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Milestone Book Club #36 - Shadow Cabinet #11-13 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to the Milestone Book Club on 22 Panels. I am joined by the brothers Anderson, No Relation.
• 0:12
  Ted: And today, we are going to talk about…
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: shadow cabinet issues, 11 to 13. 11 and 13 feel like they were…
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: Not meant to have an issue in between them.
• 0:24
  Ted: Yeah.
• 0:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like our friend Joe Illage might have had to write that issue in between in a hurry.
• 0:32
  Ted: I wasn't sure how soon we were gonna get into that, but yeah, like, of the.
• 0:35
  Tad Eggleston: I just figured I'd throw it out there.
• 0:37
  Ted: No, I…
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right off the bat.
• 0:38
  Ted: No, I get you, like, two of these issues are, like, some of the best comics I think Milestone ever put out, and then the third one sure is there. Like…
• 0:47
  Ted: It… I… I'm sorry, that really sounds like I'm hating on Joe Illich. It is a thing, like, I get it, like, you've got a month off, there's, like, delays, whatever, there's gotta be a reason, like, I get that you kind of had to maybe put something together.
• 0:58
  Marcus: Yeah. For what it's worth, I think, because I know… I know what you mean, I… I've definitely said.
• 1:03
  Tad Eggleston: It's also not J.P. Leone's, so, I mean, I really, really feel like that was a hurried fill-in issue, and or something that was sitting in a drawer as an evergreen issue.
• 1:16
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: They hoped they'd never use.
• 1:20
  Marcus: At the end of the day, I think…
• 1:21
  Marcus: if anything, what I feel like we're all trying to say, I don't want to put words in everybody's mouth, is that the series in general, and definitely issues 11 and 13, set a really high bar. So, to me, it wasn't even, like, the middle issue, like number 12, was bad at all. It was more like…
• 1:38
  Marcus: It was, like, a good issue of comics, of mainstream Big 2 comic, but it was, like… to me, there's, like, a high bar for Shadow.
• 1:49
  Ted: It's in between two of, like, the great issues of this series.
• 1:52
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and also, it… it was self-contained. It felt almost like an issue from a different era.
• 1:58
  Ted: All three of these, and here's the thing, here's why I think it was a fill-in issue, not like a found-in-a-drawer issue, is because all three of these issues
• 2:05
  Ted: kind of do the same things in terms of their bigger plot beats in the Shadow Cabinet series. Like, what they're doing in Shadow Cabinet right now. So, we're coming off Issue 10, we're coming off of Dharma's, like, weird near-death experience… no, actual death experience, where he talks to Red Dog and, like, reaffirms what his plan is at the Shadow Cabinet, they have a big snowball fight,
• 2:24
  Ted: And we're getting into this territory where now, like, Dharma's powers still work, but are weird and maybe failing, or, like, giving him incorrect information.
• 2:32
  Ted: And so people are being sent out on missions they don't quite understand, or on short notice, and they don't always get the right information, and they're kind of wondering, like, is Dharma losing it? Are we, like…
• 2:41
  Ted: what's going on here? And, like, all three of these issues are kind of that… like, they're doing other things, too, and I think that's part of why issues 13… 111 and 13 are so good, is, like, in addition to those big plot beats of…
• 2:54
  Ted: is Dharma, like, still competent? There's smaller stuff, like the whole Donner-Blitzer relationship, the stuff with Sideshow, God, that Sideshow thing blindsided me, that was great. But, like.
• 3:05
  Ted: in terms of what they're actually doing in Shadow Cabinet and, like, the Milestone universe, they're kind of all three the same thing, where it's like, is Dharma not really doing it anymore? Has he kind of lost it?
• 3:15
  Ted: So, I kind of feel like issue 12 was just written to be like, oh shit, we need another one, we're missing a month.
• 3:20
  Ted: Let's pull out, let's see here, what characters haven't we shown in a while? Bad Betty, Twilight, I don't even remember who the third one was.
• 3:29
  Marcus: You know, I had actually forgotten about Betty. She's… we have seen her before?
• 3:33
  Ted: Yeah, I had to look her up, I'm like, Bad… is Bad Betta here, like, did that show up? Yeah, she was in… she was in… she showed up.
• 3:39
  Marcus: 7 early.
• 3:40
  Ted: shadow war issues. I looked her up, like, in the.
• 3:43
  Marcus: Okay, but not necessarily the main… the main book, right?
• 3:48
  Ted: No, she, no, well…
• 3:49
  Marcus: I just wanna make sure I'm not forgetting her.
• 3:51
  Ted: No, I actually… so here, I… I went… I'm actually gonna look her up again, because I looked up her first issue, but I realized I didn't look up all her appearances. But no, she first showed up in, like, the issue of Blood Syndicate that was part of the Shadow War, and then she also appeared…
• 4:08
  Ted: in…
• 4:10
  Ted: She actually appeared in a handful of issues, okay. Oh, she appeared in, like, a handful of issues of, like.
• 4:14
  Ted: Okay, she appeared in a bunch of issues of Blood City that we haven't gotten to, she appeared in some hand icon, she appeared in two issues of Shadow Cabinet, the number zero issue and this issue.
• 4:27
  Marcus: Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't think… was Zero in here?
• 4:30
  Marcus: It doesn't matter.
• 4:32
  Ted: Whoa, yeah.
• 4:32
  Tad Eggleston: I read Zero. I think it was all the way back in the first, the first.
• 4:37
  Marcus: Oh, I think you're right, I think you're right. But you know what, I mean, that brings up an interesting thing. This Shadow Cabinet, proper, the main series, to me, is so…
• 4:48
  Marcus: Well realized that
• 4:51
  Marcus: I kind of wish they'd introduced the characters in the book before Shadow War, because when Shadow War happened, it was them and the other team, which I barely remember those characters, and it's not…
• 5:05
  Marcus: Yeah, Star Chamber, thank you. And it's not any fault of the storytellers, but to me, we talked about the time, it's the…
• 5:12
  Ted: thing I have where I'm not necessarily in love with events. Like… Yeah.
• 5:17
  Marcus: you know, like, they kinda… you can kinda smell the larger editorial mandate with them, so… I just feel like the book, like.
• 5:26
  Tad Eggleston: I think for Milestone made even worse.
• 5:30
  Tad Eggleston: that before we really got back to Shadow Cabinet, we also threw in the Worlds Collide event.
• 5:36
  Ted: Yeah, God.
• 5:37
  Ted: It was a little bit… yeah, I mean, we never really… I never really looked at it from that perspective, but you're… I mean, you're 100% right that, like, Shadow War gives us a whole… just dumps a bunch of characters in our.
• 5:49
  Marcus: Yeah. And it's like.
• 5:50
  Ted: these guys are all important, but we're also not sure, like, which ones are equally important. Like, again.
• 5:55
  Marcus: Mini?
• 5:56
  Ted: Oro? Who knew they were not gonna be anywhere near as important as, like, yeah, Donner and Blitzen and, like.
• 6:01
  Ted: Rainsaw showed up a couple more times, like, it's hard to tell, you know, here's 20 characters, 6 of which are gonna be way more interesting than any of the other ones, you know?
• 6:10
  Marcus: And on top of that, they're being… they're… so, it's like, what is it, Matt Wayne and Jean-Paul Leon, like, they're… they…
• 6:18
  Marcus: know these characters, they're… they're, like, building them, they're building on them, and if you think about it, it's like you got, what, like, Icon Team, Blood Syndicate, who already have their own very full cast of characters to…
• 6:32
  Marcus: to, build, and you know what I mean? And then on top of it, you're like, and here's 8 bad guys, or not even bad and good, but you know what I mean? Like, here's 2… 2 teams of 8 that are just, like, duking it out and showing up.
• 6:44
  Ted: I looked up, yeah, I looked up that issue of Blood Syndicate, where Bad Benny first appears, and it's also like, oh yeah, remember Slag? Remember Rainsaw? Like, there's all these other guys, you're like…
• 6:54
  Marcus: Are they a Star Chamber, or are they, are they…
• 6:57
  Ted: They were Star Chamber, but also, like, some of them either switched sides, or I don't remember.
• 7:02
  Marcus: Right, right, right.
• 7:03
  Ted: like, as an… the further away we get from Shadow War, the more I'm like, that happened, I guess, but I don't… like, it all just…
• 7:11
  Marcus: I remember… the only thing I remember… so I remember eventually, like, getting into it, but ironically, the thing that…
• 7:19
  Marcus: got me into it was the way Shadow War pulled in our main heroes and following them, because I just, at that point, I had no foundation with these two teams. So, Starch Chamber and, I knew Dharma was Shadow Cabinet, that was the main thing. You know, I do remember Donna and Blitzen,
• 7:38
  Marcus: But yeah, anyway, anyway, that's… that's all to say that, like,
• 7:43
  Marcus: You know, I really appreciate the main series of Shadow Academy.
• 7:47
  Ted: That's the thing, like, Sharks hasn't…
• 7:49
  Ted: what it becomes is so good. Because, like, we were trying to think of other things to compare it to earlier on, and it's like… I mean, it's a little bit like Stormwatch, it's a little bit…
• 7:58
  Marcus: Yeah, a little Suicide Squad. Yeah.
• 8:00
  Ted: It's all these little bits pulling from other places that ends up being…
• 8:05
  Ted: a little hard to describe, and I think it even kind of takes a while to find its footing. Like, these almost feel like…
• 8:10
  Ted: first issues of Shadow Cabinet, in the sense that they're so solidly about, here's the premise.
