Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / 22 Panels Episode #235 - Copra Round Six

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22 Panels Episode #235 - Copra Round Six · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. I am not Tyler.
• 0:07
  Phil: Who's…
• 0:08
  Tad Eggleston: You've probably figured out, Tyler had to go do, like, Stuff.
• 0:14
  Tad Eggleston: Help is…
• 0:15
  Phil: Is that what you call trapping him in your basement and, taking the show back?
• 0:19
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, he's putting a boat in a lake or some shit like that. Yeah. Just because his dad's old and doesn't have superpowers and can't pick up his pontoon all by himself.
• 0:35
  Phil: It's a hard life.
• 0:36
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 0:38
  Tad Eggleston: Something like that.
• 0:39
  Phil: Tyler has the superpowers to, get the boat into the water.
• 0:45
  Tad Eggleston: Don't want his enemies to know that!
• 0:47
  Phil: Spilling all the secrets.
• 0:49
  Phil: While he's gone.
• 0:52
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, episode 235.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: That's a lot of episodes.
• 1:01
  Phil: That is a good amount. It's… we're chugging along, you know?
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, Copa Round 6 later, but we'll start with some news. And I'm gonna, gonna start with,
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: We've had a couple Cardinals fans, in and around the podcast,
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: Recently, so I wanna say that, that, like… well, unfortunately, it ended yesterday. The Cubs just had a 10-game win streak, so you guys can suck it.
• 1:29
  Phil: Yeah. I have a dog in this fight, that's for sure.
• 1:32
  Tad Eggleston: But in checking that out, I also went, wait a minute, every National League Central team has a winning record? How does that work?
• 1:40
  Phil: It's… it feels like… it feels like…
• 1:41
  Tad Eggleston: How… how did the NL Central become the powerhouse division?
• 1:45
  Phil: when you say that everyone in this division is winning right now, I'm like, is this the… is this, like, how hedge funds work, but for sports? What is this?
• 1:53
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, because they have to play teams from other divisions or the other league.
• 1:58
  Phil: Hmm…
• 1:59
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like… 21 and 19 is good for last place in the National League.
• 2:06
  Tad Eggleston: Central, it would be second place in the National League East, which only has one team with a winning record. It would be third place in the National League West, which only has two teams with winning records.
• 2:21
  Tad Eggleston: If you move over to the American League, it'd be 3rd place in the AL East, which only has 2 teams with winning records. It would be 1st place in the AL Central, which only has one team with a winning record.
• 2:35
  Tad Eggleston: And it would just barely… it'd be a half game back of first place in the AL West, which only has one team with a winning record. So there are more winning records right now in the National League Central
• 2:50
  Tad Eggleston: than the entire American League.
• 2:53
  Phil: Huh.
• 2:54
  Phil: That's certainly a funny way to, for things to shake out.
• 2:58
  Tad Eggleston: which, like, I haven't read any of them, but I've seen a couple of people with articles this week about, does the American League just suck? And, like, I'm suddenly realizing where that article comes from.
• 3:13
  Phil: There you go.
• 3:14
  Phil: You know?
• 3:15
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 3:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, I might have to go, go, go, go read one.
• 3:21
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, I'm always for a 10-game winning streak.
• 3:24
  Tad Eggleston: From my Cubs. I'm always for winning, period, from my Cubs. They're 18-5 at home this year.
• 3:31
  Phil: Wow, that's really good. Boy cow.
• 3:34
  Tad Eggleston: on the road, and they've had some tough road trips. They've already been to both LA and San Diego, LA and San Diego being the two National League West teams that have winning records.
• 3:45
  Phil: Really? Okay, I'd see… Right. My dad hasn't even mentioned, that. I'd have to… I'll have to…
• 3:51
  Phil: But see, I think I'll probably see him later today, because I'm going to say hi to my mom. It's Mother's Day, when we're recording. But yeah, if the Padres have a winning record, I'm sure he's happy about it.
• 4:02
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, it's one of those cases where not only have the Cubs played well, but they haven't just played the dregs.
• 4:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they've beat some… It's a solid schedule.
• 4:15
  Phil: Alright, there you go.
• 4:22
  Tad Eggleston: They've beat up on some bad teams, too, but… But they haven't exclusively.
• 4:30
  Tad Eggleston: Played bad teams.
• 4:33
  Phil: Nice. They've earned it. They've earned the record.
• 4:36
  Tad Eggleston: But they've earned their record.
• 4:39
  Tad Eggleston: Well, for that matter, they've already played the Rays. The Rays have the best record in the ale.
• 4:47
  Tad Eggleston: East.
• 4:50
  Phil: Could this be, the road to another Cubs World Series? Is it just…
• 4:55
  Tad Eggleston: I don't like to talk World Series before the playoffs.
• 4:58
  Phil: Okay.
• 4:58
  Tad Eggleston: Because playoff… every round of the playoffs is a coin flip.
• 5:02
  Phil: I see.
• 5:03
  Tad Eggleston: In fact, you know, I… I am in a minority that, I way prefer the regular season to the playoffs in baseball.
• 5:12
  Phil: Okay.
• 5:12
  Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, I would be…
• 5:16
  Tad Eggleston: Very much in favor of a shortened playoff.
• 5:20
  Tad Eggleston: Not shortened as in less games per series, but, like…
• 5:25
  Tad Eggleston: Now we've got the World Series, the League Championship Series, the League Division Series, and the Wildcard Series. So we've got 4 rounds of playoffs, and, like.
• 5:34
  Phil: Wow.
• 5:34
  Tad Eggleston: I think… 8 or 10 teams that… Make it to the playoffs.
• 5:42
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and then the playoffs are a completely different game.
• 5:48
  Phil: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Tad Eggleston: Because winning 4 out of 7 is way different than winning 90 out of 162.
• 5:55
  Phil: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is a hugely different… different task at hand.
• 5:59
  Tad Eggleston: you don't have to make decisions about, okay, what resources am I willing to put into today, knowing that I have tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, you know what I mean?
• 6:14
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's… since it's… since it's more compressed, like, it's over a month or so instead of several months, then it changes to.
• 6:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but more importantly, like… look at…
• 6:26
  Tad Eggleston: Any given season, and every team loses 4 out of 7 at some point.
• 6:31
  Phil: Yeah.
• 6:33
  Tad Eggleston: Every team wins 4 out of 7 at some point.
• 6:37
  Tad Eggleston: you know.
• 6:38
  Tad Eggleston: Statistically speaking, if you take the worst Major League team and put it up against the best Major League team, they're gonna win a 7-game series about 40% of the time.
• 6:49
  Phil: Hmm.
• 6:51
  Phil: Interesting. That is very interesting.
• 6:53
  Tad Eggleston: just because…
• 6:55
  Phil: Yeah.
• 6:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… You're talking a sport where, like, you win 2 out of 3, you're not just…
• 7:04
  Tad Eggleston: Going to the playoffs, you're one of the all-time great teams.
• 7:09
  Phil: Yeah.
• 7:11
  Phil: Wow. Yeah, so just, yeah, that's some… some interesting, interesting statisticals.
• 7:16
  Tad Eggleston: Analysis there. Like, like, 5 out of 9 is a playoff team.
• 7:21
  Phil: Wow, yeah.
• 7:25
  Phil: 5 hours.
• 7:26
  Tad Eggleston: 5 out of 9 is a playoff team more years than not. So, like…
• 7:31
  Tad Eggleston: it's really, really… I mean, don't get me wrong, I… I… I…
• 7:37
  Tad Eggleston: like, the World Series last year was incredibly exciting, for that matter, the Championship Series, but it's a very different game.
• 7:43
  Phil: Yeah.
• 7:45
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I think the only game that's more different in its playoffs Than baseball is, is hockey.
• 7:52
  Phil: Interesting.
• 7:53
  Tad Eggleston: Though it's for similar reasons.
• 7:55
  Phil: Oh.
• 7:57
  Tad Eggleston: In hockey, like, once you hit the playoffs, you don't want anybody getting hurt, so it becomes way more about… it becomes a way less physical game.
• 8:05
  Phil: Interesting.
• 8:05
  Tad Eggleston: way more about skating and passing, and ironically, I love playoff hockey and have no interest in the regular season.
• 8:13
  Phil: Okay. Yeah, I don't need, brawls on ice.
• 8:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. It just doesn't interest me. But, like, when it's about skating and passing and, like, speed and finesse, it's really kind of amazing.
• 8:26
  Phil: It's similarly… that's why, I think… I haven't watched very much hockey, but, like, I've seen a couple of really great games of hockey, and I think they were almost exclusively Olympic games. And it's probably a similar reason, because, like, hey…
• 8:40
  Tad Eggleston: Women's hockey, too, because it tends to be.
• 8:43
  Phil: it might have even been women's hockey. I don't…
• 8:45
  Tad Eggleston: Women generally kick the men's ass when they play each other.
• 8:49
  Phil: Heck yeah, yeah, because they're actually trying to play the game and not beat the shit out of each other.
• 8:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I mean, for that matter, like…
• 8:57
  Tad Eggleston: I've grown to appreciate soccer a lot more since I finally, like… Nick Hornby wrote a book on being a soccer fan, and I read everything Nick Hornby does, so I.
• 9:07
  Phil: Oh, yeah?
• 9:07
  Tad Eggleston: read it, and started to understand, and therefore started to watch more. And what I'll say about playoff hockey is it's soccer faster.
• 9:17
  Phil: Interesting.
• 9:19
  Tad Eggleston: and more compact, because the soccer feels huge. But what I… like, soccer actually can be compared to baseball, because it's not…
• 9:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, where it's more like a basketball or hockey game is that there's no stopping.
• 9:35
  Tad Eggleston: very often. But there is, like, long periods of stuff that…
• 9:42
  Tad Eggleston: If you don't know what's going on, can feel…
• 9:47
  Phil: Yes, yeah, I have sat through, or at least been around when soccer has been on and looked boring.
• 9:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But if you DO know what's going on.
• 9:57
  Phil: become…
• 9:58
  Tad Eggleston: Fascinating.
• 9:58
  Phil: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Especially when, you know, games… a thrilling game can be 0-1 for soccer fans.
• 10:07
  Tad Eggleston: Or zero-zero.
• 10:08
  Phil: Or even zero… yeah, absolutely.
• 10:10
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 10:11
  Tad Eggleston: It's kind of like, you know…
• 10:14
  Tad Eggleston: baseball fan will completely appreciate a perfect game. I had a friend who was at Mark Burley's Perfect Game, and I asked her…
• 10:21
  Tad Eggleston: when she got back to the dorm afterwards, I'm like.
• 10:24
  Tad Eggleston: oh my god! And she's like, what? And I'm like, you were… you were… it's like, it seemed like nothing happened, and I'm like, EXACTLY!
• 10:31
  Phil: That's great. That's so funny.
