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#14 - OWEN LIKES COMICS (Part 2/2) · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  I've said on my channel before that I consider Secret Wars to be the greatest event comic ever written.
• 0:05
  Wow. And that's not an easy bar to pass.
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  That's putting it ahead of stuff like Final Crisis, which I love ahead of stuff like
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  there's hundreds of good names, Civil War, Secret Invasion.
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  Automating. Yeah, yeah. The lofty heights of 2009's Automating.
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  The known gets the head bitting off in this story. What gives?
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  Oh my god. That's not on the list. That might be a very different list.
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  Hey everyone, I'm Billy and welcome back to Half the Picture.
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  I'm thrilled to say that coming up this episode is part two of my chat with Owen
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  from Owen likes comics. Coming up today in part two of our chat,
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  me and Owen will be diving deep into our fourth and fifth picks of our top five comics.
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  These aren't our five votes for what are the five greatest comics ever made.
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  These are five personal favorite comics. Let's say something about ourselves
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  and I'm really excited to dive into our last two picks of our top five favorite comics.
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  So without further ado, let's roll on part two of my chat with Owen from Owen likes comics.
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  Enjoy. Joining me for part two of our top five comics chat is Owen from Owen likes comics.
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  I just won't leave.
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  We want you back. Come on. I couldn't wait to get part two recording honestly
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  because I had such a good time chatting to you Owen last week going through our first two
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  three picks for our top five comics. So I was very keen to get you back on to talk about
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  comics four and five. So yeah.
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  It felt like a needs must given. We set out to do a top five list and it took us two hours
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  to get through like what three or four books together. Yeah. Yeah. Once we started we just
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  couldn't start. Good way. I think last pick was technically mine because but it was kind of
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  a shared one because we both had chosen Miracle Man. Our Alamo was Miracle Man.
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  Pick four is yours, I want to say. So the stage is yours, sir.
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  Stage yours. Take us away. Take us for your pick, your fourth pick.
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  So if we cast our mind back to a week ago, we kind of set some ground rules for this which was
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  we were only going to pick one book per writer and we were kind of trying to structure them
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  chronologically. And so just looking at my list to be familiarized myself just as much as the
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  viewers, I brought up Ultimate Spider-Man from 2000 by Bendison Bagley and Darwin Cook's new
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  frontier from 2004 and I'll start Superman from 2005 by Morrison and quite like. And sticking
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  with this theme, we are we're now moving into the Halcyon era of the 2010s and we're going to
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  new 52 DC which depending on who you ask can either be a really good period or a really bad period.
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  I don't think I've ever met anyone that's like neutral on the new 52.
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  Everyone has an opinion on it and I think I guess it just depends what characters you like and how
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  badly they were assassinated during that era. But there's one character I think most people
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  can agree on how a pretty great new 52 got and that's Batman and specifically I wanted to talk
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  about the main just flagship Batman run from 2011 to 2016 by the team of Scott Snyder and Greg
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  Capula. Great pick, great pick. So to give a kind of a little bit of context, I've been reading
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  comics for in and out for most of the 2000s but kind of by this period I don't know if I'd
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  completely fell off but I'd kind of moved into other hobbies and interests and it wasn't
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  called to be reading comics in high school in 2011. So I'd kind of moved on to two other
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  niches a little bit more. I was still kind of keeping myself in the loop and obviously by 2011
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  superhero movies were starting to become a bigger kind of thing in pop culture but I was more
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  interested in those and I think I was in like graphic novels and keeping up with the books.
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  And then the new 52 happens where DC kind of reset their kids reset their continuity and it's a
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  really like easy jumping on point for people to either get back into DC or to get into reading
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  comics for the first time and I know lots of friends and I know lots of other people in this space
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  that that was their entry point into regularly buying and reading comics was that early new 52
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  period and it kind of like coached me back in a little bit and the book that like really grabbed
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  to me was those first few issues of Scott Snyder and Greta Puller's Batman with the Court of
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  Owls storyline. Batman has a pretty incredible rogue's gallery as it is. There's so many great
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  villains in his catalog but to come up with something entirely new that hadn't been seen before
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  like the Court of Owls it just gave this run like not only a really fresh and distinct feel about
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  it but it made it must read because you know I've read a million great stories with the Joker
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  and you kind of have an idea of how a great Joker story is going to go saying with two-faced
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  riddler Mr. Freeze Poison Ivy Bane but the Court of Owls was something so unpredictable I remember
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  reading an issue to issue having no clue where it was going to go or how Batman was going to get
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  out of this mess or there's that great issue where Batman's in the mazes in the lab rinse and the
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  comic is like contorting itself and turning it on its side you've got to read the book upside down
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  and I just remember my mind being blown and I think for my money Scott Snyder probably is the
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  best modern Batman writer I think I would pretty much there is as the best Batman writer of the 21st
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  century and that's down to that's down to the quality of this run that's down to some other
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  Batman stuff he's written in between and also the the current absolute Batman series that he's
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  writing that I just think is Stella but this run here was a real thing of like I'm back in I'm
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  reading comics I'm buying comics any kind of wavering sentiments I had are gone I'm fully back in
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  and looking back at this so I did a video like a big retrospective on this one a couple of years ago
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  and there's so many great story arcs in it the Court of Owls is the one that kind of everyone
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  remembers and the one that people keep like begging to be put in in the next Robert Pions and
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  moving but you've got stories like death of the family like I remember when they released that
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  first teaser for that arc and you have the like the Joker in the shadows with his cut off face just
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  being one of those horrifying things I've ever seen and Greg Poulos are in that is the way that
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  Joker's face gets progressively like more botting and decomposing is so gross and but it's also very
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  meta story that's like tackling the history of Batman so if you're someone that jumped in with
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  Corvals this run really gets you up to speed with the history of Batman and all the Robbins and
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  the Battle Family and then you've got one of my personal favorites a story that I really came
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  around on in the years since was zero year a book that we easily could have included on this list
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  is Batman Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzakelli one of the old time great comics ever
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  published and and for my money the perfect origin story comic for any character like if you're
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  gonna tell a character's origin story that is that's the Bible and the blueprint and when zero year