• 8:16
  Ted: we're being led around by the nose, sent on top-secret missions across the globe by a dude who may or may not have it all together, and, like, we have little interesting moral dilemmas along the way, and, like, members fall off, and it turns out that Dharma doesn't really give a shit about people, or does he? It's hard to tell. You know, like…
• 8:33
  Ted: This… this is so… this is so solid, it feels like it should be the first few issues of Shadow Cabinet. And those first few issues of Shadow Cabinet are also good, but like…
• 8:41
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know. It… this is… Yeah, I…
• 8:46
  Marcus: I appreciate it a lot.
• 8:48
  Marcus: I think, I think one thing for me, you know, kind of touching on what you said.
• 8:52
  Marcus: Is that,
• 8:54
  Marcus: So, like, stuff that happened that matters, because we've all, you know, obviously read big two comics and are very familiar with characters coming back from the grave.
• 9:02
  Marcus: But, A, like, the way… the way that Dharma came back, and we should say for anybody who's… this is their first time listening to us speak about Shadow Cabinet, Dharma is essentially this kind of, like, all-seeing…
• 9:14
  Marcus: almost all-seeing character who can, like, see through time, and, like… and you find out as it goes on that that's kind of torturous to Dharma, like, you know.
• 9:23
  Ted: Yeah.
• 9:24
  Marcus: and it's this big burden. That being said, Dharma Kaya runs the group.
• 9:29
  Marcus: definitely not as a democracy, and kind of like an asshole. And he… and, you know, like, at a certain point in that last arc we read, the team in general got pretty frustrated with him, and the way he freakin'…
• 9:45
  Marcus: puts them out there when their lives are at risk. It's not even, like, little things. And.
• 9:50
  Ted: Commander them in.
• 9:51
  Marcus: What's his name?
• 9:51
  Ted: because it was a… like, they had to do it, they had to make the future happen, but he just basically stranded, like, five of them in the literal Arctic, just, you know.
• 10:00
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 10:00
  Ted: Had to happen. Jesus, yeah.
• 10:03
  Marcus: Yeah, and Sideshow just straight up killed him. Like, you know, because he was, he was sick of it, and .
• 10:09
  Ted: loop can.
• 10:10
  Marcus: Yeah, so there was a thing at the end of that arc where there was, like, an issue where a past, shadow cabinet member
• 10:18
  Marcus: From way back, essentially, like.
• 10:21
  Marcus: Keynes of Dharma in the… I don't know, some other afterworld, or whatever type… Yeah. Type,
• 10:27
  Marcus: place, right? Like, outside of our realm of existence, and they had this real existential conversation. Dharma does end up coming back, but we see there's ramifications in this arc, because while he can still see the future, and he is still trying to pull the strings, there's…
• 10:43
  Marcus: his vision of the… his hold on what the future is and the variables are really off, you know, which is actually creating more danger for the team, you know? Another thing I like about this is that, like, they'll have their, like, kind of, like, mission of the issue many times, and…
• 11:02
  Marcus: They do end up…
• 11:04
  Marcus: solving it sometimes, but then it's not necessarily the way that he tried to set it up, you know what I mean? Right, or it's unclear…
• 11:12
  Ted: Like, how much he had really planned out, and how much they just sort of improvised, or… yeah.
• 11:17
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 11:18
  Ted: It's… Yeah, that's, like…
• 11:22
  Ted: part of what I like about this is that then, yeah, it puts Dharma on the back foot in a way that is satisfying to see after him being a real asshole for the most of the first 10 issues, but also, like, oh, he knows all the future. It's like, oh, he gets to, oh, he… I guess he gets to pull the shots. Like, now he's, you know, he didn't really know everything, he seems to, like…
• 11:40
  Ted: Okay, so getting into it, yeah, like, issue… issue 11, Donner and Blitzen get sent on a mission where they have to save a police officer from a random, like, gang shooting, because in, like, 20 years, whatever, she's gonna have a kid, and that kid is gonna grow up to be… er, she's gonna have a kid soon, and that kid's gonna grow up.
• 11:56
  Ted: Right, who's gonna take down systems? So, like, yeah, okay, sure, makes sense. We get, you know, some fun little bits of Donner and Blitzen arguing with, with, Dharma, and then also pissing off Mechanic. I do love their interaction with Mechanic.
• 12:12
  Ted: they head out to the hideout, there's some great stuff with, like, the shadows. The visuals, I mean, we… okay, even before you came in, Marcus, Ted and I were talking about, like, this issue… this is John Paulion hitting his peak.
• 12:25
  Marcus: Yeah, it looks great.
• 12:27
  Ted: remain for the rest of his career. But, like.
• 12:31
  Marcus: Yup.
• 12:31
  Ted: God, there are some panels in here…
• 12:34
  Ted: There's one panel in particular. So, Donner and Blitzen bust in, they start… Donner immediately runs and starts protecting the cops, and there's these great images of all the bullets, like, bouncing off her, and then Blitzen speeds around at super speed and grabs all the bullets, and there's this one panel of her just, like, singing You're My Everything, and just…
• 12:51
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:52
  Ted: rubbing the scattered bullets in front of these guys as the smoke curls from their guns. It's beautiful, it's so good!
• 12:58
  Ted: It's like, yeah, no, this is… this is the… this is where John Paul Dione becomes John Paul Dione.
• 13:05
  Marcus: Yeah, and actually, can I just, on that note, just, again, as the resident person who loves to talk about art so much.
• 13:11
  Marcus: the… what I love about this, and, you know, milestone books in general, like, there's great storytelling, panel progression, but I will say I remember…
• 13:21
  Marcus: the late… the early, you know, early to mid-90s, and, like, you had image taking off, and in hindsight, like, when I revisit some of those, like, image books that blew up, and definitely influenced Marvel and DC Comics.
• 13:37
  Marcus: the…
• 13:39
  Marcus: the style is… style's all there, whatever, you know, but there's… sometimes the storytelling suffered, the visual storytelling, the readability of panels, like, where am I supposed to look next? And, like, I'd say John Paul Leon is a…
• 13:54
  Marcus: perfect example. It's kind of, like, timeless, you know, because there's certain rules of, like, comic, you know, just reading and leading the reader's eye across the page that are supposed to be the rules in any era, and, you know, you can obviously put your spin on it, but, like, those rules are rules for a reason.
• 14:13
  Marcus: You know what I mean? And I think during the 90s, to a certain extent, a lot of big two books that were kind of, like, following the trend, it was like that stuff kind of became secondary, you know, the fundamental stuff. And he's so strong with it, but he's also, like.
• 14:28
  Marcus: Super dynamic, you know, like…
• 14:30
  Ted: Yeah, oh.
• 14:30
  Marcus: I'm looking at this one where, like, he's throwing… yeah, like, where, where, Blitzen, or Donner threw, through these dudes through the wall and everything.
• 14:38
  Ted: God, it's almost a splash page, and it's huge, but it's 3 dudes through a… wooden wall…
• 14:43
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 14:44
  Ted: No, it's beautiful. There's also, I mean, and yeah, what you were saying about, like, the fundamentals, like, he is… he has a perfect command of storytelling. There's a great bit, actually, there's a subtle thing that happens a couple times in this issue. When Dharma sees the future, he sees… it's like a little portal opens up in front of him.
• 15:00
  Ted: that's, like… but it's also, like, a panel, and the panel itself radiates, yeah, it, like, radiates rays that are also gutters, so that.
• 15:08
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:09
  Ted: a bit where, yeah, he and Donner and Blitzen… for any listeners who don't have the comic in front of them, I'm sure this is fascinating, but, like, if you're looking at it on, like, page 3 of this issue, him and Donner and Blitzen are talking in his office, and it's like.
• 15:19
  Ted: it's not quite a multi-panel sequence, it's not exactly that, but it kind of functions as one, and you've got this massive… Donner's got her arms sticking straight out to kind of leave this…
• 15:29
  Ted: You know, parallel line thing, and it's… oh, it's beautiful to look at as, like, just a composition thing.
• 15:35
  Ted: to lead the eye so perfectly. God! It's…
• 15:39
  Marcus: Yeah, and I'm looking at one of those…
• 15:42
  Marcus: Oh, no, go ahead, go ahead, sorry.
• 15:44
  Ted: Just that it was… I was just gonna say, it's like the fundamentals… it's not just the craft, it's the fundamentals are really good on him, yeah.
• 15:51
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 15:51
  Marcus: Yeah, but that's… but you know what? That page you just described, I'm looking at right now, is a perfect example of how you can be really inventive while sticking to those fundamentals, you know? Yeah. It's funny, because I will… I will not name any names, but there's definitely some celebrated artists today that,
• 16:09
  Marcus: sometimes I look at an incredibly drawn page that they've drawn, and I'm like… Oh, you're…
• 16:17
  Marcus: You're a little more interested in selling this page later.
• 16:21
  Marcus: the original of this page than you are with, like, this really conveying everything. You just want to… and… and this page here, I would straight up, like, I would, like, buy, like, you know what I mean? Like, and not because… but you could tell that it's not because it's like, oh man, I'm gonna draw this with the intention of selling it. It's just,
• 16:39
  Marcus: It's just a testament to the way that, like, he… I mean, I guess, listeners, you can tell we like, John Paul.
• 16:46
  Tad Eggleston: Well, here's just a meta-type question.
• 16:51
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
• 16:52
  Tad Eggleston: because it's something that I wonder about in terms of the marketplace. Do you think that there are a lot of creators that are thinking about selling the page, or do you think that because the.
• 17:07
  Marcus: Because it's so hard to make a book.
• 17:10
  Tad Eggleston: No, what I was gonna.
• 17:11
  Marcus: Because I was… that is a real reason, yeah.
• 17:13
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, it is, but what I meant in general was because the art market values that, and because the…
• 17:21
  Tad Eggleston: Cover market values that.
