tommy gun, and his head was like a sharp-toothed tentacle…
49:50
Phil: Cthulhu monster. It was…
49:53
Phil: so eye-catching. I had to pick it up. This was the first non-superhero, non-Marvel DC… I mean, not non-superhero, because I've read Vertigo stuff, but non-Marvel DC comic that helped, you know, this set me down onto getting into image and indie comics, so it's hard not to see it as formative on that level.
50:13
Phil: But yeah, those are my honorable mentions. My actual pick will be up shortly after we, check in on the One Piece Race Week 65. Tad, how much One Piece have you read this week?
50:24
Tad Eggleston: I was just checking that really quickly, and got, down a Shohei text rabbit hole.
50:33
Phil: Fascinating. Shohei text rabbit hole. Okay, well, I'm not… I'm not…
50:37
Tad Eggleston: I think it's 602, but give me just a second to confirm that.
50:43
Phil: Understood. Not entirely sure what this, Shohei text rabbit.
50:46
Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, no, no, no, 603.
50:49
Phil: Okay, there we go.
50:50
Tad Eggleston: Finish. Oh, one of my baseball friends wasn't watching the game, so, like, I was…
50:55
Phil: Eric?
50:55
Tad Eggleston: To fill him in on… on…
50:58
Phil: What? Oh, Ty, there we go.
51:00
Tad Eggleston: terribly.
51:01
Tad Eggleston: terribly missed.
51:03
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
51:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I'm at 603 characters, the band is back together.
51:12
Tad Eggleston: And having to deal with a, a,
51:19
Tad Eggleston: Band of imposters.
51:23
Phil: Interesting, okay.
51:24
Tad Eggleston: finished, I think, Volume 61.
51:26
Phil: Okay, fascinating. As always, I'd like to find an opportunity to mention our actual play, There's a Band of Pirates, has appeared, so that was in part inspired by Tad's long-running reading of One Piece, and hopefully any pirate folk
51:44
Phil: that you'd be… you'd be enjoyed to see join our adventure, you know, now's the time. In a weird way, we could become the strange imposter pirates, that run into Luffy and the gang.
51:55
Phil: But, in the time that Ted has read… has read, another…
52:00
Phil: 8 chapters of one piece. I, on Hoopla, for some reason, my library just has Berserk Volume 42. Not 41, not 43, not any before, after, in between, just Volume 42. So I, on a whim, picked it up.
52:16
Phil: Reddit.
52:17
Phil: Had very little idea what was going on, but was…
52:19
Phil: more than impressed by the lovingly drawn swords and monsters. It was a great time. It's a series I should probably read from the beginning at some point in my life.
52:30
Tad Eggleston: I have read the first volume. It's been good. I definitely need to read more.
52:34
Phil: Yeah, I've checked out the, like, jumbo hardcover volumes from the library before, so I've read a little bit of it from the beginning, but not a significant amount, so I was very lost by volume 42.
52:52
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
52:54
Tad Eggleston: It, it, I mean… It is a weird place to start.
52:58
Phil: It is.
53:00
Phil: It is something I probably wouldn't have done… I am typically very meticulous about wanting to read the whole story, and the whole story as intended in order, so this was a little bit out of character for me, but it, you know…
53:15
Tad Eggleston: Good to push yourself out of comfort zones.
53:17
Phil: And it was late last night, I was like, hey, I should probably read some manga so that I can continue, you know, continue our tradition.
53:25
Phil: And, yeah, and that was it. That's what I found. There's, you know… Hoopla… my art… the Hoopla I have access to is a very strange collection of a lot of manga I have not heard of before, and that looks, like, not necessarily my taste, so it's… Gotcha. It's been interesting, scraping through all that.
53:43
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
53:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, let's move on to, formative works is our great responsibility this week, and the way we defined this for ourselves was.
53:54
Tad Eggleston: Something we read relatively early in our comics reading that… that…
54:02
Tad Eggleston: Formed part of how we looked at comics in general.
54:07
Tad Eggleston: And… I'm gonna actually have you lead off, because I gotta.
54:12
Phil: Okay.
54:12
Tad Eggleston: I've never actually even heard.
54:14
Phil: Yeah, this is… so, for my formative work, that shows, you know, I…
54:21
Phil: after considering all of these things that are quite popular, and a lot of people have heard of, I decided to go with an obscure manga called Arm of Cannon.
54:30
Phil: That's how it was published by Tokyo Pop in the early 2000s in English. It was originally called Birth in Japan. I phrase it as, weird Buddhist sci-fi horror. It is a seinen manga,
54:48
Phil: From the 90s, so it is gratuitously violent.
54:52
Tad Eggleston: types of manga are.
54:53
Phil: Yeah, so St.
54:55
Tad Eggleston: Remind that, and maybe the other ones?
54:57
Phil: Absolutely, so Seinen is, for mature adult men. These are series, about blood and violence and sex, and horrific things, typically, at this time. You know, the genre changes over time.
55:11
Phil: Shonen is for young kids, so that's where typically you get, you know, your Dragon Ball Z, your My Hero Academia. For some reason, Fist of the North Star is Shonen, and that's kind of the outlier that shifted everyone's tastes. Then there is Jose, which is adult women. Those are on the disturbing side. I know there's,
55:31
Phil: I think it's called… Harry Carey?
55:34
Phil: I'm…
55:35
Phil: butchering it, that's the most famous and first one I heard about that was about a fashion designer, and then the mangaka got hit by a car, so it was never finished.
55:45
Phil: But it's supposed to be fantastic. And then, not Jose, but Shoujo is for young women. That's your Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, those sorts of things. So, this…
55:58
Phil: this book, Arm of Canon, so after I had been borrowing volumes of Battle Royale from a friend at school, and that was, you know, kind of the first… clearly, so the… the common theme with my foreman's works… I read Watchmen when I was 14.
56:13
Phil: A lot of elements of that went way over my head, but it definitely set me on a path to, hey, I want to read some weird, disturbing, difficult things as a young person.
56:24
Phil: that… part of that was Battle Royale. The then, sort of, in a competition to, hey, what's the most fucked up thing you can find and read and still enjoy and find fascinating?
56:33
Phil: I went to a Borders, and I found this series, Arm of Cannon, that is, quite frankly, quite disturbing, had a lot of elements that went over my head,
56:44
Phil: And… but it still… it left an impact on me. I didn't… it's an interesting book, it definitely was formative for me. It helped make me the type of person I am today, who…
56:56
Phil: it's hard to talk about because it's… it's such a strange book. It… it, it runs for 9 volumes, and goes through 3 different phases of storytelling, where characters get reincarnated, and so there… there are different versions of them that aren't quite the same.
57:13
Phil: The artifact of the title, the Arm of Cannon, is supposedly a piece of Buddhist mythology, where supposedly it is something… is an artifact that grants immense power that, in the hands of
57:27
Phil: an average person would turn them into a monster, but in the hands of a Buddha, they would solve all the world's problems in a single day.
57:36
Phil: And so, it's kind of a physical manifestation of absolute evil.
57:42
Phil: Eventually in the story, you find out that long ago, they tried to… that this arm of cannon needs to have a human host to exist. It needs to attach itself to a person in some way. And,
57:55
Phil: at one point, people try to starve it, they try not to attach to anyone, that this thing is evil, we need to get rid of it. And the world starts,
58:04
Phil: falling apart. It starts becoming apocalyptic. Volcanoes go off, so it's the idea that, hey, this is a piece of absolute evil, but something about it is fundamentally necessary for the continuation of the world, and without it, the world is destroyed. So that piece of it left
58:22
Phil: an impact on me.
58:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that sounds…
58:25
Phil: Yeah, it's, it's cool. It's, it's, it's definitely a little bit juvenile in that a lot of it is kind of action, horror…
58:32
Phil: Over the top, but there's a philosophical kernel in there that I keep coming back to.
58:39
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean… What stuck out to me from what you said,
58:46
Tad Eggleston: Is it deals with the idea that one thing could either destroy or…
58:53
Tad Eggleston: save the world, depending on the hands that it falls into. Yep. And while that's a…
59:00
Tad Eggleston: oversimplification in so many ways.
59:04
Phil: No, that's per… that's… that's a… that's a good summary, yeah.
59:07
Tad Eggleston: It does actually, like… I mean, I know that you've seen this in me. I don't like it when we declare tools, good or bad.
59:16
Phil: Yeah, and that's… that's one of the things I found fascinating about it, was…
59:20
Phil: This is… this is this, yeah, this powerful thing.
59:23
Tad Eggleston: apparently… a tool.
59:26
Phil: Yeah.
59:27
Phil: Yeah.
59:29
Tad Eggleston: Whether, whether it's… AI, the algorithm… A cell phone, a hammer…
59:39
Phil: Yeah.
59:39
Tad Eggleston: Whatever.
59:41
Tad Eggleston: You know, are algorithms used in some really terrible ways? Absolutely.
59:47
Phil: Yep.
59:48
Phil: They're also…
59:49
Tad Eggleston: Is what is popularized as AI used in some really terrible ways? Absolutely.
59:56
Tad Eggleston: But it's the users.
59:59
Tad Eggleston: And or the controllers.
1:00:03
Tad Eggleston: That… that are… are… Creating any bad that is there. Not…
1:00:12
Tad Eggleston: And again, like, where it gets really complicated with a thing like an AI or an algorithm is that…
1:00:22
Tad Eggleston: They can wind up lending themselves towards…
1:00:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, there was a study done on whether or not some, debt collecting agency.
1:00:45
Tad Eggleston: was targeting Black families.
1:00:47
Phil: Oh, wow.
1:00:50
Tad Eggleston: And what it came down to is that they absolutely had software that targeted regions based on the number of people who defaulted, the number of people
1:01:01
Tad Eggleston: You know, so it had all of this data that had nothing to do with race, except it had everything to do with race, because it can also be explained by…
1:01:09
Tad Eggleston: Do you… can you get $400 in a hurry?
1:01:13
Phil: Yep.
1:01:13
Tad Eggleston: The average white person can, and the average black person can't.
1:01:17
Phil: Yep.
1:01:18
Phil: It's basically…
1:01:19
Tad Eggleston: The average white person, if they need $400 to keep their house, if they need $400 to keep their car, they have somebody who will give or lend it to them.
1:01:30
Phil: 100%, yep.
