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Saga Book Club - Volume 1 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels, and what is the first installment of the Saga Book Club? We've been talking about it forever, you know, a mere 681 episodes in, we're finally starting it.
• 0:20
  Tad Eggleston: There you go, Marisol. You've been begging me for it since we started loving rockets. I have.
• 0:28
  Marisol: And now the day.
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: It's only two years that we've been talking about it. Josh and I had to bump into each other doing… talking about Saga with Bendis, and ….
• 0:38
  Marisol: And, and….
• 0:40
  Tad Eggleston: John Saunders to go, oh.
• 0:42
  Tad Eggleston: oh, maybe I should do this. So, speaking of Josh, we're also joined by Josh Iserreich, who has been on the show before as a creator guest for his Scout comic, Charm City.
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: Baltimore police are baffled when a Raven's cheerleader is found floating in the inner harbor with an arcane symbol carved on her corpse. And other books, what other books do you have that people should go find, Josh?
• 1:10
  Josh Eiserike: Well, they should definitely read the first two issues of Charm City, on sale now for Scout. Thank you, Tad, for the, plug. And then my first book, The Very Fun.
• 1:19
  Tad Eggleston: That was so good.
• 1:20
  Josh Eiserike: Thank you, thank you. My first book, graphic novel, The Very Final Last Girls, from a company called Darby Pop, is also on sale. When I get off my ass, I'm gonna write the sequel to that, about the girls who survive horror films and what happens next. Very much in the vein of, like, Buffy.
• 1:38
  Josh Eiserike: …
• 1:39
  Josh Eiserike: And then I have a new project that right now is on Webtoon and Tapas, the first chapter, called Pale of Settlement. It's a YA adventure, think, like, in the vein of Stranger Things, but in the world of something like Fiddler on the Roof, but without the songs. It's very weird.
• 1:54
  Tad Eggleston: Kinda love it. No songs?
• 1:57
  Josh Eiserike: No songs. But we are working on a tabletop game.
• 2:01
  Josh Eiserike: Tie-in.
• 2:02
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. That is true.
• 2:03
  Josh Eiserike: But yeah, and people can….
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: I read the first one.
• 2:05
  Josh Eiserike: chapter.
• 2:07
  Phil: Oh!
• 2:08
  Tad Eggleston: Bill will have another game to work into our world of Die.
• 2:11
  Phil: There we go.
• 2:12
  Tad Eggleston: boy.
• 2:14
  Josh Eiserike: I'm sorry?
• 2:14
  Tad Eggleston: Do you roleplay it at all?
• 2:17
  Josh Eiserike: I… I… I am a game novice. I have a colleague who is a game designer who approached me about adapting a comic, into a game.
• 2:24
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 2:25
  Josh Eiserike: Having a lot of fun.
• 2:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
• 2:27
  Tad Eggleston: Because we play Die once a month. If you want a character, we can hook you up with….
• 2:35
  Josh Eiserike: Awesome. Well, thank you.
• 2:36
  Tad Eggleston: This is the right time to get in, because we might have Kieran Gillen coming soon.
• 2:41
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, fun. Well, thank you for having me back, and I'm very excited to talk about Saga.
• 2:47
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely. Then I have my buddy Matt and his daughter Belle.
• 2:52
  Matt: ….
• 2:53
  Tad Eggleston: Hey guys!
• 2:55
  belle: Hello!
• 2:58
  belle: Hi, hi.
• 2:58
  Tad Eggleston: And for the first time ever, a co-host is in the, …
• 3:03
  Tad Eggleston: In a book club, so hi, Phil.
• 3:05
  Phil: Hello!
• 3:07
  Tad Eggleston: And we've got Psychocomicology… Psychocomicology's Lee.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: To keep us all on our toes.
• 3:15
  Tad Eggleston: And shrink our heads.
• 3:17
  Larry Woods: and maybe just act as an apologist, in response to one of my colleagues' disdain for saga.
• 3:26
  Phil: Oh, so it's not even… it's not even your disdain anymore, it's… it's… it's a… it's just a guy you know who disdains it.
• 3:31
  Larry Woods: Yeah, just the guy.
• 3:32
  Tad Eggleston: No, Lee likes Saga. Love it. It's Edgar. I'll call him out.
• 3:38
  Larry Woods: Oh, God.
• 3:38
  Tad Eggleston: Dr. Ramos doesn't like Saga, but he copped to the fact that it's kind of like, … kinda like his disdain for Sheriff of Babylon, where it's just too real. It forces him to look at himself in ways that he doesn't feel comfortable doing.
• 3:54
  Phil: Hmm.
• 3:54
  Tad Eggleston: He doesn't….
• 3:57
  Larry Woods: I… he said it. It's out there, so….
• 4:02
  Tad Eggleston: So, I was thinking about how I wanted to lead tonight all day, and I finally, had it, kick in while I was in a English class, because they were working on their, their, like.
• 4:18
  Tad Eggleston: First…
• 4:20
  Tad Eggleston: Ungraded essay, the one that's just to kind of let every… let the teachers know where the freshmen are at coming in.
• 4:27
  Tad Eggleston: …
• 4:29
  Tad Eggleston: something that I think is underrated about Saga is we… and, like, it's weird to say anything about Saga is underrated.
• 4:37
  Tad Eggleston: But the first issue… is like… A perfect thesis.
• 4:45
  Tad Eggleston: If you… Aren't hooked in the first issue, you're not gonna be hooked.
• 4:52
  Tad Eggleston: And almost everybody gets hooked in the first issue, and if you're hooked in the first issue, like, there are maybe two points
• 5:02
  Tad Eggleston: Where it feels reasonable for you to bail out.
• 5:06
  Tad Eggleston: But I think very few people do.
• 5:09
  Tad Eggleston: ….
• 5:10
  Matt: Dude, if you're not hooked after, am I shitting?
• 5:14
  Matt: You're never gonna be hooked. I'm sorry. That's just where I'm at.
• 5:19
  Larry Woods: That's fair.
• 5:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean….
• 5:21
  belle: It feels like she shouldn't.
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: I was hooked.
• 5:24
  belle: It feels like she's shitting.
• 5:29
  Marisol: I mean, pretty sure that's where I got hooked. Yeah. When Dad first showed me this comic.
• 5:34
  Phil: Yo.
• 5:34
  Marisol: Yup. Yup. Like, no.
• 5:36
  Tad Eggleston: I think I even just opened it to that and said, you want to read this?
• 5:41
  Marisol: Then my immediate answer was yes.
• 5:44
  Matt: Yup, yes, yes. Talk about….
• 5:45
  Marisol: All of it, right now?
• 5:49
  Phil: Talk about your perfect thesis. I think that's… that's it, you know?
• 5:57
  belle: There's two places that people bail out. I'm so curious.
• 6:00
  Tad Eggleston: I'll come back to that. Josh has.
• 6:02
  belle: Okay.
• 6:03
  Tad Eggleston: this day.
• 6:03
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, I was… I was gonna say, and we talked a little bit before recording, about, you know, if we read it in trades or from the beginning, and I've been ride or die for Brian K. Vaughan for… since well before Saga, so it didn't matter what this book was, I was in, and…
• 6:20
  Josh Eiserike: I have yet to be disappointed by one of his comics, and I don't want to be disappointed by any of his comics, so I'm just gonna keep reading whatever he writes, and it's great.
• 6:31
  Matt: Same, that's why I picked it up.
• 6:34
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas it was… it was during that period where I had no money and I wasn't buying single comics.
• 6:42
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so I blame my… I blame my son for why I wasn't on from the beginning.
• 6:47
  Tad Eggleston: I couldn't afford comics again yet.
• 6:50
  Matt: This came out in 2011, I got back into comics in 2010, so it was like, oh, cool!
• 6:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I got back into comics in, like, 2014, so… so…
• 7:00
  Tad Eggleston: I jumped in right before Volume 4 came out.
• 7:06
  Tad Eggleston: And collected individually from 25 on. And have since gone back and gotten all of the first 24.
• 7:15
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you, Andy. Even if you didn't show up, you did provide saga number one.
• 7:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just because it was because you found a better…
• 7:25
  Tad Eggleston: A better quality copy that you kept for yourself, and…
• 7:30
  Tad Eggleston: I got the cast off, I'm down with that. People can do that. I have no problem with that. I want the reader copy anyway.
• 7:39
  Tad Eggleston: … So, yeah, I, I, I, it's just like…
• 7:44
  Tad Eggleston: Saga is such a near-perfect monthly book that it's hard to know where to start, so… so… I'm gonna… we're gonna go alphabetically, just because I feel like having an order, and give me just a handful of thoughts on
• 8:01
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 8:02
  Tad Eggleston: And right now, we're gonna try to stick to the first volume, and I know that's hard, because we've all read it all, some of us read it all multiple times.
• 8:12
  Tad Eggleston: … What hooked you? What… what do you love? What do you root for? What do you… cry about…
• 8:25
  Tad Eggleston: Because I do all of those things.
• 8:27
  Tad Eggleston: And alphabetically, we're starting with bell.
• 8:30
  Tad Eggleston: Who's also youngest.
• 8:32
  Tad Eggleston: So, so you were gonna get stuck at the beginning either way, Bill.
• 8:37
  belle: I feel very put in a bad spot. This first podcast I joined, and I'm getting like, Belle, you're up, and I'm like, geez, okay, well…
• 8:45
  belle: ….
• 8:46
  Larry Woods: Yeah, no pressure at all, I guess.
• 8:48
  belle: Yeah, you know, just… just get out here and say some, say some stuff. I think…
• 8:53
  belle: I think I love… what I love about Saga is the… the romance between so many different characters, and also…
• 9:01
  belle: the despair that you see them go through. I think it really bonds you as the reader to those characters, because you're watching a relationship you so desperately want to root for be put through, like, the worst things it possibly could, and it survives. And I think that's really awesome to read about, because so many writers neglect to write about those really real parts of life that you get to see in Saga, through, like, you know, space war and crazy stuff, and
• 9:26
  belle: TV head people, so… it's… it's pretty epic. I… I think a live action of Saga would definitely be hard to do.
• 9:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that was… that apparently is a goal of theirs.
• 9:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they'll… they take meetings, but apparently that was a call of theirs, was to make a comic so batshit crazy that nobody could actually pitch them something where they're like, yeah, you got this.