• 17:23
  Tad Eggleston: That those artists become popular, not because they're thinking of selling pages, but because their pages are the ones that people who aren't necessarily interested in the storytelling, but do spend a lot of money…
• 17:39
  Tad Eggleston: Seek out.
• 17:39
  Marcus: Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. I… you know what? A…
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: In other words, I'm wondering if there's not the financial incentives that I would like there to be to do good storytelling.
• 17:52
  Marcus: Well, look, look, being very real…
• 17:55
  Tad Eggleston: This is my Bill James hat.
• 17:58
  Marcus: Have a second.
• 17:59
  Marcus: So, I'mma be really, very real, like…
• 18:02
  Marcus: as much as I was saying that about… I mean, there's, like.
• 18:06
  Marcus: There's, like, one or two people in particular I'm like, who I'm talking about. But… and it's… and it's only an issue if it's kind of like…
• 18:15
  Marcus: I only bring it up because storytelling actually looks secondary. There's a lot of people who sell pages like crazy, but they are locked in, and like, you know what I mean? They are 100%…
• 18:26
  Marcus: putting the storytelling first. So I don't even… and I'm not even trying to, like, create any scandal, and nobody try to figure out who I'm talking about. No, no, no. But what I am… what I am trying to say is that,
• 18:39
  Marcus: that… I guess there's two things. I would never begrudge anybody for selling pages. Matter of fact, the current book that I'm working on.
• 18:46
  Marcus: I am drawing it digitally, but there are some pages that I'm going to selectively, just do old-fashioned on Bristol boards, so I can have, like, stuff at conventions to sell. Right. You know, so I'm definitely not knocking the hustle. I also,
• 19:02
  Marcus: And also, just if we're being real, like, everybody's got, like, side hustles, in comics. You kind of have to, to a certain extent. It's like, there's a select few people who are maybe just doing comics, but, like, you know, you… most of us, need to have some kind of side hustle, and pages are bad.
• 19:21
  Ted: Most of us are not Brian Michael Bendis, and even Bendis has Hollywood money. Well, sorry, that's… he had a whole book about how he doesn't really have Hollywood money, but anyway…
• 19:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he might now, because he's had…
• 19:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. A couple more things since that book.
• 19:35
  Marcus: I definitely won't speak for by Michael Bendis, whose work I really respect, but I will say, I just know from… I know from good friends… no, I'm saying I know from good friends who have…
• 19:46
  Marcus: TV show where you, on the surface, you're like, oh, wow, you know, they just, they made, like, they've made… it's, oof, all the glitters.
• 19:53
  Tad Eggleston: You're in your…
• 19:54
  Marcus: creator.
• 19:54
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no.
• 19:56
  Marcus: Well, and some of this is not my story to tell, you know.
• 19:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right, no, I bring, I bring up kind of regularly,
• 20:04
  Tad Eggleston: One of our, our regular artists on this show.
• 20:09
  Tad Eggleston: Still does his very rough pencils.
• 20:13
  Tad Eggleston: By hand.
• 20:16
  Tad Eggleston: Just so, when he fills out the pages, and he goes, oh, this one is gonna make money, he can go back and do more solid pencils.
• 20:28
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, like, he starts by hand and then goes digital.
• 20:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he starts… and, like, 90% of them are the roughest of rough pencils, but if he hits a page where he's like…
• 20:39
  Marcus: on it, too.
• 20:41
  Tad Eggleston: This one can sell, then he'll go back when he's done with everything to make the pencils look more like the finished page.
• 20:49
  Ted: Yeah.
• 20:50
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's mine.
• 20:51
  Ted: Rewinding a fair bit, I just wanted to talk about, because, like, when you were talking about fundamentals, I actually have a,
• 20:58
  Ted: It's a similar thing, but for me, what I see is there are books that I've read that I'm like.
• 21:04
  Ted: something feels off about the way this story is being told. Like, something feels weird about the way the panels are chosen, or, like, what moments are being shown, and, like.
• 21:14
  Ted: I… 90% of the time, I look it up, it's like, oh, this person had their start in animation. And that's a…
• 21:20
  Marcus: Oh…
• 21:21
  Ted: That's not denigrating animation as a craft, obviously, but it is a fundamentally different form of storytelling.
• 21:26
  Marcus: It's a different medium, yeah.
• 21:27
  Ted: Yeah, if you try to use story… animation storytelling practices in comics, it feels like a weirdly stilted comic. Like, you're choosing odd moments to focus on, which would be great in a show, but make no sense in a comic. So, like…
• 21:42
  Marcus: Yeah. This isn't really the same thing, but it is talking about, like, the ways in which different…
• 21:46
  Ted: like, it's… different pages…
• 21:50
  Ted: It's not about the way in which comics can sometimes feel poorly told, even if the craft is incredible.
• 21:56
  Ted: Because, yeah, like, sometimes you can have… and those are, a lot of times, those are great-looking pages. Those are fantastic art. These are people who spend their life drawing, like, they know how to draw characters. Right. But it's the moments they choose, the panels they focus on, that kind of thing.
• 22:11
  Ted: it just… it feels… like, it lurches every now and then. I'm like, why? This feels uneven as to how the story's being told. And then Shadow Cab… then we go back to Shadow Cabinet, and I'm like…
• 22:20
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:21
  Ted: I'm just still looking at this page where it's Donnery's getting shot, and Blitzen's running around catching all the bullets while singing nearby everything.
• 22:29
  Ted: Just the… the moments here being chosen are so…
• 22:33
  Ted: Perfect. And then, the next page is Donner just comes up.
• 22:38
  Ted: And looked at these guys, like, you know, bullets really hurt, especially if you're up close, and she just gives them the eye, and they all just drop their guns, and they're like, oof, yeah, it is, oof.
• 22:48
  Marcus: Yeah, that's a great point. Just to add to that, just to add to that, like, a page or two earlier, when she's originally getting shot and the bullets are bouncing off, the way that it's rendered
• 22:57
  Marcus: it's not like Superman. Like, you know, we've seen Superman get shot a million times, and it's, like, barely affecting him. It's like, you can tell, like, obviously she's withstanding it, she's gonna survive, but it doesn't look like, you know…
• 23:11
  Ted: She's gritting her teeth, she's being forced back, she's, like, things are happening around her, she's not just standing there unmoved. Yeah, no, you… listeners, you can't see me, but I'm, like, doing the poses. But, like… but yeah, that… those little touches that she's so…
• 23:27
  Tad Eggleston: I'm a little disappointed here, Ted, because you misquoted a little bit, and I loved the language on that page, too. Yes. Because it was… bullets really smart, especially up close, and then you go through the whole looking and dropping the guns, and…
• 23:47
  Tad Eggleston: The, the other…
• 23:48
  Ted: Blitzen says, yeah.
• 23:49
  Tad Eggleston: and says, which is weird, because you're all really dumb, especially up close.
• 23:56
  Ted: Yep.
• 23:57
  Marcus: Yes, yes, perfectly.
• 23:58
  Ted: It's fun. I do… I love… Donner and Blitzen haven't gotten a whole lot of character…
• 24:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that page is beautiful in so many ways.
• 24:07
  Ted: Oh, yeah. Dunner and Blitzen don't have… like, they have enough characterization that I really like them, and I feel like I get them, especially in this issue.
• 24:14
  Ted: But I do like Blitzen specifically as a snarker… as a snarky type.
• 24:18
  Ted: Yeah, no, it's… it's… oh, God. And then we get that famous… and then we get the page… this is… this is the part where on re-reading, I'm like, hey, wait a minute, they just surrendered, and then she throws them through a wall? What was… why?
• 24:28
  Marcus: group.
• 24:29
  Ted: But.
• 24:30
  Marcus: Well, they shot her.
• 24:31
  Ted: Well, this is a shooter, that's true. But then this also, this is a little bit of, like, interesting realism, and I mentioned sort of the moral dilemma stuff. So, Donner and Blitzen basically run away, after saving the cop's life. The cop… we kind of follow the cop for a few pages, we cut back, and…
• 24:47
  Ted: this is, again, following the bigger, story here. Dharma's kind of watching all this from, like, 5 minutes in the past, I guess, and he realizes.
• 24:55
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I just… I just realized, though, that that… that, like, changes so much in terms of the back end of this book.
• 25:02
  Ted: Yes. Yeah, so this… so, okay.
• 25:04
  Tad Eggleston: rendered, and then…
• 25:06
  Ted: And she threw them through the wall.
• 25:07
  Tad Eggleston: or a wall.
• 25:08
  Ted: Right, so Dharma suddenly realizes, oh shit, something's gonna actually happen that I didn't predict, which is Plus had to be teleported emergency away from a different situation, which means the teleporter's down for a while, and he didn't see this coming, and he's like, oh, shit, I'm kind of losing it, and Plus realizes that. They have a nice little conversation.
• 25:27
  Ted: Because, you know, now we know that Plus is actually two of his sisters? I guess? Yeah.
• 25:32
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 25:32
  Ted: And he reveals that, like, he can't see everything now, and he's having problems, and he doesn't get it all.
• 25:38
  Ted: We get some nice little acting from Plus, this is great.
• 25:42
  Ted: And then we go back to… Donner and Blitzen now actually talk to the cops, which is nice! I really like this, where they're just like, yeah, you know, we can't get out of here for another, like, hour, can we just grab a cup of coffee with you?