1:01:32
Tad Eggleston: the average black person Doesn't know that person.
1:01:35
Tad Eggleston: Yep. It's not that… it's not even that they don't know… and again, this is average, this is talking statistically. Don't… don't take this as me saying, no black people have money. Don't take this as me saying all white people have money. Right, right.
1:01:49
Phil: Right.
1:01:50
Phil: We're painting with a product, but not absolutely.
1:01:53
Tad Eggleston: Right. Statistically, You are…
1:01:57
Tad Eggleston: Way more likely to have somebody that you can turn to if you need money in a hurry.
1:02:04
Tad Eggleston: desperately.
1:02:05
Phil: The, the little…
1:02:06
Tad Eggleston: If you are a white person than if you are any other type of person. And the group of people in the United States least likely to have access to that.
1:02:16
Tad Eggleston: are black people. They just don't have the generational wealth.
1:02:20
Phil: And my thought was, or if you do know how to get $400 in a hurry, is probably something like payday loans that are aggressively predatory, that are… that have a good chance of making your situation worse.
1:02:31
Tad Eggleston: Even there. Yeah. Even there… The white person's more likely to get the loan than the black person.
1:02:39
Phil: Oh, that's… that is…
1:02:40
Tad Eggleston: For similar sets of reasons.
1:02:42
Phil: Yeah. I… admittedly, I've never used payday loans, so…
1:02:45
Tad Eggleston: No, well, again, again, I haven't either. I'm talking, like, the.
1:02:49
Phil: mostly… Right.
1:02:50
Tad Eggleston: statistical-type stuff.
1:02:51
Phil: Absolutely, totally, totally.
1:02:56
Tad Eggleston: You know, the white person is more likely to have a job that will let them use the payday loans, or more likely to own a car that will let them
1:03:06
Tad Eggleston: Take out a title loan, or…
1:03:08
Phil: I didn't even consider that there might be jobs or places of employment that payday loans would reject. So, yes, absolutely.
1:03:15
Tad Eggleston: I just don't actually have a job.
1:03:17
Phil: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
1:03:20
Tad Eggleston: But, but yeah, like, if you need $500, and your weekly paycheck is $300, are they gonna give you $500?
1:03:27
Phil: That's a great point.
1:03:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know!
1:03:30
Phil: I don't either.
1:03:31
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not speaking from specific knowledge here.
1:03:34
Phil: Right.
1:03:36
Tad Eggleston: But, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's, it's yet another part of… systemic… Racial inequalities that, like.
1:03:46
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:03:47
Phil: I mean, even…
1:03:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the way I tend to lay it out when I talk about this is, like, when most white families began amassing their wealth, most black families were still considered part of it.
1:04:00
Phil: Jeez, holy shit, that's a… that's a… that is very accurate. That is absolutely accurate, yeah.
1:04:06
Tad Eggleston: So, even assuming… That they were in a position to begin amassing wealth.
1:04:17
Tad Eggleston: The second their family was freed.
1:04:20
Phil: Yeah.
1:04:21
Tad Eggleston: Most white families have.
1:04:25
Tad Eggleston: 100-year head start? 200-year head start?
1:04:28
Tad Eggleston: You know, most white families didn't come to America with nothing.
1:04:33
Phil: Yeah.
1:04:35
Phil: I'm also thinking here about, like… and even if… you know.
1:04:40
Phil: You… you come from a family that's, like.
1:04:42
Phil: Irish, Italian, you know, that wasn't always part of the white in-group. I think that the time in between has been a lot kinder to those people.
1:04:51
Tad Eggleston: That, too. But even when you weren't part of the white in-group, that didn't necessarily mean that you couldn't buy property.
1:04:59
Phil: Yes, exactly, that too. So there's, there's so…
1:05:01
Tad Eggleston: that there was no inheritance for your children.
1:05:04
Phil: Right. It's just that there's so many different facets that we're all…
1:05:08
Tad Eggleston: Again, we're talking statistically, not every family.
1:05:12
Phil: Again, they're…
1:05:13
Tad Eggleston: Not every family that had something…
1:05:16
Tad Eggleston: 100 years ago still has something now. Like, like, we're talking in a pooled sense.
1:05:23
Phil: Right, and this is to also speak broadly. When, when there were Black people that did amass wealth.
1:05:30
Phil: The government or other forces often intervened to try to.
1:05:34
Tad Eggleston: straight away.
1:05:34
Phil: that wealth, yeah.
1:05:35
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:05:36
Phil: Absolutely, so, so.
1:05:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:05:38
Phil: These issues are persistent, multifaceted, ongoing.
1:05:41
Tad Eggleston: I mean.
1:05:43
Phil: There's so much.
1:05:44
Tad Eggleston: This is one of the reasons why, E-viewing…
1:05:49
Tad Eggleston: In her, her newest book, original Sins.
1:05:55
Tad Eggleston: dealt with… with Black and Native, because in terms of their… their experience, the… the… the group of… group of Americans who have the most similar experience to Black Americans are the Native Americans.
1:06:07
Phil: Yep.
1:06:08
Tad Eggleston: You know. Yep. We're just considered… Other.
1:06:15
Tad Eggleston: You know.
1:06:15
Phil: And, yeah, and literally had their culture, whitewashed and stamped out, and…
1:06:22
Tad Eggleston: Well, and how about unceded treaty lands?
1:06:25
Phil: That, too.
1:06:26
Phil: That too.
1:06:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, unceded tribal lands is bad enough, but how about unceded treaty lands? Lands that…
1:06:34
Phil: a lot.
1:06:35
Tad Eggleston: under law.
1:06:36
Phil: Yeah.
1:06:40
Tad Eggleston: Under treaties we have signed and not broken.
1:06:44
Tad Eggleston: Legally.
1:06:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I sometimes wonder if half the reason that…
1:06:54
Tad Eggleston: the United States is hesitant to call out settlers on the West Bank is because
1:07:01
Tad Eggleston: they're afraid that that will have people start saying, yeah, but what about South Dakota?
1:07:10
Phil: Oh, I, I, I… yeah. I mean…
1:07:15
Phil: saying that South Dakota and Gaza have some…
1:07:18
Tad Eggleston: Oklahoma.
1:07:19
Phil: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's… it's sad that…
1:07:26
Phil: There are so few people left who had that land taken away.
1:07:32
Phil: that… Even… even giving it all back to them is not enough.
1:07:36
Phil: You know.
1:07:37
Tad Eggleston: But it's also, like…
1:07:40
Tad Eggleston: One of the things as an educator that infuriates me so much about, like, wanting to, like, overlooks…
1:07:48
Phil: so much American history, because, oh, it'll make our… No, we gotta…
1:07:53
Tad Eggleston: bad about America is like, dude, we already overlook 80% of the stuff that'll make kids… we were just starting to talk about any of this.
1:08:02
Phil: Right, right.
1:08:03
Tad Eggleston: But now you want it to go away, like.
1:08:05
Phil: No. Talking about it is the only way to start making it right, and actually making.
1:08:10
Tad Eggleston: If America's gonna be great, it needs to be because
1:08:13
Tad Eggleston: Because of the mistakes they made, not…
1:08:16
Phil: because of the way they corrected the mistakes they made, especially. Right. Yeah, I don't think we can achieve greatness while, sweeping genocide under the rug, in any capacity. So, yeah. And just to tie this back to that last word on that text, so the main formative idea that the book left me with is the idea that
1:08:36
Phil: a world…
1:08:38
Phil: that is completely rid of evil might not be possible, and might not be possible to exist. What do we do about that?
1:08:46
Tad Eggleston: It also might not be interesting. I mean, I don't know how much I love… It's a side of the world. Well, I mean…
1:08:53
Tad Eggleston: I don't know how much I love the word evil, just like I don't know how much I love the word good.
1:08:59
Tad Eggleston: Particularly as absolutes, but if…
1:09:04
Tad Eggleston: If there is no evil, what is good?
1:09:08
Phil: Yeah?
1:09:09
Phil: It, yeah, it's… it's definitely a head scratcher.
1:09:13
Tad Eggleston: There's no good, what is evil?
1:09:16
Phil: Yeah.
1:09:18
Phil: I will say that…
1:09:19
Tad Eggleston: And can there be any… any, free will.
1:09:31
Phil: That's another good question, too.
1:09:32
Phil: I don't know.
1:09:34
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if… I don't agree… with… Most conservatives people period, and most MAGA people more so.
1:09:50
Tad Eggleston: But, like…
1:09:55
Tad Eggleston: To think that their baseline values are actually…
1:10:00
Tad Eggleston: Holy different from mine is an oversimplification.
1:10:06
Tad Eggleston: They weight things differently.
1:10:11
Tad Eggleston: I await kindness over personal prosperity.
1:10:15
Phil: Yep.
1:10:17
Phil: Definitely not everyone does that.
1:10:19
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I wait… Freedom.
1:10:24
Tad Eggleston: over security.
1:10:28
Tad Eggleston: But I also wait… societal concert… security, Way over personal security.
1:10:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:10:41
Phil: I can agree to that, too. I think we need more of that.
1:10:45
Phil: I think that we do need more societal security and more re-engagement in the social context.
1:10:51
Tad Eggleston: I think people should not have to worry about getting shot, rather than being.
1:10:56
Phil: Right.
1:10:56
Tad Eggleston: back.
1:10:57
Phil: Yes, yes, I agree to that.
1:11:00
Phil: For sure.
1:11:02
Tad Eggleston: But… but it… but it… the person who's a gun nut and I share…
1:11:09
Tad Eggleston: We have a desire for personal security.
1:11:12
Phil: Well, and you share the idea that, it's not tools, but the people who use them that are the problem.
1:11:19
Phil: Sometimes it can be hard to find where our…
1:11:22
Phil: thinking is similar, but reaching two different ends, you know? It's funny…
1:11:28
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I will… I do agree that it's the people that use them that are the problem. I've never actually argued that. I still think the solution is to limit the tools. I don't know that limiting the tools for the other things is the solution.
1:11:44
Phil: Right, right, right.
1:11:45
Tad Eggleston: You still just need to differentiate between
1:11:48
Tad Eggleston: like, an AR-15 is built to kill a person.
1:11:53
Phil: Yeah.
1:11:53
Tad Eggleston: It doesn't have another use.
1:11:56
Phil: Conservatives…
1:11:57
Tad Eggleston: did use.