• 10:36
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway, in slightly more comic-related news, before people start thinking that this is a sports podcast,
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: The one piece… which…
• 10:48
  Phil: Just a one-piece. THE One Piece.
• 10:50
  Tad Eggleston: Spoiler, I was… I was, I was, I was becalmed again this week, but hopefully not next week.
• 10:56
  Tad Eggleston: A new adaptation, anime adaptation, will begin on Netflix in February, with 7 episodes representing 300 minutes.
• 11:06
  Tad Eggleston: To cover the first 50 chapters of the manga, The East Blue Saga. Phil and I were kind of looking through the… the…
• 11:14
  Tad Eggleston: Promotional videos right now, and, and, like…
• 11:19
  Tad Eggleston: Looks like they're trying to be really true to the art style and whatnot, the feel.
• 11:25
  Tad Eggleston: I'm… I'm excited.
• 11:29
  Phil: Oh yeah, I definitely, I definitely watch this, you know?
• 11:32
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, like, I also wonder if the fact that it's… going straight to Netflix.
• 11:39
  Phil: Hmm.
• 11:39
  Tad Eggleston: But with a Japanese crew?
• 11:42
  Phil: Yeah.
• 11:42
  Tad Eggleston: Mean that they… they're trying to balance, kind of.
• 11:48
  Tad Eggleston: American and Japanese sensibilities in cartoons?
• 11:52
  Phil: I could see that. I mean, it's…
• 11:55
  Phil: I'm always intensely curious how the, production deals go down to where this is… this is now being billed as a Netflix show, you know? As well as, I mean, I'll definitely agree with you, agree with you that it looks like, I mean, I can tell that
• 12:13
  Phil: this feels like an attempt for new fans of One Piece, you know? Like, I don't know how many people have jumped on board after the live-action show has come out, you know? Yeah.
• 12:25
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the live-action show's been really popular.
• 12:27
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. So, it's interesting how, just as the, the source material is wrapping up, and, you know, in its final arc, and could be ending at any time now, we're not sure, it seems like the hype around it is amping up more and more, and people are like.
• 12:46
  Tad Eggleston: In some ways, that's the best way for it to work. Then you don't wind up with the Game of Thrones, oh, we're out of source material.
• 12:54
  Phil: Exactly, yeah, no. You don't want to be on the wrong side of that. That is… I 100% agree, that it's better to go this way than not, but yeah, that's… it's…
• 13:05
  Phil: It's really interesting, because especially, I think I've… well, I know I've mentioned it to you, I'm pretty sure it's been on air, but my initial reaction to One Piece in eighth grade, when I read the first couple volumes, was like, I don't know how long they can keep this going. Not really realizing at the time it had already been going on for almost a decade. Yeah, so…
• 13:25
  Phil: it's got legs, you know? It's, it's, and I mean, this might… this might be the point that gets me hooked on it, you know? I'll definitely check out 7 episodes.
• 13:34
  Tad Eggleston: So… Yeah, and what kind of week has it been? .
• 13:41
  Phil: E.
• 13:43
  Tad Eggleston: You know those voting rights that we thought we had?
• 13:48
  Phil: Those voting rights that we needed to protect better? You mean those ones?
• 13:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 13:54
  Phil: Yeah.
• 13:56
  Phil: Yikes.
• 13:57
  Tad Eggleston: The Supreme Court proved that it's not actually good enough for us to get a trifecta.
• 14:01
  Phil: You know, well, here's… here's…
• 14:03
  Tad Eggleston: We can pass a law, and they'll just shoot it down.
• 14:06
  Phil: Yeah, well, the quick thought I had here is, could we… I wonder, I would love to see a statistical analysis of the Supreme Court's decisions to see how many laws they have struck down
• 14:19
  Phil: Versus how many they've held up, you know? Because I'm thinking between Roe v. Wade and the.
• 14:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, it's more complicated than that, because they ask.
• 14:28
  Phil: Okay.
• 14:28
  Tad Eggleston: uphold things.
• 14:31
  Tad Eggleston: That their party likes.
• 14:33
  Phil: Well, yes, yes, but I… just trying to…
• 14:35
  Tad Eggleston: So it all depends.
• 14:36
  Tad Eggleston: the case.
• 14:37
  Phil: Yeah, well, what I'm trying to get at here is…
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: What is really clear is that this is a ridiculously partisan…
• 14:43
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 14:45
  Tad Eggleston: court.
• 14:45
  Phil: I just want, I just want, like, an accounting of… And mind you, society.
• 14:50
  Tad Eggleston: Sam Alito is, like, crying crocodile tears because.
• 14:53
  Phil: It's been sick.
• 14:54
  Tad Eggleston: Suggested that they struck down the… the…
• 14:59
  Tad Eggleston: Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act. They haven't struck it down, he insists.
• 15:05
  Phil: Hmm.
• 15:07
  Tad Eggleston: They've just interpreted it.
• 15:09
  Phil: In a way that it doesn't count.
• 15:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, there are some lawyers that kind of agree with him, that there is still a way for white people to sue to say that districts were made based on race rather than…
• 15:29
  Tad Eggleston: anything else, and therefore need to be drawn. So… so it is… it is possible that he hasn't struck it down, but has completely perverted it, so that the only class that can be convincingly…
• 15:45
  Tad Eggleston: Argued to be… Hurt by… by…
• 15:54
  Tad Eggleston: But a gerrymander is white people.
• 15:58
  Phil: Yeah, that's.
• 16:00
  Tad Eggleston: Poor, poor white people whose votes don't mean enough.
• 16:04
  Phil: Oh, from crocodile tears to a kangaroo court,
• 16:08
  Phil: This is… this is just… it's…
• 16:11
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why, like.
• 16:12
  Phil: It's hard for me to… to… hear anything like that, and…
• 16:16
  Tad Eggleston: I know that there's argument… About whether or not you can effectively run on it.
• 16:22
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 16:23
  Tad Eggleston: But if massive…
• 16:27
  Tad Eggleston: Court reform.
• 16:28
  Tad Eggleston: isn't part of the next democratic agenda.
• 16:32
  Phil: Yeah.
• 16:33
  Tad Eggleston: like, leading off the next democratic agenda.
• 16:38
  Tad Eggleston: It won't matter what laws they pass.
• 16:42
  Phil: Yeah. Yeah, that's the… that's the sad thing we're seeing.
• 16:45
  Phil: You know? I… I guess I'm also…
• 16:50
  Phil: You know, now thinking back to…
• 16:53
  Phil: A good, you know, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, when
• 17:00
  Phil: Obama was still in office, and, you know, just like…
• 17:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, weren't those the days?
• 17:07
  Phil: Yeah, well, it's… I mean, it's even more so, I'm thinking now, of just one of the, like, first… Those things are, like.
• 17:12
  Tad Eggleston: term Obama?
• 17:13
  Phil: Yeah, and I mean, it's… I… I…
• 17:18
  Tad Eggleston: Those first two years… How we squandered them.
• 17:22
  Phil: And just thinking about, like.
• 17:24
  Tad Eggleston: And they were nice. They were both really nice, and, like, how did we not see the writing on the wall?
• 17:32
  Tad Eggleston: So much more with those first two years.
• 17:35
  Phil: Yeah.
• 17:37
  Phil: Yeah.
• 17:39
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't blame Obama for that. I think he had too much…
• 17:43
  Phil: I mean, I…
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: I blame him a little, I think he could have tried harder, but I think he had too much party opposition.
• 17:50
  Phil: Mmm.
• 17:51
  Tad Eggleston: 2…
• 17:52
  Phil: again.
• 17:52
  Tad Eggleston: of just unilaterally doing stuff.
• 17:57
  Phil: Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's… it's… it's easy to look back and… and, you know, blame one person, but it… it's… I… I… for that era, I still land firmly on, you know, blame… blame the people who had no morals and were abusing them. Yeah.
• 18:15
  Phil: First and foremost, just because I think of, if he did start, you know, doing things unilaterally.
• 18:23
  Phil: how would people have reacted then? You know, much more crazily, stuff like that, but but yeah, it's .
• 18:30
  Tad Eggleston: We're seeing over and over and over again that, like.
• 18:36
  Tad Eggleston: the Democrats have not…
• 18:42
  Tad Eggleston: have not… Established any sort of real strategy for hitting back.
• 18:49
  Phil: Yeah. Oh, that's… yeah.
• 18:51
  Tad Eggleston: Later.
• 18:55
  Phil: It is… it is the oppression part… or the, the opposition party looking for handouts, as opposed to an actual opposition party.
• 19:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right, like…
• 19:06
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I get, like, it pains me that we've had to do stuff with redistricting and whatnot. And, like, even along those lines, Virginia voted for redistricting, and their Supreme Court shot it down on party lines.
• 19:21
  Tad Eggleston: Like…
• 19:30
  Tad Eggleston: I am not convinced.
• 19:32
  Tad Eggleston: that…
• 19:35
  Tad Eggleston: and I don't care what the polling data is, because our polling data, like, in recent years has, like… like, if anything, the last 15 years has taught us is that…
• 19:48
  Tad Eggleston: We don't know how to poll in a digital age.
• 19:51
  Phil: Yeah.
• 19:53
  Phil: Yeah.
• 19:54
  Phil: That's for sure.
• 19:57
  Tad Eggleston: you know, response rates are so low that, like, figuring out how to put together the algorithms, etc, is nearly impossible. Focus groups often tell us completely different things from polling, and even those.
• 20:13
  Tad Eggleston: You know, we don't seem to know how to fully understand them.
• 20:19
  Phil: Well, I think… I think one of the big problems is because people aren't looking at it as, like, a challenge to be understood and optimized. They're looking at them as tactics to win elections, you know?
• 20:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
• 20:34
  Phil: Yeah.
• 20:34
  Tad Eggleston: I think, like, we're long past the time where the correct strategy is to… Be honest and brutal.
• 20:47
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately. You know, I think too often, you know… and like, understand, like, I am a big believer in the Michelle Obama, when they go low, we go high. I just don't think that saying that you're gonna put somebody in prison for committing crimes is going low.
• 21:06
  Phil: Right? Exactly. Exactly. That's not… that shouldn't be going low. Right?
• 21:11
  Tad Eggleston: I don'.
• 21:12
  Phil: I don't care.
• 21:13
  Phil: treason.
• 21:14
  Tad Eggleston: you're gonna impeach a Supreme Court justice for… for… for obvious…
• 21:20
  Phil: blatant bribes.
• 21:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, at the very least, obvious, inappropriate behavior, et cetera.
• 21:29
  Phil: Yeah.
• 21:29
  Tad Eggleston: He's going low.
• 21:31
  Phil: Yeah, again, yeah, rooting out corruption is not going low. Like, that is the high road.
• 21:36
  Tad Eggleston: I think they need to be going hard and fast, keeping every ounce of this in the news every second they can.
• 21:47
  Tad Eggleston: And making it clear that, yes, we're gonna pass some laws, we're gonna bring down some prices, but we're also gonna hold people accountable.