• 25:53
  Ted: And I have a whole conversation with the cop, and a friend of hers, another cop, Teresa, and…
• 26:02
  Ted: then they tell her, okay, yeah, well, we really just saved her life because you're gonna have a son in the future who's gonna, like, be important somehow. She's like, I don't have a son… yet. And she's… they're like, well, you're gonna, and she's like, yeah, well, okay, the… I mean, the both of us are kind of… and then it's like, oh, okay, they're actually a couple, and it, like, first off, that's nice, like, Donna and Blitzon realize, oh, hey, another lesbian couple, that's kinda cool.
• 26:21
  Ted: But, then, also, hey, one of the guys you threw through the wall.
• 26:27
  Marcus: died on the way to the hospital, we're gonna have to arrest you two. Yeah.
• 26:30
  Ted: But, fortunately, at that moment… I do… another, like, great bit of wordplay here, I admire and respect you both, but I can't let that slide. At the very moment is when they're then…
• 26:39
  Marcus: The first slide.
• 26:40
  Ted: They, yeah, they do the shadow slide, back to the Shadow Spire.
• 26:43
  Ted: And then we get them confronting Dharma.
• 26:47
  Ted: Because first off, they think, okay, she's never gonna have a son, she's a lesbian.
• 26:51
  Ted: And then, you know, like, what are you doing, you asshole, you don't actually know what you're doing, you're sending us on wild goose chases, and also, you made me kill this guy, and then he says, no, he does this big dramatic finger point, and this is, you know, the big dramatic comics finger point is JP Lyon could do that, but, like, again, we like the small stuff with J.P. Leon, but…
• 27:10
  Ted: He, he bites back, he explains, no, I did see all this, she and her partner are going to adopt a… or no, she's gonna have a kid for artificial insemination, da-da.
• 27:19
  Marcus: That was similar.
• 27:20
  Ted: Yeah, and so, he kind of gets the last word there, but also…
• 27:25
  Ted: Blitzen has this question of, like, you know, what about the guy who died? Did he have a future, too? Did you even check?
• 27:30
  Ted: And he just is like.
• 27:32
  Ted: I can't think about that. And then Donner and Blitzen have this great little emotional page or two afterwards, where Donner's fucked up about the fact that she killed a guy. And we also find out, I don't know if we knew this at this point, I kind of knew this from previous rereads, but she used to be, like, a Hitler Youth neo-Nazi type in her youth.
• 27:49
  Ted: And now, like, very specifically moved away from that, because her backstory…
• 27:54
  Ted: I forget how much of it has been given in which places, but, like, she's, like, the granddaughter of a Nazi scientist, so, like, that's the reason she has superpowers, is she's, like, a, you know, an experiment or whatever.
• 28:03
  Ted: But, like, yeah.
• 28:05
  Marcus: I actually didn't know that, I don't know if it's come up yet, yeah.
• 28:07
  Ted: That's… I don't remember where it happens, is the thing, like, I don't remember…
• 28:11
  Ted: like, where it gets revealed, but, like, the fact that she… it's not an accident that she's got the big, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, Aryan ideal going on, like, she was genetically engineered to be a superhuman, and of course, very deliberately gave that up, but, like.
• 28:26
  Ted: She regrets it, and it, like, it's…
• 28:29
  Ted: it's… it's really emotional, and, like, I was kind of joking about how two pages earlier, Dharma gets this great dramatic moment where he points at the camera, like fucking Phoenix Wright, and here, we get two panels of an extreme close-up on Donner as she's, like, clutching her face and about to start crying that's…
• 28:46
  Ted: Really affecting, and it's just… God, this issue was really good!
• 28:52
  Marcus: No, this is great comics, yeah.
• 28:53
  Ted: Yeah, and she kind of snaps at Blitzen, who's just trying to help, and she regrets it immediately, and then the two of them…
• 29:00
  Ted: have this touching moment. They eventually go to the funeral for…
• 29:03
  Ted: Is it the funeral for the punk, or is it the funeral for one of the other cops? Because, like, there's a lot of cops in attendance.
• 29:08
  Marcus: I think, right? It's gotta be the corpse.
• 29:11
  Ted: I, I, I think they said that, like, other cops died in the attack or something, because there's… yeah, anyway…
• 29:16
  Marcus: Yeah. Because he said something about, Cop Killer had a coma.
• 29:20
  Ted: Yeah, that's right, yeah, okay, you're right, it is a copy holder.
• 29:23
  Marcus: Oh, oh, oh, was the cop the undercover, right? Because wasn't there… when they first got there…
• 29:29
  Marcus: Wasn't there a dude that they were accusing of being an undercover agent?
• 29:35
  Marcus: Yeah, bridges.
• 29:37
  Marcus: Beautiful.
• 29:38
  Ted: Yeah, you're right, you are a cop. They're arguing about it.
• 29:42
  Ted: I don't think any of them… maybe one of them is a cop? I don't know, but one way or another.
• 29:46
  Marcus: Well, maybe I'm wrong, yeah, yeah.
• 29:47
  Ted: It's a little bit unclear, but one way or another, yeah, they're at the funeral, they see the two cops from earlier across the way, and kind of neither of them do anything.
• 29:56
  Ted: And…
• 29:58
  Ted: they basically just had this final moment where it's like… where they just say, yeah, Dharma, you know, remember when before we didn't know how you got your information, and you just hand us a mission? I think I like that better. And it's… it's a real sad little moment, I love it, it's… God, it's so good!
• 30:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think this whole issue… in general, kind of deals with… both…
• 30:25
  Tad Eggleston: The difficulties of knowing the future, and sometimes the difficulties of… Knowing why you're following directions.
• 30:35
  Ted: Yeah. Yeah, and that tension is really good in, like… like I said, issues 11 and 13 are really good about that in a way that I think is…
• 30:45
  Ted: Yeah, these are two of the best issues of the series. Unfortunately, in between them is issue 12, which suffers a lot by comparison.
• 30:52
  Ted: It's not bad, but it…
• 30:56
  Marcus: It's a regular 90s comic.
• 30:58
  Ted: It's a regular 90s comic, yeah, it's…
• 31:01
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe even a regular late 80s comic.
• 31:04
  Ted: God, yeah, you know.
• 31:04
  Marcus: And what this does.
• 31:05
  Ted: This actually, you know, this really hits the Suicide Squad feel of it. Like, this whole thing is like, yeah, Dharma brings everyone in on a mission, and Bad Betty's all like, don't pull me out of a deep cover in Holocaust nightclub, which… has Holocaust had the nightclub for a while? Is that a thing?
• 31:21
  Marcus: He has. It's definitely shown up. It's definitely shown up in Blood Syndicate, I forget which other books, but it's, yeah, it's been a.
• 31:29
  Ted: Okay, I also, because that reminded me, I looked this up, I looked up more about Bad Betty.
• 31:33
  Ted: like, the same month that these issues are coming out, or around the same time, there's also the issue… there's this five-issue miniseries called My Name is Holocaust coming out, which isn't in the big collection, the compendiums, and I totally forgot it existed! So maybe that gives more context on Bad Betty and Holocaust and all this other stuff, but…
• 31:52
  Ted: unfortunately, that right now, it's just sort of a standard issue of… a standard unit of 90s comics in the middle of two really good issues of Shadow Cabinet. But yeah, we get…
• 32:03
  Ted: Bad Betty shows up, Blitzen's there, and so is Twilight, the dude who looks like a Magritte painting. Who I don't know if he ever gets more characterization, but I do like him, he's a fun design.
• 32:14
  Marcus: Can I ask you guys a good… do you guys remember, was this…
• 32:17
  Marcus: I just feel like that design… did that design show up in, in Zombie?
• 32:22
  Marcus: This character- was this character in Zombie?
• 32:24
  Ted: Oh, God, you know, I don't remember. I… he might have.
• 32:27
  Marcus: I remember somebody that kind of looked like they had clouds in them.
• 32:31
  Ted: Yes, I think he did. I think he was, like, one of the guys who went to recruit… I mean, I was… I know his name isn't Zombie, but you know he went to recruit… he went to recruit David. Daniel, David, yeah. Yeah, he was… he… yeah. He was there, yes.
• 32:46
  Ted: Yeah, I'm remembering now. He was in… he was… I'm looking… I'm looking it up right now on the… the… the DC wiki. He was in Zombie number… number zero, so yes. As well as a handful of other… he was in… oh, he was in all the Justice League crossovers, that's right. That's the… the…
• 33:00
  Marcus: Oh, okay, okay.
• 33:02
  Ted: Yeah.
• 33:03
  Ted: Hmph, or no?
• 33:06
  Ted: No, that's the 2009 one!
• 33:08
  Ted: Oh, interesting. Huh.
• 33:10
  Ted: Alright.
• 33:12
  Marcus: You mean the milestone forever? Is that what you're talking about?
• 33:15
  Ted: No, the 2000… The thing where they brought it into the… DC Universe, I guess.
• 33:21
  Ted: It's not…
• 33:22
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, no, it was a two-issue Milestone… I thought it was called Milestone Forever, but it's like…
• 33:28
  Ted: Maybe it wasn'.
• 33:28
  Marcus: Is that what you're talking about?
• 33:30
  Marcus: Yeah, because at the end of it, it ends with Dharma, oh, if you guys can find that, we actually should discuss those at some point.
• 33:37
  Ted: I don't know what this is. This is, like, 4 issues of the JLA series from 2009 that…
• 33:43
  Marcus: Oh, okay, that's something different.
• 33:45
  Ted: Yeah, he had a bunch of other characters from Shadowcan that show up. Yeah, Icon, Hardware, Iron Butterfly, Donner Blitzen…
• 33:52
  Marcus: Hmm.
• 33:53
  Ted: Listeners, we're just discovering right now what's going on! But yeah, anyway, no, but Twilight himself has appeared in Shadow Cabinet Volume 1, Number 0, Shadow Cabinet 12, which is this issue, and Shadow Cabinet 15, and then…
• 34:08
  Ted: Zombie number zero. So that's… it's… he's been in, like, two issues before now.