1:11:58
Phil: will argue ridiculous things, like it is a varmint popper. I don't agree.
1:12:04
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, I actually had this conversation once on… on… On Twitter, with somebody…
1:12:12
Phil: Who took it seriously, and, like…
1:12:15
Tad Eggleston: And I said, yeah, but if it wasn't allowed, would you find another way?
1:12:19
Tad Eggleston: And he's like, yeah, wouldn't be as much fun. I'm like, so…
1:12:23
Tad Eggleston: Your ability to take care of
1:12:27
Tad Eggleston: feral hogs outweighs my ability to not get shot while I'm teaching?
1:12:33
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:12:34
Tad Eggleston: It's like, when you put it that way, you make a really good point.
1:12:38
Phil: Yeah.
1:12:39
Phil: Yeah.
1:12:41
Phil: Yeah, I don't… I… automatic weaponry like that… I don'.
1:12:45
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the, the, the…
1:12:47
Phil: Or even someone in that.
1:12:48
Tad Eggleston: The only thing that I will give much credit to Charlie Kirk on…
1:12:53
Tad Eggleston: Is he was honest when it came to guns.
1:12:56
Phil: Yeah, that's a… that's a… that's a low bar, and a dark silver lining.
1:13:01
Tad Eggleston: He… he didn't try to claim that more guns wouldn't lead to more gun deaths.
1:13:08
Phil: Yeah.
1:13:10
Tad Eggleston: He said that that was a trade that he was willing to make.
1:13:20
Tad Eggleston: He wasn't afraid of gun research, he wasn't afraid of… You know, he said…
1:13:27
Tad Eggleston: That if the price of freedom is more gun deaths, that was a price he was willing to pay.
1:13:32
Phil: Yep.
1:13:33
Tad Eggleston: It's not a price that I'm willing to pay.
1:13:36
Phil: Nope.
1:13:36
Tad Eggleston: And just to be clear, it's not a price that I think he should have had to pay. Right. If anybody out there listening is thinking for a second.
1:13:45
Tad Eggleston: that I think political murder, or murder in general, is acceptable under any circumstances. I mean, Phil will attest to the fact that I… I have, like, gone hard at him and Tyler on the opposite side of things.
1:14:01
Phil: That's okay. Defending Charlie…
1:14:03
Tad Eggleston: or at least the discussion around Charlie Kirk in a way that I really wish that I didn't have to, because I hate the idea of defending Charlie Kirk.
1:14:13
Phil: I… exactly, and I would even… I would even go to the extent that I haven't read any of what you said as defending him.
1:14:19
Tad Eggleston: No, I understand.
1:14:20
Phil: Merely left.
1:14:21
Tad Eggleston: really hard.
1:14:22
Phil: I'm clarifying for you.
1:14:23
Tad Eggleston: It feels like defending you what I'm saying.
1:14:26
Phil: Yeah, I know what you mean. But it's… it's a… it's an important distinction to make that, like, hey, we can… we can hate this guy. He can suck a lot.
1:14:34
Tad Eggleston: No, I don't hate many people, I don't hate it.
1:14:36
Phil: doesn't hate many people, that's fine. but…
1:14:39
Tad Eggleston: We're allowed to. I don't think it's particularly useful to go over the edge to hate, just because…
1:14:46
Tad Eggleston: Again, like, that's an acknowledgement that there's no possibility that they could change.
1:14:51
Phil: Honestly, I… when I really deeply investigate the specifics of the feelings, I think he's only at deep anger. I don't think he slipped into hate, because I didn't know who he was well enough to.
1:15:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's fair.
1:15:02
Phil: That's fair.
1:15:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but… This is where I'm an autistic language freak.
1:15:08
Phil: Yeah, yeah. I also love language, yeah, so it… but it all comes down to… at the end of the day, we both think that political violence is bad, and that the only… I wanted to make a jokey caveat that I condone fictional murder. Fictional murder's fine, because I think anything can go in fiction, you know?
1:15:24
Phil: But real-life political violence and murder, not okay.
1:15:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but I'm actually gonna take the Stephen King position on that, too, which is that, like…
1:15:35
Tad Eggleston: To murder a character because you can't think of something better to do?
1:15:39
Tad Eggleston: is… Nearly as bad as… Real murder.
1:15:46
Phil: I think the gap is bigger, but I agree with the sentiment.
1:15:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think the gap is…
1:15:52
Phil: Absolutely.
1:15:53
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely bigger. But, yeah, that's a good sentiment, too. But, like, even fictional death.
1:15:58
Phil: Yes. It has consequences.
1:15:59
Tad Eggleston: It needs to have a purpose.
1:16:02
Phil: That too, yes, it can't be frivolous. I mean, it can be frivolous, but I don't want it to be frivolous. Yeah.
1:16:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I would argue… I would argue that there are ways, like… like, John Wick pulls off frivolous death, but that's because one of…
1:16:17
Phil: Convention of the genre.
1:16:19
Tad Eggleston: Well, not just the convention of the genre, but one of the underlying things in John Wick
1:16:24
Tad Eggleston: Period is, like…
1:16:29
Tad Eggleston: We glorify this impossible thing, so let's make it that much more impossible.
1:16:35
Phil: Yeah. Speaking of course…
1:16:37
Tad Eggleston: For anybody who thinks that there's a John Wick out there in the world, anywhere. I mean, you got all sorts of militia guys that, like…
1:16:47
Tad Eggleston: train and whatnot, and think that they… I mean, Alex Jones thinks that, like, whatever, and, you know, Sean Hannity talks about his mixed MMA and whatnot. You put them in any sort of real fight, and they're gonna be dead in seconds.
1:17:03
Phil: Yep. Yeah, real fighting's, pretty rough, pretty gross, pretty…
1:17:08
Tad Eggleston: But also, like, as soon as it starts, and as soon as there's more than one or two people.
1:17:14
Tad Eggleston: like…
1:17:15
Phil: Messy. Chaotic.
1:17:18
Tad Eggleston: Right, your skill set stops mattering.
1:17:21
Phil: Yeah. It's real easy to think you're a badass when you are training with someone you're paying to let you feel like a badass.
1:17:29
Tad Eggleston: Or, or even if, even if you're not paying them to, to, to.
1:17:33
Phil: Yeah.
1:17:34
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's organized, it's intended for nobody to get hurt.
1:17:40
Tad Eggleston: It works under some set of… rules.
1:17:43
Phil: Yep. Like…
1:17:46
Phil: Real violence has no rules.
1:17:49
Tad Eggleston: You know, you're not gonna have the guy that you just kicked over decide, okay, I got nothing else to do but bite your Achilles.
1:17:58
Phil: You're not gonna.
1:17:59
Tad Eggleston: And see if I can rip it open.
1:18:01
Phil: Yeah, you are inherently in a situation where your opponent has agreed not to gouge out your eyes, or… Right. You know, hit you in the jewels, so it's… it's not… it's not the real thing.
1:18:13
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, and also, where your opponent is not likely to ever be… In that level of…
1:18:21
Tad Eggleston: Fight or flight, where, like…
1:18:25
Tad Eggleston: They will even think of some of the things that they might think of if they're
1:18:30
Tad Eggleston: Life is literally on the line.
1:18:32
Phil: Right.
1:18:36
Tad Eggleston: Did you want… did you want to get in some words about 300? This feels like a good… Yeah, a little bit. …on violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna admit that I picked this out, and I was gonna try to reread it, and the week got away from me, so I haven't reread it, so I haven't.
1:18:48
Phil: That's understandable.
1:18:48
Tad Eggleston: a few years right now. Okay. So for anybody who's shocked, because I'm certain that there are parts of 300 that didn't age great, there were parts that were relatively,
1:19:03
Tad Eggleston: questionable even at the time, though… though Miller, I remember in some letters pages,
1:19:11
Tad Eggleston: defended the historical accuracy of them, you know, not… not at all defending, like, the idea that… I mean, I think the one that… that…
1:19:20
Tad Eggleston: that… When the Spartans threw the… the Athenian messenger into the pit.
1:19:33
Tad Eggleston: they called him, like, a boy lover, something like that, and lots of people are like, oh, Spartans were gay in the military. Miller's like, no, you don't… The boy part was…
1:19:43
Phil: Pedophilia, not gay.
1:19:44
Tad Eggleston: Right. Pretty sure. Well, and, and, and, and, like.
1:19:49
Tad Eggleston: And yeah, the pedophilia was, like, different rules in general, but I mean, A, there were Athenian scholars who wrote about the…
1:20:00
Tad Eggleston: Purest form of love being between an older man and a younger…
1:20:05
Tad Eggleston: Student, and, like, we're pretty explicit about that not being, like, a familial love.
1:20:12
Phil: Right, right.
1:20:14
Tad Eggleston: Definitely not platonic. But second, the idea was actually, like, It wasn't about, like.
1:20:25
Tad Eggleston: me saying that this or that was bad, it was about there was a massive rivalry between Sparta and Athens, particularly among somebody who would have been an Athenian messenger and somebody.
1:20:38
Phil: whom?
1:20:38
Tad Eggleston: would have been a Spartan war leader.
1:20:41
Phil: Yeah. You're like… It's also…
1:20:43
Tad Eggleston: gonna say the worst thing they could possibly say while killing them. Right. It wasn't supposed to be cool, it wasn't supposed to be make you like Leonidas more.
1:20:57
Phil: Oh, are you telling me that people who read Frank Miller's violent work misunderstood the violence as cool?
1:21:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, one of his later books is one that I won't even talk about.
1:21:09
Phil: Yeah, that's fair.
1:21:10
Tad Eggleston: haven't read. There's exactly one Frank Miller book that I refuse to read. Yeah, same. And the only thing I'll say about him is, like, he lived…
1:21:20
Tad Eggleston: blocks from Ground Zero.
1:21:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And I think that book was a response to something very specific, and it would have been better if he'd never shared it with the world. Yeah. But I understand…
1:21:33
Tad Eggleston: How it could come out of him, and there seems to be some evidence that that's not who he is again.
1:21:40
Tad Eggleston: I hope not. I mean, there's a lot of evidence that it wasn't who he was before then.
1:21:46
Phil: Yeah, he… to his credit, he hasn't…
1:21:50
Phil: I don't think his career after that has been going in that same direction.