• 9:48
  Matt: Yeah. Because the Wachowski brothers haven't pitched them yet.
• 9:51
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't it the Wachowski sisters now?
• 9:54
  Matt: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I meant the, Russo brothers, I'm sorry, I misspoke.
• 9:58
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 9:59
  Phil: I would… I would hate to see a Russo saga.
• 10:02
  Phil: I would love to see a Wachowski saga.
• 10:06
  Matt: Yeah, I would too, I would.
• 10:08
  Phil: What I'd love….
• 10:09
  Matt: The timing was great.
• 10:10
  Phil: what I'd love more than either of those would be an animated saga. I think that's really the only way to do it. Especially after seeing animated series like Scavenger's Rain, and Common Side Effects, and so many others that get really weird.
• 10:24
  belle: I think Vox Machina 2 gets really weird. I think, like, a Vox Machina-style saga would do well.
• 10:28
  Phil: Oh my god.
• 10:29
  Marisol: Oh, that would be incredible.
• 10:31
  belle: That's what I'm saying!
• 10:34
  Marisol: I would pay so much actual money. If I wasn't poor for moving in 12 days, I would pay so much actual money.
• 10:42
  Matt: See a Vox Machina style.
• 10:44
  Marisol: Saga.
• 10:45
  belle: Oh my god, I… yeah.
• 10:50
  Tad Eggleston: Josh, you're, ….
• 10:53
  Josh Eiserike: I was just thinking about, like, who would I want to adapt this? And the answer is…
• 10:58
  Josh Eiserike: I have a lot of thoughts, but the answer is they're probably all wrong, because I don't think it should be adapted. I think, like Calvin and Hobbes, just.
• 11:06
  Tad Eggleston: I agree.
• 11:06
  Josh Eiserike: Let it be a comic.
• 11:07
  Josh Eiserike: I… sorry, Ted, what was the initial question?
• 11:12
  Phil: Who do you root for? What's your overall thoughts?
• 11:15
  Josh Eiserike: Okay, great, …
• 11:16
  Josh Eiserike: So, I went back and I googled when the book came out, and just sort of where I was in my life.
• 11:23
  Josh Eiserike: because this is the first time I'm rereading it, I've been reading it in singles and just enjoying the ride, but I haven't gone back. I couldn't tell you what the arcs were, I couldn't tell you about the trades, I was just like, oh yeah, they're good characters. I think the book does a really good job at orienting the reader every month or, you know, 3 years later when the next one comes out.
• 11:44
  Josh Eiserike: Without, you know, Without a recap page.
• 11:47
  Josh Eiserike: So I'm following the story, but I haven't gone back to read it, and when the first issue came out, like, I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, and I was dating the girl who would eventually become my wife.
• 12:00
  Josh Eiserike: But that didn't even cross my mind back then, that, you know, this was happening. It was like, oh, cool, I'm dating a girl, I got a comic, it's great. And now I read it again, married with kids, and the book hits me totally different.
• 12:14
  Josh Eiserike: It hits me about… this is a book about a family coming together, and, you know, holy shit, like, the beginning of my first daughter's life was so hard, and so challenging, and, you know, this is a book where people have horns and wings and televisions for heads, and it's so out there.
• 12:34
  Josh Eiserike: And yet, the emotions are so real, and it's so grounded, and it's so human, and you can probably tell, I am such a fan of this book.
• 12:42
  Josh Eiserike: And I'm really looking forward to going straight at a time, because it is, you know, it's like, when you come back to a piece of pop culture when you're older, with a different perspective, and, you know, just, you know, different life has happened, like, it's gonna hit you differently, and I think I like it even more than I did on the first read.
• 13:02
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I… I….
• 13:04
  Matt: 100.
• 13:05
  Tad Eggleston: I… Until… until the break.
• 13:12
  Tad Eggleston: I reread everything during every 3-month vacationpalooza they had.
• 13:20
  Phil: Now, that's commitment.
• 13:21
  Tad Eggleston: And I reread everything during the break, but I haven't done a full reread since they came back, so, like, we've got 3 new volumes since the last time I did a full reread.
• 13:32
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, so parts of it I've read, what, 8, 9 times, and all of it I've read at least 3 times, and I absolutely love it more. Every time.
• 13:46
  Tad Eggleston: And, … Lee?
• 13:50
  Josh Eiserike: Don't… don't spoil anything, because I'm… I'm coming at it again after years. I didn't remember the stock being killed so quickly. I was like, wait, what? She's already gone?
• 13:59
  Matt: Yay!
• 14:00
  Josh Eiserike: Don't tell me if she's coming back, because I wanna, I wanna, I wanna get, I wanna….
• 14:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I….
• 14:04
  Josh Eiserike: Kinda going in front.
• 14:06
  Matt: Then let me… let me do my two minor, quick spoilers.
• 14:11
  Tad Eggleston: … Because Bell had asked, what are the acceptable points to jump off?
• 14:16
  Tad Eggleston: My… my brother jumped off when … Marco… got high.
• 14:26
  Matt: All of them.
• 14:27
  Phil: ….
• 14:28
  Tad Eggleston: Because he was so… invested in Marco being this rock.
• 14:35
  Tad Eggleston: That when things… went wrong, and Marco… like… God.
• 14:45
  Tad Eggleston: Wasted, rather than… Continuing to fight for them.
• 14:51
  Tad Eggleston: he didn't even want to know that he came out of it and did better. He was just so disappointed in him that he couldn't go forward. And I think the other…
• 15:01
  Tad Eggleston: Acceptable place to jump off is the end of the first half.
• 15:06
  Tad Eggleston: You know, the way we just got the shit kicked out of us, and then 3 years to sit with it.
• 15:14
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm… on one side, personally, I can't imagine not coming back.
• 15:22
  Tad Eggleston: But on the flip side, I'm also kind of amazed at how many people came back.
• 15:28
  Phil: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean? Because to get the shit kicked out of you, that hard.
• 15:35
  Tad Eggleston: And then have to sit there for 3 years?
• 15:40
  Tad Eggleston: Of course, my first question, if I ever get to talk to Fiona, is, like, tell me how that really got… went down, because in my mind.
• 15:47
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like, at the end… they do, like, the longest letter answer ever. At the end of the first hardcover book, somebody asks the process of writing, or the process they go through for an issue. Like, 50 pages answering the question.
• 16:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right? And one of the things you learn is that Brian has had most of this…
• 16:13
  Tad Eggleston: its head and plot it out forever, and Fiona likes to go issue by issue.
• 16:19
  Tad Eggleston: Which means Fiona found out right before she had to draw it, 3 issues in a row, as she killed 3 beloved characters in a row.
• 16:33
  Tad Eggleston: And I just imagine her finishing drawing that last issue, picking up the phone, and having Brian pick up, and just going, fuck you!
• 16:41
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck you, I'm taking a break, and slamming it down.
• 16:46
  Matt: But she fleed all her cards with….
• 16:48
  Tad Eggleston: One of the other characters. But I still… …
• 16:57
  Tad Eggleston: So those are the two places that I think it's acceptable, and I'll do my best to do no more spoilers.
• 17:04
  Tad Eggleston: And I…
• 17:06
  Tad Eggleston: remind you of all the people who died, though I bet you you remember them pretty well. So… so I'm gonna… I'm gonna jump in. Oh, okay, but then it's Lee's turn. We're going alphabetically.
• 17:17
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, I'll just… real quick, I just want to say I am one of those people who, I have not read Saga since…
• 17:24
  Phil: that…
• 17:25
  Phil: that point, issue 64. This is my first time reading it since then. 54, yeah. This is my first time reading Saga since then. I am writing.
• 17:34
  Tad Eggleston: So you're 3 trades behind.
• 17:36
  Phil: Huh?
• 17:37
  Tad Eggleston: You're 3 trades behind.
• 17:38
  Phil: Yes, yes, I have not read any of the Return, ….
• 17:42
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, man.
• 17:42
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, this is… yeah. I can….
• 17:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, 10 months, it's gonna be really interesting.
• 17:48
  Phil: It is!
• 17:48
  Tad Eggleston: Have you managed to wait that long.
• 17:50
  Phil: Oh.
• 17:51
  Tad Eggleston: I, I think, I think I'll try.
• 17:53
  Phil: I mean, I've got… I've got a lot else going on.
• 17:55
  Tad Eggleston: Are you gonna… are you gonna try the way… the way Tyler tried to, not get ahead in… in Lazarus?
• 18:03
  Phil: Yeah, but I've got….
• 18:04
  Tad Eggleston: Another one of those. Mr. Owl, how many licks to get to the center?
• 18:10
  Phil: You know, I'd like to think I'm more Mr. Owl myself.
• 18:15
  Phil: No, I… well, it's… it'll be different because I've… I've read up to that point, so it's not like I haven't read… if I hadn't read any of it, I'd probably…
• 18:25
  Phil: like, not even stop. I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna get caught up after this, you know?
• 18:30
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 18:30
  Phil: But no, I've read it before, so… or most of it before, so… there's that.
• 18:35
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, Lee, you're slightly newer to comics, so when did you come to Saga? Particularly because we know Edgar doesn't like it, so, like, when and how did you come to Saga?
• 18:46
  Larry Woods: Okay, yeah, I… actually started… I picked up my first comic book ever.
• 18:53
  Larry Woods: In 2014, actually. I was 28 years old.
• 18:57
  Larry Woods: Okay. Was…
• 18:59
  Larry Woods: by way of a dear friend of mine, Matt, who… he's like, hey, there's a character I think you like, and he handed me, like, Deadpool. And at… he was spot on. I love Deadpool, and I was in my phase of buying anything Deadpool. Deadpool and Cable, the Kellology, all of that, and…
• 19:18
  Larry Woods: He also said, hey, I think you might like this one too.
• 19:21
  Larry Woods: And recommend a saga to me, and that was…
• 19:25
  Larry Woods: Yeah, I think we were actually saying this off-air before we started recording, but that was the first trade paperback volume that I picked up. I read it, I couldn't put it down, and then I promptly went back to my local comic shop, and then bought every trade I could.
• 19:43
  Larry Woods: And just binged it. So, yeah, I was introduced to Saga…
• 19:50
  Larry Woods: Right then, and it's been a love story ever since.