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  came out I almost kind of rejected it a little bit because one how dare you try and replace
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  Year One with a new origin story and also this is just not bad and in the years since I've really
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  come to love that story because it's intentionally not that I read a great interview with Scott Snyder
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  where he talked about I can't do Year One better than Miller and Mazzakelli did they are masters
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  so if I'm gonna do my own early years Batman story I'm gonna intentionally take every other choice
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  so whatever Miller decides to do I'm gonna do wherever Miller goes left I'll go right
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  so Year One is short it's poor issues it's gritty it's grounded it's neo noir it's Mazzakelli with
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  these very muted colors and pencils so zero year is 12 issues long it ran for an entire year
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  it's like a 200 million dollar like Roland Emmerich like Zack Snyder's Azaster movie it's
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  bright it's technical or it's fantastical so it's trying to do everything that Year One isn't
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  and trying to do the opposite choice and yet I think those two books work really complimentary
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  together because it shows the variety of great Batman stories the Batman can be Year One but can
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  also be zero yet and even getting to the end of this one I think the part of the run that everyone
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  kind of forgets or doesn't really care for was the like the weird era where Jim Gordon became
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  Batman for a bit well okay I mean I confess I actually haven't read zero yet so this is all
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  very interesting to me but wait hold on Jim Gordon becomes Batman at one point yes so after zero
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  year the do a story called Batman end game where it essentially ends with the Batman and the
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  Joker seemingly dying and the final chapter of Snyder and Capulos arc is centered around Bruce Wayne
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  is missing and we find out he has amnesia essentially and he he's found by Alfred and Alfred just
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  chooses not to tell him that he's Batman so he's just like living a civilian life and the police
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  set up it's own like government sanctioned Batman program and Jim Gordon has to run it
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  essentially and a lot of people don't really care for this story because it's bizarre and mental
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  that Commissioner Gordon is Batman how's he going to fit that mustache in the cow or what I like
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  about it is that's also kind of the point of that arc is that how mental and weird it is that
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  I'm Batman this feels wrong I shouldn't be doing it however there's arguably no one who knows
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  Batman better than Commissioner Gordon they probably have the longest running relationship out of
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  Batman and anyone in the DC universe going back to year one so it makes sense that he is the one
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  that steps up and essentially tries to fill the void because he knows more than anyone what Batman
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  means to the city and there's a great moment and it's it gets very fantastical and very grand
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  Morrison A where it ends with it's revealed that Bruce has a machine in the back computer that
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  can essentially like you know when you restore a back up on an iPhone we can basically basically
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  does that with his brain and like restores like his memories up until like a month before he's
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  accident and suddenly like remembers he's Batman again and there's a great moment at the end that
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  I think about a lot were Gordon is fighting so there's this new villain in in that art cognizant
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  Bloom who's like this giant plants lend a man creature and Gordon's having a really rough time
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  with him in the fighting on like the GCPD building and Bruce in the suit for like the first time in
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  like six or eight issues jumps down and lands on the bat signal and he's watching Gordon like being
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  strangled by this monster and he says hey Jim who died and made you Batman and it's I think like
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  there's a lot of arguments about what the best part of that run is but like Stadron Campulo ran
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  for 50-something issues and it's such a varied every storyline is different it's totally different
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  stylistically different it's thematically different but it's a perfect crash course on modern
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  Batman it's well got me back into reading the character regularly what got me back into comic
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  shops very regularly because I I'd heard about this run I went and I think I bought the trade of
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  the Court of Owls and then it was like right I I'd like this I need more of this this is form
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  this is no I've pretty I don't think I've took a break since 2011 so for the last like 15 or so
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  years I've been I've been locked in and I think that is partly down to Scott Snyder and Greg
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  Capulo's Batman amazing well I confess I have so I have read Parliament of Owls and I have no
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  Court of Owls and I have read a death of the family when they first came out I remember when
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  the trades first came out I remember they're coming out and I like you I very much remember the
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  image of the Joker's you know how well that to start with the face you know the missing face
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  and I remember reading that and thinking it was a really good because as you say like these characters
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  have been going for so long at this point it's like how many great sort of I think it's hard
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  much harder these days to do like a great original Batman story or a Joker story because so many
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  have been done and as you say you mentioned some of them just there like like year one especially
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  Miller's work is is I is seminal and I remember reading it and thinking like no you know I remember
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  being impressed by how I felt Snyder had managed to actually ring some more juice out of you know
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  that orange or get some more blood from that stone because it was yeah it takes all at this point
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  like Batman's been around for over 80 years it takes a lot to do something that genuinely feels new
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  and I think that Snyder more so than anyone in a modern context has managed to find new avenues
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  and new ways to explore Batman both in in this run here and also in like I'd be remiss not to talk
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  about the absolute Batman series that's coming out now which is such a a fresh take on the character
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  that is not a book I ever expected I would like if you just kind of explained it to me but reading
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  it month to month it's one of my favorite things out right now and I think it really does cement
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  him as kind of an all-time great Batman writer. No I'd be curious to read it because as I say I've read
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  those first sort of couple of volumes of his Batman room at the new 52 and also I do I do like
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  American vampire which I remember reading at the time so um which I know is his stuff so I'll
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  I'll have to check that out like so these chats are great because it's just you just I'm just
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  getting more and more recommendations for a for great comments. I believe at the time that we're
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  recording this the trade for volume one of absolutely Batman just came out in the last month
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  so the first six issues have been collected so that's a pretty good place to start I will say with
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  absolute it's a pretty different take on Batman I don't know how kind of familiar are with the
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  concept but it's a much more like working class Batman the whole idea is traditionally Batman is
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  like a symbol of order and status quo when he's fighting against characters like the Joker that are
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  these very empty establishment figures it's a complete inverse of this world like Batman is this
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  almost like working class anarchist fighting against a corrupt system there's almost like a weird
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  it's strange like I'm always trying to figure out what I think the influencers are there's a little