1:21:56
Tad Eggleston: Well, and like, he went away and didn't make a big deal about it, and when he came back, he seemed, I hope he's changed. I hope he's changed since his comments against Doc.
1:22:08
Phil: that, you know?
1:22:09
Tad Eggleston: Based on everything beforehand,
1:22:14
Tad Eggleston: it's barely changed, it's more reverted. It's, like, yet… got over the hard period in his life.
1:22:21
Phil: You know, where he both watched a horrific Yeah.
1:22:26
Phil: Yeah, I can't imagine…
1:22:27
Tad Eggleston: Terror in real time, and had his marriage fall apart.
1:22:31
Phil: Yeah… That is tough.
1:22:33
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know the order, because it's not my business to know the order, and, like, it's not something that he's talked about to my knowledge.
1:22:40
Phil: Yeah.
1:22:41
Tad Eggleston: You know, and it's actually his ex-wife that I, like, will talk about the most with 300 here.
1:22:52
Tad Eggleston: So, when I discovered…
1:22:53
Phil: color screens.
1:22:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, when I discovered 300,
1:23:01
Tad Eggleston: I knew Miller, I'd read his Daredevil. I can't remember if the first issue… because I remember buying the first issue at 300 first!
1:23:09
Tad Eggleston: grabbing it because, oh, this looks amazing, then going, oh, it's Frank Miller, I know I like his stuff.
1:23:15
Tad Eggleston: Right. What I don't remember is if I had actually started reading Sin City yet, or if I still only really knew Miller from Daredevil.
1:23:23
Phil: Interesting, okay.
1:23:25
Tad Eggleston: Probably Daredevil and Batman.
1:23:27
Phil: Yeah.
1:23:28
Tad Eggleston: I'd probably read his Batman already, but I don't remember if I'd started reading Sin City yet, or had only read his Daredevil and Batman, because it… it was one of the first non-superhero comics that I really got into.
1:23:40
Phil: Yeah.
1:23:41
Tad Eggleston: So, it was… it was part of my transition out of superheroes into vertigo and…
1:23:50
Tad Eggleston: Image, and… and, you know… .
1:23:54
Phil: the good stuff.
1:23:57
Tad Eggleston: For the most part, I mean, I don't want to bash.
1:23:59
Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:23:59
Tad Eggleston: dogging Frank Miller, you know.
1:24:03
Tad Eggleston: And Batman Year One… Oh, yeah.
1:24:05
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:24:06
Tad Eggleston: absolute masterpiece.
1:24:07
Phil: I am not about to say anything bad about David Mazzicelli, ever.
1:24:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:24:13
Tad Eggleston: And even when talking about Miller doing the art as well as… I don't think of Dark Knight Returns quite as highly as a lot of people do, though I actually like it more than I like Watchmen.
1:24:26
Phil: Okay, that's fair.
1:24:28
Tad Eggleston: Not enough that it's a hill I'll die on.
1:24:30
Phil: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean, that's…
1:24:32
Tad Eggleston: really clear.
1:24:33
Phil: Hey, this is one of those things, I mean, my current take on Watchmen is that it's a great book that a lot of people should read, but there are still comics as good and better than it. It's not the best comic of all time.
1:24:46
Tad Eggleston: I think… I think, I think it opened a lot… I mean, Watchmen, to me, is kind of like Chuck Berry.
1:24:52
Phil: That's fair, yeah.
1:24:54
Phil: Yeah. Chuck, I don't know where you're going with this, but I want to hear it, it sounds good.
1:24:57
Tad Eggleston: where I was gonna go is that, like, I don't know that Chuck Berry has, like, a perfect album.
1:25:03
Phil: I don't even know that he has more than a.
1:25:05
Tad Eggleston: Dozen uniquely perfect songs.
1:25:11
Tad Eggleston: But his sound… opened a door.
1:25:14
Phil: Yeah.
1:25:18
Tad Eggleston: I… I have more problems with Watchmen than most people do.
1:25:24
Phil: That's probably fair.
1:25:26
Tad Eggleston: like Chuck Berry, I actually think it's more derivative than it is… Original.
1:25:32
Phil: That's an interesting take.
1:25:34
Tad Eggleston: Put derivatives from enough different places that it is original.
1:25:41
Tad Eggleston: Like, most…
1:25:42
Phil: So an interesting take.
1:25:44
Tad Eggleston: No, most great art is derivative.
1:25:47
Phil: I…
1:25:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, we're thousands of years too late to have original, original ideas.
1:25:54
Phil: See, and I… this is something I think about a lot, and…
1:25:59
Phil: I think that it's… it's ultimately a semantic muddle, you know?
1:26:03
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
1:26:04
Phil: I… first of all, I think that derivative…
1:26:08
Phil: I want a second word with different connotations, you know, to say, but, like…
1:26:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, one of my favorite lines about creation is, good writers borrow liberally from other writers, and great writers steal things outright.
1:26:24
Phil: Yes, that one, as well as what I think of is that the reason why I can't 100% disagree with those statements is because nothing's created in a vacuum. Everyone has influences. Right, right. Everything comes from somewhere. So there's always pieces of history in new work.
1:26:37
Tad Eggleston: But, but, but…
1:26:38
Phil: too new.
1:26:39
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but back to 300,
1:26:44
Tad Eggleston: It was definitely the first time I'd seen comic as history.
1:26:48
Phil: That's nice.
1:26:50
Tad Eggleston: it was definitely the first time… and don't get me wrong, Mouse was out there, and I knew about it, I just hadn't, I think, read it in depth, and it wasn't that I… but it was, like, that was… that was his.
1:27:02
Phil: That was also memoir. Yeah, memoirs…
1:27:05
Tad Eggleston: Historical fiction. This was… this was like going and watching Spartacus.
1:27:10
Phil: Yeah, these are… these are the experiences of people who are no longer around, not stories of people who lived before us, yeah.
1:27:16
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:27:17
Tad Eggleston: So history's not quite right. Historical fiction is better.
1:27:21
Phil: Yeah.
1:27:21
Tad Eggleston: You know, it had that feeling of the film epic, you know?
1:27:26
Phil: Mmm.
1:27:26
Tad Eggleston: Articus, the Lawrence of Arabia, the… The colors were just…
1:27:34
Tad Eggleston: outstanding. It was the first time I'd seen…
1:27:37
Tad Eggleston: you know, and I knew Lynn Varley. I mean, Varley had been covering Miller's work for ages, but most of the time, she'd been covering… coloring it in the basic four-color style, because that was what the comics were printed in, and these…
1:27:50
Phil: Oh… I didn't know that.
1:27:51
Tad Eggleston: Because she's shit.
1:27:52
Phil: That's amazing.
1:27:53
Tad Eggleston: Okay, well, I mean, I don't know for certain… I don't think 300 is 4 color.
1:27:57
Phil: No, that's what I mean, is I didn't… I didn't know.
1:27:59
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they feel fully painted.
1:28:02
Tad Eggleston: Here, let me… let me just pull up an image.
1:28:05
Phil: Yeah. Because I think I've only read 300 once way back in college, so it's been a long time for me.
1:28:12
Phil: But yeah, that's… That's a really… I am fascinated with the evolution of… the…
1:28:21
Phil: technology of comics, you know? The… the going from four-color to computer-generated coloring in the 90s, to, you know, where we are now with, like, the hypersaturation and stuff like that. I think it's such a fascinating progression, so I hadn't realized the extent that 300…
1:28:39
Tad Eggleston: Let's get our cover here.
1:28:40
Phil: Yeah, the cover already is… that is… that looks like a step above 4-color. Oh my gosh, that second… the inside page of just inkwash.
1:28:47
Tad Eggleston: Right, and covers are That was the other thing, they were all wraparound covers, so this is…
1:28:53
Tad Eggleston: You know, that's the first cover.
1:28:55
Phil: Wow.
1:28:56
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the honor was moved to the right so that it could be…
1:28:59
Phil: Isn't? But I mean…
1:29:00
Tad Eggleston: half.
1:29:01
Phil: the book that I've seen is, is, like, it's wider. It's, like, staught and wider.
1:29:04
Tad Eggleston: Well, because they, they, they, when they printed it as a hardcover, they printed all.
1:29:09
Phil: of the two.
1:29:09
Tad Eggleston: page spreads.
1:29:10
Phil: Oh, so the issues had a… had a fold in the middle of all these pages? Right. Right. Wow. Wow. Holy shit.
1:29:16
Tad Eggleston: But it was one of the first times where the heart… where the… the… the…
1:29:21
Phil: Hardcover was the idealized form, as opposed to the single.
1:29:23
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:29:24
Phil: fast.
1:29:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, but just look at these covers.
1:29:27
Phil: Yeah, no, the colors are great. Frank Miller's an amazing fucking artist, and I forget that way too often, like, especially his…
1:29:34
Tad Eggleston: Well, and he's particularly great at action and tension.
1:29:38
Phil: Yes.
1:29:38
Tad Eggleston: which these.
1:29:39
Phil: Storytelling.
1:29:40
Tad Eggleston: filled with.
1:29:41
Phil: Yes, I love his… that wolf, the way that the details bleed out into the forms, and the inks are so fucking good.
1:29:49
Tad Eggleston: Phenomenal with shadows?
1:29:51
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:29:52
Tad Eggleston: like… Can't you?
1:29:54
Phil: shape and environment so much.
1:29:56
Tad Eggleston: And he's such a student of, I mean, like…
1:30:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the reasons that I, I, I give… like, watchmen a hard time.
1:30:06
Tad Eggleston: Is everybody talks about the nine panels.
1:30:08
Phil: Yeah.
1:30:09
Tad Eggleston: And, and, you know, the brilliance and whatnot. And, like…
1:30:12
Tad Eggleston: It's like none of them have read contemporary interviews where…
1:30:17
Phil: This is true.
1:30:18
Tad Eggleston: Where Moore says that the nine panels was Dave Gibbons' idea, he sent him a Love & Rockets comic.
1:30:24
Phil: That's funny. Oh, that's amazing.
1:30:27
Phil: That is amazing.
1:30:28
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Jaime Hernandez had just… and Jaime Hernandez didn't…
1:30:33
Tad Eggleston: originate it. Right, right. You can find it older than that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Jaime Hernandez had JUST done it.
1:30:40
Phil: Chew.
1:30:40
Tad Eggleston: Ridiculous effect!