• 21:54
  Phil: Yeah.
• 21:55
  Tad Eggleston: We might not be back in our home districts at all during the first two years that we're in office, because we might need every minute of every day to either pass laws or hold hearings.
• 22:06
  Phil: Yeah.
• 22:10
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody who doesn't want that as their job should drop out of the race right now.
• 22:15
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 22:16
  Tad Eggleston: Because that's what this next term is gonna be.
• 22:20
  Phil: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Tad Eggleston: And if the Republicans don't join us, that just means they're gonna lose a lot of votes.
• 22:26
  Phil: Yep.
• 22:27
  Phil: Lose all the votes that can't see them.
• 22:29
  Tad Eggleston: weekends, they're gonna lose a lot of votes, because we're not adjourning.
• 22:39
  Phil: Yeah, it'll be… I mean…
• 22:41
  Tad Eggleston: The American people deserve our work, and there's a lot of work to do.
• 22:44
  Phil: That's for sure. It's,
• 22:49
  Phil: right now, stealing myself against too much optimism, you know? Just… I wish I had that.
• 22:56
  Tad Eggleston: optimism.
• 22:57
  Phil: Right? It's… well, it's funny.
• 22:58
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't quite have pessimism yet.
• 23:00
  Phil: Yeah.
• 23:02
  Tad Eggleston: But my optimism is, is… My hope is not gone, but my optimism is…
• 23:07
  Phil: Well, I was gonna say…
• 23:08
  Tad Eggleston: You're hopeful, you're hopeful.
• 23:09
  Phil: Your hope is, is, charging my optimism, so, you know, it's, it's hard for me
• 23:15
  Phil: it's hard for me to be optimistic without hope, and honestly, yeah, things… Hope's been hard to find.
• 23:22
  Tad Eggleston: I think that there are real pathways.
• 23:24
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:25
  Tad Eggleston: I think that there are people that are fighting for them.
• 23:27
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 23:29
  Phil: It's… it's hard to maintain when, like… so again, the… the…
• 23:34
  Phil: you know, the voting rights being demolished, it's… it's certainly hard to watch, you know, one of our own state senators here in Tennessee, kept out of
• 23:48
  Phil: Hearings about his own district as they redraw the maps to kick him out.
• 23:55
  Phil: when he's been… he's been removed before for just being, a presence, you know, trying to obstruct Republican governance, so it's…
• 24:06
  Phil: it's batshit. It's quite frankly batshit to me to, literally redraw the map based off of inaccurate data.
• 24:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, look at Louisiana. Their primary had started, and they paused it.
• 24:21
  Phil: Oh, yeah, no, there was an election apparently the day before, like, the election results weren't even ratified, and they're trying to redraw the lines. So it's… it's their scrambling, they are full-on scrambling to maintain power.
• 24:33
  Tad Eggleston: And mind you, like, the Supreme Court fast-tracked their actual, like, normally there's, like, 40 decisions, or 40 days between the…
• 24:43
  Tad Eggleston: it being announced from the bench.
• 24:45
  Phil: Oh my god.
• 24:46
  Tad Eggleston: The written decision being handed down and whatnot, and they fast-tracked that.
• 24:50
  Phil: They're speedrunning it, yeah.
• 24:52
  Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, like, the Supreme Court
• 24:56
  Tad Eggleston: required that an illegal map be used in Texas, because there wasn't enough time to change it before the election.
• 25:04
  Phil: Oh my god.
• 25:05
  Tad Eggleston: two years ago.
• 25:07
  Phil: But, but…
• 25:07
  Tad Eggleston: Now…
• 25:09
  Phil: Right.
• 25:12
  Tad Eggleston: Southern states who have illegal maps because they allow black people to be counted.
• 25:20
  Tad Eggleston: are getting to… I mean, it's…
• 25:22
  Phil: The largest percent… Memphis is, like, the largest percent Black city in America, and they're being redrawn to silence those people and, remove their representation from Congress. So, yeah. I mean, that's…
• 25:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's on par with the fact that Jackson is the capital of Mississippi, and almost entirely black, and split into, like, 7 different districts, so they don't really have any representation in their own state government.
• 25:51
  Phil: Yeah, that's fucked up. That's beyond fucked up. That is… It's…
• 25:57
  Phil: It's… it's just… it's one of those things that…
• 26:03
  Phil: I… I… I struggle to find words for beyond, you know.
• 26:09
  Phil: Beyond, this is… this is fucked up, this shouldn't be happening.
• 26:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 26:14
  Phil: And, yeah, it's… it's… it's kind of a, you know…
• 26:25
  Phil: All I can land on is, like.
• 26:26
  Tad Eggleston: I will, I will, I will toss out a, like, people who like their, their,
• 26:32
  Tad Eggleston: They're news delivered with comedy, Saturday Night Live UK's…
• 26:39
  Phil: No?
• 26:40
  Tad Eggleston: Weekend Update has been nailing it.
• 26:42
  Phil: Oh, okay. Yeah.
• 26:44
  Tad Eggleston: I think my favorite from this last week was,
• 26:49
  Tad Eggleston: in describing the, the Correspondence Dinner… Yeah. They, they said that,
• 26:56
  Tad Eggleston: President Donald Trump shat himself, and 5 minutes later, shots rang out.
• 27:01
  Phil: Wow, that's amazing.
• 27:03
  Tad Eggleston: That's cool.
• 27:03
  Phil: Great.
• 27:05
  Phil: That's fantastic.
• 27:08
  Tad Eggleston: the way that they've treated their Prime Minister in relation to his Epstein stuff?
• 27:14
  Tad Eggleston: And he doesn't even have direct Epstein stuff.
• 27:16
  Phil: I was gonna say…
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: he only… he only gave a cabinet position to somebody who had epchney stuff.
• 27:24
  Phil: Right, right.
• 27:25
  Tad Eggleston: But the way they have, like.
• 27:28
  Phil: Skewered him over?
• 27:29
  Tad Eggleston: Destroyed him!
• 27:30
  Phil: Please, yeah, yeah. He's a joke.
• 27:34
  Phil: He's a bespeckled fool.
• 27:36
  Tad Eggleston: But anyway… led.
• 27:40
  Phil: Good to hear that, Saturday Night Monty Python has the juice.
• 27:44
  Tad Eggleston: It's been, it's been…
• 27:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I, I, like, it's one of those things that, like, I saw one write-up on it, where, where it was essentially, like, this is when we find out whether or not…
• 27:59
  Tad Eggleston: they'll treat it like the U.S. market, or like…
• 28:04
  Tad Eggleston: the British market often is, because… like…
• 28:13
  Tad Eggleston: Nobody knows that the ratings are quite there yet, but the show is good, so the question is whether it will be given enough rope.
• 28:22
  Phil: Right.
• 28:23
  Tad Eggleston: to…
• 28:25
  Phil: You know, can they get 6 more episodes? That's the question.
• 28:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 28:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, no, but, but yeah, no, it's available on… on Peacock in America, and it's a,
• 28:38
  Tad Eggleston: Totally worthwhile watch.
• 28:40
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 28:41
  Tad Eggleston: It's always interesting to me just to see, even with countries that are as similar as the U.S. and Britain can be, how there are little…
• 28:50
  Tad Eggleston: Quirks and differences in humor and whatnot.
• 28:53
  Phil: Oh, absolutely.
• 28:55
  Tad Eggleston: You know,
• 28:58
  Tad Eggleston: But anyway, let's talk some comics. Some new to order this month. Initial orders are due on May 28th. Contact your local comic shops if you are interested in any of the following books. Kick it off!
• 29:11
  Tad Eggleston: Mr. Phil.
• 29:13
  Phil: Yeah, first up we've got Cloven, number one, which I will say that this is different from the series of graphic novels illustrated by Matthew Southworth. This is a series from Mad Cave by… written by Dan Panosian, with art from
• 29:28
  Phil: David Ferracci. In the dying days of the American frontier, a young woman journeys into the unknown to claim a legacy she never asked for, and may not survive. June Buckley's father was a monster in life. In death, he may be something worse.
• 29:44
  Phil: Summoned alongside a group of treacherous heirs, June is forced to traverse the same brutal path that built her father's empire.
• 29:51
  Phil: But the trail reveals more than hardship. It exposes the rot in every soul traveling beside her. And at the center of it all is Hendio, a creature bound to her father's past, and perhaps to something far older and much more wicked. As the tension simmers and night closes in, June begins to understand. Her inheritance comes at a grisly price.
• 30:12
  Phil: It's gonna have a final order cutoff of
• 30:14
  Phil: July 6th, in stores, July 29th, from MedCave.
• 30:21
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty. Hank Howard, Pizza Detective, the inside job number one. I don't think we've given enough attention to Hank Howard, so I decided that I needed to.
• 30:31
  Tad Eggleston: With this volume. New York Times best-selling writer Robert Venditti and world-renowned comics legend David Lapham joined forces to deliver a must-read new entry in their striking new vision in the fight against crime.
• 30:46
  Tad Eggleston: Something's rotten at Big Caligula's Pizza, location number 212, and it's not just last week's mozzarella. Cash chips have fallen off a cliff, and the question on everyone's lips is, why?
• 30:59
  Tad Eggleston: Has service really gone downhill, or is there something or someone more sinister to blame? Corporate smells trouble, and they've called in their best man for the job. Enter Hank Howard.
• 31:09
  Tad Eggleston: Armed with a mind as sharp as a tack, nerves of steel, and an ironclad stomach, Hank's about to dive into a mystery hotter than a fresh baked pie, and his only lead won't talk.
• 31:21
  Tad Eggleston: Literally, it's the location's mascot.
• 31:25
  Tad Eggleston: Biggie.
• 31:26
  Tad Eggleston: The employees who don't don the oversized Roman Emperor garb are forbidden from talking in front of customers. Ruins the illusion for the kids. Thankfully, Hank's not flying solo. Location number 212 just happens to be the stomping grounds of Hank's old buddy.
• 31:41
  Tad Eggleston: the pizza-crust-loving dog, Callie. Together, they'll sniff out clues, chomp down leads, and uncover secrets that could rock the pizza world to its core.
• 31:52
  Tad Eggleston: These are just, like, Imagine, like, hard-boiled noir set around Pizza Hut.
• 32:02
  Phil: Nope.
• 32:03
  Phil: Oh, yeah. I need to read this series, honestly, it sounds hilarious.
• 32:06
  Tad Eggleston: these are. Which, as with many things, a bad idea, like.
• 32:15
  Tad Eggleston: there were a couple of them that were, like, backup stories in, like, Season 2 of Bad Idea, and then they put out, like, a hardcover, so I had the hardcover with all of them.
• 32:25
  Phil: Wow.
• 32:26
  Tad Eggleston: Nice. Which is one of the reasons that I hadn't highlighted them yet, because I've read them all.
• 32:32
  Phil: Well, this is…
• 32:32
  Tad Eggleston: they're… now they're doing single issues.