• 34:12
  Marcus: And I… he's…
• 34:13
  Ted: He's such a great design, but like… he doesn't… Yeah, it's kinda…
• 34:20
  Marcus: Nothing significant happens with him, basically.
• 34:22
  Ted: Yeah, which sucks, because he does look really cool.
• 34:26
  Ted: Anyway, puts in… hijacks a truck using her super speed, that has a special thingy, and then they also have to, like.
• 34:32
  Ted: So they have to take the truck, but also, like, take over the base where the truck is going, so they can…
• 34:38
  Ted: like, defused? I don't know.
• 34:41
  Ted: Oh, it's to be picked up, so they have to get the truck, invade to get the interface chamber, and then get it back, blah blah blah. Okay. It's… it's kind of a standard action-y issue thing. They shoot some stuff.
• 34:53
  Ted: Bad Betty has, like, weird techno abilities, and she… she comp-locks the door, like, it's so Cyber 90s, it's… it's great. They fight a big system robot monster thingy, she has a force field, Twilight has weird…
• 35:07
  Ted: Teleportation powers…
• 35:11
  Ted: IOTA shows up, because she randomly was also there, because they figured they needed an extra edge, and…
• 35:16
  Ted: I don't know, it happens, it's an issue.
• 35:19
  Ted: It's… I really hate to be so down on it, but it, like…
• 35:23
  Ted: Compared to what we just saw, it's just sort of… It's just…
• 35:27
  Marcus: Yeah, I think it's… yeah, it's fine, but, like, I think… and also just being real, like, we only have so much time to talk about this, so I… I don't think there's anything wrong with leaving more time for issue 13.
• 35:39
  Ted: Yeah, it's… it's fine.
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: 213 needs to be talked about.
• 35:42
  Ted: Yeah, cause issue 13…
• 35:44
  Tad Eggleston: First off.
• 35:44
  Ted: Incredible cover! Beautiful cover! J.P. Lee, this is like…
• 35:48
  Tad Eggleston: That's second off. That's second off.
• 35:50
  Marcus: I know what you're gonna say. I thought of you, Ted, but I know you take it away.
• 35:54
  Marcus: I thought it was.
• 35:55
  Tad Eggleston: J.P. Leone clearly has a strong appreciation for baseball, because not only is there baseball in this issue.
• 36:07
  Tad Eggleston: But that… that picture… frame income.
• 36:11
  Marcus: religion.
• 36:12
  Tad Eggleston: is not an easy angle to get right. And he nails it.
• 36:20
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 36:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we do get… He nails it.
• 36:24
  Marcus: Also, also, the MLB is canonical, but with a Dakota team. So in this universe, they have our Major League Baseball.
• 36:34
  Ted: Oh, yeah.
• 36:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was a little disappointed that they chose the Indians, though.
• 36:40
  Tad Eggleston: As the team to play if they're gonna go canonical.
• 36:44
  Ted: Yeah, this is.
• 36:46
  Marcus: Well, they probably…
• 36:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 36:47
  Marcus: them, though. Did they beat them?
• 36:49
  Tad Eggleston: No, they lost.
• 36:50
  Tad Eggleston: They got, they got their butts.
• 36:51
  Marcus: It's kicked.
• 36:52
  Ted: 6-0, top of the night, yeah.
• 36:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is where I almost have to ask, is John Paul Leone another one of the Cleveland guys? Because there were a lot of guys from Cleveland at the time.
• 37:03
  Marcus: Maybe.
• 37:03
  Ted: But yeah, no, this is one of those
• 37:05
  Ted: opens of, like, the heroes hang out, and it's Donner, Blitz, Starlight, and Payback. Payback hasn't been seen in a while either.
• 37:11
  Marcus: Yeah, I'd forgotten about Payback, yeah.
• 37:13
  Ted: Yeah, Payback has got his own fun story. Hanging out at the baseball game, and they're so bored that Blitzen just steals the ball so they can stop the game.
• 37:22
  Ted: It's fun. I love it, that's great. But yeah, I love, god, the classic, like, baseball cold open for a comic book, and also the stadium's, like, completely empty.
• 37:32
  Ted: Donner tries to get people singing the… singing, baby out of the ballgame.
• 37:36
  Ted: Oh god, it's great.
• 37:37
  Marcus: I love the expressions on the audience members as well.
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 37:42
  Tad Eggleston: No, so much of it was done well, but, like…
• 37:47
  Tad Eggleston: I have seen lots of baseball and comics where I felt like
• 37:52
  Tad Eggleston: it's almost like baseball and movies, where the first thing that I pay attention to is.
• 37:57
  Tad Eggleston: Did anybody bother to figure out how to play?
• 38:01
  Ted: I mean, to be fair, a lot of times it's like the X-Men playing baseball, which, like, they got their own rules. They're the X-Men, they can teleport.
• 38:07
  Marcus: Oh, and basketball, basketball as well.
• 38:10
  Ted: Oh, the basketball issues are gambits, like, doing.
• 38:12
  Marcus: Because I know, it's just because, yeah, you made me think of Gambit and the X-Men, but…
• 38:15
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm not talking about the rules as much as, like, the physics.
• 38:19
  Marcus: The rendering. No, I know exactly what you mean.
• 38:22
  Tad Eggleston: I knew, I knew Marcus knew what I meant!
• 38:25
  Ted: Oh, God.
• 38:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, even in Calvin Ball, where there are no rules, you can tell
• 38:33
  Tad Eggleston: that Bill Watterson knows baseball and knows football. The ball isn't held wrong, the bat isn't held wrong, you know, things look right.
• 38:43
  Ted: Right. It's the best depiction of baseball and comics since peanuts.
• 38:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's the difference between watching Ray Liotta in Field of Dreams and watching Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. Ray Liotta had never swung a bat in his fucking life.
• 39:00
  Tad Eggleston: Fostner was a ballplayer.
• 39:02
  Ted: My favorite bit of trivia was in the episode of Deep Space Nine, where they play baseball against a bunch of Vulcans. The guy who played Rom actually was, like, almost went professional as a baseball player.
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: And you can tell!
• 39:12
  Ted: Yeah, well, and in order to appear like he sucked at baseball, because he was supposed to be, like, the worst player, he had to play left-handed, just to look convinced.
• 39:19
  Tad Eggleston: But you could tell that he knew what he was, you know.
• 39:22
  Ted: Yeah, he knew how to play himself.
• 39:24
  Tad Eggleston: he wasn't… I mean, you don't have to be good for me to believe that you understand and care about the game.
• 39:32
  Ted: Yeah.
• 39:33
  Ted: Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does.
• 39:36
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, which is why I can't… I can't 100% guarantee that John Paul Leone was a baseball fan, but I did do a Google of John Paul Leone in baseball, and found, like, 4 different pictures of him out to the ballgame with various people. So, I think he probably was.
• 39:52
  Marcus: But…
• 39:55
  Tad Eggleston: like, I mean, Marcus, you talk about hair.
• 39:59
  Tad Eggleston: Like, my version of… It does, but my version of hair is baseball.
• 40:07
  Ted: That's a… sorry, that's a good bounce point. I want to… as much as I want to talk about baseball, though, I do want to segue into the rest of the issue, and that.
• 40:12
  Tad Eggleston: We will.
• 40:13
  Ted: good question, which is, Payback even points out Stella wearing extensions. How does her hair look to you?
• 40:19
  Ted: I'm curious.
• 40:21
  Ted: I, I generally don't know.
• 40:23
  Marcus: I think it's alright. I think… I think it's… it's… it's not… out of the stuff I've seen, like, I'm cool with it. It looks like he at least…
• 40:31
  Marcus: Like, there's a close-up on some of the braids, and then in the close-up, it kind of comes apart. But, for the most part, it's good.
• 40:39
  Ted: There's…
• 40:40
  Marcus: Like, I can tell what style he's going for, but yes, no, black women's hair in comics is so often is just…
• 40:47
  Ted: Oof.
• 40:48
  Marcus: They don't… You know, artists won't commit…
• 40:51
  Marcus: I will… I'll just say, when I see some of this stuff, and then we can move on, but when I see some of this stuff, I'm like, okay.
• 40:57
  Ted: Who?
• 40:58
  Marcus: One of my favorite books of all time is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. You know, there's no… it's not a science fiction, it's not about a man who is invisible, it's about a Black man, and invisibility is a metaphor for,
• 41:12
  Marcus: for Black people, and our social invisibility, etc, marginalization. But sometimes you see instances of, like, it's almost like we're literally invisible, because I'm like, alright, a lot of you artists…
• 41:26
  Marcus: lived in New York City. I know you're on the train and you see different types of Black people, so you're just, like, literally just not, like, looking, just to come away with some of these renderings. But anyway, I'm sure there's a past episode of this show where I've had the same rent, so I'm not gonna.
• 41:40
  Ted: Hey, it's a grant worth having, is the thing.
• 41:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess what I was… where I was going was, if he didn't already have a huge appreciation of baseball, he at least took the time
• 41:53
  Tad Eggleston: to…
• 41:54
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:55
  Tad Eggleston: go find a good example and make certain that he got it right, and I don't always see that, so I…
• 42:02
  Marcus: I want a monthly deadline, too.
• 42:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, I mean, who knows? Maybe that's why there was the month in between.
• 42:08
  Ted: You have to draw the brakes.
• 42:10
  Marcus: Oh, that's true. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. The same issue.