1:30:42
Phil: That's… that's another thing that… because on… in some more recent issues or interviews I've read, and some of this I'm pretty sure, is coming from Elizabeth Sandifer's last War and Albion, is talking about how Watchmen… there was a certain degree of it that was discovered in the making.
1:30:59
Tad Eggleston: But people want to talk about it as this, like, fully formed thing. No, a ton of it was discovered in the making.
1:31:04
Phil: Exactly, and that's… to me, that makes it more interesting. It makes it more flawed, but it makes it more interesting.
1:31:09
Tad Eggleston: Like, absolutely. Like, I will never, never… Deny Watchmen's historical significance.
1:31:22
Phil: Right.
1:31:25
Tad Eggleston: But to hold it up as the end-all, be-all of comics…
1:31:31
Phil: You're gonna miss out on so many.
1:31:32
Tad Eggleston: Or to seek to be a watchman by being a watchman, rather than doing something that is…
1:31:41
Tad Eggleston: new and… I mean, to me, Jerome.
1:31:45
Phil: I still need to.
1:31:46
Tad Eggleston: Jesse Lonergan's new book.
1:31:47
Phil: Oh, fuck.
1:31:48
Tad Eggleston: more likely to go down like Watchmen.
1:31:51
Phil: Yeah.
1:31:52
Tad Eggleston: Anybody who ever tried to do… Their own watchman.
1:31:56
Phil: Yeah, and that's the other thing is.
1:31:57
Tad Eggleston: Because Jesse wasn't trying to be Alan Moore, Jesse wasn't trying to be anybody. Jesse was trying to be Jesse.
1:32:04
Phil: And he was over…
1:32:04
Tad Eggleston: Telling a great story.
1:32:06
Phil: He was already so fucking good! Oh my god. Right.
1:32:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:32:09
Phil: Yeah.
1:32:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, Ann Alamoore was already so fucking good. I mean, I will argue that…
1:32:15
Tad Eggleston: Miracleman are as good or better comics than Watchmen. The overall Watchmen experience might be better because of…
1:32:25
Tad Eggleston: the parts that I skip over every time I reread it, which is the Black Sailor stuff that just makes it dense, and… like, yes, that's what makes it this bigger meta thing.
1:32:36
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
1:32:38
Tad Eggleston: that I have less energy for a lot of the time.
1:32:41
Phil: That's fascinating, that's interesting, because that's… that's kind of a piece that…
1:32:44
Phil: has remained the most mysterious to me, is the Black Freighter pirate stuff in there.
1:32:51
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:32:51
Phil: Right.
1:32:53
Phil: Gosh, oh no, that means… that means… okay. We're gonna have to run into the park rater at some point. That's part of… that's part of its appeal.
1:32:59
Phil: Yeah.
1:33:00
Tad Eggleston: At some point, we should probably, like, serious…
1:33:05
Tad Eggleston: take on Watchmen. It's a worthwhile endeavor. At some point, I want to actually read the annotated Watchmen. I want to, like, it's worth it at some point to…
1:33:15
Tad Eggleston: a really serious look at Watchmen.
1:33:17
Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:33:18
Tad Eggleston: I don't have the energy yet.
1:33:19
Phil: I mentioned earlier. Maybe when I retired.
1:33:20
Tad Eggleston: higher.
1:33:21
Phil: Since… since we're… since we're on a pirate ship.
1:33:23
Phil: Exactly.
1:33:24
Tad Eggleston: That's a whole… that's a whole other thing. But yeah, so… so those are the things that… Really?
1:33:34
Tad Eggleston: Real quick… attracted me to 300. This cover…
1:33:37
Phil: Oh, that's so good. Of just a Spartan story. It's one of my favorite…
1:33:40
Tad Eggleston: Favorite policy?
1:33:41
Phil: In front of a moon. Oh, that looks so good. That's so fucking good.
1:33:45
Phil: Yeah, the silhouette, the spear, everything about it.
1:33:48
Tad Eggleston: copies of this, just because I love the cover.
1:33:51
Phil: Yeah, it's so weird. Because I, I, I, I have at times, and certainly will again, have it framed and, like, up on…
1:33:58
Phil: Yeah. but real quick, have you read, Kieran Gillen and Ryan Kelly's three?
1:34:05
Tad Eggleston: Damn.
1:34:06
Phil: Okay, yeah, I would watch.
1:34:07
Tad Eggleston: Let's go.
1:34:08
Phil: Yeah, I would love if, if you do get, you know, get around to rereading 300, I would love to do a comparison of rereading 303 and talking about them both together in conversation.
1:34:19
Tad Eggleston: Totally worthwhile.
1:34:20
Phil: Yeah.
1:34:20
Tad Eggleston: That might even be something to just throw into the ideas for, great responsibility. Okay, there we go. But yeah, without even having re-read it, like, this, to me…
1:34:31
Phil: Oh, goodness.
1:34:32
Tad Eggleston: visual masterpiece. I can… I can see that, and I think I'd agree to that, because…
1:34:36
Phil: I mean, yeah, even…
1:34:38
Tad Eggleston: Xerxes that had a lot of the…
1:34:43
Tad Eggleston: A lot of the same elements just fell flat.
1:34:46
Phil: Oh, oh, I didn't.
1:34:47
Tad Eggleston: Xerxes was, like, the… I forgot he did the.
1:34:49
Phil: follow up.
1:34:50
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, it was years and years.
1:34:52
Phil: Yeah, it was more recent.
1:34:54
Tad Eggleston: on Dark Knight follow-ups, that sort of thing. Oh, that was my hopes!
1:34:58
Phil: But the story wasn't nearly as good.
1:35:01
Tad Eggleston: And the art just didn't quite…
1:35:05
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is ab… when people talk about the brilliance of Frank Miller.
1:35:11
Tad Eggleston: is it.
1:35:12
Phil: I do think this is… this is… this feels like a pinnacle. I mean, I haven't…
1:35:15
Phil: I haven't read Sin City, I haven't gone through all of that, so there might be.
1:35:19
Tad Eggleston: Sin City. Sin City is outstanding.
1:35:22
Phil: Sin City was the first R-rated movie my parents took me to see in theaters.
1:35:27
Phil: And so that's kind of…
1:35:28
Tad Eggleston: Do you like it at all?
1:35:29
Phil: I loved it.
1:35:30
Tad Eggleston: Okay, if you loved it, you will like the comic better.
1:35:33
Phil: No, I know, I know, because it's… yeah.
1:35:36
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I will quote an author who I won't name because.
1:35:41
Phil: he's.
1:35:41
Tad Eggleston: come…
1:35:42
Phil: one of those guys that I'm just not comfortable talking about.
1:35:45
Tad Eggleston: his name, even though I can't erase his brilliance from my conscience and whatever. But after the movie came out, said.
1:35:55
Tad Eggleston: you know, this is a brilliant movie, like, Rodriguez and Miller did a wonderful job of…
1:36:04
Tad Eggleston: Filming it, shooting it, giving it that feeling.
1:36:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, and he'd kind of predicted before.
1:36:13
Tad Eggleston: But he confirmed it afterwards, but… but Miller's words
1:36:17
Tad Eggleston: Weren't meant to be spoken out loud the way that.
1:36:19
Phil: Richard.
1:36:21
Tad Eggleston: Interesting. It would have actually been better if they had…
1:36:25
Phil: If it was a silent film.
1:36:27
Tad Eggleston: No, if they had gone ahead and not used the comic as the script.
1:36:33
Phil: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, if they had touched…
1:36:35
Tad Eggleston: I literally use the comic as the script. There are almost no movies in either film, or almost no words in either film that are not in the comic.
1:36:45
Phil: Wow.
1:36:47
Phil: I haven't seen the second film yet.
1:36:49
Phil: Right. The second one's not as good, but… That's what I figured.
1:36:53
Tad Eggleston: Well, let me rephrase.
1:36:56
Tad Eggleston: Biggest reason the second one isn't as good is because it has more of the vignettes, but not enough.
1:37:02
Tad Eggleston: To look at it as just a series of short films.
1:37:07
Phil: Yeah.
1:37:08
Phil: That… that… I mean, I didn't realize that specifically, but I figured they did…
1:37:12
Tad Eggleston: Some of the most brilliant Frank Miller work.
1:37:15
Phil: Huh.
1:37:16
Tad Eggleston: or Sin City work is actually, like, the one-shots.
1:37:19
Phil: Okay. That… that is… that is very intriguing to me.
1:37:22
Tad Eggleston: Babe War Red is probably my favorite.
1:37:31
Tad Eggleston: Sin City story.
1:37:32
Tad Eggleston: And I don't even know if it's close.
1:37:35
Phil: Alright.
1:37:36
Tad Eggleston: And blue eyes.
1:37:41
Tad Eggleston: Where there are a couple of them.
1:37:45
Tad Eggleston: Probably ranks high after.
1:37:48
Tad Eggleston: You know, but those are a couple of, like, really short stories, and one of them…
1:37:56
Tad Eggleston: Was the opening sequence of…
1:37:59
Tad Eggleston: The second Sin City movie.
1:38:01
Tad Eggleston: But the opening sequence was just… Absolutely brilliant.
1:38:09
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I mean, that's another one. That would be one that would be worth reading the books and
1:38:15
Tad Eggleston: Watching the movie and doing the…
1:38:18
Phil: the comparison.
1:38:19
Tad Eggleston: To talk about them together.
1:38:21
Phil: Yeah, I flipped through a bit of the first volume with Marv, and my take was, wow, this is just the movie with the material that they had to trim.
1:38:30
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:38:31
Phil: Yeah. But again, as a comedy.
1:38:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, honestly, like… I don't think it's talked about enough.
1:38:41
Tad Eggleston: What the Sin City movies did… that I think…
1:38:46
Tad Eggleston: has only otherwise been done by the Spider-Verse movies.
1:38:51
Tad Eggleston: Is they understood that, like, you could use
1:39:00
Tad Eggleston: Almost all of the elements
1:39:03
Tad Eggleston: Of a comic in a movie, and really, the trick in terms of making it good.
1:39:11
Tad Eggleston: Was how you pieced it together.
1:39:14
Phil: That's a really great point, actually. Yeah, I can see that.
1:39:18
Tad Eggleston: You know, you could use the comic as storyboard.
1:39:23
Phil: But still add elements after that, too.