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  bit of judge dread in there there's a little bit of I get little hints of like Morrison's action
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  comic Superman where it's kind of this young idealistic kid like fighting against a system it's
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  really it's really good but I've been interested here your thoughts on it it sounds really good
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  interesting I have to check it out because with the new 52 uh my I think I read I've read the
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  new 52 act command when it came out I remember reading Snyder some of Snyder's Batman and a few
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  bits and bobs here and there but for me it was as you say you mentioned action comics it was action
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  comics for me all the way Morrison and it's interesting that you say so in European Snyder is the
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  the great 21st century Batman writer it's not like Morrison say or I would say Snyder and I love
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  grants like mid 2000s Batman we run everything from from the Damien story through RIP through the kind
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  of Dick Grayson Batman era all the way up to Batman in can I think that's a really really great
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  bro however I think the way I will categorize it is my favorite Scott Snyder work is when he's
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  writing Batman as much as I love grants Batman I don't think I would put Batman up there with
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  my favorite Grant Morrison comics just because there's so many other ones you could pick like I've
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  been bumping off the invisibles or zenith or doom patrol or animal man or yeah there's a real
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  who's who yeah I agree I think the thing with Morrison's Batman is that it's so big it's so epic
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  and it runs for so many years that they're really and and each sort of uh volume of that really
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  is almost it so in many ways it's own story it's own sort of consolidated story so you could pick
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  like what do you take the whole run or do you take like like for me like I think RIP is my favorite
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  part of that run but I also love the day the you know Batman and Robin stuff with Dick Grayson and
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  Damien and and actually I was I actually have been rereading Morrison's Batman recently and I really
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  I actually really enjoyed the return of Bruce Wayne like way more than I remember doing when I
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  first read it and in fact I actually found some elements of that really emotional actually really
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  like particularly the last issue where Bruce actually returns spoiler alert you know he returns
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  through his sort of time travel adventures and returns to the present date DC universe present day
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  and I actually found that very emotional which I um and I think that's that's a trick that like
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  some of the great sort of writers like of Batman and those characters like Morrison and Snyder as well
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  can you know yeah you can ring that juice out of that orange and also you can make it actually
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  hit home emotionally which uh I wish I don't find happens every day in sort of comics for me
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  anyway like I don't always tell myself emotionally like properly moved by some of the mainstream
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  yeah absolutely I think that like those two are for me quite comfortably the best modern runs
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  and I don't think there's like an objective rung answer whether you're picking Snyder or
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  Omora so I think both are great and the fact that one pretty much led into the other means that
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  like that was a great decade of Batman comics from like 2005 to like 2016 you've got
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  grant run you've got Scott doing detective where you get stuff like the black mirror which is also
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  an amazing story you get the little Tony Daniel running between and then you go into new 52 and
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  it's pretty and even like when the new 52 stars like grant still kind of finishing up Batman ink
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  you've got Batman eternal you've got uh the Pete Tomassie Batman and Robin book like it's a pretty
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  great time for it was pretty much a great solid decade of Batman stories yeah I remember that when
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  when Morrison was wrapping up ink and it was kind of overlapping with the 52 it was kind of the
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  older regime sort of handing off to new regime I remember that it'd be it was weird like yeah
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  reading like action comics and then like touch picking up a bit of Snyder stuff and then
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  picking up incorporating and going right back into it's like Damien and all and all that sort of
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  pre new 52 stuff keeping track of all that I'm really curious at some point to go back and read
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  the Batman ink stuff specifically um because that's probably the part of grants run that I'm
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  the least I go back to the least but I think the concept of Batman Incorporated is such a
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  fun and unique idea and I do feel like it was slightly yeah I kind of had its legs cut under it
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  by the new 52 reboot I would have loved to have known if it had just gone on naturally like what
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  grants long term plans was for that concept but I should go back and and reread that entire story
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  arc at some point so should we move on to my fourth pick absolutely cool oh one thing to say before
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  that we're going to my fourth pick so last week on the on the pod let them the part one your second
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  pick DC the new frontier the Darwin cook comic you did such a great job of basically selling me
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  that comic that I was like I've got a I think I even said on the on the episode like right I've
• 18:49
  got to check this out this sounds amazing which I promptly did you can see this here this is my
• 18:54
  copy compact comics and as I was saying before we start recording like I'm already halfway through
• 18:59
  you can see there more than halfway through and it's really good it's really really good so that
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  was a very good recommendation thank you thank you I'm I'm taking that as as living proof that I am
• 19:11
  I won't have good taste until decent recommending books to people so I will take that thank you
• 19:17
  no you're welcome right so I hold I hold heart at the concur because and I can and reading it actually
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  I can see I mean we'll I'll just to say it briefly I can see why because we talked about the
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  DC picking Darwin for Darwin cook for minute men before watchmen and I think you can definitely
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  see why when you read this because not just because the artwork is staggering but also because
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  his take on the politics of like you know 50s eyes and how America and mix in that with the sort of
• 19:43
  classic silver age DC universe is just is really really you know it's quite inspired to be honest
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  he did a really really good job and again like a surprise like you know like you was like we were
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  saying before like these characters have been around for so long like you know you can still get
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  juice out of that orange you know you can still make great stories and so and yeah no so I'm really
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  impressed I'll I'll have to finish it and I'll let you know what I want my final thoughts are but
• 20:05
  so far so good please don't one thing I'll say about the new frontier because you mentioned
• 20:10
  minute man I always think of the new frontier as a bit of a response and a companion piece to watchman
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  because he said he's very much playing in that area of like the relationship between superheroes
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  and the cold war and real world politics and obviously it's set you know it leads up to like the
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  Kennedy era so it's just kind of looking at a different time period but I always read it as a kind
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  of more optimistic and hopeful response to watchman where watchman is kind of steeped in sort of
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  more I think right and kind of understandable cynicism of the late 80s cork is kind of looking
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  back at like the kind of forties and fifties is this more kind of idyllic period it's kind
• 20:51
  of similar to what way doesn't kingdom come I suppose a little bit yeah now I would agree I was
• 20:55
  thinking about watchman when I was read when I've been reading it in terms of like yeah the the
• 20:59
  politics of it and the and but but in a sense it's also I thought it was a really nice hybrid in a
• 21:04
  way of what we said last week about like Moore's approach and Morrison's approach where Morrison is
• 21:07
  affirmative and Moore is deconstructive you've got the sequences of like putting these characters in