• 32:35
  Phil: Okay, yeah, I feel like… I feel like we've had Hank Howard Pizza Detective in the solicits for… for several months going on now.
• 32:41
  Tad Eggleston: We have… this is, I think, the third…
• 32:45
  Phil: It's more than…
• 32:46
  Tad Eggleston: Is there generally two or three issue? We had the two Hollywoods, and, Slice of Life.
• 32:54
  Phil: Okay, yeah.
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: So far. Okay. So this is… this is the third… third different Hank Howard to make it to…
• 33:01
  Phil: So, are these reprints of backup stories? Yes. Or, okay.
• 33:05
  Tad Eggleston: Well, the reprints of backup stories and or stories that were… Only collected in the hardcover.
• 33:12
  Phil: But the hardcover is the complete Hank Howard.
• 33:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 33:16
  Phil: Okay, it's one of those where I'm like, I… I'm tempted.
• 33:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, again, that…
• 33:20
  Phil: Did you know something.
• 33:20
  Tad Eggleston: weird. I will also toss out, I'm gonna have to track, get one of these, Hank Howard's Slice of Life No. 2.
• 33:28
  Tad Eggleston: which comes out June 10th, has the world's coolest sketch cover.
• 33:34
  Phil: Oh.
• 33:35
  Tad Eggleston: Let me, let me share this with you so you can see.
• 33:37
  Phil: Interesting. Okay.
• 33:39
  Phil: Is this, like, a,
• 33:42
  Phil: a blank sketch cover, or a… a cover… oh, okay, I'm seeing… this is a cover of a sketch, and yeah, that looks… that looks awesome.
• 33:52
  Tad Eggleston: It's got the… it's got the pizza, and the Caligula cola, and the nearly empty plate, and the… the…
• 33:59
  Tad Eggleston: Crumpled up napkin, and it…
• 34:01
  Phil: Eve.
• 34:01
  Tad Eggleston: Here's the spot for you to draw in the person eating the pizza.
• 34:05
  Phil: That's funny. That's great. That's fantastic.
• 34:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:10
  Phil: Oh.
• 34:10
  Phil: You can have some real fun with that one.
• 34:14
  Phil: There's, like, a… Floating piece of pizza ready to go into somebody's mouth.
• 34:18
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 34:21
  Tad Eggleston: So… Yeah.
• 34:24
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, so we had to give Hank Howard some love.
• 34:28
  Tad Eggleston: And then we're gonna stick with Bad Idea for,
• 34:33
  Tad Eggleston: Olympus Saga, er, Megalith the Olympus Saga No. Number 1 actually comes out
• 34:40
  Tad Eggleston: Before number zero, but we're gonna read about number zero anyways.
• 34:44
  Phil: That's the, the traditional, the traditional method for zero issues.
• 34:48
  Tad Eggleston: It is, kind of.
• 34:50
  Tad Eggleston: Come to think of it.
• 34:53
  Tad Eggleston: New York Times best-selling writer Matt Kint joins forces with powerhouse artists Ramon Villalobos and Jonathan Marks Baravecchia to unleash three earth-shattering origins to the blockbuster Olympus saga.
• 35:08
  Tad Eggleston: Brace yourself for a wild thrill ride as Special Operative Hawk takes on his deadliest mission yet, Recon in Area 23.
• 35:17
  Tad Eggleston: Deep in the Amazon jungle, zoned off from human contact, is perhaps the strangest and most dangerous peace place on the planet. The U.S. military wants control of the zone and is throwing men at the problem.
• 35:30
  Tad Eggleston: Despite only half of them ever coming out again, join Smythe.
• 35:35
  Tad Eggleston: the United States government's top clandestine scientist, as she engages in a desperate fight to save Baltimore, before it's wiped off the map in this high-stakes thriller packed with political intrigue, deceit, and deception. Finally, travel to a hostile alien world in universal language, witness a savage fight for survival, learn the truth behind the fearsome foe at the heart of the Olympus saga.
• 35:58
  Tad Eggleston: And uncover the secret behind his next target.
• 36:02
  Tad Eggleston: Earth.
• 36:03
  Tad Eggleston: This is the, the, the, the zero issue of the Matt Kent Louis LaRosa.
• 36:11
  Tad Eggleston: mega Series, been on the works for us.
• 36:17
  Phil: a while, from what I understand.
• 36:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the crazy thing they did with Issue 1 of this is every single page of the comic.
• 36:28
  Tad Eggleston: He's available as a variant cover.
• 36:32
  Phil: Interesting.
• 36:35
  Phil: Certainly, an unconventional idea.
• 36:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, with the claim that every, every page is cover-worthy, and they put their money where their mouth is.
• 36:48
  Phil: Oh, that's funny.
• 36:50
  Phil: That is funny. Wow.
• 36:54
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, they're beautiful, so I don't know that I disagree.
• 36:58
  Phil: Yeah.
• 36:59
  Phil: LaRosa is an incredible artist. He's… he's a…
• 37:04
  Phil: known for drawing dinosaurs extremely well.
• 37:11
  Phil: At least that's what I know him for.
• 37:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, so there you go. What do you got, Phil?
• 37:15
  Phil: Next up, here is the patron, number one, from Christian Ward and John J. Pearson, with letters by Hassan Oxmainel Howe, and colors by John… oh, colors by Pearson as well. Over at Ignition Press, all the great artists have one thing in common. They're dead.
• 37:35
  Phil: A true patron of the fine arts, Mr. Cherish has dedicated his life to scouting and supporting emerging artists, launching countless unknowns from obscurity into industry superstardom. Unfortunately for these young artists, the secret to Cherish's success is their untimely demise. Nothing makes a work of art more desirable and valuable to collectors than the passing of its creator, and Cherish has refined his ability to
• 38:00
  Phil: orchestrate spectacular tragedies without leaving a trace, before selling his dead protege's auvoirs for massive profits.
• 38:07
  Phil: Painter Maddie Barnes is primed to become Cherish's next hit.
• 38:12
  Phil: But when the script is flipped on the latest murder, a posthumous twist calls the artist's fate
• 38:18
  Phil: Yeah, calls the artist's fate and legacy into question, putting the patron's empire in the dueling crosshairs of law enforcement and a merciless third-party connoisseur. Writer Christian Ward and artist John J. Pearson put their own life's work on the page in a highbrow thriller at the
• 38:34
  Phil: bloody intersection of art and commerce. Both creators will contribute a full series of variant covers alongside special incentive cover by number one.
• 38:43
  Phil: Artist Award, yeah, by, Eisner Award-winning artist, Anand Arke, of Ticidium and the Beauty. That's, once again, from Ignition Press, gonna have a final report.
• 38:56
  Tad Eggleston: What's the news that I should have remembered. Not just Eisner-winning artist, Anand R.K.
• 39:02
  Phil: Huh.
• 39:03
  Tad Eggleston: Pulitzer-winning artist.
• 39:05
  Phil: I'm not.
• 39:05
  Tad Eggleston: NRK.
• 39:06
  Phil: Okay, yeah.
• 39:07
  Tad Eggleston: this year's Pulitzer.
• 39:09
  Phil: Very nice, alright, even more prestigious.
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:12
  Phil: Yeah, gonna have a final order cutoff of June 15th, on sale July 29th, once again, coming from Ignition Press.
• 39:23
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty, some graphic novels. We're gonna start with Katie Skelly and Heaven.
• 39:29
  Tad Eggleston: Out past the edge of town, there exists a strip club called Heaven that only some can find. Some say it's a mirage, others say you can't miss the giant neon heels lighting up the desert night skies. Dolly can't find a place to belong.
• 39:44
  Tad Eggleston: After losing her identity as a gymnast and navigating family turbulence, she's adrift from school and friends when a mysterious presence
• 39:53
  Tad Eggleston: beckons her to heaven. She wonders if she may just have found her place, but just what does it want in return?
• 40:00
  Tad Eggleston: Katie Skelly's first graphic novel since her acclaimed maids in 2020, Heaven finds out what happens when the artist's quintessential cool girl characters let their guards down and let the world in.
• 40:13
  Tad Eggleston: With the supernatural strip club backdrop, an eye-popping sense of color that would make Dario Argento proud, Heaven reinforces Skelly's place as one of the most distinctive voices working in contemporary comics today. This is from Fanographics Books. Final order cutoff is June 1st, in stores on July 8th.
• 40:34
  Tad Eggleston: Love me some Katie Skelly.
• 40:37
  Phil: Yeah, that sounds fascinating. Next up, we've got an Iranian Metamorphosis from Mana Nayastani. This powerful graphic memoir is essential for those interested in the stories of artistic freedom, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for expression.
• 40:54
  Phil: A struggle that remains deeply relevant in the current turmoil in Iran. Can a cartoon cause riots? It seems unbelievable, but for Mana Nayatson.
• 41:05
  Phil: Nayastani, it's true. One of his cartoons sparked riots, shuddering the newspaper he worked for, and landed the cartoonist in solitary confinement inside of Iran's notorious prison system.
• 41:16
  Phil: Mana Nayastani's story, which can only be described as Kafka-esque, is vividly brought to life in an Iranian metamorphosis.
• 41:26
  Phil: Nayastani, born 1973 in Tehran, is an Iranian cartoonist and illustrator for economic, intellectual, political, cultural, and professional magazines. He is particularly known for his work with the newspaper Zahn and Persian-language radio Zamana.
• 41:43
  Phil: He is the recipient of the Cartoonist Rights Network International Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning 2010. He now lives in France, and remolds the exhausting terrors of his life's
• 41:58
  Phil: Worst Months into grim comedy. That's gonna have a final order cutoff of June 1st in stores July 1st from Uncivilized Books.
• 42:10
  Tad Eggleston: Love me some uncivilized.
• 42:12
  Phil: Yeah, they've got… they're always a good pick with those guys.
• 42:16
  Tad Eggleston: Tom's great.
• 42:18
  Tad Eggleston: Are you first?
• 42:20
  Phil: First on the next one.
• 42:21
  Tad Eggleston: connections.
• 42:21
  Phil: I am.
• 42:22
  Tad Eggleston: first.
• 42:23
  Tad Eggleston: You picked a good one.
• 42:24
  Phil: Ivania.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: the Full Scoop Collection from Richard Ashley Hamilton, Pablo Andres, and Joseph Cooper. Breaking news! All four volumes of Scoop in one beautiful edition that is sure to stop the presses. Sophie Cooper is the newest intern at WMIA 7 News Station, a struggling station based
• 42:45
  Tad Eggleston: in Miami, Florida. And she's determined to use access to the newsroom's resources to prove her father has been framed for embezzlement.
• 42:52
  Tad Eggleston: But investigating her father's case soon uncovers some unsettling things about her hometown, like a flying saucer crashed in the Everglades, a chukacobra running wild, a digital doppelganger intent on ruining what's left of Sophie's social life, and a bunker hidden since the 1960s that seemed to be at odds with time itself.