• 19:54
  Larry Woods: … Speaking of love stories, because you're asking me, like, what…
• 19:59
  Larry Woods: what hooked me? Like, what, like, attracted me?
• 20:01
  Tad Eggleston: I'mma hook you.
• 20:02
  Larry Woods: And there's two things. I won't try to take up too much airspace, but… …
• 20:08
  Larry Woods: it… the best way I can describe it, and this hits all of the things that I love, Romeo and Juliet.
• 20:14
  Larry Woods: … Firefly, And, Game of Thrones.
• 20:20
  Larry Woods: So, we're not talking about the eighth season.
• 20:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 20:23
  Larry Woods: But it takes.
• 20:24
  Tad Eggleston: Am I the only one that was okay with the eighth season?
• 20:28
  Larry Woods: We're talking about Saga, Ted.
• 20:33
  Larry Woods: When it comes to those three stories, I felt like Saga was a beautiful culmination of those three
• 20:41
  Larry Woods: Types of storytelling, in a very epic fashion.
• 20:44
  Larry Woods: … But the thing, the issue that got me hooked emotionally was issue 2.
• 20:53
  Larry Woods: And it was specifically the story. I had her… I am looking at my screen, because I had to Google her name, but Isabelle, which was….
• 20:59
  Tad Eggleston: God.
• 21:00
  Larry Woods: to a teenage girl.
• 21:01
  Larry Woods: … That one, I don't.
• 21:04
  Tad Eggleston: Math.
• 21:06
  Tad Eggleston: Were you precocious, and that's why Isabelle was named? I mean, because she's too old for it to actually be.
• 21:13
  Matt: Yeah, she was born, long before.
• 21:18
  belle: That would have been so much….
• 21:19
  Tad Eggleston: K, Brian K. Vaughn?
• 21:22
  belle: That origin story would have been so much cooler.
• 21:25
  Tad Eggleston: We'll just start using Saga. We'll be like, I was named after Saga.
• 21:28
  Matt: You can show up, if you want to say….
• 21:29
  Tad Eggleston: You should just use that, and….
• 21:31
  Matt: My dad gave me my name.
• 21:32
  Tad Eggleston: And see if any….
• 21:33
  belle: But he does.
• 21:34
  Tad Eggleston: the math.
• 21:35
  Matt: That's right, exactly.
• 21:37
  belle: Yeah.
• 21:38
  Tad Eggleston: My dad's friends with Brian K. Vaughan. That's what you said.
• 21:42
  Matt: I guess.
• 21:43
  Tad Eggleston: Dave.
• 21:43
  belle: That would be the coolest sentence ever to come out of my mouth.
• 21:49
  belle: No, that's… Goodness.
• 21:54
  Larry Woods: But that, that, that issue, or those particular issues, that's what…
• 21:59
  Larry Woods: Yeah, I was… that's what made me a Saga fan.
• 22:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Isabelle is… is amazing.
• 22:07
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, Marisol.
• 22:13
  Marisol: Sorry, I had to find the unmute button.
• 22:16
  Marisol: … For me, what got me hooked the hardest on Tissaga was actually the art style.
• 22:24
  Marisol: Cuz… My big thing is, the story can be… The greatest story ever written.
• 22:31
  Marisol: if I don't like the art style, or if I have
• 22:36
  Marisol: Just my own personal preference, an issue with how things and people are drawn, or the background, or what have you.
• 22:43
  Marisol: I cannot bring myself to continue the story.
• 22:47
  Marisol: I've done it before, where, like, I think…
• 22:50
  Marisol: some comic, one or two that Tad's recommended me, story was fantastic.
• 22:56
  Marisol: I could not get past the first trade or whatever, just because the art style started driving me nuts.
• 23:03
  Tad Eggleston: You gotta make certain…
• 23:04
  Tad Eggleston: Can you tell me which ones those are, just so I can, like, have it in the back of my head? Okay, avoid this artist, avoid that artist.
• 23:13
  Marisol: I don't even remember.
• 23:15
  Marisol: Which ones they were.
• 23:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you don't have to tell me now, but, like….
• 23:19
  Marisol: There's at least one. I mean….
• 23:21
  Tad Eggleston: You used to buy, like, what, $150 worth of trades every time you walked in?
• 23:26
  Marisol: out, yeah.
• 23:28
  Marisol: Oh, I….
• 23:28
  Tad Eggleston: You wouldn't come visit me unless you could afford it.
• 23:31
  Marisol: 6 to 9 trades every time I went over.
• 23:34
  Tad Eggleston: Great.
• 23:35
  Tad Eggleston: I did not have that kind of money to be throwing around, but damn it, I did it anyway.
• 23:42
  Marisol: But yeah, for me… Comics will get us every time. It was the art style of…
• 23:47
  Marisol: this book, and I did also enjoy the fact that you kind of…
• 23:53
  Marisol: Hit the ground running with the plot.
• 23:55
  Marisol: Like, page 1. We're already in the middle of the shitstorm. We're doing stuff right away. A baby is being born. They're… the parents are being hunted down by anyone and everyone.
• 24:07
  Marisol: And… We are getting… Kind of the context of How we got here… From the narration that's happening.
• 24:20
  Marisol: It's like, yes, we are dropped in the middle of the shit.
• 24:25
  Marisol: But we are still getting that necessary…
• 24:28
  Marisol: These are the key players, this is how we got here.
• 24:32
  Marisol: And… I know… usually I like that better than… More slow burn stories.
• 24:41
  Marisol: Because occasionally, I feel like slow burns tend to drag.
• 24:45
  Marisol: a little long, and then my ADHD acts up, and I lose all attention, and then I put it down and never fake it back up again.
• 24:55
  Tad Eggleston: That does make it hard for this to burn to work.
• 24:58
  Matt: That's really annoying.
• 24:59
  Matt: That was real.
• 25:01
  Marisol: That was real, but….
• 25:05
  Tad Eggleston: This is your writing tip, Josh. Be careful with the slow burn.
• 25:08
  Marisol: Yes.
• 25:10
  Marisol: A little slow burn is nice.
• 25:12
  Tad Eggleston: You gotta speed it up at least a little bit here and there.
• 25:16
  Marisol: You know, you're talking to somebody who listens to audiobooks at at least one and a half times speed, because the readers are talking too slow.
• 25:24
  Tad Eggleston: I don't get that.
• 25:25
  Marisol: and a half to 1.75 times speed, because….
• 25:29
  Tad Eggleston: One of our regular… I cannot handle their normal things.
• 25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, one of our regular listeners, hi Brett.
• 25:37
  Tad Eggleston: only listens to us at double speed, because that's what he listens to, like, all of his podcasts at, and I'm like, I just… so I… so I sound like a chipmunk to you most of the time?
• 25:50
  Marisol: Yes, the… I just… just from the first…
• 25:55
  Marisol: book that Tad sold me. I was…
• 25:57
  Marisol: hooked, and there was a point, I think, where I got caught up on the number of trades, And…
• 26:05
  Marisol: I kept coming in, like, every week or so, like, hey, is this one in? Is this new one in? Is this new one in?
• 26:12
  Marisol: And almost every time I tried to come in and buy comics, I was scouring the shelves for the next saga trade.
• 26:20
  Tad Eggleston: Did I, did I eventually….
• 26:22
  Marisol: Thanks, Jim, just….
• 26:22
  Tad Eggleston: single issues.
• 26:24
  Marisol: No. Because my whole thing was…
• 26:27
  Marisol: I stuck to trades, and I have trades all the way through for Saga. And the reason I actually prefer trades is because… not to say I don't have
• 26:37
  Marisol: Some boxes of single-issue comics.
• 26:39
  Marisol: But I tend to like the trades more just because I know I'm not missing an issue that way.
• 26:45
  Marisol: Yeah. And that's my biggest thing. I hate getting a bunch of comics, and it's like.
• 26:49
  Marisol: You go from 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, and I'm missing story, I know I am.
• 26:59
  Phil: But sometimes… but sometimes they collect out of order in trades, or, like, they'll skip an issue in trade, and they won't collect it until later on, and then it's… or what if you're following two series?
• 27:08
  Tad Eggleston: Very often.
• 27:10
  Phil: interlinked. Oh, I mean, it happens more often at the big publishers. They'll mess up the trade order when, like, especially if there's a crossover, or, like, the same writer is writing two sister books.
• 27:21
  Phil: the… the… yeah, that'll happen, but….
• 27:25
  Marisol: This is why.
• 27:25
  Phil: Right, you're right.
• 27:27
  Marisol: That's why we read the back of the book.
• 27:29
  Marisol: Yes. To see which issues are collected. Yes.
• 27:32
  Matt: But what do you do if Neil Gaiman wrote issue 9 for you, and then you had a falling out with him, and then you won't reprint his things?
• 27:40
  Phil: I mean, I don't feel the need to read… is that… oh, Spawn.
• 27:43
  Matt: Yeah, it's a spa joke.
• 27:45
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's okay, it's okay. I thought it was a Cerberus joke at first, but… but….
• 27:50
  Matt: Gross!
• 27:50
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. He was one of… didn't he… wasn't he something Spawn? I don't know.
• 27:55
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah. I think Was Cerberus number 8? I think it was number 8, was it? I don't remember.
• 28:00
  Matt: pause, yes.
• 28:02
  Matt: No, no, no, … Oh, fantastic.
• 28:05
  Josh Eiserike: I don't remember. But I have all those, too!
• 28:07
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, anyway.
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, Matt, you're up!
• 28:14
  Matt: Oh, what I like about Saga, what I love about Saga, it's fucking relevant.
• 28:18
  Matt: It's politically, on a personal level, self-reflection.
• 28:24
  Matt: and I connect with all the characters, all the… at least some of the tertiary characters. I can feel why they are driven to do what they're doing. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I get it. And there's times I completely disagree with them and get angry, but…
• 28:40
  Matt: He brings these characters to life, in my mind, as I'm reading, and I'm like, oh, if this was my friend, I'd be like… so that is what
• 28:52
  Matt: pulls me in and just keeps me attached to Saga. And Fiona's already.
• 28:57
  Marisol: It's real.
• 28:58
  Matt: Yeah, yeah. And Fiona really does help a lot, so… That's… that's my schtick.
• 29:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Fiona's art is out of this world.
• 29:09
  Tad Eggleston: Phil.