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  very much real world scenarios so like putting Superman and Wonder Woman in the Vietnam war
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  and how they would actually deal with that and how it shades of gray it's not like a white there
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  like some of the stuff that Diana gets up to but yeah also it's told by it's a story told by someone
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  who has a deep look clearly to me seems to have a deep love for these characters and is not interested
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  in totally breaking them down it's more like no these characters are great but let's see what if we
• 21:38
  can do something that's a bit more interesting and a bit more not as full-on postmodern as watchman
• 21:42
  but yeah it's like we can put them in a more sort of interesting out of context it reminded me
• 21:46
  I think this is probably maybe a lazy comparison but it reminded me a bit of Brad Bird in that sense
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  like quite no way yeah I can see that so for a family audience like anyone can pick up and read this
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  yeah I can definitely see the Brad Bird similarities I didn't thought about it that way but absolutely
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  yeah and I think even artistically there's a sort of visually there's a sort of
• 22:05
  kind of yeah that very kind of like I would miss mid-century futurism a lot of birds movies have
• 22:11
  yeah yeah there's definitely like a stylistic similarity there and it's interesting that it came
• 22:17
  out the same year as the Incredibles just you know it's interesting parallel there so I guess
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  sticking with the chronological sort of pattern the rhythm that we've set up here so going
• 22:27
  through them chronologically my fourth pick and I'd be curious to know if you've if you've made
• 22:31
  with this one or is Brian Tarbolts Alice in Sunderland sorry sorry not Alice in Sunderland very
• 22:40
  specifically yeah well I'm going to be brutally honest I'm not I've heard of it and I know
• 22:45
  of Brian Tarbolts but I'm never I've never read it and I don't know a huge great deal about it I'm
• 22:50
  I'm excited to learn yeah well it's a yeah it's a really it's a fat completely bonkers fascinating
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  comic to be honest because and it's quite unlike any of the comics I had on my list which were
• 23:02
  just a recap were Batman Arkham Asylum Miracle Man Ditko's Doctor Strange and then the the
• 23:09
  upcoming fifth pick it's kind of a perfect hybrid of about five different genres it's basically
• 23:15
  Brian Tarbolts who for anyone who's not familiar with him is like one of the godfathers of
• 23:20
  British comics and in many ways maybe even one of the sort of pivotal figures in Western comics
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  because he arguably he's sort of one of I guess his biggest claim to fame is that he kind of
• 23:30
  it's always invented the graphic novel with the adventures of Lufar Arkwright which was this
• 23:34
  sort of first big big big break into comics in the 70s and 80s and then Alison Sunderland what
• 23:40
  he did like 20 years later in 2007 he he puts together this comic which is essentially a sort of
• 23:46
  psycho geographic exploration of the town of Sunsunderland where he lives and cross sort of
• 23:53
  referencing it with Lewis Carroll and Alison Wunderland and exploring basically the links between
• 23:58
  Sunderland the city and Alison Wunderland the the book and also just the sort of the the idea
• 24:05
  of of Alison Sunderland Alison Wunderland and also its history so he goes into how Lewis Carroll
• 24:11
  was very much familiar with Sunderland had a lot of holidays there as a child was very familiar with
• 24:16
  it loved it and then that sort of the influence that had in sort of seeping into his imagination as a
• 24:22
  child growing up and then as an adult when he was obviously a professor of maps and then writing
• 24:28
  Alison Wunderland for his niece I want to say Alice and so it's but also on top so that alone kind
• 24:35
  of gives you an idea of like this is kind of a very sort of weird mix of like whimsy and also very sort
• 24:41
  of quite gritty but very well researched sort of Norveeastern English history and then quite
• 24:49
  similar I guess in some ways to what Alan Moore did later with Jerusalem you know his pros and
• 24:53
  other way basically sort of broke down the entirety of sort of in some ways of life and the
• 24:58
  universe and everything to Northampton like Brian was kind of doing a similar thing with Sunderland
• 25:03
  in this but also on top of that he's telling the story of his own life it's kind of part memoir
• 25:09
  and his own relationship to Alison Wunderland and Sunderland and his own career I hear myself saying
• 25:14
  all this but then I guess a question is how does it read and one of the fascinating things about how
• 25:19
  it reads is that it plays so he said he has this device it's a very free actual comic he has this
• 25:24
  device of of him of Brian himself as the author being on stage telling this man he has this one sort
• 25:30
  of character who's kind of the read supposed to be the reader in the audience of this great
• 25:34
  Sunderland picture out Sunderland Empire which is a real sort of theater and he's telling the story
• 25:39
  of Alice Lewis Carroll and Sunderland to this guy in the audience but then you have all these layers
• 25:45
  of meta fiction it's actually you sort of go about some of the stuff we talked about
• 25:48
  with Grant Morrison's work like it's very postmodern how you have these various layers of reality
• 25:53
  of like Brian telling this story very directly from you know his own perspective to the reader
• 25:58
  but then also going into Lewis Carroll's world then going into sort of the history the sort of
• 26:03
  checkered history of Sunderland and it's just it's like I say it's completely bonkers but it is
• 26:08
  far as like a feat of storytelling in the rock and comic storytelling it's totally totally unique
• 26:14
  it's funny it sort of marries up this sort of amazing mix of high brow culture of like Lewis Carroll
• 26:21
  you know and that sort of Oxford scene of literature and sort of that that whole scene of Victorian
• 26:27
  era literature and also it marries that up with this very low brow quote unquote low brow working
• 26:32
  class English you know like carry on films and sort of like mac and culture and all this and it
• 26:39
  sort of brings these things to that Brian obviously is very familiar with the loves and he brings all
• 26:43
  these things together into this one sort of smorgasbord it's it genuinely is like smorgasbord is
• 26:49
  like the best word to describe it and it also sums up kind of it manages to sort of sum up life
• 26:53
  and death as well he talks about his own family and his own grandparents and how he was raised
• 26:58
  in and and the influence that had on him and the sort of turn of the wheel of light life and death he
• 27:03
  talks about his grandchildren and he kind of sort of sums up everything it is possible to sum up
• 27:08
  but in the context of this this this idea of like what if we look at Alice in Wonderland but from
• 27:13
  the point of view of of that it was sort of born in the streets and in the sort of countryside of
• 27:18
  the northeast and in Sunderland has all these different layers and it does so much but it's a
• 27:22
  but it is a comic that is ultimately it's entertaining and it's called Alice in Sunderland an
• 27:27
  entertainment but it is also very educational and it and it has all these amazing stories and facts
• 27:32
  about Sunderland and Alice in Wonderland it you know as a story and you know the behind the scenes
• 27:37
  of them of the of Lewis Carroll's you know writing of that book but also and the but also the
• 27:42
  influences of Alice in Wonderland on 2020 from 21st century pop culture too from the Beatles
• 27:48
  fruits of cinema and Disney and all that stuff it kind of he manages to sort of encapsulate
• 27:52
  everything in a single text and it is remarkable on that and it manages to be funny and sort of
• 27:58
  moving and whimsical and scabious as well it's like a preel proper gonzo trip of a book but all
• 28:06
  it's a gonzo trip of a book but with the sort of acumen of of a great academic at the same time
• 28:11
  like a work like a great comic story teller and a great academic so no it's it's great it's one
• 28:16
  of my faves I feel like you've really ticked a lot of the boxes of things I'm into like as someone
• 28:23
  from the UK from an academic background as soon as you mentioned psychogiography I was like okay
• 28:29
  this is interesting that sounds like such a cool book I'm really shocked that I've not I've
• 28:34
  not already read it because that sounds so up my street I think that like the melding of the
• 28:40
  retelling of Alice in Wonderland doing this kind of psychology graphical study of his region but
• 28:44
  also making something that's kind of autobiographical is such a cool combination it's also really
• 28:51
  interesting that two of your five books are Alice in Wonderland inspired so I don't know what that says
• 28:56
  about your relationship with Lewis Carroll but I think it's a very interesting thing that both this
• 29:01
  and Arkham are like playing in that sandbox with that iconography a little bit. Totally I was
• 29:06
  going to mention that there is a real strong Lewis Carroll connection to both of those books and
• 29:10
  they actually are quite similar in terms of like they really do go their books that go through
• 29:14
  the looking glass they don't mess about they really and they sort of till reality on it on
• 29:19
  that on its head they're constantly some versing themselves but in a way that's really they're
• 29:22
  really works it's really playful but also just it sucks you in there's no you do literally go down
• 29:28
  the rabbit hole and and even Scott McLeod the great Scott McLeod one of the great sort of
• 29:32
  scholars on comics makes an appearance in this like there's a whole segment where Brian has a
• 29:36
  kind of vision of Scott McLeod and it's and it's hilarious but it's also fantastic it's
• 29:41
  like I said I can't recommend this book enough I mean and it's interesting because we mentioned
• 29:45
  before like I think quite a few of our comics are British are from British creators and this is
• 29:50
  you know this I think of Alice in Sunderland is maybe being the most along with Miracle Man maybe
• 29:55
  as being the most quintessentially British of my list and Brian Brian's very much a working class
• 30:00
  sort of creative and his voice and his experience is growing up in the North and Wiggin and then in
• 30:05
  Sunderland really comes through and it's just yeah and I remember this comic being around a lot
• 30:10
  when I was a kid actually because it was it was one of the ones that would always be on the shelves
• 30:14
  in the library when I would go to library and it was just always and it always just looked I mean it's
• 30:17