• 42:14
  Ted: But it's also… again, something else I want to point out, like, this is… this is beyond, like, the hair, but it's… his… so his rendering is really good. I also love that Donner and Blitzen, and also Stella, are just wearing, like, normal-ass clothes. This is 90s, this is 95, this is the heyday of…
• 42:30
  Marcus: Oh, yeah.
• 42:31
  Ted: women's outfits. Yeah. Daughter's wearing, like…
• 42:33
  Marcus: No, I love the X-Men, but the issues were…
• 42:37
  Marcus: The issues where the ladies are, like, going out on the town. It's like, what are they wearing?
• 42:42
  Ted: Yeah, no, but here, like, Donna's wearing, like, an oversized Freebooters jersey, which is great, and the baseball hat turned backwards, and Blitzen's wearing, like, a sweater and jeans, and she looks…
• 42:52
  Ted: Like, she looks like a normal human being! It's great, I love it! It's so naturalistic, it's fantastic. And then, you know, Payback's just wearing a hoodie, but then he also, like, does the transformation, and his transformation looks fantastic, and you're also like, oh yeah, John Paul Dione also does really good creatures, I forgot about that. Yeah.
• 43:10
  Ted: But yeah, we get the important plot beat that Stella is thinking of quitting the cabinet, because she's going to go back and get her degree, which… kind of significant, because we just had a whole three-issue arc about her, like, having to be detransformed and fight the guys who are…
• 43:24
  Ted: Wait, was she fighting?
• 43:25
  Ted: No, that wasn't hardware.
• 43:27
  Ted: Wasn't it? But the hardware had, like, the two issues.
• 43:29
  Marcus: That's where she was trying to.
• 43:30
  Ted: Get her powers under control.
• 43:32
  Ted: No.
• 43:33
  Marcus: Oh, that sounds familiar. Okay, yeah, yeah, but either way, yeah.
• 43:37
  Ted: Yeah. So, anyway, of course this is interrupted because there's a big mission going on, she transforms, she looks incredible while transformed. This is, again, J.P. Leone being J.P. Leone, her, like, transformed look is…
• 43:49
  Ted: incredible, she's got, like, the braids floating around her, she's all starlight in the middle. God, it's beautiful.
• 43:55
  Ted: And, oh, yeah, and I love the little detail of the fact that, like, oh yeah, they can only shadow slide usually when they're in total darkness, but she's got, like, starlight powers, she just stops reflecting any light, and then she can teleport immediately.
• 44:07
  Ted: like, I love them, it's great, I love those little details. She gets brought in, there's this… oh, god, I forgot that they had this page, this beautiful full-page spread of her, like, following through the teleportation
• 44:19
  Ted: Dimension. God. Oh yeah, and she talks about her experience of it, how it, like, it's very quick, but for her, it's just like this…
• 44:27
  Marcus: Relaxing period of time that feels longer.
• 44:30
  Ted: Yeah, but the rendering on this page, God, I love this.
• 44:32
  Marcus: Well, definitely, yeah, yeah.
• 44:34
  Ted: Beautiful.
• 44:35
  Ted: She comes in, there's a mission, it turns out maybe, like, when she got transformed, like, the person who was there might have been trying to replicate the experiment or something, something else that's horrible is gonna happen, you gotta go to Ann Arbor, Michigan, the worst place on Earth. No, I'm just kidding.
• 44:53
  Ted: Again, we get J.P. Leone doing great people in normal clothes on, like, the campus of Ann Arbor, and suddenly hears Sideshow, and he's…
• 45:03
  Ted: completely messed up. He's apparently drunk, or crazy, or something.
• 45:07
  Ted: He transforms kind of uncontrollably. She has to go stop him and call him down.
• 45:14
  Ted: Which she does without hurting him.
• 45:17
  Ted: And she takes him back to his apartment, where he's completely messed up. Is that…
• 45:21
  Ted: In his apartment, is he supposed to… is that supposed to be a bong? Like, I can't tell…
• 45:25
  Ted: Like, I know they can'.
• 45:26
  Marcus: It really shows.
• 45:27
  Ted: But, like… I can't…
• 45:30
  Marcus: Yeah, well, he's definitely… I mean, he's definitely, like, smoking on something, because at the end, after she leaves, he looks over at his pipe.
• 45:37
  Ted: Yeah, that's right.
• 45:38
  Marcus: From time to tend to the animals.
• 45:40
  Ted: Yeah. But Sideshow, like, again, he looks convincingly rough, you know? Like, his face is lined and weathered, his muscles are all standing out around his neck, his hands are all kind of gnarled up, like, he's had a rough few months after killing Dharma.
• 45:54
  Marcus: Dharma becoming unkilled, and then him quitting the cabinet.
• 45:58
  Ted: Did he quit, or was he fired? I forget, like, fired, you know. Was he…
• 46:01
  Marcus: I think he might have just left, because he, like, he killed the boss, I don't know.
• 46:05
  Ted: Yeah, you don't come back after that, usually.
• 46:07
  Ted: Yeah, but yeah, he, you know, he and Stella have a lovely little moment where she's reminiscing about how much she loved the stars and, you know, going to the observatory, and then, of course, we also get a little condensed version of her backstory, where, like, she…
• 46:21
  Ted: found some experiment going on that was… that was messing up someone, some dude with pulsar juice, and then, of course, she got hit with the pulsar juice, and then she turned into star stuff. And this is why I was trying to remember, like, when she first appeared, if it was in… I think it was hardware, because he shows up to save her.
• 46:37
  Ted: Anyway.
• 46:39
  Ted: And we get, yeah, we get this condensed little version of her origin story, and now she can transform, and…
• 46:46
  Ted: then we come back to reality, where now she's still talking with Sideshow, but he's now like a giant octopus, just sitting on the couch.
• 46:52
  Marcus: Which…
• 46:53
  Ted: I love… I love the casualness of his transformations, it's so good, it's…
• 46:58
  Ted: Oh, man. But yeah, he's… Dharma… er, Dharma… Sideshow is really bummed out about everything. He's completely… he's insanely cynical about all this. He doesn't want to have anything to do with the cabinet anymore. She's sort of disappointed in him, and…
• 47:14
  Ted: he thinks, also, that Dharma basically sent her there to nag him.
• 47:18
  Marcus: This interaction is nice and subtle, because, like, neither one of them really dislikes each other, but they're at…
• 47:24
  Ted: Odds over what's happening around them.
• 47:27
  Ted: And… Oh, God, I like it.
• 47:30
  Ted: I like it a lot, yeah. You can tell that she cares, too.
• 47:33
  Marcus: I also hooked back briefly, and… Yeah, it definitely was,
• 47:39
  Marcus: Sideshow, who decided to leave, okay.
• 47:43
  Marcus: And then, you know, Dharma is there in that last scene when they're sitting in the snow and the snowball fight happens, so it's not even like it's, like.
• 47:51
  Marcus: Beef, like, you know… With a capital B. But yeah, like, Sideshow is definitely… and also,
• 47:59
  Marcus: Blitzen messed him up, like, she, like, you know, after it happened, like, she… she beat him up on the… Oh, yeah, that'.
• 48:04
  Ted: Yeah, because she got the super speed, yeah. Anyway, Stella.
• 48:07
  Marcus: Oh, no, sorry, Donner, I meant Donner. Donner.
• 48:09
  Ted: Okay, yeah, that makes more sense. But yeah, that's… I kind of forgot about all that. I gotta… oh, man, it's been… we missed a couple months in there, listeners. I kind of forgot a lot of what happened before the break.
• 48:20
  Ted: She goes off to figure out what's happening. She has a cool little use of her powers where she, you know.
• 48:26
  Ted: absorbs all the light so nobody can see her sneak in. She uses some x-rays to see through a fake wall, and then, of course, she comes across this dude, the dude who tried to do the experiment the first time, and it turns out he got a little power, so he can turn intangible.
• 48:40
  Ted: And now, he's gonna try to steal all of Stella's powers to get all of her powers, and mess her up completely for good. And also, I gotta say, the coloring in this issue, like…
• 48:52
  Ted: The color is really good. It's the same dude who's been… dude, I actually don't know. The person who's been working with JP Leone, I think, on most of his issues, but it's this lovely painted stuff. There's this effect where Stella's getting all the, like, the pulsar juice sucked out of her.
• 49:06
  Tad Eggleston: She's like this.
• 49:07
  Ted: Kind of pale.
• 49:08
  Tad Eggleston: Everything with Stella in this issue is beautiful.
• 49:11
  Ted: Yeah! Like, the little paint flex starlight effect inside her, like, star body, and now she's, like, getting it all sucked out of her, and she's, like, got surrounded by.
• 49:18
  Tad Eggleston: How about… are you looking at the big, huge compendium right now?
• 49:23
  Ted: I'm actually looking at a different form of it, but I can look up the compendium version of it.
• 49:27
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was… I was just gonna say, on page 710 in that, but I don't know what… what page… there is just a black panel in the middle.
• 49:35
  Ted: Oh, yeah!
• 49:36
  Tad Eggleston: That has the little outline in purple with the stars that just works.
• 49:41
  Ted: Yeah, because it's… you can see that she's walking through it.
• 49:44
  Tad Eggleston: She's got that…
• 49:45
  Ted: outline of purple, and then, like, the little… again, with the little paint fleck color to it, that's really… God, it's beautiful. She's a lovely… it's a lovely character design that…
• 49:56
  Ted: really complements J.P. Leone's
• 49:58
  Ted: excellent and realistic, like, anatomy with, like, the people he works with who do really good, like, inking and coloring. I don't know who inks his stuff, usually, but it's… I really want to give them credit, too, because I know it's a collaborative work, but…
• 50:14
  Ted: Yeah, this issue is gorgeous. Anyway, of course, she's in a bad spot, but then who should show up but Sideshow, having kind of gotten his mojo back?