1:39:25
Tad Eggleston: Well, you… well, because you don't have… gutters.
1:39:30
Phil: Yeah, or the unit of the page. You're only working with one image at a time, in rapid succession.
1:39:36
Tad Eggleston: You don't have the gutters, and you don't have page turns, and so you have to find other ways to express the time between panels, to when the panels aren't… when the panels are at the same time, manage to make them feel, you know.
1:39:53
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
1:39:55
Tad Eggleston: They are different mediums.
1:39:58
Tad Eggleston: But that doesn't mean you have to, oh, we're only gonna take the most basic part of the story.
1:40:04
Phil: And I think…
1:40:06
Tad Eggleston: translated into the comic. We continue.
1:40:08
Phil: Yeah.
1:40:09
Tad Eggleston: huge amounts of… how they portrayed it. And this is also Bob.
1:40:16
Tad Eggleston: like…
1:40:17
Tad Eggleston: Everybody hates Zack Snyder's Watchmen, I'm not in that camp. I don't love the change to the ending, but, like, the film itself, I think he did a phenomenal job with.
1:40:29
Phil: I think it's about an 85% perfect adaptation and a 15% bastardization.
1:40:34
Tad Eggleston: Sure.
1:40:35
Tad Eggleston: I might go a little bit higher on the… .
1:40:39
Phil: On the adaptation part?
1:40:40
Tad Eggleston: Right. He added a couple of things to 300 that I didn't think were strictly necessary, but I also didn't think were strictly out of place.
1:40:50
Tad Eggleston: But also, I think, did a phenomenal job. I mean, I got why…
1:40:55
Phil: there was more back home at Sparta?
1:40:57
Phil: Well, no, I think a little bit more back home at Sparta, there was a couple of different things. Yeah.
1:41:05
Tad Eggleston: I got why his work on 300 and his work on
1:41:18
Tad Eggleston: Watchmen got him his work in the DC Universe.
1:41:24
Tad Eggleston: What I didn't get is why they let him shoot the scripts he shot.
1:41:31
Phil: That's funny. Oh, that's funny.
1:41:34
Phil: I mean.
1:41:35
Tad Eggleston: He has the talent that if you'd had him do, like, a direct adaptation of Superman Man of Steel…
1:41:44
Phil: Or a direct adaptation.
1:41:47
Tad Eggleston: were a mostly direct adaptation of Dark Knight Returns. Like, if you had had him stick closer to the comics.
1:41:56
Tad Eggleston: Which he had also shown that he was very good at doing.
1:42:01
Tad Eggleston: You would have had infinitely better movies than what came out, which had elements of the comics, but, like…
1:42:09
Tad Eggleston: I think it's clear that he's…
1:42:11
Phil: essence of so many things. Yeah. He's a much better director than he is a writer, and because of the ego-driven Hollywood ecosystem.
1:42:20
Phil: people need to be writer-directors. You can't have people who are just stellar directors that direct other scripts. They have to write their own scripts for some reason, yeah, so it's… Right. Yeah.
1:42:30
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, so that's… that's why, as I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it,
1:42:40
Tad Eggleston: this became… My formative comic.
1:42:44
Phil: It's a good pick. It's making me want to reread it, looking at the pages.
1:42:49
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I… well, and, and, like, it was a harder thing for me, because I, I, I wanted to, to, like, I kind of dealt with something along…
1:43:00
Tad Eggleston: along these lines, with my first couple of American Nature Presents.
1:43:07
Tad Eggleston: columns, where I talked about what
1:43:13
Tad Eggleston: what influenced how I looked at comics and what you could do with them?
1:43:18
Tad Eggleston: And I'd used… a singular issue of Miller's Daredevil, and I'd used Mazzicelli on Daredevil.
1:43:27
Tad Eggleston: But I didn't talk about this…
1:43:33
Tad Eggleston: for any number of reasons, I wasn't willing to talk about Authority. Planet.
1:43:40
Phil: Scary.
1:43:40
Tad Eggleston: Sandman Transmetropolitan.
1:43:44
Phil: There was a certain amount of editing in my mention titles, too, for sure.
1:43:50
Tad Eggleston: so it's like, what… what have I not talked about? Particularly because it's kind of a different question. I looked at the question less as what forms my criteria for what a great comic is.
1:44:04
Tad Eggleston: And more as, what… comic… Sucked me 100% full into, this is a medium of its own.
1:44:17
Phil: Yeah.
1:44:17
Tad Eggleston: that has… Phenomenal capabilities.
1:44:23
Phil: Yeah, and… and so that.
1:44:25
Tad Eggleston: And I shouldn't look at it as any less than film, or…
1:44:29
Phil: Right.
1:44:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, at this point, I think of it as more, but I acknowledge that that's a preference.
1:44:35
Phil: Yeah, yeah, and…
1:44:36
Tad Eggleston: It has to do with… I do think it has more flexibility than any other medium.
1:44:40
Phil: Oh, yeah, and I think…
1:44:41
Tad Eggleston: Mom.
1:44:43
Phil: because I agree with that, part of my own journey is by the time I hit that point of realizing that comics were my favorite medium, I think that was, like, the end of my…
1:44:54
Phil: formative years. Like, my first big realization was, oh no, I'm a comic book person.
1:44:58
Phil: Because I looked back at my life and saw me reading newspaper strips and getting into manga in middle school and high school.
1:45:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, I… I… Yeah, all those things is…
1:45:07
Phil: This came out in, I think, 2000?
1:45:10
Phil: That sounds about right.
1:45:11
Tad Eggleston: 20 when this came out?
1:45:13
Phil: Yeah.
1:45:14
Phil: And just, like.
1:45:16
Tad Eggleston: Maybe 1999?
1:45:17
Phil: Yeah, it was kind of… it was kind of looking back on… on my life and saying, oh, I've kind of.
1:45:21
Tad Eggleston: 1998. So I was 18 when this came out.
1:45:24
Phil: Yeah, that'd be huge for me if I read that. I mean, I think I did read it around 1819.
1:45:29
Tad Eggleston: Not at all, like, I… I…
1:45:32
Tad Eggleston: You know, I'd been in and out of comics for 14 years already.
1:45:36
Phil: Yep.
1:45:37
Tad Eggleston: And never really out-out of comics.
1:45:41
Tad Eggleston: I'd been out at new comics.
1:45:43
Tad Eggleston: I'd gone through periods where I was way more likely to read novels than comics. I'd gone through periods where I was watching a ton of movies rather than reading anything.
1:45:53
Phil: Yeah.
1:45:54
Tad Eggleston: you know.
1:45:55
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, I wasn't completely out of the movie period. You know, my heavy movie-watching period was, like, 16 to 24.
1:46:03
Phil: Yeah, yeah, that was probably my biggest movie-watching period, too.
1:46:07
Tad Eggleston: And it didn't completely slow down until I was in my 30s.
1:46:15
Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean, a huge part of the reason that it's slowed down, if I'm being completely honest, is my wife doesn't like movies a ton. She doesn't generally have the 2-hour attention span.
1:46:24
Phil: Right? Prefers TV shows.
1:46:26
Tad Eggleston: She prefers 30-minute comedies.
1:46:28
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
1:46:29
Tad Eggleston: She might watch 5 hours of them at once, but, like…
1:46:32
Phil: I… we're the same way. Will we watch 5 hours of a series? Absolutely. Hour and a half movie? It's too long. Right. I mean, hour and a half early, two hours, but yeah, still. And then for me…
1:46:44
Tad Eggleston: That image.
1:46:45
Phil: I know, that's so… I love the phalanx. It's incredible. Yeah. Oh my goodness, but one of the other things for me…
1:46:52
Tad Eggleston: Look at…
1:46:52
Phil: Yeah, that's so good, too. Again, it's all form. It's silhouette and shadow, and it's so evocative and incredible. Part of it for me, too, is that growing up.
1:47:04
Phil: I… so we… the combination of moving around, like.
1:47:08
Phil: from 3 to 10, my family moved 7 times in 7 years. There was not always a comic book shop where we moved. Right. There was not always the same TV channels when we moved. So I… I never had a regular comic series I was reading. I would get a random volume here and there.
1:47:25
Phil: Until, again, reading manga series, in late middle school, early high school.
1:47:31
Phil: And then immediately after high school is when I got a poll list and started reading American comics monthly. So, again, that feels like something that kind of happened
1:47:41
Phil: just after my… my formative comment reading experience, so it's… it's kind of funny hearing other people say, like, oh yeah, I started reading this as a kid, and I was like.
1:47:49
Phil: I really just popped in and out of… I observed Civil War from afar while, you know, I saw posters for it while playing Magic the Gathering in comic shops, but I didn't read it until way after it happened, you know?
1:48:03
Phil: So yeah, so it's interesting.
1:48:05
Phil: pulling that autobiographical, like, hey, how did I get into this? What were the various pieces and gears and machine that put.
1:48:13
Tad Eggleston: Well, and particularly when you're that…
1:48:15
Tad Eggleston: Deep into… yeah, see, that's… that's how it would look originally.
1:48:18
Phil: Mmm, fascinating.
1:48:19
Tad Eggleston: But, but the…
1:48:20
Phil: That's, that's so, so fascinating.
1:48:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, like, it just occurred to me that I, like, because I've been decorating my room.
1:48:32
Tad Eggleston: That while it would be great to do it as…
1:48:35
Tad Eggleston: like, the actual comics opened up, it would be even cooler to find, like, virgin… versions of the art.
1:48:44
Phil: Yeah. Without…
1:48:45
Tad Eggleston: The, the, the, the title on it at all.
1:48:48
Phil: Yeah.
1:48:48
Tad Eggleston: Just do the five up together, and high qual… well, there's one version.
1:48:54
Phil: Look at that. Of the, the Spartan in front of the moon. Yeah, it's so good.
1:48:58
Phil: It's just the composition, the… the mood… Ugh.
1:49:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, don't get me wrong, the trade dress, also amazing. Yeah. Particularly when you're thinking about putting 5 of them up on the wall.
1:49:09
Phil: Yeah. In some ways.
1:49:10
Tad Eggleston: is not having… The trade dress makes it cooler.
1:49:14
Phil: It does, because then it takes you a second to recognize what it actually is.
1:49:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, and it just also goes together.
1:49:22
Tad Eggleston: Well, oh, wow.
1:49:25
Tad Eggleston: And the set's priced higher than I would have expected.