• 29:10
  Marisol: 10 out of 10.
• 29:11
  Matt: Oh, yeah. I'm gonna….
• 29:14
  Phil: I'm gonna pick up from that note. I think that… that… that is for sure, especially on…
• 29:21
  Phil: now my, my, first return trip, you know, read it again for the very first time. Fiona's art is what I am loving most.
• 29:31
  Phil: And I'm also thinking about how…
• 29:35
  Phil: drawn… like, they're… so to get back to what you said about, like, oh, it was a great story, but the art, it bothered me. Those are still more readable than the reverse, which is a, you know, a terrible story with wonderful art. Those books are….
• 29:49
  Marisol: This is true.
• 29:50
  Phil: Won't get you very far, but… but…
• 29:52
  Phil: This one is in… I mean, it's no… it's not either of those situations at all, but…
• 29:57
  Phil: There are some books… that…
• 30:00
  Phil: you could imagine drawn by someone else, and they don't change that much. But this one is so much, like.
• 30:06
  Phil: it's… It's so much of having read a lot of…
• 30:12
  Phil: Brian K. Vaughn's other works, you can see the parts of him that are in this, but it's the parts of Fiona that are in this that I find most fascinating.
• 30:21
  Phil: And… I would challenge you, Ted.
• 30:24
  Phil: To… to try to have her on first.
• 30:27
  Phil: You know?
• 30:28
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, she's higher on my list.
• 30:30
  Phil: Awesome. Perfect.
• 30:31
  Tad Eggleston: She's totally higher on my list.
• 30:33
  Phil: Great.
• 30:34
  Tad Eggleston: But if it takes going through Brian to get to her, I'll have him come too.
• 30:40
  Phil: Yeah, I didn't understand, but … I guess… so, for me.
• 30:44
  Tad Eggleston: What did you say, Bill?
• 30:45
  Tad Eggleston: You're muted.
• 30:48
  belle: I just love that. I love that.
• 30:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 30:51
  belle: She should be higher on your list, she's awesome!
• 30:53
  Tad Eggleston: She is! She's higher on my list.
• 30:55
  Phil: I still remember the moment when, they flipped….
• 30:58
  Tad Eggleston: And her husband follows us on Blue Sky.
• 31:01
  Phil: Oh, nice!
• 31:02
  Phil: Mr. Staples.
• 31:05
  Tad Eggleston: I forget his name, but… but I know he follows us on Blue Sky. He's even commented on our posts.
• 31:12
  Larry Woods: Yeah, yeah, just that guy. Fion or something.
• 31:15
  Phil: ….
• 31:16
  belle: Show that, girl.
• 31:18
  Marisol: Mr. Fiona Staples.
• 31:21
  Tad Eggleston: He'd better be okay with being that. The… the first….
• 31:25
  Phil: The first gentleman of comics.
• 31:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 31:27
  Marisol: Yes.
• 31:31
  Phil: But….
• 31:32
  Matt: It's… it's so weird thinking of….
• 31:36
  Phil: you know, so, like, similar to what Josh said, the way that my life has changed since…
• 31:42
  Phil: picking up the very first issue, and I remember…
• 31:46
  Phil: Getting sucked into, you know, the romance of it all more so than the weirdness and the genre fare and, you know, being…
• 31:55
  Phil: a single person at that point and thinking, wow, you know, I really want to, you know, find the love of my life, and now that I have, and I'm married, coming back to it in that level is wildly different.
• 32:06
  Phil: But still having the distance of, like, not being a parent.
• 32:12
  Phil: And yet, the proximity in that I… so, my, sister-in-law had a baby, and it's the first time I've ever, been around a baby in a family. And so that's, that's another level that….
• 32:25
  Matt: Nope.
• 32:26
  Phil: that I can relate to more now, you know, watching… watching someone grow up and… and … you know, rebuilding those senses of family. It's just… there's, you know, like I said, I'm… I'm ready to be heard again.
• 32:40
  Tad Eggleston: Did you be heard again? That's, like, a good way to put it.
• 32:45
  Matt: Can I just jump in one second and say something I forgot to say?
• 32:48
  Tad Eggleston: Sure.
• 32:49
  Matt: So…
• 32:50
  Matt: Reading Saga issue to issue back when it came out is such a different feeling than reading the trades.
• 32:57
  Phil: Oh, yeah. And it's like True Detective.
• 32:59
  Matt: I binged True Detective years after it came out, because my brother told me it was a good show, but watching it monthly or weekly would have killed me. And I happened to do both with Saga, so….
• 33:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I've done both.
• 33:16
  Matt: So, it's just that children, so, yeah.
• 33:19
  Josh Eiserike: I, I would, I would add to that,
• 33:21
  Josh Eiserike: the reason I never went to trades is, for my money, Vaughn writes the best cliffhangers. You know, some people will write a really good one here, and then a couple months, and then another good one, but, like, it's just, like, month after month after month, it's like, he gets me, and then I gotta come back.
• 33:37
  Matt: Yup, absolutely.
• 33:37
  Tad Eggleston: bet.
• 33:38
  Phil: Have you been… have you been reading, The Power Fantasy?
• 33:42
  Josh Eiserike: I have not.
• 33:44
  Phil: It's, it's kind of.
• 33:45
  Josh Eiserike: I haven't….
• 33:45
  Phil: We know that.
• 33:46
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's Karen Gillen.
• 33:48
  Phil: But he's had some… the past, like, 5 issues have had incredible, like, twist cliffhangers. So, it's…
• 33:56
  Phil: Pretty good, pretty good, worth checking out.
• 33:59
  Josh Eiserike: he's… he's one of those writers that, like, I respect, but emotional… like, I never got into, like, Phonogram, or whatever the one that came after, and, like, the X-Men run never….
• 34:10
  Phil: You didn't like, The Wicked and the Divine?
• 34:12
  Josh Eiserike: I don't know if I ever read that. I should check it out.
• 34:14
  Phil: That one's really.
• 34:15
  Marisol: It was so good.
• 34:16
  Phil: Yeah, I gotta, I gotta check it out.
• 34:18
  Marisol: Check it out.
• 34:18
  Phil: Young Avengers. I haven't read any of his X-Men, believe it or not, but I loved Young Avengers, Journey into Mystery was great, Wicked and the Divine is great, Die is fantastic. I'm a huge fan. Sorry I didn't derail the….
• 34:33
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I mean, honestly, I think of him as Mr. Chrissy Williams.
• 34:38
  Phil: That's a good title for him, too.
• 34:39
  Tad Eggleston: Golden Rage… Is… is out of this world.
• 34:47
  Tad Eggleston: Which, ….
• 34:49
  Phil: Real quick, to bring it back to Saga Tad, I remembered why it took so long for there to be a Saga book club.
• 34:56
  Phil: is that you had a reason. It's that…
• 34:59
  Phil: you didn't want the Saga Book Club to be the first book club.
• 35:04
  Phil: and or the only book club. And that was why you started Lexing Rockets first, and you had other ones going.
• 35:11
  Phil: And now that the book club, the 22 Panels book club.
• 35:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right now, I have so many book clubs.
• 35:16
  Phil: has been established, and now Saga is merely, you know, one of your crown jewels, not the only one that's there. Okay, I like that. It is the expansion of the Empire, not the Empire itself.
• 35:32
  Tad Eggleston: So, my experience with Saga. So, …
• 35:37
  Tad Eggleston: When I'm traveling, I like to go to comic shops.
• 35:42
  Tad Eggleston: And before we got married, my wife and I were in Minneapolis, and we went to my favorite Minneapolis store.
• 35:48
  Tad Eggleston: The College of Comics… College of Comic Book Knowledge, colloquially known as the Comic College, …
• 35:58
  Tad Eggleston: And… as I always do, I said, sell me something. And the guy showed me a couple of books, he showed me…
• 36:07
  Tad Eggleston: … saga, and he showed me Manhattan Projects. And I don't know why.
• 36:14
  Tad Eggleston: But I took Manhattan Projects that day.
• 36:17
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know what it was that didn't… have Saga sink into me.
• 36:24
  Tad Eggleston: It could have been that he was showing me single issues of saga.
• 36:28
  Tad Eggleston: And the first straight Manhattan Projects, and that makes me even sadder, because I have a feeling he was showing me the first single issue of Saga.
• 36:40
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, I… I, like… I dropped the ball.
• 36:47
  Matt: A couple years later.
• 36:51
  Matt: I know. The price is right. I know. I know. I know.
• 36:54
  Matt: Bob Barker's like, yeah, and you're like, oh, I'm gonna take the first one.
• 36:58
  Tad Eggleston: I know. I know.
• 37:00
  Tad Eggleston: But… but, it means I actually get a cool story, because flash forward, we're on our… we're coming home from our honeymoon, where we went out to the East Coast, and we stopped for lunch in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
• 37:13
  Tad Eggleston: And while we were eating lunch at, at, at, Coney Island Diner.
• 37:18
  Tad Eggleston: Which is still there, and fantastic, cheap chili and burgers and stuff. Well, not much stuff, it's chili, and hamburgers, and cheeseburgers, and hot dogs, and pie. I think that's the entire menu. And fries.
• 37:36
  Tad Eggleston: … But, ….
• 37:39
  Matt: My kind of place, man.
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, I took… I took Andy. Andy will vouch for it. …
• 37:47
  Tad Eggleston: Kelly noticed that around the corner was a place called Comics on the Green, so we went to… went to Comics on the Green, and Dave sold me on Saga. He sold me hard on Saga. He had me hook, line, and sinker on Saga, and then he realized he was out of Saga.
• 38:10
  Tad Eggleston: It's a Friday afternoon, he had a shipment coming, he's like, it'll be here in 2 hours. And I'm like, in 2 hours, we'll be in Ohio, halfway…
• 38:22
  Tad Eggleston: To where we're stopping tonight on our way home.
• 38:25
  Tad Eggleston: for tomorrow, and he's like, I'll knock 20% off of it and throw in free shipping. So, so I paid $8, and he shipped it for… and he told me it would beat me home.
• 38:38
  Tad Eggleston: I paid $8.
• 38:41
  Tad Eggleston: He threw in free shipping, so I can't imagine he actually even made any money.
• 38:45
  Matt: 100, yeah.
• 38:46
  Tad Eggleston: Sure enough, when I got home, it was… On my porch.