  a great looking book you know it's it looks gray it's a proper you know tome and I was like oh
• 30:22
  this looks interesting and I remember picking it up and and actually I love I love Brian's work
• 30:27
  in general I mean and actually you fingers crossed we should be getting Brian on the podcast soon
• 30:32
  to talk about he's got a prequel to Granville his Granville series coming out and he's done
• 30:36
  so much great stuff likely for our cry obviously but also one bad rat is great I would recommend
• 30:41
  all of his work and he even worked he's he's done some sporadic work in the mainstream he did
• 30:45
  some work on Batman he did some work on Sam Man in the in the 90s and he did and Granville was
• 30:51
  kind of his big sort of I guess his big sort of explosive it's like an action steampunk comic
• 30:56
  with anthropomorph animals like it's it's pretty amazing but Alice in Sunderland for me really is
• 31:01
  like the if you eat one it's like for me it's got to be Alice in Sunderland because it kind of
• 31:05
  encapsulates everything and visually like he's such a great artist like just and just to say on that
• 31:10
  briefly like he's because he is interesting how for a guy who has been around for so long he would
• 31:15
  and we've I think we've touched on this before like the Norties traditions of comics like he's
• 31:20
  he's not at all sort of sniffy about sort of playing with what's going on at the moment in
• 31:24
  terms of what's in style in fashion at the time so obviously in the Norties I think we talked about
• 31:29
  in episode one we the add the the ultimate Sennel to put Spider-Man and the authority which is very
• 31:33
  much like widescreen comics with black infills between the panels and all that stuff and it's very
• 31:38
  much sort of modern and not classical comic book sort of layouts and style but but he approximates
• 31:44
  that he does his own version of that in this and in very much more in Granville which is also great
• 31:49
  I would recommend as I say that the prequel to that's coming out soon so now Alice in Sunderland I think
• 31:54
  is is absolutely one of my all-time favorites and I would recommend it honestly this is my I guess
• 31:59
  of the mall this is of all my five picks I think it's the one that people most people might be the
• 32:02
  least familiar with so I think it's the one that I would recommend the the most loudly of the five is
• 32:08
  like check out Alice in Sunderland because it's really it's something else yeah I mean like as someone
• 32:13
  that you know obviously it's familiar it's over and as heard of this book it's but haven't actually
• 32:18
  read it you've done an incredible job of selling me I'm itching to once we get out of this cold
• 32:24
  to go on Amazon and see if I can like get this to come tomorrow that sounds genuinely that sounds
• 32:29
  brilliant and so my kind of thing that I'm honestly a little bit embarrassed I haven't already read it
• 32:35
  and I wasn't the cool one putting it on my list well it's me that's how I've been feeling with
• 32:41
  a couple of your picks and the best possible way like and as you say if I can if you can recommend
• 32:45
  me a great comic I hope I can just I hope I can do the same because like obviously you did
• 32:49
  with DC you need for it so please like you know and I'd be curious to know what you think of it
• 32:53
  because it's such a sort of potent it's a it's a real sort of post like heady sort of mix but it
• 32:59
  is also very accessible it's very accessible it's very funny it's it's got like every everyone
• 33:04
  from Lewis Carroll to George Formby is like a character in this comic like and like Sid James
• 33:10
  in all those guys it's great that's a that sounds great I can't wait to read it and I would let
• 33:14
  you know what I think so okay that brings us so quite nicely onto our both of our respective last
• 33:19
  picks I want to say yeah do you want me to go first let's hear it so okay so my last pick is
• 33:27
  kind of interesting one and in some ways I feel like I've gone for a lot of basic bitch options
• 33:33
  in some ways I feel like there's a really good reason for why this is on my list and I will
• 33:40
  just tell you what it is first and then I will kind of explain a bit of why it's here and what it
• 33:43
  means today so sticking with the theme of kind of very modern leaning books and we could have done
• 33:49
  a whole episode on books and the 80s or the 90s or even books in the 50s and we're given that this
• 33:55
  is kind of about my personal journey with comics I've gone with mostly of not exclusively 21st
• 34:01
  century stuff and this is the technically it's the most recent of the of the list and this is now
• 34:09
  a book that's 10 years old which oh I could feel my knees crack when I say that and this is from
• 34:17
  a writer that we've not talked about yet but is one of my favorite cornday comic book writers Jonathan
• 34:21
  Heckman beautifully illustrated by the legendary Assad Rubik this is Secret Wars in 2015
• 34:29
  oh yes which I haven't read confession time but I remember it coming out I remember how big a deal
• 34:33
  it was a big deal so obviously for anyone that's kind of in the comics world secret wars will
• 34:40
  be a name that you're pretty familiar with not just because there's like a movie coming out soon
• 34:45
  called it and secret was was the name of a toy line and subsequent comic crossover the
• 34:51
  Marvel published in the mid 1980s they did a line of action figures called Marvel superhero secret
• 34:56
  wars and to help sell these toys they kind of just cobbled together an event in the comics with all
• 35:03
  of the characters that the toy line was going to feature the plot of the original comic let the
• 35:08
  original secret wars stuff in the 80s is fun but it's not groundbreaking like it was coming out
• 35:13
  at around a similar time to crisis on infinite earth and one of them is much more kind of
• 35:18
  headier and more modern than the other you know secret wars is about an alien dude called the
• 35:24
  beyonder takes I think like ten heroes from the Marvel universe and ten villains puts them on a
• 35:31
  planet he's made and they have to fight to determine whether good is stronger than evil it's a pretty
• 35:36
  flimsy plot but it's a fun book like it's one of the first times you see like Spider-Man and the
• 35:42
  Fantastic Four and the X-Men and the Avengers all on the same page and the same with the villains
• 35:47
  seeing like Galactus and Spider-Man villains and Magneto all kind of working together the most
• 35:54
  famous thing to come at the original secret wars is that was where Spider-Man got the the black
• 35:57
  symbiote costume for the first time he gets that on battle world and brings it home and then
• 36:02
  so it's kind of important in that regard that it's like you don't get venom without secret wars
• 36:07
  but outside of that it's a pretty surface level fun but not super memorable story lot
• 36:13
  flash forward 20 years later Jonathan Hickman is kind of rising through the ranks as the next big
• 36:19
  Marvel writer we talked about Bendis at the start of this show kind of being the definitive Marvel
• 36:23
  writer of the 2000s for my money I would say Hickman might be the definitive Marvel writer of the
• 36:29
  2010s and there's a lot of Hickman books that I love that I could have included I could have
• 36:33
  talked about his run on the ultimate since 2012 where he creates he takes the character of ultimate
• 36:39
  read Richards who kind of been left in a bit of a bad place and reintroduces him as the ultimate's
• 36:44
  biggest villain called the maker who is probably one of the biggest like original creations come at
• 36:50
  a Marvel since Miles Morales I could have talked about yeah yeah I could have talked about Hickman's
• 36:56
  like four three four year run on the fantastic four which was a real like incredible series for me
• 37:04
  why I bought religiously at the time I could have talked about his Avengers role and storylines
• 37:08
  I can finity are amazing and even like more recently what Hickman's done with the ultimate the
• 37:14
  new ultimate universe with ultimate spider man and Hickman's and create this got a ton of amazing
• 37:18
  creative own work as well if anyone's looking for recommendations go and read the black Monday
• 37:24
  murders and east of west and the Manhattan project because they are some of my favorite comics
• 37:29
  but I've gone with secret wars and I kind of explain why so I I've said on my channel before that I
• 37:37
  consider secret wars to be the greatest event comic ever written wow and that's not a easy bar
• 37:44
  to pass that's putting it ahead of stuff like final crisis which I love ahead of stuff like
• 37:51
  yeah there's hundreds you could name civil war secret invasion
• 37:55
  or ultimatum oh yeah yeah the lofty heights of 2009's ultimatum and no one gets the head
• 38:03
  bit in off in this story what gives oh my god that's not on the list that's that might be
• 38:08
  a very different list and the secret was to see who was kind of like the culmination of Hickman's
• 38:14
  entire work at Marvel it builds off themes and ideas established in his fantastic four run from
• 38:19
  the late 2000's and then throughout his like six year run on Avengers and new Avengers it introduces
• 38:26
  the idea of incursions and this kind of like ticking time bomb with the multiverse destruction
• 38:31
  and at the end of his Avengers run all of reality is destroyed and that leads into this book where
• 38:36
  we discover that Victor Vondom has basically stolen the power of the gods and pieced together
• 38:43
  like the surviving fragments of different realities and created this like patchwork world
• 38:49
  called battle world and it essentially is like this this game of thrones Tolkien style feudal kingdom
• 38:57
  where different nation states and different kingdoms are different realities from the Marvel
• 39:03
  universe so there is like an old man Logan corner of the world there is a planet Hulk corner of
• 39:10
  the world there is a corner of the world where it's the Marvel universe but if it was the Wild West
• 39:15
  so it's this great like Frankenstein of different continuities and at the crux of it you have the
• 39:21
  the main plotline of the series which is God Emperor Dune as he's called in the book because Jonathan
• 39:27
  Hickman is a huge Frank Herbert nerd and that was an intentional thing that he wanted to call him God
• 39:32
  Emperor Dune and he runs this makeshift planet and he's the only one that knows what the world
• 39:39
  was originally everyone else just that is the world that they've all they've always known
• 39:45
  and you have in the end of issue one you have a ship crashes on battle world and it's a group of
• 39:50
  heroes that had survived the final incursion so in the in the first issue of secret world as you
• 39:56
  see read Richards and fantastic for build a life raft and it's like Spider-Man and a couple of the
• 40:02
  X-Men the Avengers like ten or so heroes build this ship and they venture through a black hole and
• 40:08
  they crash land on this planet and they are the only ones that know that this is not how reality is
• 40:14
  supposed to be and it then becomes in this very grand and enormous cosmic setting it becomes this
• 40:21