1:49:29
Phil: That's funny, because I'm… I saw that, and I'm like, okay, yeah, no, that seems about… that seems about right. Were those signs? I completely…
1:49:36
Tad Eggleston: I… I'm… I don't know how much old comics cost.
1:49:41
Phil: I care about wind up being a.
1:49:42
Tad Eggleston: dollar apiece.
1:49:43
Phil: Right.
1:49:44
Tad Eggleston: Ps.
1:49:44
Phil: I guess it's more of, if you had told me, oh yeah, single issues of 300, 80 bucks on eBay, I'd be like, yeah, that sounds, you know, that's in the ballpark.
1:49:53
Tad Eggleston: Whereas, I would totally expect to find, like, a bundle.
1:49:57
Phil: Would I buy it?
1:49:58
Tad Eggleston: 20 bucks at a cop shop, at a comic shop.
1:50:01
Phil: And that's one of those things where I'm like, would I buy it at $80? No.
1:50:04
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:50:04
Phil: Am I surprised seeing it at 80? Also, no. You know? Gosh, that's another fun thing, is I went… Some of these word balloons are just outstanding, too. Yeah, the lettering… the lettering in this is pretty incredible.
1:50:17
Tad Eggleston: He did all of his own…
1:50:19
Phil: So I saw a trend, so there was a page where, you know, there's a lot of landscape images, and then the lettering is
1:50:28
Phil: to the right in a column. That's a technique used by Rick Remender and Wes Craig in Deadly Class, so it's really interesting flipping through the scene. Oh!
1:50:38
Phil: that's where… that's probably where the influence came from. I can see those guys having read this. The fact that the book turned into every page as a double-page spread was clearly an influence on J.H. Williams, with… there was an edition of Promethea that came out that way, and now the way he's doing Echolance that way is like, oh shit!
1:50:54
Phil: I didn't realize that this is where that came from, so that's also really cool to see.
1:50:59
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I'm relatively certain that it's not necessarily this is where it came from. It's certainly… certainly one of the biggest earlier examples of.
1:51:08
Phil: Yeah.
1:51:08
Tad Eggleston: that.
1:51:10
Phil: I just mean, like, you know, history-wise, this is a book that did those things first.
1:51:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Everything was a double-page spread.
1:51:19
Phil: Yeah.
1:51:19
Phil: This is… this is also where, if I… if I blink out suddenly, it's because my laptop ran out of battery, not because…
1:51:26
Tad Eggleston: Well, then let us… let us wrap up, because we're at this point just navel-gazing.
1:51:31
Phil: Yeah.
1:51:31
Tad Eggleston: They will be using a comic that, like.
1:51:35
Phil: In our defense.
1:51:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are not many comics as beautiful as 300.
1:51:42
Phil: It's… yeah, it's one of a kind that way, even amongst Frank's work.
1:51:46
Phil: I think it's… it's pretty one, kind of.
1:51:47
Tad Eggleston: So… Three books that I hope will be spectacular… oh god, this was hard.
1:51:54
Tad Eggleston: This was so hard.
1:51:56
Tad Eggleston: Because we had both Lazarus fall in number 5, Ann Powers No. 25.
1:52:03
Tad Eggleston: And Lazarus pulled out the win, but only by a hair, and I would… I would be less than shocked.
1:52:10
Phil: the cover. The cover has me on pins and needles.
1:52:14
Tad Eggleston: I would be totally less than shocked.
1:52:16
Tad Eggleston: if, when I'm talking about amazing books next week, they…
1:52:20
Phil: That's… I… Yeah, that's totally possible. I could see you doing that.
1:52:24
Tad Eggleston: Three books I know are amazing, the Ephraimata…
1:52:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I forgot. Outlaw Showdown from EC Oni.
1:52:32
Tad Eggleston: Anything that has, John R. Cooty, Christopher Cantwell, Ann Nesenti, Tony Moore, David Lapham, and Brian Azzarello is… Those are good names!
1:52:40
Phil: Those are really good names, yeah!
1:52:42
Tad Eggleston: Heck yeah. My apologies to Orla number 3.
1:52:47
Tad Eggleston: Gaia, the Protopia's one-shot, Chris Condon's Green Arrow, number 29, Jeff the Landshark, number 5, Killer Affairs of State, number 5, News from the Fallout, number 5, in a… in a double Chris Condon week. Really, really kind of feel bad about leaving this double Kelly Thompson week, too, because we got
1:53:06
Tad Eggleston: Absolute Wonder Woman number 3, we got Zach Thompson in Cemetery Kids Run Rabid number 3.
1:53:12
Tad Eggleston: Like, good week of comics, but yeah, the 3-spot is gonna go to the one that has Cantwell, Nesenti, Lapham, and Azzarello.
1:53:25
Tad Eggleston: is…
1:53:25
Phil: Yup.
1:53:27
Phil: That's… hey, it's hard to argue with that. I was gonna say, I'm remembering you… sorry to mention your book there, but the ephemerada Shaping the Exquisite nature of grief. I remember you mentioned that before, and that sounded really incredible, so I've got to look at it.
1:53:40
Tad Eggleston: I got my reader copy before I talked to Carol, go listen to our interview. I got my physical copy at Cartoon's Crossroads. It is…
1:53:49
Tad Eggleston: Beautiful! You can buy your copy on Wednesday. Similarly, I've had a digital copy of Nocturnos from Laura Perez at Panic Graphics for a while. It is outstanding, you can buy it on Wednesday, and I just got a digital copy of Thanksgiving from Mark Russell and Morissette, the one-shot from Ahoy.
1:54:09
Tad Eggleston: If I'm being completely fair.
1:54:13
Tad Eggleston: it went into the, I know is spectacular, because I got a copy that I haven't read, but will certainly read before Wednesday.
1:54:22
Phil: So you know you know it'll be.
1:54:24
Tad Eggleston: And because I can't remember the last time Mark Russell did anything that I didn't feel was spectacular.
1:54:32
Phil: I'd be shocked. I'd be shocked.
1:54:34
Tad Eggleston: Great week for collections. Full Tail Boogie from Alex DeCampi and Eduardo O'Connor, collecting their stories from 2000 AD. Out of Alcatraz, from Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook, this is probably a short list…
1:54:48
Tad Eggleston: for my favorite miniseries of last year, we gotta start thinking about those. We're getting up to…
1:54:54
Phil: Oh, yeah!
1:54:56
Tad Eggleston: Another, shortlist book for me, and, and this goes full circle back to our, our talk of ballplayers way at the beginning, Pastime from Joe Harris and Russell Olson involves,
1:55:11
Tad Eggleston: Barnstorming baseball, and Vampirish. Yeah.
1:55:17
Tad Eggleston: Also, some interesting graphic novels coming out this week. Nine Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off, an informal self-defense Guide for Independent Creatives from Raymond Bessinger at Drawn and Quarterly, Bridge Planet 9 from Jared Throne at Top Shelf, Cat Mask from Linus Liu at Nakama Press slash Mad Cave.
1:55:34
Tad Eggleston: and This Slavery from an adaptation of Ethel Carney Holdsworth work by Sophie Ricard and Scarlett Ricard at Abrams.
1:55:45
Tad Eggleston: So… are you… We're gonna talk about a book that I just talked about.
1:55:51
Phil: Indeed.
1:55:52
Tad Eggleston: Two books that I left off the list, because they're the paperback versions of things that have come out before, but are absolutely…
1:55:58
Phil: Outstanding.
1:56:00
Phil: So, I am, as you can all guess, also excited for Lazarus Fallen number 5, Greg Rocco, Michael Lark, Santi Arcus, Ariana Mayer, Image Comics,
1:56:09
Phil: Yeah, I…
1:56:11
Phil: I… I don't even want to say my guess for what's gonna happen in the issue, and the off chance… yeah, I'm not even gonna make a guess. I am just… I'm pumped, I'm excited.
1:56:20
Tad Eggleston: First of all, even if you're right, you'll be wrong. Exactly. And most likely, you're… Completely wrong.
1:56:28
Phil: Yeah.
1:56:29
Tad Eggleston: And if you're right, Right, which is really unlikely.
1:56:34
Tad Eggleston: That would just be spoiling it.
1:56:36
Phil: Exactly! So, so, don't even need… don't even need to speculate.
1:56:40
Phil: just, just get excited. The other two picks were, fortuitously, All Negro Comics, America's first black comic book from various writers and artists at Image. I didn't realize that was a reprint. It is, it was, it was kickstarted, and the hardcover, I think, was also released in comic shops. Oh, yeah.
1:56:59
Tad Eggleston: Darren Bennett actually sent me a copy after he was on the first time, because he wrote a,
1:57:05
Tad Eggleston: Jackie Robinson adjacent story.
1:57:09
Phil: ask?
1:57:09
Tad Eggleston: And really, really good. Very cool.
1:57:12
Tad Eggleston: So when we got… when we fell down the baseball rabbit hole, he's like, oh, I gotta send you this!
1:57:17
Phil: There you go.
1:57:18
Tad Eggleston: available right now, but…
1:57:20
Phil: Nice.
1:57:22
Tad Eggleston: between printings.
1:57:23
Phil: Yeah, I love unearthing pieces of comic book history, and this is absolutely one of them that everyone interested should check out.
1:57:31
Tad Eggleston: Both the original comic, the all-negro comic.
1:57:35
Tad Eggleston: you know, Negro creators, Negro superhero, that sort of thing, was surprisingly good, but the ancillary material is really outstanding, outstanding.
1:57:45
Phil: I'm sure, yeah. And then, of course, the paperback for Fish Flies by Jeff Lemire Image. I like Jeff Lemire, it's been a while since I've read one of his books, and there being a weird bug man monster on the cover of this one.
1:57:58
Tad Eggleston: Andy did the art.
1:57:59
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:58:00
Tad Eggleston: Even better when it's stuff that he does the.
1:58:01
Phil: It's the same. I'm getting to a point where I would almost prefer reading stuff he draws himself over stuff he writes for other artists.
1:58:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I.
1:58:10
Phil: She hadn't.
1:58:11
Tad Eggleston: I prefer… But… but I also almost never dislike his writing, so, like…
1:58:18
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
1:58:18
Tad Eggleston: I understand that he can't draw at all, and that he makes as much money from writing as he does from drawing, which is, like.