• 43:14
  Tad Eggleston: Sophia had to rely on her… on all her truth-seeking skills to solve these mysteries. This is from Mad Cave Books. Final order cutoff is July 6th, and stores on July 29th. You can go back and listen to my conversation with Richard Ashley Hamilton
• 43:31
  Tad Eggleston: regarding the first volume of this in our archives, I'm gonna have to invite him back, because he's a cool guy.
• 43:37
  Phil: I can. Next up, there is a book I've heard quite a bit about without having read it yet, Russell Heist.
• 43:44
  Tad Eggleston: So good.
• 43:45
  Phil: Kyle Starks and Kyle Starks, as well as a, Vladimir Putov.
• 43:50
  Phil: A no-holds-barred heist caper packed with body slams and backstabs for fans of over-the-top action. After being crippled by a shady wrestling promoter, a former pro wrestler gathers a team of others wronged in the ring to rob the promoter blind during the biggest wrestling event of the year, from the outrageous, action-packed mind of multi-time Eisner nominee Kyle Starks, with eye-popping colors by Vladimir Popov.
• 44:14
  Phil: Collects Russell Heist number 1 through 5, and a brand new, never-before-seen 6-page comic story. Gonna have a final order cutoff of June 1st in stores July 8th from Image Comics.
• 44:28
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, final order cut off for Monday, May 18th. We have Absolute Catwoman No. 1 from Che Grayson, Scott Snyder, and Bengal at DC in stores on June 10th.
• 44:38
  Tad Eggleston: Betas from Nick Mondog from Drawn and Quarterly in stores on June 10th. Dispatch number 1 from B. Claymore, Daniel Giete at Ignition in stores June 24th. Night City Hardcover from Matt Kint and David Lapham.
• 44:54
  Tad Eggleston: from Dark Horse In Stores on August 18th. Miss Truesdale and the Rise of Man from Mike Mignola and Jesse Lonergan at Dark Horse In Stores on August 18th. Phil, tell us about some crowdfunding.
• 45:08
  Phil: How funny, we've got The Forgotten Five from Alex Segura, Sarah Sentry, Pat Kennedy, and Dean Kotz, with, New Pain Productions on Kickstarter through May 11th, Runaway to the Stars, Jay Eaton, with Iron Circus Comics on Kickstarter through May 14th.
• 45:27
  Phil: Steven Frank's Complete Palomino from Dark Planet Comics on Kickstarter through May 15th. Tad's got an incredible series of conversations with, Stefan
• 45:39
  Phil: talking about Palomino as originally…
• 45:42
  Tad Eggleston: And it's now our, book on pulp water.
• 45:46
  Phil: Oh, there you go.
• 45:47
  Tad Eggleston: Is out already, and there will be two more.
• 45:50
  Phil: Excellent, there we go. And then there's the Forgotten Divine from Mark Russell and Russ Brown, along with Ahoy on Kickstarter, which is launching soon, but that's definitely noteworthy. Anything by Mark Russell, should be on the radar.
• 46:05
  Tad Eggleston: And I've already discussed it with Mark Russell and Russ Braun, and.
• 46:08
  Phil: Heck yeah.
• 46:09
  Tad Eggleston: with… with… Tom Pyre, and Stuart Moore.
• 46:13
  Phil: Oh, wow, that's quite a, quite a collection.
• 46:15
  Tad Eggleston: We've had, we've had two separate podcasts in the run-up to the Forgotten Divine.
• 46:21
  Phil: Right.
• 46:21
  Tad Eggleston: launching soon.
• 46:22
  Phil: There we go.
• 46:24
  Phil: What's on Humble Bundle right now?
• 46:26
  Tad Eggleston: Bumble Bundle, Peanuts has been extended.
• 46:30
  Tad Eggleston: Until May 14th for the complete collected peanuts from Fantag Graphics, $25 for 43 items.
• 46:37
  Tad Eggleston: To support canine companions.
• 46:39
  Tad Eggleston: Also excited in May 14th is Strange Romance from Image Comics. 18 items will get you 59 items, including Falling in Love on the Path to Hell, Love Everlasting, Saga, Sex Criminals, and more, all supporting the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. And finally, Terry Moore.
• 46:59
  Tad Eggleston: $16 for 54 items, supporting the world Central Kitchen.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: through May 14th, the complete Terry Moore.
• 47:09
  Tad Eggleston: Really, really cool.
• 47:12
  Tad Eggleston: So… Three amazing books.
• 47:17
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna start with, with, Matt Rosenberg and his
• 47:22
  Tad Eggleston: Brother Mark, Elijah Rosenberg, with art from Andy McDonald, and If Destruction Be Our Lot.
• 47:29
  Tad Eggleston: It's kind of a different spin on the only robots are left
• 47:35
  Tad Eggleston: story, at least in Issue 1.
• 47:39
  Phil: Interesting.
• 47:41
  Tad Eggleston: Because you've got the only… only the robots are left, but they're all still, like…
• 47:49
  Tad Eggleston: Performing their purposes.
• 47:51
  Phil: Hmm.
• 47:52
  Phil: Oh, like, like, doing what they, what they were… while they're.
• 47:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like, there's a breakfast bot that goes up to other robots and asks them.
• 48:02
  Tad Eggleston: If they want breakfast.
• 48:04
  Phil: Interesting.
• 48:05
  Tad Eggleston: Like, there's one robot that has been, like…
• 48:09
  Tad Eggleston: the circuits have been fried a little bit, and so it winds up having a conversation. Yes, but how long has it been since somebody said yes to breakfast?
• 48:19
  Tad Eggleston: Like, 6,372.
• 48:22
  Phil: Wow.
• 48:22
  Tad Eggleston: Does it go?
• 48:23
  Phil: Wow. Yeah. That's very interesting.
• 48:28
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, dog tag number 1 from Mark Russell and P.J. Holden at Bad Cave is,
• 48:36
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know where the series is gonna go, cause the, like, the first issue is… is about…
• 48:46
  Tad Eggleston: a reporter… at…
• 48:50
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know how many… if you know your World War II history, I didn't fully know this, but I wasn't surprised by this. There was, like, a fake amassing of troops
• 49:04
  Tad Eggleston: Set up in Dover.
• 49:07
  Phil: Okay.
• 49:07
  Tad Eggleston: before D-Day?
• 49:10
  Tad Eggleston: inflatable tanks, and, and, and…
• 49:12
  Phil: I do remember hearing about that, yeah. Right.
• 49:14
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so that… so that, like, hey, Germany, look over here.
• 49:22
  Phil: Yeah, fascinating.
• 49:23
  Tad Eggleston: And so the issue is about, like, the reporter who
• 49:30
  Tad Eggleston: is there to write the fake stories about it, and, like, kinda frustrated that he is doing these fake stories, but he does this great job, and then D-Day happens, and it's a success, etc. And, he gets called in, and told that he was done a great job, and to…
• 49:45
  Tad Eggleston: to report for his next assignment. His next assignment is not as a reporter, it's a…
• 49:51
  Tad Eggleston: It's just a… a Joe…
• 49:57
  Tad Eggleston: In Europe. So he's… he's now being sent into the action, but not to report upon it.
• 50:02
  Tad Eggleston: Wow. That's where it kind of left off, so spoiler for the end of this issue, but it's why I… I don't know where it's going. It's Mark Russell, it's PJ Holden, it's gonna be great.
• 50:12
  Phil: I think that's part of the surprise at this point, is figuring what the heck Mark's gonna put you through.
• 50:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. And then, Batman number 9, Matt Fraction, fillin', fill-in art from Ryan Sook, and, like, when you get Ryan Sook as your fill-in artist, you're, like, killing it. .
• 50:30
  Phil: Is this the second issue that Sook has done for… for Batman on Bat Fraction yet, or…
• 50:36
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's only the first. I think we just brought it up last week, because it was one of the ones I was looking forward to.
• 50:42
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, no, for people who are behind, Vandal Savage is the.
• 50:51
  Phil: commission.
• 50:51
  Tad Eggleston: of… of… Police and, and, Ivy is the mayor.
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: And… Vandal Savage has sold her on, like, a massive… Huge hit.
• 51:15
  Tad Eggleston: Let's hit all of their safe houses at once.
• 51:19
  Tad Eggleston: you know, somehow had the information, etc. So this is the issue where, like, the entire team is trying to save what they can.
• 51:27
  Phil: Wow.
• 51:30
  Tad Eggleston: And, stuff happens.
• 51:35
  Tad Eggleston: sets up.
• 51:37
  Tad Eggleston: multiple events, because, without… without getting too deep into it, one of my honorable mentions for books that I'm hoping to be spectacular next week is, Mariko Tamaki's Barbara Gordon Breakout, number one.
• 51:53
  Phil: There you go.
• 51:54
  Tad Eggleston: Which may have been specifically set up in this issue?
• 51:58
  Phil: Hmm… it's like an interconnected universe of some sort going on?
• 52:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, I, I'm, I'm… So, yeah
• 52:06
  Tad Eggleston: Astro Quantum was great. Carmen Redclaw continues to be great.
• 52:11
  Tad Eggleston: I need to read… I have it. Violet Kitchen's Crawl Space came out this week.
• 52:17
  Phil: Oh.
• 52:17
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's been available indie longer, but it hit comic shops this week. Daredevil was great.
• 52:25
  Tad Eggleston: Hank Howard, Pizza Detective, Slice of Life.
• 52:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know, good stuff.
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, Phil, take a walk.
• 52:32
  Phil: Yeah, so, I had a… I had a weird,
• 52:38
  Phil: series of… of thought connections I'm gonna try to… to relay to you, which is that, you know.
• 52:45
  Phil: on Friday, supposedly, files about UFOs were… were released. I haven't looked at them, just because.
• 52:54
  Tad Eggleston: Well, not supposedly, they were released. Sure, sure. They didn't necessarily, like, have any… Truly noteworthy shit in them.
• 53:03
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:05
  Phil: Hence, hence why they're, you know… They just… it felt like an immediate distraction. Also this week, I watched, the movie from last year, Begonia, which is… oh, it's really incredible, and hit me pretty hard. One of the points that…
• 53:22
  Phil: You know, minor spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but I don't know if you remember the,
• 53:29
  Phil: the police officer that used to be his babysitter. Right.
• 53:34
  Phil: I… it was one of those things, we were watching it, and my wife was like, what are they talking about? And I'm like.
• 53:40
  Phil: oh, that cop molested him as a kid, 100%. And she's like, what? And I'm like, yeah, which is additionally.
• 53:47
  Phil: odd, because, the film Mysterious Skin, which I'm pretty sure was based on, if not true events, then heavily researched on them,
• 53:58
  Phil: It draws a link between
• 54:01
  Phil: those childhood abuse experiences and obsession with alien abduction, feeling alien abduction stories yourself as, like, one side of a reaction of, like, massive repression. Which then makes it bizarre that it feels like, you know.