  very personal story of read Richards versus Doctor Doom and it's a battle of ideology it's a battle
• 40:28
  of intellect and it's a battle of which of these two men is going to shape the future of the
• 40:32
  Marvel universe and I love that because I am a huge fantastic foreigner they are my favorite
• 40:39
  team in all of comics and read Richards especially as a character that I deeply adore and and
• 40:44
  Doctor Doom is like the coolest villain ever oh yeah absolutely but the Marvel universe as we know
• 40:50
  obviously Marvel in some forms been around since the 30s but I think most historians would agree
• 40:54
  that the Marvel universe trademark begins in 1961 with the fantastic for issue one that is the
• 41:01
  thing that cake started not only the company's kind of resurgence in pop culture but also like
• 41:06
  this idea of a living breathing interconnected universe comes from that if the fantastic for is
• 41:12
  in a hit you don't get Spider-Man you don't get the Avengers you don't get the X-Men Captain
• 41:17
  America is still in ice if you don't get that so the fantastic for is a hugely significant
• 41:23
  title it's it's a massive thing in comics and at the time in which secret wars was being
• 41:29
  published like I said Hickman had done a pretty acclaimed like four year run on the fantastic for
• 41:34
  only a few years later Marvel cancelled the fantastic for's book so at the time secret
• 41:39
  wars was happening the fantastic for did not have a comic right that was the first time they'd
• 41:45
  ever not had an ongoing series and why did they cancel it was it just because of sales or
• 41:51
  I think the official I think the official line Marvel gave with sales but it was very transparently
• 41:56
  because of the movie rights situation with Fox because this was like around the same time where
• 42:02
  the X-Men comics weren't really being pushed and Marvel were really trying to tell you the
• 42:06
  humans were a big deal there was a clear like internal realignment of we want to promote certain
• 42:13
  books and certain characters that are going to kind of synergize with the MCU so you saw a big push
• 42:18
  for the Guardians of the Galaxy in the 2010s you saw them trying to give the humans a bit of a big
• 42:23
  push and you saw the X-Men and the Fantastic Four kind of get de-emphasized I think with X-Men
• 42:29
  even though that period of the comics wasn't great and they weren't kind of major players X-Men
• 42:35
  still sold enough that they couldn't justify canceling the books an X-Men comic will always sell
• 42:41
  X-Men copies no pun intended because it's the X-Men the Fantastic Four maybe weren't didn't have
• 42:47
  that kind of cushion so they kind of got chopped for a few years wow so in addition to being
• 42:53
  this kind of like epic you know almost like Tolkien inspired saga of the Marvel Universe it's a very
• 43:01
  personal story about the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom and it's very much framed by Hickman and
• 43:06
  Ribbick as the last Fantastic Four story that you know this is being published in a context where no
• 43:12
  one knows you know this is this is before any rumors about Disney buying Fox emerged no one knew
• 43:18
  if the Fantastic Four would ever be brought back or would ever be put in the level and at the status
• 43:24
  that they're used to be so Hickman kind of writes this as an ending for the Fantastic Four story
• 43:29
  kind of if this era of the Marvel Universe began with Reed Richards and Doctor Doom in 1961
• 43:35
  we are giving those characters and this long-running saga definitive ending here obviously the
• 43:41
  Fantastic Four came back and today not only are they starring in really good big budget movies but
• 43:47
  the Fantastic Four comics the last couple of years have been amazing like it was since Ryan North
• 43:51
  took over the the book a couple of years ago it's it's been one of my favorite things to read each
• 43:56
  month I couldn't be happier with it but in in this time it was bleak the comics were cancelled for
• 44:03
  movies and then the movies that we made was that weird Josh Trank one yeah I paid money to see
• 44:08
  that that Josh Trank film and cinemas and I'm regretting it still to this day it's real bad
• 44:16
  so yes the sequel was kind of mean to lots mean that regard because it is kind of like it feels
• 44:23
  like it was written to be the last great Fantastic Four story in the event that Marvel never let them
• 44:29
  back in essentially but it also works as kind of a full circle moment for the Marvel Universe
• 44:36
  that this is because you know all of reality has been destroyed technically at this point
• 44:40
  Earth 616 does not exist the world that Stan and Jack created in the tiny office in New York is gone
• 44:48
  and there's something really pointing about these two characters who are two of the first characters
• 44:54
  that really brought Marvel back in a big way being the ones that essentially at the end of
• 44:58
  secret wars have to have this ideological chess battle to determine the future of the universe
• 45:04
  and you have and obviously like it's a big event comic you have a huge battle with multi-versal
• 45:09
  variants Doctor Doom essentially has his own Green Lantern army of different variants of Thor
• 45:15
  so you get to see Thor's from different realities all fight the Avengers and
• 45:19
  there's a very famous panel where Doctor Doom Rick Stanossus spying out and you get great moments
• 45:25
  where Miles Morales and Peter are working together and there's a great moment in the second
• 45:30
  to last issue where Black Panther wields the Infinity Gauntlet which I just got burned into my brain
• 45:35
  because it's awesome but it's not just that it's also a very personal point of story about these two
• 45:41
  men Reed and Doom who have not only so much of a personal history together but symbolized so much
• 45:47
  of what Marvel is as a brand and the ending of secret wars is so beautiful to me were spoiler alert
• 45:55
  Reed basically forces Doom to admit that he would have been able to save the world if he had the power
• 46:02
  that Doom had harnessed that if Reed had the power the gods Reed could have saved the world and Doom
• 46:07
  knows that because the whole thing about Doom is he has this inferiority complex towards Reed he
• 46:14
  always sees himself as lesser so he's overcompensating so at the end of the end of the book Reed
• 46:19
  kind of takes this power and puts the universe back right with a few exceptions like the ultimate
• 46:26
  universe doesn't come back and Miles just ends up on 616 right yes was it was was this sorry so
• 46:33
  it's in jet but was this like cataclysm I remember reading cataclysm yes this was like a year
• 46:38
  to ask the cataclysm right yeah yes because that's what I remember because that was sort of the end
• 46:42
  I think I read cataclysm and then Miles was sort of booted into the 616 and that's where I actually
• 46:46
  sort of fell off of Miles and Mendis so I think like after Secret Wars that's when they like
• 46:53
  try and retcon like no Miles is not from Miles is from the 616 now but this is like a soft reboot
• 46:59
  and he's always been here and I think they go back and forth on like whether Miles knows
• 47:03
  he's from another universe or not it really seems to depend on who's writing him to be honest
• 47:09
  there's so many things in common yeah but Secret Wars has this beautiful ending where
• 47:14
  because they say Secret Wars doesn't end in a new fantastic four series starts they still don't
• 47:18
  come back for another three or so years wow I think Dancelot launches the Fantastic Wars next series
• 47:25
  in like 2018 2019 this is the summer in the fall of 2015 so there's still a big gap before they
• 47:32
  ever come back and it ends with this beautiful moment where read reunites with Sue and the children
• 47:38
  Franklin via area they've remade Earth 616 and then as a family they're going to jet out into the
• 47:45
  universe and repopulate the multiverse they're going to go from planet to planet galaxy to galaxy
• 47:51
  and not only restore all these worlds and universes but also catalog everything because the fantastic
• 47:56
  four are at the core the scientists and their explorers more than the our superheroes so they jet
• 48:02
  off on this like family holiday into the stars and it's essentially like if the fantastic four never
• 48:08
  come back this is as perfect an ending as you could give them that they are off in the distance
• 48:15
  exploring the unknowns of the universe always just out of reach but though when we need them
• 48:21
  and I think that's a beautiful thing and I feel like I shouldn't tell you the full ending because
• 48:27
  it will spoil it but the last page of this book just like gives me chills every time where we see
• 48:32
  like we go back to 616 and it's kind of narrated by read and it ties into a speech read Gibbs in
• 48:38
  the first issue of new avengers the Hickman wrote were read so in the fantastic four series read
• 48:44
  discovers the concept of incursions he discovers that realities are colliding into each other and
• 48:49
  it's triggering this like multiversal bomb and so much of his fantastic four run is centered on
• 48:56
  read trying to solve this problem in different ways and not figuring out and then in new avengers
• 49:01
  re-present this to the illuminati so he presents it to captain america and iamman and professor
• 49:06
  Xavier and black bolt and black panther all of like the smartest minds of the universe and then
• 49:11
  that becomes the major through line throughout hickman's avengers run is the avengers finding
• 49:16
  different ways to try and stop the incursions and save their reality and ultimately failing
• 49:21
  and so it ends with read rebuilding the 616 like spider man swinging through the city the avengers
• 49:27
  the x-men everyone waking up kind of business as usual and the the speech read gives in new
• 49:33
  avengers it's he tries to explain incursions in the simplest way possible where he says basically
• 49:40
  everything dies it's inevitable there is no fighting it there is no stopping it this is a universal
• 49:47
  constant we cannot stop the end of everything so secret was ends with read giving a speech to
• 49:54
  suing and the kids we're talking about entropy and he's talking about how everything lids and how
• 49:59
  there's always a tomorrow and as you see all of the people kind of go back to normal we cut to
• 50:05
  that veria dr doom steps out on this castle into a balcony and we see that readers done something
• 50:12
  for victor so as read is giving the speech about how everything lids and everything's going to be
• 50:17
  we see victor take off the mask and reveal that his face is fixed he's not scarred he's not
• 50:24
  disfigured in any way and that's something that read it intentionally dorm that's one of the small
• 50:30
  changes he'd made to reality essentially saying like let's put everything behind us and just like
• 50:35
  this is a fresh start this is like our historic feud from 1961 to now is over and this is like me
• 50:42
  extending the olive branch and it ends with just this really beautiful moment of victor smiling on
• 50:47
  his balcony as the fantastic for jet off into the stars and like i said if the fantastic for never
• 50:53