1:58:25
Phil: We'll see it. That's where I'd actually disagree.
1:58:27
Tad Eggleston: Later.
1:58:28
Phil: about him not being able to draw at all, because he… just because he's… he's mastered a simplified and more, like, kind of ugly style, it's still there, it's still capable. I think that's.
1:58:38
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I meant that, like, he has X number of years in his life.
1:58:44
Tad Eggleston: fraud.
1:58:44
Phil: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, yes, you're right, you're right. You cannot draw everything.
1:58:49
Tad Eggleston: We will lose… I mean, based on his output as a writer, if he only did work that he drew, we would lose a significant number of his brilliant ideas.
1:59:01
Phil: He is a damn workhorse, I have no idea how he puts out as many books as he does.
1:59:05
Tad Eggleston: He's not anywhere close to Bendis as his prime.
1:59:09
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, yeah, I was gonna say, I'm like, Bendis has definitely tapered off a bit, but yeah, I… Yeah, Bendis is prime.
1:59:16
Phil: I'm sure.
1:59:17
Tad Eggleston: And actually, the one that's crazy, and I don't know if he wound up having, like, because enough of it is places like Oni or Bad Idea that do things kind of differently.
1:59:28
Phil: Matt Kent, yeah.
1:59:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, I was actually gonna go with David Lapham.
1:59:32
Phil: Oh, yeah, he puts out a bunch, too!
1:59:34
Tad Eggleston: Because he's not doing… I mean, he's doing some writing, but he's not doing…
1:59:40
Phil: Yeah, he's drawn.
1:59:41
Tad Eggleston: He's doing some writing and drawing, and a lot of drawing for other people.
1:59:46
Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:59:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, a bunch of them are short, I mean, I just…
1:59:50
Phil: Makes you want to go read more Digital Affin, too.
1:59:53
Tad Eggleston: to talk to Lapum soon, and that will definitely be one of the questions that I have for him, is… is, like.
2:00:03
Tad Eggleston: Is… is your workload not…
2:00:07
Tad Eggleston: as much… not what it feels like because of release schedules, or are you just, like, in overdrive?
2:00:14
Phil: It'd be pretty funny if the American Caper episode turns into just questions for Lapham the whole time!
2:00:22
Tad Eggleston: We'll try to avoid that.
2:00:24
Phil: Right, but it'd be funny if it happened.
2:00:27
Tad Eggleston: I will try to avoid that, because among other things, I will try very, very, very hard to lead with American Keeper.
2:00:39
Phil: Right, right, right.
2:00:44
Phil: But yeah.
2:00:45
Tad Eggleston: Yes, that, that does feel like a possible danger.
2:00:49
Phil: Feature or bug, who knows?
2:00:55
Tad Eggleston: You know… I think Bug.
2:00:57
Phil: I think at that point, Buck, it's probably poor form to invite on a team and only interview one of the members of the team.
2:01:03
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:01:04
Phil: Appropriately bad form.
2:01:05
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:01:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is one of the reasons that, like.
2:01:11
Tad Eggleston: I often, like, the bigger the team I have, the more I start…
2:01:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I understand that the writer's often gonna talk first when we're just talking about what the book is about, but like…
2:01:24
Tad Eggleston: if I've read it, and I have ways to… I will often go…
2:01:28
Tad Eggleston: As low on the theoretical totem pole as possible first.
2:01:34
Phil: Yeah.
2:01:34
Tad Eggleston: But, like, like, like, I don't remember if I did this when we were doing,
2:01:41
Tad Eggleston: like, because the first whole team, whole team that I remember having is when we had the… the Love Everlasting team, and we had Tom and Elsa, and Matt, and Clayton.
2:01:52
Tad Eggleston: But I know how I'd do it now, is I'd make certain that after we had the basic, like, tell us about the book.
2:01:59
Tad Eggleston: I would go to a Clayton question first, and then a Matt question before I started talking to Tom and Elsa about anything.
2:02:06
Phil: That's good, I think that's good, yeah.
2:02:08
Tad Eggleston: Because I cannot emphasize how important colors and… and…
2:02:14
Phil: Yeah.
2:02:18
Tad Eggleston: Colors and letters and word balloons and whatnot are in ways that are supposed to be invisible.
2:02:25
Phil: Yes.
2:02:26
Tad Eggleston: To a certain extent, you're not supposed to know who Clayton and Matt are.
2:02:32
Phil: Until you get to be a comic book super freak like us, and then some of your.
2:02:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
2:02:38
Phil: See ya.
2:02:41
Tad Eggleston: But… but… Some of the things they do are incredibly important.
2:02:48
Tad Eggleston: To how the book… feels.
2:02:51
Phil: Oh, 100%.
2:02:54
Tad Eggleston: You know, cause that's the… I mean… Like, the words… important.
2:03:00
Tad Eggleston: And the… and the art is important.
2:03:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is kind of part of what we were talking about with what is a medium last week, you know?
2:03:09
Tad Eggleston: But what a comic is…
2:03:15
Tad Eggleston: is… The sum of those parts.
2:03:21
Tad Eggleston: Yes. Or really, the thing that's greater than the sum of those parts, or likely.
2:03:26
Phil: It's…
2:03:27
Tad Eggleston: The sum of those parts.
2:03:28
Phil: It's how they work together, yeah. It's… I still remember the moment I realized that I liked Richard Corbin's art colored by David Stewart more than when he colored himself.
2:03:39
Tad Eggleston: Well, and my favorite Richard Corbin art is the stuff by, philorubia now.
2:03:46
Phil: I don't… that doesn't stand out to me in my memory, so I'll have to check that out.
2:03:50
Tad Eggleston: the… the,
2:03:59
Tad Eggleston: the Dark Horse…
2:04:05
Tad Eggleston: the Dark Horse…
2:04:07
Phil: edition of Den.
2:04:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, they've been re-releasing all of Corbin's stuff.
2:04:12
Phil: Huh.
2:04:12
Tad Eggleston: With… Restored pages and colors.
2:04:17
Phil: applying for.
2:04:17
Tad Eggleston: Jose Villaruia, and new lettering from Nate Picos.
2:04:21
Phil: That does sound interesting. I, I mean, I, I, that does look really good.
2:04:27
Tad Eggleston: I love Richard Corbin so much.
2:04:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, and part of it is, like, so much of the Corbyn, like, and… and…
2:04:34
Phil: Oh, hu.
2:04:35
Tad Eggleston: You're not in the Heavy Metal Book Club, but you probably enjoy.
2:04:38
Phil: I would pro- I probably would enjoy it.
2:04:40
Tad Eggleston: Like, so much of this stuff, like, heavy metal wasn't printing at the same level that…
2:04:48
Tad Eggleston: That so many of the European companies were. So, like… The versions we got…
2:04:55
Tad Eggleston: As good as they often were, were often shadows of what was actually created.
2:05:00
Phil: Oh, wow.
2:05:03
Phil: That's incredible.
2:05:04
Tad Eggleston: You know, they were doing… more detailed coloring.
2:05:10
Tad Eggleston: In the 70s. They were doing.
2:05:13
Phil: I love the sound of that. I just… I just… I want to see that. I want to see more detailed coloring from the 70s.
2:05:19
Tad Eggleston: So many things that we think of as black and white Mobius.
2:05:24
Tad Eggleston: weren't.
2:05:25
Phil: Ugh.
2:05:26
Phil: That kills me.
2:05:27
Phil: Kills me just a little bit.
2:05:29
Phil: Well, I mean, for the most part, they're now very much available in color in the United States as well, but like…
2:05:35
Tad Eggleston: The first time we saw them, we saw them as black and white, even though they were already very much available in color.
2:05:42
Phil: How hard would our minds have been blown if we saw them in color to begin with? The world may never know.
2:05:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
2:05:50
Phil: Oh, there are 5 volumes of Den by Richard Corbin. I am checking out the first one from Hoopla right now.
2:05:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like…
2:06:05
Tad Eggleston: Look at Arzak.
2:06:07
Phil: Oh…
2:06:10
Phil: You know, this is… this is always the… the best way to wrap up an episode of 22 Panels, of just… just staring at gorgeous comic art.
2:06:18
Tad Eggleston: Of course.
2:06:19
Phil: Of course.
2:06:19
Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, because we're such a completely audio podcast, and… but look at Arzak really quickly there, and…
2:06:28
Phil: And then…
2:06:29
Tad Eggleston: You know, and this is where we're also telling people that they should go… Check out,
2:06:38
Tad Eggleston: they should totally go check out Mobius and Richard Corbin, because then they'll know these things that we're looking at.
2:06:48
Phil: two artists that are always a good time, Corbin and Mobius.
2:06:58
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I get… I guess they did do color for the first… for that in… in… Good.
2:07:06
Tad Eggleston: So the fir… the first Arzak was in color, and…
2:07:10
Tad Eggleston: And heavy metal as well, so that… that's… that's good.
2:07:18
Tad Eggleston: So, it would be harder for me to go find an example of
2:07:22
Tad Eggleston: of a color versus not color Mobius, but not as hard as it should be.
2:07:28
Tad Eggleston: How about that?
2:07:29
Phil: Yeah, that's true. I think…
2:07:31
Tad Eggleston: And that's not that he never worked in black and white.
2:07:33
Phil: screen share has frozen.
2:07:34
Tad Eggleston: That's just… Well.
2:07:35
Phil: I just started off.
2:07:37
Phil: Oh, okay. Well, it's… my screen hasn't changed, so it's definitely frozen for me.
2:07:42
Tad Eggleston: Gotcha, yeah. Gotcha. Well, that could be you're running low on battery, it could be that we're going too long. We're not… well, actually, no, I think we pulled off 2 hours again, didn't we? Fuck.
2:07:53
Phil: Yeah, it's funny how right after, right after we're like, hey, we need to… we need to tighten up, we need to get these closer to an hour, we sprawl into formative comics talk and hit two hours.
2:08:01
Tad Eggleston: At least… at least it was… it was not the… the going off on a tangent, at least it was the…
2:08:09
Phil: Yeah.
2:08:09
Tad Eggleston: The body of the… So, anyway…
2:08:13
Phil: Exactly. We set ourselves up.
2:08:15
Tad Eggleston: panels. This has been… Episode, what, 206?
2:08:21
Phil: 206?
2:08:23
Tad Eggleston: And, we will see you after the next page.