• 54:18
  Phil: the… these new UFO files are released as a distraction. Ostensibly, you know, one of the things on social media people are talking about is like, hey, these aren't the files we're looking for.
• 54:27
  Phil: You know, so yeah, so it's really, it's really odd to see our own government trying to use alien propaganda to distract people from real pedophilia, you know? And that's where my head's been at this week. It's not been… it's been rough. It's been…
• 54:44
  Phil: It's been a fucked up time to be alive.
• 54:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is, this is where I'll say, we'll quickly run through the, the, not read the whole thing, but…
• 54:56
  Tad Eggleston: run through Heather Cox Richardson for May 8th, which.
• 55:00
  Phil: I started reading a little bit of that before the show.
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: Which, like, I will emphasize again to everybody, if you're not already reading letters from American on a daily basis, you really should be.
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: She starts with, in case you're wondering what kind of news day it was, Donald Shea Trump announced that the Department of War was releasing government files related to alien or extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects. The president posted, Have fun and enjoy!
• 55:32
  Tad Eggleston: It's hard to see the release of this information at this moment as anything more than a distraction from the many stories in the news that show the administration in an unflattering light. The biggest of those stories was not that transportation Sean Duffy took his family on a 7-month road trip to film a television series called The Great American Road Trip.
• 55:52
  Tad Eggleston: while he was supposed to be doing his job as Secretary of Transportation.
• 55:56
  Tad Eggleston: It was not!
• 55:58
  Tad Eggleston: A story written by David Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater, and published at the New York Times, that Trump gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to reseal the joints, waterproof and paint bright blue the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
• 56:15
  Tad Eggleston: Such contracts are supposed to be put out for bids, but we ignored the process. Oh, and we may have also already destroyed the seals because he took his motorcade out there to look at the stuff.
• 56:28
  Tad Eggleston: And the contract was for triple the $1.8 million that Trump had promised that the repairs would cost.
• 56:35
  Tad Eggleston: It was not?
• 56:37
  Tad Eggleston: The story by economist Justin Wolfers in the New York Times explained that the Defense Department's claim that the cost of the war in Iran was costing taxpayers $25 billion.
• 56:48
  Tad Eggleston: was only the price of the Tomahawk and Patriot missiles and airplanes lost and other materials used. Does not measure the loss of lives, the disruption in global markets, companies shut down, heightened geopolitical tensions, higher interest rates, lower stock prices, lower economic growth. Iran's new ability to charge
• 57:05
  Tad Eggleston: tolls in the Strait of Hormuz to fund its nuclear ambitions, and the new need for countries to increase their military spending.
• 57:12
  Tad Eggleston: Wolfers notes that the Iraq war cost about $3 trillion and estimates the Iran war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and very possible trillions. It was also not…
• 57:24
  Tad Eggleston: the article from Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic that reported that Trump is
• 57:30
  Tad Eggleston: bored with the war and wants to move on. Five Trump aides and advisors told Lemire that Trump is convinced he can sell any agreement as a win, but so far, Iran is unwilling to bail Trump out of the war he started. It was also not the story from Washington Post.
• 57:49
  Tad Eggleston: Brianna Sachs and Kevin Crowe reporting that under Trump, the Federal Emergency
• 57:53
  Tad Eggleston: management agency, FEMA, which helps you prepare, respond, and recover from disasters, has been denying aids to states that have Democratic-led governments while speeding it to Republican-dominated states.
• 58:07
  Tad Eggleston: is also not the story by Mark Olalde at ProPublica, reporting that the Trump administration has granted a two-year pause on compliance with the Clean Air Act to more than 180 facilities.
• 58:21
  Tad Eggleston: In… in…
• 58:24
  Tad Eggleston: using a loophole, if the technology to implement the standard is not available, and it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so. The authority has never been used before.
• 58:39
  Tad Eggleston: and other utilities say they are using the pollution controls the administration claims don't exist.
• 58:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, let's see, what else was it? It was not the story that the Court of International Trade in New York found Trump's 10% global tariffs imposed after the Supreme Court declared Liberation Day tariffs of April 2025 unconstitutional to be illegal?
• 59:07
  Tad Eggleston: The biggest story of the day was not even the dedication of a 22-foot
• 59:13
  Tad Eggleston: gold statue of Trump installed at his golf course in Miami.
• 59:17
  Phil: Ugh.
• 59:19
  Tad Eggleston: That apparently crypto investors paid $450,000 for as a promotional push for their new meme coin.
• 59:27
  Tad Eggleston: No, the biggest story of the day was after voters in Virginia turned out record numbers to approve a new temporary congressional district map on April 21st to garner four more seats for Democrats, the Virginia State Supreme Court struck down the referendum. Virginia voters had agreed to the change in order to counter gerrymandering imposed by Republican legislators in Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina, and Florida.
• 59:52
  Tad Eggleston: That is expected to gain them an additional 14 seats across the country. Following last week's Louisiana v. Calais Supreme Court decision, Republicans are hoping to change the lines in Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina to take four more. So far, voters in California have agreed to temporary redistricting of California to pick up four Democratic seats there.
• 1:00:13
  Tad Eggleston: The court split on partisan lines, saying the process of passing the referendum violated the state's constitution.
• 1:00:27
  Tad Eggleston: But let's look at the UFO files.
• 1:00:31
  Phil: Yep.
• 1:00:32
  Phil: And that's why I encourage you to not look at those files, people.
• 1:00:36
  Tad Eggleston: Let's… let's look at the UFO files.
• 1:00:39
  Phil: Yeah, let's, let's, yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Phil: So now I'll worry about it. This is where I… I would say that, to me.
• 1:00:47
  Phil: life being elsewhere in the universe is a mathematical certainty, so any, any hype around their existence should, should be met with a, you know, what, am I supposed to be excited when the sun comes up every day?
• 1:01:04
  Phil: Yeah, it's just…
• 1:01:10
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: So, anyway, one Piece Race, I mentioned earlier, I was McCall this week, so…
• 1:01:19
  Phil: I am… I am also the comp. I… I… holding off, I've got.
• 1:01:23
  Tad Eggleston: move forward.
• 1:01:23
  Phil: Yeah, I've got the last volume and a half of Blue Period that I haven't gotten back to yet, just, you know, dragging my feet on finding the successor. I think I have a volume of Tower Dungeon, at the comic shop next chance I get to it, though, you know, so that'll be exciting. Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  Tad Eggleston: So, I did, however…
• 1:01:43
  Tad Eggleston: For a great responsibility, read Copa Round 6.
• 1:01:45
  Phil: Naturally.
• 1:01:46
  Tad Eggleston: Continues to be awesome.
• 1:01:48
  Phil: I love it.
• 1:01:49
  Tad Eggleston: I loved the fact that they did a one panel per comic catch-up.
• 1:01:54
  Phil: That was pretty cool.
• 1:01:55
  Tad Eggleston: At the beginning here.
• 1:01:56
  Phil: That's exciting, yeah.
• 1:01:57
  Tad Eggleston: That was… that was… that was pretty awesome.
• 1:02:01
  Tad Eggleston: this, in some ways, was, like, the first big Copra event, was where, where, like.
• 1:02:07
  Tad Eggleston: All sorts of stuff from previous stuff, like, wove back together, and…
• 1:02:12
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:12
  Tad Eggleston: at our… our… are… are galaxy-wide.
• 1:02:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know… the fate of the Earth is at… at stake.
• 1:02:26
  Phil: it certainly did feel like… I mean, you know, it's… it's weird, because at first I… I was balking internally a little bit, like, well, can… can a… can a, you know, plucky little indie series have an event? But, like, this… it did feel like it, you know? It… it… it had that.
• 1:02:43
  Tad Eggleston: Like, in the old-school manner, because, like, we finished up Fourth World, so this week.
• 1:02:52
  Tad Eggleston: For, for the yet-to-be, renamed Kirby…
• 1:02:58
  Tad Eggleston: esque club, and I say Kirby-esque because we're not doing Kirby this week. We're starting a 3-month tour of the Kree Skull War. That's out.
• 1:03:05
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 1:03:06
  Tad Eggleston: bench.
• 1:03:07
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:03:08
  Tad Eggleston: It was all in 9 issues of Avengers.
• 1:03:11
  Phil: Yeah? Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  Phil: That's true, that's a good point.
• 1:03:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's like the old school type of event.
• 1:03:17
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:03:17
  Tad Eggleston: Where it's like…
• 1:03:18
  Phil: This is just a saga, a big story.
• 1:03:21
  Phil: More so than… than…
• 1:03:23
  Tad Eggleston: And it's meaningful to the universe, only in this case, should the wider universe ever exist.
• 1:03:30
  Phil: Sure.
• 1:03:30
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than… Specifically to…
• 1:03:34
  Phil: Complete.
• 1:03:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean?
• 1:03:35
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like…
• 1:03:38
  Tad Eggleston: you couldn't tell other stories in the Copra universe That didn't have this as…
• 1:03:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they wouldn't have to include this.
• 1:03:50
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, the knowledge that we get about some of the origins in this story, the way things turn out, etc, would affect anything else.
• 1:04:03
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:04
  Tad Eggleston: written in the entire universe.
• 1:04:06
  Phil: And it feels like this is… I mean, it's fascinating that this is basically the prelude to the end of the series, you know? This is the beginning of the final three volumes, and I… so here's the thing, I'd be curious to see if you notice or picked this up on it, that
• 1:04:24
  Phil: This volume felt a little off to me.
• 1:04:28
  Phil: Because, I mean, the couple of, at least, artistic signs to it were,
• 1:04:34
  Phil: the… the digital colors in a few places on a few pages, it just… it felt really out of place, just because I had gotten used to seeing, Fifei's…
• 1:04:47
  Phil: you know, DIY,
• 1:04:50
  Phil: Everything felt hand-drawn, hand-colored, so… seeing those… those bits felt a little off, as well as, like.
• 1:04:59
  Phil: At least initially, it felt like most of the paneling was played straightforward. And it took towards the end of the volume to get back some of the, like.
• 1:05:11
  Phil: crunchy, indie aesthetic that…
• 1:05:14
  Phil: you know, were rampant in the first 5 volumes. And even there was a note in the back that, hey, you know, they briefly were published by Image, and then went back to being
• 1:05:25
  Phil: self-published, and that's something I'm immensely curious about, of, you know, how and why that decision was made, and how that came about. Because I do remember when it started out at Image, and I was like, oh wow, this is crazy, and then it disappeared, and, you know, had to find out, oh, it's because they went back to self-publishing.
• 1:05:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I gotta only imagine that it wasn't…
• 1:05:52
  Tad Eggleston: Enough more sold to be worth… Whatever he got from Image.
• 1:05:59
  Tad Eggleston: Versus…
• 1:06:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the thing is, when you go through Image, you're then going through Diamond, so you're cutting down your individual profits, versus if you're…
• 1:06:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right. And as somebody who had… A pretty substantial, like…
• 1:06:22
  Tad Eggleston: Just mailing them out to subscribers.