• 50:22
  Ted: Then decided to be a hero again. He does… he does this great little, like, hero pose where he puts his hands on his hips and turn your death machines off! And, you know, he jumps in, he fights the guy for a while.
• 50:33
  Ted: He discovers he's in… the guy can turn intangible, but while Sideshow is distracting him, Stella figures out how she can get away from him by turning herself into tangible, zipping through the floor.
• 50:42
  Ted: And then once the guy thinks he's won, she just busts out of the floor and breaks everything and reabsorbs her power.
• 50:49
  Ted: Blitzen shows up, because I guess she was here too? Oh, no, she got called in, that's right.
• 50:53
  Ted: I do like that Blitzen trips when she comes in, because she doesn't realize that he's in front of her.
• 50:57
  Ted: And then… and then everything basically just gets cleaned up. And… like…
• 51:07
  Ted: it's… I forget when it's implied
• 51:10
  Ted: But it's implying along the way that, like, the fact that Stella showed up a couple of miles from where she was supposed to be, and an hour or so earlier than she was supposed to be, right where Sideshow was having an episode.
• 51:22
  Ted: means that Dharma was deliberately trying to send her there to convince him to clean up his act.
• 51:27
  Ted: I mean, it seems pretty clear that that's what happened. But along the way, of course, she also decides, you know, as much as I, you know.
• 51:35
  Ted: love my old life, I can't have it back, I want to use my abilities, you know, the world needs heroes, and there's this great shot of her flying above the earth in this final page, and she's got the little sparkles inside her, and…
• 51:47
  Ted: Yeah.
• 51:48
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 51:49
  Ted: this is just a stunningly beautiful issue. It's… it's… like, this and… this and 11…
• 51:53
  Ted: are some of the best side… they're some of the best Shadow Cabinet stuff because they're so focused, as well. They're… they're really about just these characters and their misgivings about the mission of the Shadow Cabinet, and… and how they deal with that, and the decisions they make, and the problems they have.
• 52:09
  Ted: And it's also just.
• 52:10
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 52:10
  Ted: they look amazing, because of course it's JP Leon at its peak, like… Oh, God, yeah.
• 52:16
  Marcus: Well, and I think that's one of…
• 52:19
  Marcus: things that, like, I really love about this series is, you know, it is a lot of characters to keep track of, and…
• 52:26
  Marcus: they don't necessarily take the approach… like, for instance, if you're reading X-Men, some issues might focus more on some characters than others, but for the most part, you're gonna, like, kind of touch on the whole team.
• 52:37
  Marcus: And, you know, but with this, it's kind of like, no, they usually will focus in on…
• 52:42
  Marcus: a few, or maybe even, like, two, and then, like, you'll have, like, in this issue, where Blitzen, like, you know, does come in, but it's not really a Blitzen story. But even with that, like, these little
• 52:55
  Marcus: In a lot of ways, this could not work. It could feel disjointed, you could feel like, well, I don't know who any of these characters are, or what it's about. But you do, you feel like it's, like, gradual, because you're not necessarily seeing everybody, like, in a big cluster.
• 53:10
  Ted: Yeah.
• 53:11
  Marcus: you know… You don't get the big, big names.
• 53:13
  Ted: Patient briefing, or whatever.
• 53:14
  Marcus: Yeah, and in a lot of ways, it makes the series as a whole more compelling, because you kind of, like, really want to come back to be like, oh, who's got the job this time? Like.
• 53:24
  Marcus: I don't know, what little interesting tidbits of their character are we going to get? You know what I mean? Because, like, they do find… even though, like, these books move… I'm sure we've said this before at a pretty quick clip.
• 53:35
  Marcus: They still manage to do, like, little character building with them, or even just giving us little nuggets of who the characters are.
• 53:44
  Ted: Yeah, again, like, that bit about Donner used to be in a neo-Nazi group, you know, Sideshow is doing bad after he quit the cabinet, like…
• 53:51
  Ted: there's tantalizing little bits along the way, and like, again, I keep thinking of the comparison that I made of Stormwatch, which is not actually my favorite series.
• 54:01
  Ted: It's a little too bombastic for my taste, but, like, it did the same thing, where you would have these little missions where it's maybe only one or two guys, or a handful, or whatever, and sometimes it wasn't even about a mission, it was just what they're doing in their spare time, and I like that a lot. I mean, of course, X-Men 2, but, like.
• 54:16
  Ted: the nature of Stormwatch also being, like, a shadowy, quasi-governmental, Not quite benevolent organization.
• 54:25
  Ted: Oh.
• 54:27
  Ted: Yeah, that's… that's…
• 54:28
  Ted: that's, I feel like, a really close comparison for this, but again, I like this a lot more than I like Stormwatch, because I like that they're… they're… they're not part of the UN or whatever, they're not, like… the costumes in Stormwatch are awful, man. Like, those friggin'… with all the bits and, like, the arm guards… I love…
• 54:46
  Marcus: I mean…
• 54:47
  Ted: again, hey, how many times have we praised JP Lee on this episode? But, like, I love how all… how distinct all their costumes look without being… without overlapping or, like, feeling over-designed or anything. I love… I love Sideshow's kind of corny circus strongman suit, because it kind of fits him, you know? And you also don't see it a lot of times, because he's transformed or whatever, but…
• 55:07
  Ted: Anyway, so yeah, this issue just kind of reestablishes, you know, several things that Eleven also did, which is Dharma's powers aren't working totally right, people are questioning his leadership, but at the same time, they realize we're doing good things.
• 55:22
  Ted: What do we do with all this?
• 55:25
  Ted: And it's kind of building towards…
• 55:28
  Ted: I was looking at the numbers, I'm wondering, we don't have a whole lot of issues of shadow cabinet lefts.
• 55:34
  Ted: we're kind of on the later stages of Milestone, and…
• 55:37
  Marcus: Well, when does it end? When does Shadow Covenant end?
• 55:40
  Ted: 17. 17. It is… it then gets… there's a second… there's a series called Heroes, which is a really hard title to Google, but it is just called Heroes, but it's… it's a lot of the same characters.
• 55:53
  Ted: But that's only, like, 6 issues, I think, so… it… it doesn't… yeah, it…
• 56:00
  Ted: This is where it starts getting a little bit depressing for me to think about the fact that, yeah, like.
• 56:05
  Ted: The Milestone universe is already kind of getting packed up, unfortunately, which…
• 56:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, we have at least one whole compendium left.
• 56:13
  Ted: Oh, yeah, no, there's still a lot left, but, like, it's just depressing for me to realize, like, only.
• 56:17
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 56:18
  Ted: Compendium left, man, you know?
• 56:20
  Tad Eggleston: Is it only one?
• 56:21
  Ted: Probably. I haven't done.
• 56:23
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't actually checked, yeah.
• 56:24
  Ted: Yeah, me neither. I wouldn't be surprised if there's only enough for, like, one more issue. Or, compendium. But it's…
• 56:32
  Ted: Yeah, I… I so wanted to see this universe continue. I mean, that's the great tragedy of this podcast series, is like, yeah, this was a great, wonderful, beautiful work.
• 56:42
  Ted: that… I don't know… something else we were talking about before we started recording is, like, I'm wondering…
• 56:50
  Ted: what was the… what was the sort of deciding factor? You know, was it McDuffie leaving? Because McDuffie left, of course, after you… Tad reminded me, he left after 25, sat at 25.
• 57:02
  Ted: But…
• 57:04
  Marcus: Look, it wasn't all that… that was, then they talk about that in the… The documentary that freakin'…
• 57:13
  Marcus: However.
• 57:14
  Ted: Out of all this stuff to not, like,
• 57:17
  Ted: whatever that HBO guy's name, exec guy's… Discovery guy's name is.
• 57:22
  Tad Eggleston: On the bright side, they will be sold soon.
• 57:25
  Tad Eggleston: On the downside.
• 57:26
  Marcus: I don't know.
• 57:28
  Tad Eggleston: We'll bring it back.
• 57:29
  Marcus: Okay, but sorry, I didn't mean to get into a whole streaming thing. What I actually meant was just, in the documentary, they do get into the fact that that…
• 57:39
  Marcus: fights over… over, issued Static Issue 25, it was essentially a culmination, because, like, DC…
• 57:47
  Marcus: had, despite the fact that they'd been like, you guys got complete creative control, blah blah blah, like, they had been, like, you know, editors had been bitching and moaning, and to be honest, it's a great distillation of… you could tell that they weren't reading the books, because it's essentially
• 58:04
  Marcus: just really reminds me of the glass ceiling parakeet metaphor in hardware, you know? Like, because they were… there were definitely some people at DC high up, that just had made up their mind, like, oh, this is annoying, why do they need their own…
• 58:19
  Marcus: blah, blah, blah. Same shit you hear in… anytime Black people do anything together. So, but my point is that that was, like…
• 58:28
  Marcus: it would…
• 58:29
  Marcus: I think the higher-ups started letting things die out, like, after that point, you know what I mean? And like you said, McDuffie left.
• 58:37
  Marcus: So.
• 58:37
  Ted: Yeah, and I have to wonder…
• 58:38
  Marcus: Having a turning point.
• 58:40
  Ted: Yeah, I have to wonder how much of it is money, because also the 90s are not great for comics and comic book stores, necessarily. Like, I don't…
• 58:48
  Ted: I just… yeah, it's a million different factors, obviously, but I don't…
• 58:53
  Marcus: I'm gonna, you know, before next time, I'm gonna watch the sci-fi… on YouTube, sci-fi has, like, a four-part milestone docuseries. I think they get into it ending there as well, but… Okay. So, maybe, maybe I'll have more detailed information next time.