• 38:53
  Tad Eggleston: And I went in, and I tore open the… sat down the line, I read it, cover to cover.
• 39:04
  Tad Eggleston: I looked up at my wife, Open my mouth.
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: And then I read it again.
• 39:17
  Phil: Said nothing to his wife.
• 39:18
  Tad Eggleston: And then, I find… And then I finally turned to her and said, that was amazing.
• 39:26
  Tad Eggleston: And she gave me the address of the closest comic shop.
• 39:34
  Tad Eggleston: I… I…
• 39:38
  Tad Eggleston: Volumes 2 and 3, Volume 4 was coming out the following Wednesday, and I started my first poll list in, like, 15 years at that point. …
• 39:51
  Tad Eggleston: at that point, with only Saga on it, but I showed up every Saga Wednesday, and eventually, well…
• 40:00
  Tad Eggleston: I got sucked in, and now I… now I buy much more than one comic a month.
• 40:07
  Tad Eggleston: So… Do you know how sad it is.
• 40:09
  belle: to live in a college town without a comic book shop while Saga is producing issues. Do you know how sad that is?
• 40:16
  Tad Eggleston: That is really… I mean, just a college town without a comic shop feels wrong.
• 40:21
  belle: First of all, my college town is missing a lot of things, but….
• 40:24
  Marisol: It's not of a comic book shop!
• 40:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I feel like… I feel like that was a business opportunity for you, Bill.
• 40:32
  Marisol: Are you kidding?
• 40:32
  belle: D&D storage?
• 40:33
  Marisol: In the middle of nowhere?
• 40:35
  Josh Eiserike: I would probably… We have a D&D.
• 40:37
  belle: comic shop.
• 40:37
  Marisol: See, that makes no sense.
• 40:40
  belle: That makes sense.
• 40:41
  Tad Eggleston: If you wind up at… if you wind up at Purdue, they do have comic shops in… in…
• 40:49
  Tad Eggleston: Valpo, and South Bend, and….
• 40:53
  belle: I think I'm sold on Purdue.
• 40:54
  Tad Eggleston: All around there. Yeah, there are comic shops there.
• 40:58
  Matt: Oh, great!
• 41:02
  Tad Eggleston: It's okay, Matt. She'll be close enough to me that I'll go visit from time to time. If you want, I'll pretend to be you and make really off-color jokes that… Perfect.
• 41:13
  Matt: In front of your daughter.
• 41:15
  Tad Eggleston: That's never stopped you before.
• 41:18
  belle: It'll be almost like my dad's there.
• 41:24
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I loved every second of the story, I loved every second of the art. Every reread, I noticed more of what I love about the art. There's so many little things in Fiona's art that…
• 41:41
  Tad Eggleston: I notice that, like, not only do I notice them, but I know that…
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: They mattered to how I felt while I was reading the book, whether I noticed them or not.
• 41:56
  Tad Eggleston: You know, the one that I bring up the most is every time Marco is involved in violence.
• 42:03
  Tad Eggleston: The panels are crooked.
• 42:06
  Tad Eggleston: He takes his vow of no more violence, and every time he's involved in violence after that.
• 42:13
  Tad Eggleston: The panels are cockeyed. They're not…
• 42:17
  Tad Eggleston: It's like they're out of focus, it's like something's wrong.
• 42:20
  Tad Eggleston: And it comes through in the very way the panel is drawn.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: My challenge to all of you, I still haven't figured out why, but I'm certain that there's a reason. Every once in a while, there will be panels that have
• 42:35
  Tad Eggleston: Generally only one, but I think occasionally two, and once or twice, possibly even three of the corners are chopped off the panel.
• 42:44
  Phil: I noticed that.
• 42:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 42:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I haven't figured out why.
• 42:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 42:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, exactly, like that. And I haven't figured out why.
• 42:54
  Tad Eggleston: But I… but I guarantee there's a reason.
• 42:58
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I guarantee there's a reason. The other thing that I love when it pops up is when there are completely mundane, like.
• 43:07
  Tad Eggleston: Real-world thing, you know, the, the, the, the contract, the, the, the agent, the, the…
• 43:16
  Tad Eggleston: The weird yellow snap.
• 43:18
  Phil: the freelancer.
• 43:19
  Tad Eggleston: That's the freelancer contractor.
• 43:22
  Phil: Yeah, the, seahorse.
• 43:23
  Tad Eggleston: Using a corded telephone.
• 43:25
  Phil: Yeah.
• 43:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's in a later volume, but we will see RCA cables. I think… I think…
• 43:35
  Tad Eggleston: Some of the people on this podcast might not be old enough to know what an RCA cable is.
• 43:43
  Phil: I know it plugs into something.
• 43:45
  belle: As the youngest one on the podcast, I do say I know what an RCA cable is. My sister in the background might not, but I, in fact, do.
• 43:52
  Matt: Okay.
• 43:53
  Marisol: I probably know what it looks like, but I probably don't know it by name.
• 43:57
  Tad Eggleston: It's the issue.
• 43:57
  belle: Exactly, exactly. You tell me the fact that I know it. Yeah, I know that it.
• 44:02
  Marisol: Yeah. You show it to me, I know what that is.
• 44:06
  belle: I have no idea.
• 44:06
  Tad Eggleston: But, but….
• 44:07
  belle: No, it's one of Wii connection to the TV.
• 44:09
  Larry Woods: associate.
• 44:10
  Larry Woods: Well, when you're not using an HDMI cable.
• 44:17
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there's a phone booth.
• 44:22
  Tad Eggleston: There's a phone booth at, like… A gas station… in space.
• 44:32
  Marisol: What year are we in?
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: … I don't know, that's the whole point.
• 44:38
  Tad Eggleston: ….
• 44:39
  Marisol: I love it, though.
• 44:40
  Tad Eggleston: And we get, like, element… I mean, for that matter, for that matter.
• 44:45
  Tad Eggleston: How often do you read sci-fi and have, like, a major part of the story be a book club?
• 44:56
  Tad Eggleston: They read a book together. Not on a tablet, not on some space-age device, not some immersive…
• 45:05
  Tad Eggleston: like… hollow thing, like… An ink and paper book.
• 45:12
  Phil: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point to make, Ted, because it's kind of like…
• 45:20
  Phil: it's kind of like how people on TV never use the bathroom. You'd think it would happen more often, that in books, people would read.
• 45:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know what? It happens in Saga. I saw a robot on the toilet reading a book.
• 45:34
  Marisol: Yes!
• 45:35
  Matt: Right?
• 45:38
  Phil: Took it on the bottom.
• 45:39
  Marisol: This is with that one.
• 45:40
  belle: This saga is so real.
• 45:42
  Phil: I've seen so many boundaries.
• 45:44
  Marisol: You get to see a robot man take a shit.
• 45:47
  belle: Dude, who.
• 45:49
  Matt: I didn't want to do that.
• 45:50
  belle: I hope she's right now. It feels like he's shitting.
• 45:52
  Phil: I hope his….
• 45:53
  Matt: Feels like he should.
• 45:54
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, we got to see the robot Fox, so why not get to see him take his shit?
• 45:59
  Marisol: This is true.
• 46:01
  belle: Valid.
• 46:02
  Marisol: We also get a little too personal with his wife later on, and…
• 46:05
  Marisol: go somewhere that… I mean, that's not my business.
• 46:17
  Josh Eiserike: I know this is the Saga Book Club, but I assume you all, or maybe I shouldn't, have read Spectators, Vaughn's more recent work.
• 46:24
  Matt: No, I'm not.
• 46:25
  Tad Eggleston: I have. No. I have.
• 46:27
  Josh Eiserike: Spectators makes this look G-rated in comparison.
• 46:30
  Phil: And I'll just….
• 46:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yes. It's great. I don't know if it really does, because, like, that last arc, page 1 of every book, was daring you to open it public.
• 46:43
  Marisol: But what you're saying is I need to go.
• 46:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you should. Spectator?
• 46:49
  belle: You're not even drive an hour to Buffalo.
• 46:51
  Tad Eggleston: soup.
• 46:54
  Tad Eggleston: But I might have a PDF that I can send people.
• 46:58
  Tad Eggleston: Because I am part of Brian K. Bond's substack.
• 47:03
  Phil: Oh, that's where it came out.
• 47:03
  Tad Eggleston: -Oh.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 47:06
  Marisol: I'll make a note on my….
• 47:07
  Tad Eggleston: But it will be out in our….
• 47:09
  Marisol: I will forget.
• 47:16
  Tad Eggleston: Spec….
• 47:18
  Larry Woods: I'm also… Sorry, as you looked that up.
• 47:22
  Larry Woods: I'm, I'm curious, too, because… For me, it was…
• 47:28
  Larry Woods: those little connections, too, that even in that sort of sci-fi world, in this completely fantastical world, I'm like, oh, I know what that is, that's a really, like, freaking human concept, and like, that was, in a way, for me to…
• 47:43
  Larry Woods: It grounded me?
• 47:45
  Larry Woods: Like, as I read it, like, and…
• 47:48
  Larry Woods: And mind you, I haven't read the first volume since I picked it up back in 2015, so I'm actually gonna, like, go back and reread it, because I think this will be fun as a fairly new comic reader still, I would say.
• 48:02
  Larry Woods: But just to see it, like, yeah, like, a corded phone, like, what the hell? Like…
• 48:09
  Larry Woods: How it felt like, okay, these weird assassin people.
• 48:13
  Tad Eggleston: Gunpowder.
• 48:15
  Larry Woods: Oops.
• 48:16
  Tad Eggleston: and not like gunpowder as in we've got a gun with bullets. He had a bag of gunpowder.
• 48:25
  Larry Woods: Like… At least for me, it was like, dude, this is like…
• 48:29
  Larry Woods: Even in this sort of fantastical world, this sort of multiverse, in a way, fiction.
• 48:34
  Larry Woods: It can still be kind of, like, human, in a way.
• 48:39
  Larry Woods: Especially in, like, my experience. For me, I thought that was, like, really freaking cool.
• 48:46
  Phil: Yeah, I'm also remembering….
• 48:48
  Matt: Some of the characters that show up later, and….
• 48:51
  Phil: I feel like every… every relationship feels real, and every character feels like a real person, as opposed to… there are a lot of stories where…
• 49:02
  Phil: People will show up, and they'll just kind of speak a line and serve a function, but in here, it, you know, little quirks of dialogue, little tweaks to the art, and you can imagine live lives for…
• 49:14
  Phil: Everyone on the page.