  came back after this story as much as i love them and i'd love the current stuff like this would be
• 50:58
  as fitting that it's it's almost i give all star suitman was the last superman story yeah yeah
• 51:04
  i'm getting this is just such a poignant and perfect end to these characters at a time when people
• 51:10
  like even people at works at marvel didn't legitimately know what their future was and these are
• 51:14
  such historically significant and important characters and you don't get a lot of instances in
• 51:20
  mainstream comics to give characters endings and no no while nothing ever ends and obviously
• 51:26
  the fantastic for a back now at the time this was a hugely powerful story and a real celebration
• 51:32
  of the fantastic for packaged in a very very fun and exciting event story so that's why that's
• 51:38
  my final pick wow and you talk about it very eloquently oh and and you make me want to read it
• 51:43
  as you have done with all of the comics that you even the ones I've already read you make me
• 51:46
  want to read them again because i because i remember that event comic coming out but i think
• 51:50
  like say cataclysm was kind of my the end of my sort of love affair at the time we've sort of
• 51:54
  buying a comics every month from this off the stands for a bit so i did cataclysm it wasn't because
• 51:59
  i disliked it i just i did that and then i kind of lost track of like okay where am i supposed to be
• 52:03
  now with miles i was following that story and where am i supposed to be so i missed um this one
• 52:08
  when it came out but obviously it's going to be you know it sounds like it's going to be the
• 52:12
  inspiration for the next Avengers movie they obviously marvel listened to like i know aware of
• 52:17
  the quality of it in terms of like this is a sounds like a very respected respectable book
• 52:22
  in the eyes of the readers and fans and the critics so they're obviously they're making it the
• 52:27
  basis of the next movie and as you say it's like it's hard to end comics like doing an actual
• 52:31
  what could be a fitting ending to a to a mainstream super comic is i think nearly in some ways
• 52:35
  impossible and it in fact go back to grand it's just the consequence of being trapped in myth it's
• 52:39
  like your stories you never age and your stories are recycled for generations upon generations and
• 52:45
  like Superman has been around longer than me you all grant and um and we'll be going long after
• 52:51
  we're sort of we're gone so like and in grand size that means Superman is kind of the most real
• 52:57
  of of of all of us and i guess the same thing with the fantastic fall they are the foundation
• 53:01
  stone of the marvel universe as we know it and how can you end that how can you actually do like a
• 53:06
  fitting ending and it sounds like hickman before you describe i mean i'm as you're describing
• 53:10
  that i'm seeing that in my head and i'm seeing that sounds it sounds fantastic no pun intended
• 53:15
  fantastic and and it's interesting because what you said about doom sort of that ending of doom's
• 53:19
  face being sort of fixed because it reminds me of what Kirby said about doom i remember there's a
• 53:24
  great quote from him where he basically says that in his mind when he drew doom doom only had like a
• 53:28
  I don't know if it's carried over to all the different variations just like a tiny little
• 53:32
  a tiny little scar and all it took was that tiny little imperfection to basically bring down
• 53:37
  this sort of great man into the realm of vanity and like you say inferiority there's a great moment
• 53:43
  in i think one of the early issues of secret wars so in this reality Sue is married to doom
• 53:50
  and the children are dooms so he is essentially like stolen reads life on top of everything else
• 53:56
  and there's a really great moment early on where doom is having this heart to heart with Sue when
• 54:01
  he takes the mask off and he is like he looks like skeleton like he is like more scarred and
• 54:07
  disfigured than he's usually presented as and i remember at the time thinking okay it's just like
• 54:14
  they're just kind of make doom look great but actually there's something really thematically
• 54:18
  rich about that idea that like in the normal continuity doom is someone that had a slight
• 54:25
  blemish essentially and then willingly disfigured themselves by putting this hot metal mask on them
• 54:31
  because they were so vain they couldn't lip with the idea that they had this slight imperfection
• 54:36
  and the way i've seen that clip of Kirby articulating it and it's just genius
• 54:42
  and this idea that like doom has the power of the gods he can do anything he can bend reality
• 54:47
  as well and yet he makes himself look more disfigured because that's how he sees himself that's
• 54:52
  how he views himself as this like grotesque monster and then counteract that with what read does
• 54:59
  at the end of that book where read sees him as a person he doesn't see him despite everything
• 55:05
  that they've been through together and all the horrible things doom has done to the fantastic for
• 55:10
  he still sees him as victor the guy that he grew up with and he went to school with and he was
• 55:15
  once he was best friends with and there's something i never thought about those two moments kind
• 55:20
  of intending together but there is something kind of really sums up that book perfectly of
• 55:26
  the reveal of doom's face when he has the power and he is kind of very much disfigured and kind
• 55:32
  of grotesque and then when read has the power where he is he looks like Michael Shannon
• 55:37
  weirdly enough maybe that was the the visual inspiration i don't i'll have to check this out
• 55:42
  again like decent new frontier i wasn't familiar with it and and i and i am i'm only sporadically
• 55:46
  familiar with hickman's work in the sense that the main thing of his i read was i think i read a bit
• 55:51
  of his fantastic forward and i and i read a good chunk of his ultimate's run because that was coming
• 55:56
  out obviously at the same time as the new 52 and ultimate spider-man so i and i remember my
• 56:01
  my sort of best friend who i read comics with would would read was reading the ultimate so now
• 56:05
  I was really altered spider-man so we would swap over issues and i would read the stuff with the
• 56:09
  maker i was and i do remember being very impressed by it in terms of like it did feel it was very
• 56:13
  cerebral but also an intelligent but also it read like a cracking monthly 24 page adventure comic
• 56:19
  and i and i so i would read i really should dip into hittman proper it's i think it's a guy
• 56:23
  already obviously like obviously secret was is bill out of his fantastic foreign is Avengers run
• 56:29
  but i think like stylistically it is very comparable to his ultimate not just because it's the
• 56:34
  same artist Assad ribic who drew his ultimate's run also draw secret was play said in that very like
• 56:40
  i think hickman's different to Morrison away but they're both very intellectual and very
• 56:45
  deep and meta in how they write it it results in very different books but i think there is a
• 56:53
  kind of similar methodology to them where it is just very like almost cerebral a meticulous
• 56:59
  understanding of for grant DC and for for hickman marvel mixed with this these outside influences
• 57:06
  were for granted it's more kind of spiritual and tarot mysticism and for hickman it's more
• 57:12
  political thriller undertones a lot of kind of noir those kind of things but i think they are
• 57:19
  like there are two of my favorite writers i think hickman is one of my favorite corny day writers
• 57:23
  and secret was is is up there with anything he's ever written he doesn't do as much create
• 57:29
  our own work now as i'd like because he's so kind of busy with he's been like the main architect
• 57:33
  of marvel's ultimate revival for the last two or three years and been writing ultimate spider man
• 57:38
  you just wrap this like cosmic story called imperial check out secret wasn't if you like that
• 57:43
  check out something like the black monday murders or the manhattan project the manhattan project
• 57:47
  is a satirical re-telling of the creation of the atomic bomb okay that's like a little bit of
• 57:53
  like alan morsel e-wish don't we gentlemen vibe going on there it's it's a hard book to explain
• 57:59
  but it's very fun cool i know i'll check those out no absolutely because as i keep saying
• 58:03
  DC the new frid here it's hit so like you know i'll check out the others too cool so that's your
• 58:10
  last pick my last pick going chronologically and it's funny that you say you said something at
• 58:14
  the start of talk about super secret wars which was kind of like you felt like it was a bit of a
• 58:19
  basic bitch pick i mean i i wouldn't agree to agree but i felt like this is very much my basic
• 58:24
  bitch picks i might say but this is uh i've gone for scot pilgrim uh specifically scot pilgrim
• 58:30
  volume six uh scot pilgrims finest hour i mean i'm guessing you're familiar with scot pilgrim
• 58:35
  i look i was a geek in the early 2010s i've caught i know what scot pilgrim is yeah i mean good
• 58:41
  company then because this comic i mean i remember i ex i so i was one of the people who read
• 58:45
  scot pilgrim when it came out like i had a sort of friend who is much more i guess you could say
• 58:50
  hip than me at the time and he was very much into his online comics and also like i remember we
• 58:55
  bonded over questionable content which i don't know if he's still going but was a very good web
• 58:58
  comic at the time and then scot pilgrim was kind of around the same time filtered into that like
• 59:03
  i remember my friend sort of telling me you've got we know this there's this comic and the movie's
• 59:07
  coming out soon and it's directed by the guy who did hot fuzz so like we've got to check this out
• 59:11
  and go right as we now know as we know so i was like okay cool so i remember we both read it was very
• 59:16
  much like a bonding a friendship experience for us because we both read scot pilgrim as it was coming
• 59:20
  out and um just fell in love of it i mean because for me again i think some of the one of the key
• 59:26
  things of some of my picks is that is is humor i feel like allyson sundaland is very funny you know
• 59:31
  miracle man even has its funny moments amongst all the darkness and um scot pilgrim is just i
• 59:38
  find it hilarious i think the characterizations are brilliant i think i love brionley omali's artwork
• 59:43
  and his storytelling i love how each volume i don't know if you agree i feel like each volume
• 59:48
  builds and tops the last one as you go along and as you go i mean for me my two favorites i mean
• 59:53
  i've specifically picked volume uh six which is uh it's my original copy of it um from 2010 uh
• 59:59
  because i think this is the best volume and i think it's and it's my favorite this and volume
• 1:00:03
  four scot pilgrim gets together my favorites i have a lot of memories associated with this comic and
• 1:00:07
  also with the movie and the video game all of which uh are amazing and all of which even though
• 1:00:12
  they're obviously made by different creatives they got right did the film uh you know the game