• 59:08
  Ted: I'm wondering whether we should take a,
• 59:11
  Ted: Not a break, but, like, take an episode to talk about…
• 59:17
  Ted: the, the, the, the, like, the history, like, looking at one or more of the documentaries, yeah, so…
• 59:25
  Tad Eggleston: It might be a great thing between…
• 59:29
  Marcus: Compendium.
• 59:30
  Tad Eggleston: We'll always look for things.
• 59:31
  Ted: Yes, actually, that's a good point, is…
• 59:33
  Tad Eggleston: I think that.
• 59:34
  Marcus: Yeah, actually, can I nominate another thing? I think we 100% should do that. I also, that milestone, not Generation, I feel like it's Milestone Forever. It's like a two-issue…
• 59:46
  Marcus: Two 48-page, issues that Dwayne McDuffie did in, like, 2010, and .
• 59:52
  Ted: Yeah.
• 59:53
  Marcus: They're really… I remember really enjoying those, so I don't know if you can find them digitally, but if we can, like, I'd like to read those at some point.
• 1:00:01
  Ted: Yeah, good point, I don't know either. But I… I wonder if… should we then maybe,
• 1:00:06
  Ted: Should we add those to…
• 1:00:11
  Ted: So should that be the next episode we do, is on one or more of the milestone documentaries?
• 1:00:16
  Tad Eggleston: Well, not the next episode, because we've got a ways to go on this. Oh, yeah, in between compendiums. This compendium.
• 1:00:21
  Marcus: Okay.
• 1:00:21
  Tad Eggleston: In between the compendiums.
• 1:00:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, good point.
• 1:00:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I can find out how many episodes we have left in this compa-.
• 1:00:30
  Ted: Yeah, good point. Let's see here, I know we got…
• 1:00:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:00:32
  Ted: So… What's syndicate.
• 1:00:34
  Tad Eggleston: Blood syndicate, and then Cobalt…
• 1:00:38
  Ted: Cobalt.
• 1:00:39
  Ted: Cobalt's on.
• 1:00:40
  Tad Eggleston: And then ICON.
• 1:00:42
  Ted: Oh yeah, water.
• 1:00:43
  Tad Eggleston: Episodes left, unless we want to split up cobalt.
• 1:00:46
  Ted: Yeah, cause that's 7 episodes of Cobalt, wow. No, 8 episodes of Cobalt. Good lord.
• 1:00:51
  Marcus: We could maybe split it, yeah, whatever you guys…
• 1:00:54
  Ted: I don't know, I'm…
• 1:00:54
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, we have 3… we have 3 or 4 episodes left in this compendium, and then I think it would be a great time to…
• 1:01:01
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:01:02
  Tad Eggleston: To look at the documentaries, talk some milestone history.
• 1:01:07
  Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing.
• 1:01:10
  Ted: Yeah, I think that sounds right. But yeah, so for next time, we've got, yeah, Blood's gonna get 24 through 27.
• 1:01:15
  Ted: About which I don't remember,
• 1:01:19
  Ted: I don't remember at all, like, what the…
• 1:01:21
  Ted: what is gonna actually be happening in these issues, we'll have to find out. That's right! I remember some of what happens in these issues! I'm sorry, I was just paging through it, I'm like, oh, that's right, that's some of the nonsense that happens here. Yeah.
• 1:01:34
  Ted: But yeah, I'm… Yeah, I'm looking forward to that nonsense, because I don't remember it, let me say.
• 1:01:40
  Ted: And then…
• 1:01:41
  Marcus: Yeah, I definitely don't remember the big thing.
• 1:01:43
  Ted: It's… We'll find out together.
• 1:01:47
  Marcus: No, I see it, no, I see it. I did look ahead. I know the big…
• 1:01:50
  Ted: Oh, yeah. I don't remember how it plays out at all. I have no clue of, like, what the… anyway. But yeah, I'm really curious, like.
• 1:01:58
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, I'm curious how this is all gonna shake out, obviously, and then we'll… yeah, we'll be on to Volume 4 after that. And then, of course, the Icon stuff, the Icon stuff alone is…
• 1:02:08
  Ted: huge, but yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there.
• 1:02:12
  Ted: But yeah, these are some good issues. These are… these were one…
• 1:02:17
  Ted: Solid, respectable issue, and one really good… two really good issues.
• 1:02:21
  Ted: I think is how those fold out.
• 1:02:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, I mean, JP Leone took those two issues to…
• 1:02:29
  Tad Eggleston: It's just a whole other level.
• 1:02:31
  Ted: I, I, I, while we were talking…
• 1:02:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be brutally honest, like, I mean, because we know Joe, we've been apologizing to Joe.
• 1:02:41
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I think the difference for that middle issue…
• 1:02:45
  Tad Eggleston: Is one part show, and three parts art.
• 1:02:51
  Ted: Yeah, it's not… it's Mike Gustavich, right? It's… it just… it's…
• 1:02:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… and the art's not bad, but, like, the art… the art really…
• 1:03:01
  Tad Eggleston: When you're sandwiched by J.P. Leone doing J.P. Leone stuff.
• 1:03:08
  Ted: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Marcus: Look, it's like the post-Jordan.
• 1:03:11
  Tad Eggleston: And your name…
• 1:03:12
  Marcus: You know what I mean? They had some good years.
• 1:03:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:03:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, no, it's like the middle year.
• 1:03:19
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, well, Jordan was playing baseball. The team was the same.
• 1:03:25
  Ted: That's a good comparison.
• 1:03:27
  Tad Eggleston: Honestly, it might have been Pippin's best years.
• 1:03:32
  Marcus: Yeah, but not to get too basketball, but I will say that, like.
• 1:03:36
  Marcus: That was such a… it was a great team around… built around, like… so I'm literally talking about, like, say, like, I don't know, 20… out of 2004 or something, when there was, like, no, Bulls OGs, you know? Anyway…
• 1:03:52
  Tad Eggleston: And they sucked. This didn't suck.
• 1:03:55
  Marcus: Right, right, right.
• 1:03:57
  Ted: I gotta say, completely out of my depth here, I know nothing about…
• 1:04:01
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not a basketball guy, but I live in Chicagoland.
• 1:04:04
  Marcus: Right, you had to know.
• 1:04:05
  Tad Eggleston: Missed the polls!
• 1:04:07
  Ted: Fair, totally fair.
• 1:04:08
  Marcus: You probably bump into Bill Carbright all the time.
• 1:04:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I have been in the same room with Bill Cartwright.
• 1:04:16
  Marcus: Really? Cool.
• 1:04:19
  Ted: In any case…
• 1:04:21
  Tad Eggleston: Not on purpose, and I didn't speak to him.
• 1:04:26
  Ted: Same, yeah.
• 1:04:29
  Tad Eggleston: But then, if we count Wrigley Field as a room, I've been in the same room as Michael Jordan, too.
• 1:04:35
  Ted: Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.
• 1:04:36
  Marcus: Hmm, okay.
• 1:04:37
  Ted: I don't know if that… I don't… whatever. In any case…
• 1:04:41
  Ted: I am looking forward to whatever is left of Shadow Cabinet. I'm also really looking forward to getting back to Blood Syndicate, because I think Blood Syndicate is also in a really good place, too. Like, I think this is some peak Blood Syndicate stuff, in addition to peak Shadow Cabinet stuff.
• 1:04:54
  Marcus: Yeah, definitely.
• 1:04:56
  Ted: I… I mean, this is… this is honestly… and from what I remember of, like, where Icon is and what happens next with Icon, this is… this is, like, maybe the best stretch of Milestone Comics, kind of right now, where we're at, is in, like… I looked it up, it was, like, May 95, it's, like, mid-1995-ish. This is… Yeah.
• 1:05:13
  Ted: an incredible time for them, because finally all these books have been allowed to hit their stride, and have gotten some of the early hiccups out of the way. And I feel like now we're really, really into the best era of milestone stuff.
• 1:05:27
  Marcus: Yeah, oh yeah, I remember… I very vividly remember these Return of Book Wild issues.
• 1:05:33
  Ted: Oh, yeah, I mean, the icon stuff is… there's, like, there's two different icon things going on at the same time, both of which are really good in really different ways. But, like, yeah, we'll get there when we get there.
• 1:05:45
  Marcus: This is such a great Luke Cage Paradios.
• 1:05:48
  Ted: God, it's… and then the…
• 1:05:50
  Marcus: Early, early Luke Cage, because people have rehabilitated Luke Cage over the years, but like…
• 1:05:55
  Ted: Yeah, this is… this is before he got the rehabilitation. It's… oof, we'll get there when we get there, but yeah, those issues…
• 1:06:03
  Marcus: I just love the idea of…
• 1:06:05
  Marcus: Oh, I'm sorry, I just love the idea of Black creators taking a black character that white.
• 1:06:10
  Marcus: White creators who didn't get it,
• 1:06:14
  Marcus: And just, like, creating this, like, really incisive parody.
• 1:06:17
  Ted: Yes. Yeah, it's… We're in for a ride on those issues.
• 1:06:24
  Ted: In a good way, but still. Oof. Anyway…
• 1:06:29
  Ted: Yeah, I… I'm looking forward to it. So yeah, it's Shadow Cat- er, Blood Syndicate 24 through 27, next time, and then,
• 1:06:38
  Ted: And then, yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Ted: On from there? Cobalt, so forth? Yeah.
• 1:06:43
  Ted: Cool beans.
• 1:06:46
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty.
• 1:06:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well, for the Brothers Anderson, no relation. This has been the Milestone Book Club on 22 panels.
• 1:06:55
  Tad Eggleston: And we will see you after the next pay.