• 49:16
  belle: Yes.
• 49:16
  Matt: 100%.
• 49:18
  Marisol: Oh my goodness.
• 49:18
  belle: To add to that.
• 49:19
  Matt: Oh!
• 49:20
  belle: Marisol, you guys.
• 49:20
  Marisol: Greg, go ahead.
• 49:21
  belle: Are you sure?
• 49:23
  Marisol: Yes.
• 49:24
  Marisol: Okay, to add to that.
• 49:26
  belle: Can we… is it okay if I bring something up? Can we talk about how….
• 49:30
  Tad Eggleston: Dirt?
• 49:30
  belle: At the end of Volume 1,
• 49:34
  belle: because I forgot this, I haven't reread it in a very long time, since before I actually went to college. This is my first reread since I was in high school. …
• 49:42
  belle: how Marco's parents come in and shoot Isabelle?
• 49:45
  belle: after they build Isabelle into this great character that I fall in love with, being named Isabelle, I'm like, oh, like, she's… she's exactly doing what I would do in this scenario. She's helping them get out, she's, like, doing all the things she should be doing. And then, like, she gets shot?
• 50:00
  Marisol: Yep.
• 50:02
  belle: Like, what?
• 50:03
  belle: Like, you build these characters that are so human and then you kill them?
• 50:07
  Matt: So what's… What do good writers do?
• 50:10
  belle: How do you kill a ghost!
• 50:11
  Phil: She doesn't… she's still around, isn't she?
• 50:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, they didn't. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah.
• 50:16
  Phil: I forgot that she was in the back.
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: for later. Oh, no!
• 50:22
  Phil: The ghost doesn't die.
• 50:24
  belle: I think my dad spoiled that, but it's okay.
• 50:28
  belle: I think I called him complaining, and he was like.
• 50:30
  Tad Eggleston: die here.
• 50:32
  Josh Eiserike: Bill, did you… Bill, did you read, Brian K. Vaughan's original run on Runaways?
• 50:37
  belle: No, I'm so behind.
• 50:39
  Josh Eiserike: If you want your heart to get ripped out.
• 50:42
  Phil: Yeah. Oh, God.
• 50:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 50:45
  Marisol: Yeah. Oh, no.
• 50:46
  Phil: That was some.
• 50:47
  Matt: The last man, why the last man.
• 50:49
  Phil: Am I the last man?
• 50:51
  belle: I have two… I have two issues of that. I'm looking… or two volumes of that I'm looking forward to reading.
• 50:55
  Phil: I'd even say… Ex Machina is…
• 51:00
  Phil: emotionally devastating in a completely different way.
• 51:03
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 51:04
  Matt: But 200%. Yeah.
• 51:06
  Josh Eiserike: That…
• 51:08
  Josh Eiserike: I've already hurt my own feelings enough. That woman on Runaways probably gutted me more than any comic I've ever read in my life.
• 51:15
  Josh Eiserike: It's… it was… it was insane.
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 51:19
  Phil: I knew it was coming because I'd heard about it. I'd heard spoilers, and it was still devastating.
• 51:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 51:27
  Marisol: Yeah, I already hurt my own feelings reading this book and playing D&D with my friends. I don't need more of that.
• 51:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, spoiler, nothing is ever devastated. Nothing fictional has ever devastated me the way the final page of issue 54 did.
• 51:48
  Larry Woods: Stop it.
• 51:48
  belle: I agree.
• 51:49
  Matt: Agreed.
• 51:50
  Marisol: I agree. I cried.
• 51:52
  Larry Woods: I remember.
• 51:53
  Marisol: Get actual tears.
• 51:55
  belle: I was so lucky that I was introduced to this book, like, right before the hiatus ended, because I swear, if I had to wait 3 years, I don't think I could have done it, you guys.
• 52:02
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
• 52:03
  Marisol: card.
• 52:04
  Marisol: It was hard, it hurt.
• 52:05
  Tad Eggleston: I still… I mean, that's another one that I tell the story
• 52:10
  Tad Eggleston: Based on, like, my wife's reaction more than my own, because…
• 52:15
  Tad Eggleston: we were at her parents' house, and I picked up the single issue, even though I had one waiting at my comic shop. No way was I waiting to get home from South Dakota to read it. You know, we had to go and pick up a copy on Wednesday, because I needed to read it then.
• 52:32
  Tad Eggleston: I sat down, and I read it, and I'm in, like, a rocking chair that is in front of their couch.
• 52:39
  Tad Eggleston: So she was behind me, and I finished, and I don't know how long I sat in silence, but it was long enough that she went, sweetie, are you alright? And I just held it up over my head, and, like, my wife has only read the first volume of Saga, and…
• 52:57
  Tad Eggleston: And… experienced Saga through me. And she was still able to go, Oh, dear.
• 53:08
  Tad Eggleston: She just immediately got up and just gave me a hug.
• 53:14
  Marisol: The correct response.
• 53:15
  Matt: Yup.
• 53:17
  Marisol: No, I read that, and immediately, like, cried actual tears, had to set the book aside for a minute.
• 53:24
  Marisol: And in my own mind, I was like.
• 53:27
  Tad Eggleston: I re….
• 53:28
  Marisol: need to demand financial compensation from Brian K. Vaughan. He made me feel feelings in my own home.
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 53:33
  Marisol: This is unexpected.
• 53:34
  Tad Eggleston: I had a period that when I was selling Saga, I told people, read the first 8 volumes, buy the 9th, but don't read it until the series comes back.
• 53:50
  Marisol: I did not.
• 53:50
  Matt: Listen to that advice.
• 53:52
  Marisol: clearly.
• 53:53
  Tad Eggleston: Cause you don't want to sit with this!
• 53:56
  Matt: That's right.
• 53:59
  Tad Eggleston: Marisol, I think you're one of the ones that I made read it, because I needed to, like, have somebody to commiserate with.
• 54:05
  Marisol: Yes.
• 54:06
  Tad Eggleston: I had two sets of people. I had the people that it's like, no, you must read it now.
• 54:12
  Marisol: It was a painful choice, Ted.
• 54:16
  Larry Woods: I remember distinctly when I read that, I…
• 54:19
  Larry Woods: I was, one, obviously devastated, that goes without being said, but I'll say it anyway. But again, being new to that sort of world, I'm like, I went back to my comic shop, like, almost weekly. I'm like, hey, updates on Saga?
• 54:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:33
  Larry Woods: No, it's not in yet. And then, once the cashier, I think, got tired of me asking, they were like, yeah, they're on hiatus.
• 54:43
  Larry Woods: And then…
• 54:44
  Larry Woods: every other month for the next 6 months, I would say. We're just like, any updates on Saga? Like, like, no, dude. We don't know.
• 54:53
  Tad Eggleston: I had to… I had to restrain myself. I thought about writing my first letter during the hiatus, but I was like, if I write a letter now, I'm gonna write a weekly letter until they come back. Brian, are you bringing it back yet? Brian, are you bringing it back yet?
• 55:08
  Matt: Oh, yeah.
• 55:09
  belle: Where we at, bro?
• 55:14
  Matt: Yup.
• 55:15
  belle: You killed my boy.
• 55:16
  Tad Eggleston: But that actually leads to….
• 55:18
  Marisol: I need live updates every hour on the hour, come on.
• 55:22
  Tad Eggleston: That leads me to another thing that I've always appreciated about Saga, and it's evident in this first volume, it's evident on, like, the first page.
• 55:32
  Tad Eggleston: …
• 55:34
  Tad Eggleston: you know, for a long time, it ran side-by-side with Walking Dead, and, like, they… particularly among long-running series, they stood head and shoulders above almost everything else coming out.
• 55:49
  Tad Eggleston: And it's because they're such… they're both such character studies. Both….
• 55:55
  Matt: Absolutely.
• 55:55
  Tad Eggleston: Such amazing pictures of the human… human condition.
• 56:00
  Matt: I'm gonna make you careful. But the reason I preferred Sokka. And then I'm gonna hurt them, and you're gonna feel it.
• 56:07
  Tad Eggleston: And then they're gonna keep going.
• 56:08
  Marisol: Exactly. Help.
• 56:10
  Tad Eggleston: But the reason… but the reason I preferred Saga is I couldn't imagine…
• 56:17
  Tad Eggleston: Walking Dead having a happy ending, though hats off to Kirkman, it did. I don't… I still am, like, flabbergasted that he pulled it off, and haven't had the energy to reread it, to experience it again, because…
• 56:35
  Tad Eggleston: Talk about an exhausting read. Walking Dead, every time you think that maybe they can be happy, Rick gets hit over the head again.
• 56:45
  Matt: No, Washington.
• 56:46
  Matt: Absolutely.
• 56:48
  Phil: At a certain point, it actually….
• 56:50
  Tad Eggleston: When you became a.
• 56:51
  Phil: Parody of itself, really.
• 56:53
  Josh Eiserike: I… I fell off.
• 56:54
  Tad Eggleston: Almost.
• 56:55
  Phil: Yeah, except….
• 56:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: But… But Saga, because… It's narrated by Hazel. Yes.
• 57:08
  Tad Eggleston: Because, from the get-go.
• 57:15
  Tad Eggleston: She talks about getting to live.
• 57:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know that no matter what happens, There's gonna be some semblance.
• 57:30
  Tad Eggleston: Of a happy ending, or she wouldn't be writing it.
• 57:35
  Matt: That's available.
• 57:36
  Marisol: Or maybe not even a happy ending, maybe just…
• 57:39
  Marisol: Not even maybe a satisfying one, just… An ending that is.
• 57:46
  Tad Eggleston: Huh?
• 57:46
  belle: You know what?
• 57:47
  Tad Eggleston: say that, Tad?
• 57:49
  Tad Eggleston: And doesn't….
• 57:53
  Phil: I mean.
• 57:54
  belle: go.
• 57:54
  Phil: The last page is gonna be the end of her life, isn't it? Don't you think….
• 57:58
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I was letting Bell go.
• 57:59
  belle: I was gonna say, it brings up, like, the D. Oswald heist thing. Like, you saying, oh, she's writing the book, like, the fact that they even mentioned D. Oswald Heist in the first five issues, which I didn't realize, because my first reread, like, that's such a major part of the story that I think has gotten maybe left behind, and maybe we'll cut back.