• 1:06:26
  Tad Eggleston: I wonder if it wound up that, like, after a few issues, it's like, wait a minute, I'm making less money, not more.
• 1:06:33
  Phil: Interesting. Yeah.
• 1:06:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that would be a question to ask, but… but I could see that, like, there's a certain threshold.
• 1:06:41
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  Tad Eggleston: Where… where even if you're technically selling more copies, You have to sell.
• 1:06:48
  Tad Eggleston: A certain amount more copies to make up for.
• 1:06:51
  Tad Eggleston: People who need to make profit off of it.
• 1:06:54
  Phil: Right, right. Once you're… you're with a full-on distributor, as opposed to just, distributed.
• 1:07:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think I mentioned this in one of the recent weeks, Kyle Starks was writing about how, like.
• 1:07:10
  Tad Eggleston: He's not really making money on the issues of… WrestleHeist?
• 1:07:15
  Phil: Oh, interesting.
• 1:07:16
  Tad Eggleston: Cause they're just… they're not selling quite enough to, like…
• 1:07:22
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean, like, I wanna say he said issue 3?
• 1:07:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he netted… like… 1400, but 700 of it was gonna go to the colorist?
• 1:07:38
  Phil: Oof.
• 1:07:41
  Tad Eggleston: Who, who he paid a page rate to.
• 1:07:43
  Phil: Right, right, right, right.
• 1:07:44
  Tad Eggleston: And he didn't, but, but, like.
• 1:07:46
  Tad Eggleston: You know, as he was trying to figure out what to do next, etc, because, like, he's got…
• 1:07:51
  Tad Eggleston: less on his schedule right now than he's had in a while, like, he was kind of breaking down the math and trying to figure out, okay, like…
• 1:08:00
  Tad Eggleston: like, how do I do this? And, like, one of the comments he made is, like, I might have to color my own next series, even though I'm slower than most other colorists, and I don't think I do it as well. I…
• 1:08:16
  Tad Eggleston: you know… Giving up that much of a slim profit.
• 1:08:23
  Phil: Yeah, that's… that's tough. That's rough.
• 1:08:26
  Phil: You know, that's like, I hope that he's getting effectively subsidized by that Vertigo book, you know?
• 1:08:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, and, and, you know, he's got a Patreon, that's where I read all of this, and he's got…
• 1:08:42
  Tad Eggleston: you know, hopefully, you know, some of his books still bring residuals as people discover them and buy the back stock, etc. Hopefully, the Russell Heist does better as a graphic novel than it did as…
• 1:08:57
  Tad Eggleston: A single issue.
• 1:08:59
  Phil: I would think so. He seems like someone who'd have a decent, trade weighting audience.
• 1:09:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but it's… I mean, like…
• 1:09:06
  Tad Eggleston: The comic industry has always been weird, because.
• 1:09:14
  Tad Eggleston: The money comes from different places, depending on the type of book.
• 1:09:21
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know… The library market doesn't generally care about single issues that much.
• 1:09:30
  Tad Eggleston: The comic store market, it's hard to have them notice things if they weren't single issues first.
• 1:09:36
  Phil: Right, right.
• 1:09:38
  Tad Eggleston: The bookstore market.
• 1:09:41
  Tad Eggleston: Also doesn't care about single issues, but it's not clear that they're exactly like the library market either.
• 1:09:49
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:09:52
  Tad Eggleston: And they represent the biggest piece of the pie at this point.
• 1:09:56
  Phil: Really? Bookstores are still, doing the most sales?
• 1:09:59
  Tad Eggleston: books, you know, I don't know if that includes, manga as well, in terms of making it go that high, but, like, Heidi McDonald's Last Breakdown, you know.
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: the… the bookstores, We're the biggest part of the comic market.
• 1:10:16
  Phil: Interesting.
• 1:10:18
  Phil: That is definitely interesting to hear.
• 1:10:25
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, comics are weird.
• 1:10:27
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, that is for sure. That's why…
• 1:10:32
  Tad Eggleston: We work on elevating the medium.
• 1:10:34
  Phil: Right, right.
• 1:10:35
  Tad Eggleston: Because part of the reason that they're weird is nobody really seems to agree on… what they are.
• 1:10:43
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:10:45
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:10:46
  Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean?
• 1:10:47
  Phil: A little bit, yeah. I mean, in terms of, like.
• 1:10:54
  Tad Eggleston: Nobody agrees on whether… whether they're part of the greater literature?
• 1:11:01
  Tad Eggleston: Nobody knows what to do with…
• 1:11:06
  Tad Eggleston: Or agrees on what to do with non-fiction comics, particularly non-fiction comics that aren't autobio comics.
• 1:11:13
  Phil: Right? Those are basically, you know,
• 1:11:19
  Phil: Not… not making too much impact or splash when.
• 1:11:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes they do, but like… But, like…
• 1:11:25
  Tad Eggleston: Even librarians are sometimes split on
• 1:11:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, even the librarians that, like, are big comics…
• 1:11:33
  Tad Eggleston: Supporters are sometimes split as to whether they're a gateway to other literacy, or a literacy in and of themselves.
• 1:11:41
  Phil: Yeah, weirdly, when I worked at the library,
• 1:11:45
  Phil: there were 3 different comic sections. There was one for the kids, and then there was one for, YA teens, and then there was an adult one.
• 1:11:57
  Phil: And, I mean, the Y18s were kind of by themselves, but, the kids won't…
• 1:12:02
  Tad Eggleston: Deciding where to put books is difficult, too.
• 1:12:04
  Phil: It is… well, I'm getting to that part, the kids ones and the adult ones were in the non-fiction section.
• 1:12:10
  Phil: per…
• 1:12:11
  Phil: even The Walking Dead, like, everything was in the nonfiction section, because they were art books, and that was where you put things. So it's… you're absolutely right in that.
• 1:12:20
  Tad Eggleston: But even decide, like, what Spider-Man goes in kids, and what Spider-Man goes in adult.
• 1:12:26
  Phil: And team, yeah, that's also a difficult choice, you know? That's like, okay, what's… what's a kid's thing versus a teen thing versus…
• 1:12:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, and this is… I know I've brought it up before, there was nothing that I have enjoyed more in terms of seeing
• 1:12:42
  Tad Eggleston: a comic categorization in the last few years than when I was in a Barnes & Noble, and saw…
• 1:12:49
  Tad Eggleston: March.
• 1:12:51
  Tad Eggleston: with the U.S. history books.
• 1:12:53
  Phil: That's awesome.
• 1:12:55
  Phil: That's really cool.
• 1:12:57
  Phil: But it is… it is, like, a… a bit of a… of a, what the hell.
• 1:13:01
  Tad Eggleston: Because, frankly, in a lot of ways…
• 1:13:04
  Tad Eggleston: Like, superhero comics and maybe manga should be?
• 1:13:11
  Tad Eggleston: Set on their own?
• 1:13:14
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, almost everything else might sell better if they were just in the categories of…
• 1:13:22
  Tad Eggleston: Mystery, or sci-fi, or literature, or memoir, or…
• 1:13:27
  Phil: Yeah, that is… see, here's… and here's the funny thing.
• 1:13:31
  Phil: to me, is that while working at the library, I saw so many interesting-looking
• 1:13:37
  Phil: middle grade books that, like, with really fascinating, like, illustrated covers, that then weren't… weren't graphic novels and weren't comics, and I was disappointed.
• 1:13:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, the number of… you see that with adult books, too, where, like, you see the cover, and you're like, oh, a new comic, and it's like, no. They're selling to comic readers.
• 1:13:59
  Phil: Right, right. Well, and I'm seeing now in a couple of our solicits that we're getting more and more, authors from those other genre works.
• 1:14:09
  Phil: adapting their work to comics, or trying to… to… Start working in comics. Yeah.
• 1:14:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, I, I…
• 1:14:18
  Tad Eggleston: I dream of a world where comics are just… literature.
• 1:14:23
  Phil: Right. I mean, I… I… I like to think… for me personally, I already live in that world.
• 1:14:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean, I mean that…
• 1:14:32
  Phil: Everyone else.
• 1:14:33
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 1:14:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they're their own medium, but because they're transmitted in the same way in terms of being on paper, in terms of sales, it makes so much more sense to market them with
• 1:14:48
  Tad Eggleston: Prose books like them than to strictly market them with other comics.
• 1:14:54
  Phil: Yeah, I can definitely see stuff… stuff outside of superheroes and manga. Like, if you don't… if you're a book that is not…
• 1:15:04
  Phil: cross-pollinating with superheroes and manga, then I think you're right. I think you would do better, in whatever section of the story.
• 1:15:11
  Tad Eggleston: Perfect, perfect world, like…
• 1:15:13
  Phil: both.
• 1:15:14
  Tad Eggleston: It'd either be in both, or each section would have a graphic section.
• 1:15:19
  Phil: Right, right. I could see that being really interesting.
• 1:15:22
  Tad Eggleston: So.
• 1:15:23
  Phil: Like, the.
• 1:15:23
  Tad Eggleston: First section of mystery, which would be the graphic novel mystery.
• 1:15:27
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:29
  Phil: We gotta put them up front.
• 1:15:31
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely my preference.
• 1:15:34
  Phil: Exactly.
• 1:15:35
  Tad Eggleston: They're bigger, and, like, the bigger stuff generally… Yeah. Shelf-wise, it looks better if it's at the start.
• 1:15:42
  Phil: I also hope that, you know, we… and I think… I think we're seeing… we've, we've seen over the years some small movement in this direction, but, more bigger comic books, you know?
• 1:15:55
  Tad Eggleston: But you also… I also think that you need to… it would be good to see more where…
• 1:16:02
  Tad Eggleston: They're not their own separate category of new releases?
• 1:16:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Or if they are, it's the genre category, not the…
• 1:16:11
  Phil: Not the medium category.
• 1:16:12
  Tad Eggleston: Medium category, yeah.
• 1:16:13
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I mean, along those lines, I mean, Copra is… I mean, they just put out, I think, a one-volume
• 1:16:22
  Phil: Of… of it, not too long ago, right?
• 1:16:27
  Phil: Oh, 3 of those, okay.
• 1:16:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:29
  Phil: Interesting.
• 1:16:30
  Tad Eggleston: hardcover size, kind of like the Saga hardcover size.
• 1:16:34
  Phil: interest…
• 1:16:35
  Tad Eggleston: The first two are available now, and the third is… That's the… the master collection.
• 1:16:44
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:46
  Tad Eggleston: Cover Book 1.
• 1:16:48
  Tad Eggleston: had issues 1 to 12. It came out…
• 1:16:51
  Tad Eggleston: It actually came out originally in November of 2022.
• 1:16:58
  Phil: Oh.
• 1:16:58
  Tad Eggleston: That was when they were bringing… it was the way to get caught up.