• 1:00:17
  company was designed by so now brionley omali obviously had fingers in all those pies and they
• 1:00:22
  was very it was evolved in the portion of all of them but like it feels like it's born from a
• 1:00:25
  single genius a single creator and they all feel very much for peace and i love the game i love the
• 1:00:31
  film and i and i look but the comic for me is is the you know the high watermark of of scot pilgrim
• 1:00:36
  just in general and yeah i just think i think as the series goes along it just becomes more intelligent
• 1:00:41
  more mature brionley omali's sort of command of what he's doing of the material but also of
• 1:00:47
  the uh the characters and and how he's depicted them on the page as an artist gets better and more
• 1:00:52
  assured of each wall until you get to the final book and he's mixing in almost kind of collages
• 1:00:57
  and sort of these different styles sort of on the page it goes from that sort of quite sort of
• 1:01:01
  at the beginning quite simplistic sort of manga meets questionable content style sort of visual
• 1:01:07
  visuals to by the time he gets a volume five and six he's really sort of mixing it up and trying
• 1:01:11
  all these different layouts and different styles sort of implement the action uh and that's
• 1:01:17
  the other thing it's a great action you know he's great at telling action on the page and i'm a
• 1:01:21
  fan of malays in general like i really like seconds i don't know if you're familiar with seconds
• 1:01:25
  um oh and but his follow up sort of to scot pilgrim is his sort of becks big comic after scot pilgrim
• 1:01:29
  was seconds which is completely different uh although it does have a cameo from scot on Ramona
• 1:01:34
  flowers the uh you know the love interest in scot pilgrim in it but like for me scot pilgrim is
• 1:01:38
  kind of his his magnum opus and i think maybe other people would say that i just and um as i say
• 1:01:44
  i feel like at the time in 2010 people had a lot of nostalgia i guess for films looking back now
• 1:01:49
  things of the same tone as scot pilgrim so like five hundred days of summer and that kind of thing
• 1:01:54
  and i wasn't really connected to any of that sort of really i was sort of in the corner to sort of
• 1:01:58
  reading my books and reading my comics but like scot pilgrim is kind of my when i think of 2010 i
• 1:02:03
  think in many ways of scot pilgrim and i think of my adolescence and childhood so it's there is
• 1:02:08
  there is like a certain corner of my mind that these things all go together like scot pilgrim far
• 1:02:14
  and there's a summer the band no in the whale the old i don't know what it is they all occupy that
• 1:02:20
  that corner my brain i that's a great pick my introduction scot pilgrim is a little bit different
• 1:02:25
  like i i discovered the comics through the movie and the movie was kind of like my introduction
• 1:02:30
  to those characters in that world and i i'm a big egggerite fan as most people are age from the UK
• 1:02:36
  are like i love Sean at the dead and hot falls so i was i was predisposed to like the film and
• 1:02:42
  very much did and then that led me to to seeking out the books and it's been a couple of years since
• 1:02:46
  i've read them as this is a good reminder to dive back in at some point but yeah a great pick i
• 1:02:51
  think that the comic is is tremendous and it's clever it's funny it's it's deep it really has
• 1:02:59
  everything and brilliant unique art and and like you mentioned how it starts with this almost like
• 1:03:05
  kind of mango infuse kind of webtoon style and really like finds itself as the book goes on
• 1:03:11
  i i love long runs where you can see the creators where they you can see them pull from their
• 1:03:17
  inspirations at the start but by the end of it really carve out their own unique identity where
• 1:03:22
  there's nothing both visually and stylistically like this and i think scot pilgrim is maybe the
• 1:03:27
  perfect example of that were when it starts you can see what the creators are inspired by and what
• 1:03:33
  they're riffing on but as the story progresses it just becomes its own holy unique and independent
• 1:03:38
  think totally and i must say on the on that sort of front on the visuals because like i say i think
• 1:03:44
  his command of obviously you know the artwork is only one part of what makes hot pilgrim great but
• 1:03:49
  like the visuals and his style evolved so much from volume 1 to volume 6 and actually i
• 1:03:55
  wanted to touch on this because the i know because years after the book sort of finished there was
• 1:04:00
  the reprints with in color i think Nathan Fairbane who's a great colorist did the color and and
• 1:04:06
  i really like and i think they look great but for me it's always scot pilgrim is a book that
• 1:04:09
  exists in black and white you know existence is real sort of like hard sort of you know especially
• 1:04:15
  the volume 6 i think of that sort of the hard black up against hard white of the fights between
• 1:04:19
  Scott and Gideon and the sort of almost kind of slightly psychedelic the video game sort of
• 1:04:24
  psychedelia of like all this imagery of the mario imagery in the subspace highway all this stuff
• 1:04:30
  like it for me exists in sort of this really stark sort of some modernistic kind of black and white
• 1:04:34
  and i really really love that about it and i even know i love the colors color versions
• 1:04:37
  they they're almost something a bit flat to them and i feel like similar to film there's
• 1:04:42
  something about like this not to get not sound sort of i guess two ponsu this sort of quote this
• 1:04:47
  name but like awesome well said like the black and white i think Guillermo del Toro recently quoted
• 1:04:50
  this with Frankenstein his new film like black and white is the actor's friend like every actor
• 1:04:55
  looks better and and he's better in black and white and i think there's something about comic
• 1:04:59
  where like sort of black and white art you know it's i don't think you see it as much these days
• 1:05:03
  because it's cheap now to do color whereas back in like the 80s and earlier like black and white
• 1:05:08
  was quite common especially in like 2000 ad in like comics from Britain that we were reading
• 1:05:13
  and i think like with Scott Pilgrim like i think of it very much like it's black and white and
• 1:05:16
  it's like stark and it's really even though the story is very colorful the style is that kind of
• 1:05:21
  like modernistic kind of almost sometimes that kind of a scurro and that kind of juxtaposition of
• 1:05:27
  the very colorful and vibrant and technicaler and psychedelic plotting with this very strip back
• 1:05:34
  and almost minimalist art style i think that's kind of what defines the book and it's the reprints
• 1:05:40
  with color are great and they do add its own flavor to it but i think there is something very
• 1:05:45
  special about the original format that the book was told in yeah totally and the fact that and
• 1:05:50
  it's also just simple as the fact that Brian Lee O'Malley was this guy sort of you know in his
• 1:05:54
  studio like it's like banging this out like on it by himself you know it felt cheap but in the
• 1:05:58
  best way like it's the guy just like there was no barrier between him the creator and like the
• 1:06:03
  story he was telling it was very personal but very fun he was telling a story that he was really
• 1:06:07
  enthusiastic about and it just comes straight through and then by the time you get to volume six the
• 1:06:11
  end like it's so you know his sophistication has just gone through the roof no it's and like
• 1:06:16
  so for all those reasons that's why i picked it for my my fifth pick it's one great pick
• 1:06:21
  yeah so well that brings us through our our each of our top five favorite comics and i think like
• 1:06:27
  we've learned a fair bit about each other and maybe even a little bit about ourselves through this
• 1:06:32
  this chat i mean we were to ask what we said at the start wasn't it like these comics say something
• 1:06:36
  about us i guess that's why we've picked them it isn't just like oh we've got to tick top five
• 1:06:40
  you know these are these are the greatest you know these are very much our personal picks yeah i
• 1:06:45
  think we've both done a good job of like charting our own personal journey with the medium through
• 1:06:50
  these books and kind of telling exchanging personal stories and and giving each other some
• 1:06:55
  recommendations and hopefully everyone watching and listening to this might be inspired to at least
• 1:07:00
  pick up one of the books we've talked about i think if you pick up all of them it might be expensive
• 1:07:05
  because i i am known to rattle off some some suggestions but i think there's there's definitely
• 1:07:10
  out of the combined ten that we've come up with there is something for everyone whether you like
• 1:07:15
  your sort of psychic geographic north east of england stories or whatever you like your sort of
• 1:07:19
  big event crossover comics you know you're going to get a little flavor of sort of any where else
• 1:07:23
  you're going to find a list that has ultimate spider man and Alice and sunda land in it that's
• 1:07:27
  the question and the answer is nowhere so there you go thanks so much Owen for coming on the show
• 1:07:33
  again and sort of walking us through some of your favorite comics it was such a pleasure i mean
• 1:07:37
  and as i said i think last time at the end of the last episode like i'm such a fan of yours and
• 1:07:41
  i've been for a long time so it really was a pleasure yeah no absolutely this was this was
• 1:07:44
  an absolute blast i'm i'm so glad you reached out and that we we could have done this uh yeah
• 1:07:50
  and it's been so much fun so i appreciate being invited fantastic and i'm looking very much forward
• 1:07:55
  to um your brama co-bendus into you i can't wait i can't wait to see what you guys
• 1:07:59
  charted about as well that's a good opportunity to to plug and promote where you can find me
• 1:08:04
  which is youtube.com slash oon likes comics if you if you've made it this far into these these
• 1:08:10
  videos uh you probably don't hate the sound of me talking about comics so youtube.com slash oon
• 1:08:16
  likes comics i make um video essays and and short documentaries about comic book history kind of
• 1:08:22
  peeling back into what the behind the scenes history of stories and characters and creators
• 1:08:28
  at the time of recording this i'll be dropping a big video on the 1995 xmen storyline
• 1:08:33
  age of apocalypse soon uh and by the time this is up i might have posted my my follow up video
• 1:08:39
  which includes a very special guest in the form of legendary comic greats of brama co-bendus so
• 1:08:45
  and then you can find me on twitter instagram blue sky just out i win likes comics well you know for one
• 1:08:50
  novel add to another thanks so much again it's for such a pleasure
• 1:09:03
  hey guys thanks so much for listening to part two of my conversation with Irwin from
• 1:09:08
  our in-likes comics remember to like subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode
• 1:09:12
  and stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests coming soon on half the picture
• 1:09:20
  you