• 58:19
  belle: as… as the book progresses. I haven't read past, … the first…
• 58:25
  belle: volume of trades that have been released since the hiatus ended, so I'm… I'm actually… since I reread this, I'm sticking my neck out a little and hoping that the D. Oswald heist suffers.
• 58:34
  Tad Eggleston: Two volumes behind.
• 58:37
  belle: Yeah.
• 58:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 58:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we'll see.
• 58:40
  Tad Eggleston: We'll see.
• 58:42
  Tad Eggleston: I kind of like where it's gone after the trades, and since… or after the hiatus, and since enough of you haven't gone there, I don't want to… don't want to get into that at all.
• 58:52
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 58:55
  Tad Eggleston: it took an unexpected twist that, like, if you told me what he was gonna do, I would have gone, fuck no.
• 59:04
  Tad Eggleston: But, of course, he made it work.
• 59:08
  Tad Eggleston: made it work. He always makes it work. Like…
• 59:11
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's like when everybody… you know, and Nick Spencer's only, like, half the writer of Brian K. Vaughan, but he's a hell of a comic book writer. When everybody was upset about Captain America being Hydra, I'm like, it's Nick Spencer. It's gonna be worth it.
• 59:30
  Tad Eggleston: if it wasn't a fantastic story, it wouldn't have gotten greenlit and just spited out. And that's how I… that's how I feel with, like, every crazy twist he takes us on. It's like…
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck you, Brian, but I'm… Certain that it was the right.
• 59:48
  Matt: Shut up and take my money.
• 59:50
  Josh Eiserike: I would… I would also add that because.
• 59:52
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 59:53
  Josh Eiserike: Because the book is called Saga, I give it a lot of latitude to just take me on this adventure. Like, I mean, he didn't call it the Odyssey, but…
• 1:00:03
  Josh Eiserike: He kind of did.
• 1:00:05
  Matt: Exactly. Oh, you're 100% right.
• 1:00:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:00:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:00:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, … Is this… I feel… I feel like… It was generally the…
• 1:00:26
  Tad Eggleston: Is it the even-numbered books? Yeah, I think it's generally the even-numbered volumes are the ones that have the most crushing endings, but I feel like this is the only…
• 1:00:37
  Tad Eggleston: Trade so far that has a relatively…
• 1:00:41
  Tad Eggleston: happy ending. They find their rocket ship, and they… they blast off, but with that
• 1:00:48
  Tad Eggleston: Crazy, crazy twist of the grandparents are here, and they just shot the.
• 1:00:51
  Matt: Confident.
• 1:00:53
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  Matt: Because that's about as happy as Frank K. Vaughn's endings get.
• 1:01:03
  Tad Eggleston: I know it's hard.
• 1:01:05
  Marisol: for him, is Brian okay?
• 1:01:08
  Matt: I think him and Tom King need to go seek some therapy.
• 1:01:11
  Marisol: Does he need a hug?
• 1:01:16
  Tad Eggleston: Lee, you're the expert there.
• 1:01:20
  Larry Woods: We needed to do a wellness check on Brian Kay Von, bud.
• 1:01:23
  Marisol: Yes.
• 1:01:27
  Marisol: Just, just sit down. How you doing, bud? You good?
• 1:01:31
  Matt: Good, yeah.
• 1:01:33
  Larry Woods: Anything you want to talk about, or…?
• 1:01:38
  belle: I was a little scared.
• 1:01:41
  Phil: I mean, I… You know, well…
• 1:01:46
  Phil: There's people I worry about more than Brian, you know?
• 1:01:50
  Phil: Like….
• 1:01:52
  Marisol: But he is currently the one hurting my feelings the most.
• 1:01:56
  Phil: Yeah….
• 1:01:57
  Matt: Valid.
• 1:01:58
  Marisol: And making me cry.
• 1:02:01
  Marisol: I need him to stop.
• 1:02:05
  Matt: Brian, you're hurting me, help me help you.
• 1:02:08
  Marisol: Yes.
• 1:02:10
  belle: But shut up and take my money.
• 1:02:13
  Marisol: Exactly.
• 1:02:14
  Marisol: I'm gonna give you my money full of my tears.
• 1:02:19
  Marisol: I'm gonna be sad about it.
• 1:02:20
  Larry Woods: What are you doing?
• 1:02:22
  Marisol: Yes. I'm gonna be sad about it the whole time, but I'm gonna give it to you anyway.
• 1:02:26
  Tad Eggleston: Make more merch so I can give you more money.
• 1:02:33
  Tad Eggleston: No, really, I want more toys. I'm sure and doff?
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: I'm all over him.
• 1:02:41
  belle: I'd have to… I'd have to get….
• 1:02:42
  Tad Eggleston: Robot?
• 1:02:43
  belle: twice dropped.
• 1:02:44
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I have the pops, but I like the action figures even better.
• 1:02:48
  belle: There's Saga Funko Pops? Hold on, pause.
• 1:02:51
  Larry Woods: I have a lion cat, I'm looking for it.
• 1:02:54
  Marisol: I have, ….
• 1:02:55
  Tad Eggleston: I have them all.
• 1:02:57
  belle: Opening….
• 1:02:57
  Marisol: about Faco.
• 1:02:58
  Tad Eggleston: I….
• 1:02:59
  belle: Amazon now.
• 1:03:00
  Marisol: No, you wanna, you wanna see what I got? Hold on.
• 1:03:03
  belle: Oh my god.
• 1:03:05
  Marisol: On the camera, just for this.
• 1:03:07
  belle: Duh.
• 1:03:08
  Marisol: How do I….
• 1:03:10
  Tad Eggleston: I forced myself to walk in to a hot topic.
• 1:03:16
  Tad Eggleston: Because they had the exclusive on the Goose Pop.
• 1:03:22
  Larry Woods: Hmm….
• 1:03:23
  belle: I'm gonna buy Saga Funko Pops now.
• 1:03:26
  Marisol: Okay.
• 1:03:27
  Larry Woods: And….
• 1:03:28
  Marisol: Ignore my stuff here. Oh, I love the goose!
• 1:03:32
  Larry Woods: ….
• 1:03:33
  Tad Eggleston: I also have lying, cat, and goose stuffed animals. My dad has those ones.
• 1:03:40
  Marisol: Tad sold that to me.
• 1:03:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I have that set, I… I have the… the… the will, and… And, …
• 1:03:50
  Tad Eggleston: I forget who, the Willem Lion Cat, and… and Hazel and Isabelle.
• 1:03:56
  Tad Eggleston: Or all action figure sets.
• 1:04:01
  Tad Eggleston: I have too many Saga t-shirts at this point, and that's… that's both ones that my wife has made me, like this one.
• 1:04:10
  Tad Eggleston: And….
• 1:04:10
  Marisol: a full.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: And one slip.
• 1:04:12
  Marisol: soccer shirts.
• 1:04:12
  Tad Eggleston: they're… Yeah, yeah, Matt's pulling out his action figures, too.
• 1:04:19
  Tad Eggleston: Mine are actually opened.
• 1:04:22
  Matt: I refuse to open them, because I love them.
• 1:04:26
  Larry Woods: That's odd.
• 1:04:26
  Marisol: Right?
• 1:04:27
  belle: All your toys….
• 1:04:28
  Tad Eggleston: I love them, and therefore I need to play them.
• 1:04:33
  Larry Woods: The Funkos can….
• 1:04:34
  Marisol: come out of the box.
• 1:04:35
  Tad Eggleston: But you don't have Hazel and Isabel, Matt.
• 1:04:37
  Marisol: tiny pieces.
• 1:04:38
  Matt: not.
• 1:04:40
  belle: Those are, like, the two best characters. What?
• 1:04:44
  Larry Woods: Whoa.
• 1:04:44
  Tad Eggleston: So… To wrap up tonight… And I know this is a hard question, because…
• 1:04:54
  Tad Eggleston: We really have to think back. We've lived with these characters forever, but I wanna think back to the end of the first trade, where…
• 1:05:04
  Tad Eggleston: they've gotten away… you know that it's the beginning, not the end, you know people are going to be chasing them or whatnot, but they've got their ship, they've gotten away, and now Marco's parents have…
• 1:05:16
  Tad Eggleston: shown up, if you can.
• 1:05:19
  Tad Eggleston: … I mean, I know my feeling was, get me Volume 2 right fucking now. ….
• 1:05:27
  Matt: Anybody that has in-laws, is totally hung up on the end of Volume 1, okay?
• 1:05:35
  Josh Eiserike: I… I am so excited to, when we do the next one, to look at Volume 2, now having a mother-in-law, and to see if it hits me much differently.
• 1:05:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:05:47
  Matt: And that….
• 1:05:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm always
• 1:05:49
  Tad Eggleston: I'm already thinking, what's his dad's name? I can't remember his dad's name right now. Starts with a B.
• 1:05:56
  Phil: Bear?
• 1:05:58
  Tad Eggleston: No… it's not that simple.
• 1:06:01
  Marisol: Bar?
• 1:06:02
  Tad Eggleston: Bar. Bar.
• 1:06:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  Marisol: I didn't even look at the book.
• 1:06:07
  Tad Eggleston: He….
• 1:06:07
  Larry Woods: Holding laundry.
• 1:06:08
  belle: Oops.
• 1:06:09
  Tad Eggleston: He… he is so… Don't need the flaps there, Marisol.
• 1:06:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yes. Marissol.
• 1:06:18
  Matt: No need to flex.
• 1:06:19
  Matt: I'm kidding.
• 1:06:20
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
• 1:06:21
  belle: She can totally slack.
• 1:06:22
  Marisol: Gotta give me something.
• 1:06:23
  Matt: She can totally flex. You're awesome.
• 1:06:28
  belle: I literally pulled my book out to try and find it.
• 1:06:30
  Matt: Same.
• 1:06:31
  Tad Eggleston: So, so…
• 1:06:34
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly those of you who haven't read Saga Vol. 2 in, like, the last 6 months, …
• 1:06:44
  Tad Eggleston: What are you looking forward to that you remember? What can't you remember that you're, like…
• 1:06:50
  Tad Eggleston: I wonder what's gonna happen here.