• 1:17:02
  Tad Eggleston: If you were jumping into… COPRA at… Image.
• 1:17:08
  Tad Eggleston: and then…
• 1:17:11
  Tad Eggleston: The Master Collection Book 2 is issues 13 to 25, and Copra Versus issues 1 and 2, and that'll be in stores on May 20th of this year.
• 1:17:24
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:17:25
  Tad Eggleston: I think there's a plan for one more that hasn't been… solicitation.
• 1:17:31
  Phil: I was gonna say, that third one would be huge, then, because it's…
• 1:17:36
  Phil: They have 8 volumes, and it sounds like those first 2 only cover volumes 1 through 4, give or take.
• 1:17:42
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, then maybe there'll be 2 more volumes.
• 1:17:45
  Phil: But still, regardless…
• 1:17:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:17:46
  Phil: I am definitely looking at those. Definitely looking at those, that would be… that'd be…
• 1:17:51
  Tad Eggleston: There's 50 total issues of COPRA.
• 1:17:54
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:17:55
  Tad Eggleston: plus the COPRA versus.
• 1:17:58
  Tad Eggleston: So… So yeah, probably 2 more volumes.
• 1:18:01
  Phil: Yeah, and I think… I think in between round, I think it was between round 5 and 6, FIFA also did,
• 1:18:11
  Phil: Bloodstrike Brutalist, I think it was called? Yeah, but…
• 1:18:15
  Tad Eggleston: That… that's… that's…
• 1:18:17
  Phil: It's an image.
• 1:18:17
  Tad Eggleston: Oprah.
• 1:18:18
  Phil: Exactly, yeah.
• 1:18:19
  Tad Eggleston: That's a… what's his name? That's a Liefeld Creed.
• 1:18:22
  Phil: It is, it is. Well, I was gonna say that. I read that one, admittedly, despite not really understanding anything about it or what was going on, simply because it was, it was, Michael Fife, but, but I wonder, I wonder if…
• 1:18:36
  Phil: While doing that, you know, some of the…
• 1:18:40
  Phil: if that… if that kind of shifted his style a little bit, you know? Or I wonder if his thought process was, oh, if I'm… if I'm gonna be at Image, I need to…
• 1:18:51
  Phil: you know, I need to play this a little bit more straight than usual, because like I said, it definitely… it was…
• 1:18:57
  Phil: it was a distinct shift in… in visual style to me. Like, even though…
• 1:19:04
  Phil: Even though it's still the same guy, drawing in the same style.
• 1:19:07
  Phil: those differences were… were noticeable enough, because it, yeah, I don't know. They… they stood out, for sure.
• 1:19:15
  Tad Eggleston: I see that. But I also wonder how much of that was because…
• 1:19:21
  Tad Eggleston: Cause he kinda has, like,
• 1:19:25
  Tad Eggleston: Slightly different style, issue to issue.
• 1:19:28
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes, and I think we have less of that this volume, because it's all one big arc.
• 1:19:34
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, I guess I could see that.
• 1:19:37
  Phil: You know?
• 1:19:38
  Tad Eggleston: I wonder if it's the event style. And yes, I'm not saying that it wouldn't also be influenced by the other work he'd done.
• 1:19:44
  Phil: Right, right, right.
• 1:19:45
  Tad Eggleston: By the fact that lots of events wind up in a specific.
• 1:19:50
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking of… I mean…
• 1:19:54
  Phil: I'm thinking of, like, the issue that, like, each page was one… was shaped like one letter.
• 1:20:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:20:01
  Phil: You know? That was certainly an event-style issue, you know?
• 1:20:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:20:04
  Phil: And you're right, I think that… I think that this one…
• 1:20:11
  Phil: Was different in that it focused more on, you know.
• 1:20:17
  Phil: the action in the panels than using the shape of the panels to… to convey things.
• 1:20:24
  Phil: At least for the most part.
• 1:20:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well… Two more weeks of COPRA.
• 1:20:30
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:31
  Tad Eggleston: So, I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:20:33
  Phil: Oh yeah, I'm excited to see where it ends, how it all wraps up.
• 1:20:36
  Tad Eggleston: some, books I hope will be spectacular. First, I'll shout out to Just Brutal, number 3, from Dennis Opeless and Braum Revel. It IS spectacular.
• 1:20:47
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, what does it take?
• 1:20:52
  Tad Eggleston: for Absolute Martian Manhunter, number 11, and Bleeding Hearts, number 4, to not put Dennis Camp in my one spot?
• 1:20:59
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:21:00
  Tad Eggleston: Godzilla vs. Texas.
• 1:21:02
  Phil: Somebody needs to take Texas down, and Godzilla's exhaust.
• 1:21:06
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly, though.
• 1:21:07
  Phil: What we need for that job.
• 1:21:09
  Tad Eggleston: That's what it takes.
• 1:21:10
  Tad Eggleston: versus Texas.
• 1:21:12
  Phil: There you go.
• 1:21:13
  Tad Eggleston: is in my one spot, followed by Absolute Martian Manhunter number 11, slash Bleeding Hearts number 4, from Dennis Camp and Javier Rodriguez, and Stepin Morian, respectively, at DC and DC Vertigo. And then Dork, number 4 from Brett Bean at Image are my top 3.
• 1:21:31
  Tad Eggleston: Barbara Gordon, Breakout, Department of Truth, Forged, Free Planet, the future is Innards, Megalith.
• 1:21:37
  Tad Eggleston: Showdown, Terabytes, Tigress Island, Undiscovered Country, and Zorro are also coming out this week, as well as What We Mean by Yesterday, Volume 2 from Benjamin Mara, who I might be talking to soon. I'm in talks with Fanographics setting that up.
• 1:21:52
  Tad Eggleston: Very exciting. And, the Collected Star Trek Red Shirts number… er, from, Volume 1 from Christopher Cantwell and Megan Levins was just a ridiculous book, whether you're a Star Trek fan or not. I won't mention my other…
• 1:22:05
  Tad Eggleston: collection, because it's Phil's all-new giant-sized trade waiter graphic novel tech. Take it away.
• 1:22:12
  Phil: Cemetery Kids Don't Die Volume 2 Run Rabbit from Zach Thompson.
• 1:22:17
  Phil: And, Daniel Irizari and colorist Brittany Peer, I do believe, over at, Oni Press. Heck yeah, that is, you know, the crazy book about the video game system you play in your sleep that is slowly drifting into our own reality.
• 1:22:35
  Phil: Talked to Zach twice about it. It is a really great series. I hope it keeps going. I hope they keep doing as many volumes as they want for this one, because it is absolutely fantastic.
• 1:22:47
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty. So, for 22 panels-ish, episode number 235.
• 1:22:53
  Phil: each episode.
• 1:22:56
  Tad Eggleston: Issue, episode, episode, issue.
• 1:22:58
  Tad Eggleston: I get them confused. I call TV shows issues and comic books episodes. That's great. That's great.
• 1:23:04
  Phil: This reminds me, one of my little curmudgeon soapboxes is, I really hope comics stop referring to volumes as seasons. I don't like that.
• 1:23:13
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not a huge fan of that, but…
• 1:23:15
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:23:15
  Tad Eggleston: it either, because again, anything that makes it feel less like…
• 1:23:20
  Phil: It won't stop me.
• 1:23:21
  Tad Eggleston: Thing.
• 1:23:22
  Phil: Right, it won't stop me from reading a book, it won't stop me from enjoying a book, but it is the kind of thing that I wish we did less of.
• 1:23:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. Speaking of seasons, the new season of The Terror, which is.
• 1:23:36
  Phil: Oh, yeah! I'm excited for that.
• 1:23:38
  Tad Eggleston: Victor LaValle's Devlin Silver.
• 1:23:42
  Tad Eggleston: with.
• 1:23:42
  Phil: Three receipts? You can't…
• 1:23:43
  Tad Eggleston: with… with Chris Cantwell,
• 1:23:48
  Tad Eggleston: Chris Cantwell Show Running, just kicked off this last.
• 1:23:52
  Phil: Nice.
• 1:23:52
  Tad Eggleston: on AMC. First episode was… Outstanding, so go.
• 1:23:57
  Phil: Stars.
• 1:23:57
  Tad Eggleston: Go watch at that.
• 1:23:59
  Phil: Stars Dan Stevens, who played Legion in the TV show Legion, so that's a triple comic threat. We could show run up Chris Crane Hall…
• 1:24:06
  Tad Eggleston: Sources.
• 1:24:07
  Phil: Victor Lovell.
• 1:24:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and just for shits and giggles, it's also got,
• 1:24:13
  Tad Eggleston: what is it? CCH Pounder, and, Steven Root, and…
• 1:24:19
  Phil: Steven Root's great, yeah.
• 1:24:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 1:24:22
  Phil: I remember when you first… I think you first mentioned that, and Cantwell announced it, I was like, oh, hell yeah, that looks awesome. That sounds…
• 1:24:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is… this has been… this has been a while in the making, and it's finally, finally there.
• 1:24:35
  Phil: Nice.
• 1:24:38
  Phil: don't have to have seen any of the previous shows, because it's the anthology, so… I'll be jumping in.
• 1:24:43
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I haven't seen any of the previous shows.
• 1:24:47
  Phil: Damn.
• 1:24:49
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, let's see, our cast… is…
• 1:25:02
  Tad Eggleston: Dan Stevens, Michael Aronoff, B.
• 1:25:06
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't know that there was an actor named B.
• 1:25:08
  Phil: Okay, neither.
• 1:25:09
  Tad Eggleston: Philip Ettinger.
• 1:25:16
  Tad Eggleston: Why is it being rude and not letting me see stuff? Okay.
• 1:25:20
  Tad Eggleston: Hampton Fluker, John Benjamin Hickey.
• 1:25:24
  Tad Eggleston: Marin, Ireland, Judith Light, Asif Mandavi, CCH Pounder, Steven Root, Chanaza Uchi.
• 1:25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Juani Feliz, Mel Johnson, Celia Keenan-Bulger, Larry Marshall, Maureen Sebastian, and Andrea Siglowski.
• 1:25:43
  Tad Eggleston: With writers Christopher Cantwell and Victor LaValle, directed by Karen Kusama.
• 1:25:49
  Tad Eggleston: And available on AMC+.
• 1:25:53
  Tad Eggleston: And I… I was… very pleased.
• 1:25:58
  Tad Eggleston: Very pleased.
• 1:25:59
  Phil: Were you terrified?
• 1:26:01
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 1:26:02
  Phil: Not yet? Okay, that's good.
• 1:26:06
  Tad Eggleston: So… But, I mean, I've read the source material.
• 1:26:13
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:26:15
  Tad Eggleston: So, I knew some of the stuff to expect.
• 1:26:19
  Phil: Nice.
• 1:26:21
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 1:26:25
  Tad Eggleston: But, anyway, 6-7, and, we will see you… After the next page.