• 1:06:53
  belle: Am I….
• 1:06:54
  Matt: Do you mind if I jump in?
• 1:06:55
  Tad Eggleston: No, you can go in any, any.
• 1:06:57
  belle: Yes, don't let me go first this time, I wanna think!
• 1:06:59
  Matt: Awesome.
• 1:07:00
  Larry Woods: We'll do reverse order now.
• 1:07:01
  Josh Eiserike: It's over.
• 1:07:03
  Matt: remembering the action, remembering what happened, I did not remember that the stock died.
• 1:07:09
  Tad Eggleston: The same issue she was introduced.
• 1:07:11
  Matt: So, it's that, so what's gonna happen in Volume 2? Because this… clearly, this shit is moving at a really fast clip.
• 1:07:20
  Matt: That feels out of order to me.
• 1:07:23
  Matt: And why kill the stock so early? Because if she was an awesome character, you really gotta milk that well for so long! But, you know, he did what he did.
• 1:07:37
  Phil: So, yeah.
• 1:07:38
  Matt: I'm looking forward to, you know, reliving that timeline and putting things back in place.
• 1:07:44
  Phil: Yeah, I thought that the grandparents showed up later, so it was a slight surprise that they showed up at the end of Volume 1. I look forward to the, almost death of Lioncat, simply because I know that she's gonna live. ….
• 1:08:00
  Matt: I remember… Spring alert!
• 1:08:02
  Phil: Well, it's come… we've… I… I'm sorry, I'm sorry, anyone who's listening to this podcast….
• 1:08:06
  Tad Eggleston: That sounds….
• 1:08:07
  Phil: That is reading….
• 1:08:08
  Tad Eggleston: Spoiler alert!
• 1:08:10
  Tad Eggleston: She wa- she wasn't supposed to live, and Fiona… Fiona saved her.
• 1:08:15
  Phil: And that's why Fiona.
• 1:08:18
  Tad Eggleston: The most important….
• 1:08:19
  Phil: of Saga, she knows, she the greatest piece of Saga, and it's like, that's the line.
• 1:08:26
  Matt: And Brian told her, that was it, you don't get any more. You can't tell me not to kill anyone else!
• 1:08:31
  Tad Eggleston: I also love that Goose, who we'll meet next volume, was initially just, like, a Fiona sketch.
• 1:08:39
  Tad Eggleston: that, like, Brian liked and became a character.
• 1:08:46
  Phil: Fantastic addition.
• 1:08:47
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:08:48
  Larry Woods: I love goose.
• 1:08:49
  Josh Eiserike: … I remember my favorite character being the Will.
• 1:08:54
  Josh Eiserike: I just thought he was such a great antagonist who… And again, I read this
• 1:09:00
  Josh Eiserike: Years ago. My recollection was he had a very strong moral compass. I don't know if that is gonna hold up, so I'm looking forward to revisiting that and seeing how I still feel about him.
• 1:09:13
  Matt: Definitely an.
• 1:09:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right now, I'm thinking….
• 1:09:16
  Matt: He's a bad guy.
• 1:09:17
  Tad Eggleston: I'm thinking, Josh, you gotta keep track of cons in your area. If Psychocomicology comes out, and they have their Psychology of Evil panel, you probably wanna go.
• 1:09:31
  Josh Eiserike: I should also mention that Magneto is my favorite character ever in all of pop culture, full stop.
• 1:09:36
  Phil: This is….
• 1:09:37
  Matt: That's where I'll ask. I feel that.
• 1:09:39
  Phil: First time through, I read the will as a self-insert for Brian, because they were both bald.
• 1:09:49
  Matt: I hope Brian.
• 1:09:50
  Marisol: Stop, that's incredible.
• 1:09:52
  Matt: I love that!
• 1:09:55
  Phil: The logic was flawless!
• 1:10:00
  Tad Eggleston: That works, that works.
• 1:10:02
  Larry Woods: So for me….
• 1:10:04
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to remember what the second volume… I know that they meet Goose, I know that they meet Oswald. I don't remember…
• 1:10:13
  Tad Eggleston: What else happens in the second volume off the top of my head right now?
• 1:10:18
  Marisol: I just skimmed through it.
• 1:10:20
  Tad Eggleston: That is what happened.
• 1:10:21
  Matt: Don't they go to the author's house?
• 1:10:25
  Tad Eggleston: Like I said, they meet Oswald.
• 1:10:26
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:10:27
  Phil: I don't know.
• 1:10:28
  belle: This one's gonna break my heart. I remember some things now. If this is the one where they're on quietest, things are either going to happen, or they're already happening.
• 1:10:35
  Matt: You got it.
• 1:10:36
  belle: Oh, God.
• 1:10:37
  Phil: The heartbreaking… the heartbreaking parts from Volume 3, though.
• 1:10:40
  Tad Eggleston: But there's also the talk of… of what… what's going on down there. Oh!
• 1:10:49
  Tad Eggleston: I love the one time that Brian chooses not to show us as much as have Mom and Heist talk about what Marco and Alana are doing.
• 1:11:04
  Larry Woods: I… I think this is one of the… if I… I don't remember exactly where I left off for sure, but I definitely remember…
• 1:11:13
  Larry Woods: for me… It was super cool, and… Super interesting to me.
• 1:11:21
  Larry Woods: that all these side characters… had…
• 1:11:25
  Larry Woods: main character energy. Like, they were… already seemed so interesting.
• 1:11:29
  Marisol: Hmm.
• 1:11:30
  Larry Woods: and seemed so rich in background that, at least for me, it was like, like, the will, even. Like, I had, obviously.
• 1:11:38
  Larry Woods: we can talk about this later, but I had very mixed feelings about Will, being an antagonist. But then, the more I read about him, I was like, oh.
• 1:11:46
  Larry Woods: Oh.
• 1:11:47
  Larry Woods: It's not that clear-cut, is it?
• 1:11:49
  Matt: They're all easy to relate to, yeah.
• 1:11:52
  Larry Woods: And that, for me, was just like, okay, well, now I get it. It's Saga. It's an epic.
• 1:11:58
  Larry Woods: let's see where this goes. What other side characters am I gonna fall in love with? Especially, like, again, Lioncat is one of my favorite characters.
• 1:12:07
  Matt: Who starts small when you first?
• 1:12:10
  Matt: Yep.
• 1:12:11
  Tad Eggleston: lying.
• 1:12:12
  Larry Woods: That's it! That's the only line.
• 1:12:14
  Matt: lying.
• 1:12:16
  Tad Eggleston: Lying.
• 1:12:17
  Phil: It's because she's not one of your favorite characters, she's your favorite character.
• 1:12:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:12:22
  Larry Woods: True.
• 1:12:28
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody have any final… final thoughts?
• 1:12:32
  belle: Yeah, I read.
• 1:12:33
  Matt: I… It sounds like I'm shitting.
• 1:12:36
  belle: I read…
• 1:12:38
  belle: Oh, wait. I did already say that. Never mind! I said I already read it, and then it… oh, no, I didn't! It goes really fast, so I read Saga.
• 1:12:44
  belle: The first time I read it, I read it all the way through. I had all the trades, I had everything, issues 1 to 54, at my disposal on, PDF. So there was no ads, there was nothing. I was able to just go straight through. And it was… it was a whirlwind. I think I read it all in 2 days, in my bedroom, and I would come down only when something crazy happened, or I would yell down to Dad and be like, Dad, they killed so-and-so! And he'd be like, yup, keep going!
• 1:13:08
  belle: So, to read it all again, but slow, and really digest the deaths of these characters, it kind of is like a perpetual gut punch. Like, I'm not gonna read Issue 2 until the week before this podcast again, because I kind of want to feel it, man.
• 1:13:25
  Marisol: Yay.
• 1:13:25
  Matt: I think it makes it awkward.
• 1:13:26
  belle: Present it.
• 1:13:27
  Matt: premiered yesterday morning.
• 1:13:28
  Tad Eggleston: Volume 2, not Issue 2. Doing 16 issues at a time.
• 1:13:32
  Tad Eggleston: If we went… if we went one issue at a time, I think we'd really kill ourselves.
• 1:13:38
  belle: Yeah.
• 1:13:39
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that would be grueling.
• 1:13:40
  Phil: I'd be right about it. The panel-by-panel breakdown.
• 1:13:45
  Marisol: Yep.
• 1:13:46
  Tad Eggleston: I did think about it, but I decided…
• 1:13:49
  Tad Eggleston: Trade paperback by trade paperback is the way we're gonna… row with this. We've got.
• 1:13:54
  Matt: Yeah, we're getting….
• 1:13:54
  Tad Eggleston: A year's worth, which means hopefully by the time…
• 1:13:58
  Tad Eggleston: By the time we get through the year's worth that's available now, at least one more will be available.
• 1:14:05
  Tad Eggleston: … And then we'll start having to have, like… A book club every… 8 months or so.
• 1:14:15
  Tad Eggleston: Or pick another book.
• 1:14:17
  Marisol: Yep.
• 1:14:18
  Matt: Or we can do the floppies.
• 1:14:21
  Tad Eggleston: You mean start over and go back?
• 1:14:24
  Matt: Let's go, I mean, do the single issues as they come out.
• 1:14:26
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, we could do that. Yeah, yeah. I mean… We'll figure it out.
• 1:14:29
  Larry Woods: That's what I did.
• 1:14:30
  Tad Eggleston: It's at least a year in the future. At least a year in the future. Yep. So, thank you all.
• 1:14:36
  belle: Years.
• 1:14:36
  Tad Eggleston: for joining us on our inaugural journey of the Saga Book Club. Everybody, remember to go pick up
• 1:14:46
  Tad Eggleston: Josh's books, Charm City from Scout Comics, and The Very Final Last Girls from Darby Pop Publishing, and what was the one on… on Tapas?
• 1:14:57
  Josh Eiserike: of Settlement, first chapter right now is free on…
• 1:15:01
  Josh Eiserike: The tapas and… what's the other one? Webtoons. It's real weird. I'm very, very proud of it, and I hope y'all dig it.
• 1:15:12
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:15:13
  Tad Eggleston: So, for… And thank you for having us here.
• 1:15:18
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely! And Matt's here, and Matt came up with our exit line, so Matt gets to say our exit line.
• 1:15:26
  Matt: And we will continue after the next page.