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Pulp Blotter Book Club #21 - Torpedo · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody! It feels like I was just recording, another episode. Oh, wait, I was. I get kicked off by Phil to come talk to
• 0:11
  Tad Eggleston: to, to Sean and Mark on the Pope Blotter. We, we,
• 0:16
  Tad Eggleston: We recently did Alex Toth with Sorro, and before that, we had done a lot of Geordi Bernay in
• 0:25
  Tad Eggleston: Jonah Hex, so I said, hey, did you know that there was a book that went from Toth to Bernay? Let's look at that. So this month, we looked at…
• 0:35
  Tad Eggleston: And here I forget the, the bully, I forget the first name of the writer, and, and Torpedo. So I'd read this before, and definitely have
• 0:45
  Tad Eggleston: Thoughts that are always… changing, but I wanna… I wanna hear you guys' initial impressions.
• 1:00
  Mark Pracht: I, look…
• 1:02
  Mark Pracht: I am… I am very into amoral characters. I like people like… I like characters like Jonah Hex, I like characters like Parker, I like characters who feel like they are…
• 1:15
  Mark Pracht: not necessarily beholden to the morals of society, but I also like characters who have a sense of some morality to themselves.
• 1:26
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 1:27
  Mark Pracht: Torpedo has none.
• 1:30
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 1:31
  Mark Pracht: It's better.
• 1:32
  Sean Harklerode: Have a code.
• 1:33
  Mark Pracht: Man's gotta have a code. That's correct. Yeah, like, that's it. There's no code here. There's no… there's no sense, like, there's… I… I… I went through this entire book, and again, art's lovely.
• 1:49
  Mark Pracht: But I… I found myself just sort of, like, flipping through it and going, okay, that happened. I mean, like…
• 1:56
  Mark Pracht: I wasn't offended by it, I wasn't angry at it, but I just was not enjoying the read.
• 2:05
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, to… which is, you know, probably one of the more famous stories about this
• 2:13
  Sean Harklerode: book, this series.
• 2:16
  Sean Harklerode: Toth, or Toth, did the first two issues, and… Didn't like that tone.
• 2:23
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Didn't like where it was going and left.
• 2:26
  Sean Harklerode: Right?
• 2:26
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 2:27
  Sean Harklerode: And I can definitely see, an older man at that point, who, you know.
• 2:34
  Sean Harklerode: Look, he's the ultimate Super Friends artist, right?
• 2:38
  Mark Pracht: Right. And…
• 2:39
  Sean Harklerode: and I don't mean to diminish him by putting him with Super Friends, but he did a lot of great, great work in different areas, but…
• 2:47
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, it just was not what he wanted to do.
• 2:52
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 2:53
  Sean Harklerode: And… and I think the book… Takes off from there.
• 2:59
  Sean Harklerode: I think… When, Bernay
• 3:04
  Sean Harklerode: comes aboard. It really kind of leaps
• 3:07
  Sean Harklerode: off where I think AbuLi wanted it to go.
• 3:13
  Sean Harklerode: And it looks grittier. It's very, I think, it reminds me a lot of Hubert.
• 3:20
  Mark Pracht: His work in this.
• 3:22
  Sean Harklerode: But, I mean, it really made me rethink how I feel about characters that I love.
• 3:29
  Sean Harklerode: who are also fairly amoral, James Bond, the comedian.
• 3:37
  Sean Harklerode: in Watchmen, I thought about a lot.
• 3:39
  Sean Harklerode: Regards to this, but I think the comedian, you know, pays for his sins.
• 3:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Sean Harklerode: which is not to excuse them, but…
• 3:52
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I had a… had a hard time, you know, I… I keep thinking back to the Norm Macdonald,
• 4:01
  Sean Harklerode: Jerry Seinfeld conversation about Bill Cosby.
• 4:05
  Sean Harklerode: And it's like, you know what the worst thing about Cosby is?
• 4:08
  Sean Harklerode: And, Jerry Seinfeld says, the hypocrisy?
• 4:14
  Sean Harklerode: McDonald's says, I thought it was the raping.
• 4:18
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 4:21
  Sean Harklerode: And, I mean, that's… that's the line for me, and it… it's not that it just happens once. Not that I could excuse it once.
• 4:30
  Sean Harklerode: But it's a recurring theme, and I actually flipped forward through… I've got some untranslated, stuff.
• 4:39
  Sean Harklerode: and, Torpedo 1972, and it continues, there.
• 4:47
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 4:48
  Tad Eggleston: He's… he's… Yeah, no, I mean…
• 4:51
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like, I think that… I think that for me, like, at one point we were having a discussion about Parker, and I think Tad said that there is a softening of Parker, and I don't… I don't necessarily agree with that about Parker, but the thing is, is that Parker has…
• 5:06
  Mark Pracht: Parker is not into cruelty.
• 5:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right?
• 5:10
  Mark Pracht: And that Parker is going to do whatever is good for Parker, but he's also not going to do more than he needs to do.
• 5:18
  Mark Pracht: because… of some…
• 5:23
  Mark Pracht: inherent cruelty within him. Like, and I think that when I read these stories, I'm like, this man is just… like, and it does come down to… like, and…
• 5:33
  Mark Pracht: And I think that…
• 5:36
  Mark Pracht: What Sean said was very, very interesting about the comedian, in that the comedian has that same sort of, like, it's beyond amoral.
• 5:44
  Mark Pracht: It's… it's a cruelty, it's a… it's a… it's a… a… a… a desire to see people hurt, right? And that…
• 5:53
  Mark Pracht: The… the comedian gets his comeuppance, And…
• 5:58
  Mark Pracht: on… on a storytelling level, I think that… that…
• 6:03
  Mark Pracht: I don't wanna… I wanna be very careful. That does excuse it, because that's the point of the story, is that, like, this man was…
• 6:11
  Mark Pracht: bad, and we're going to have him pay a price for that, okay?
• 6:17
  Mark Pracht: The thing is, is that, in a way, these stories, they continue, and they continue, and they continue, and he never pays a price. There's never anything bad that ever happens to him. He, like, his partner guy, whatever that character's name is, like, he's…
• 6:33
  Mark Pracht: awful to him all the time. And you're like.
• 6:37
  Mark Pracht: what am… what am I supposed to be, you know, and I realize it's probably…
• 6:42
  Mark Pracht: I'm sure we're talking about the R word here, which comes up several times during the course of this book. You know, like, it is French, and we… we… I know there is a different view of sexuality in a European situation, or a different view of…
• 6:59
  Mark Pracht: Of, how to…
• 7:04
  Mark Pracht: work with sexuality in a storytelling medium. I mean, like, we all know the United States is a pretty puritanical society, as far as those kind of subjects, but…
• 7:14
  Mark Pracht: Like, it's also not, like, it's not pleasant in any way, and it doesn't seem to have any point, you know?
• 7:21
  Mark Pracht: It's sort of… God, some… part of this was, like, watching I Spit on your grave.
• 7:27
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. You know?
• 7:28
  Sean Harklerode: But it's Italian, isn't it?
• 7:30
  Mark Pracht: Maybe it is a town.
• 7:31
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's actually Spanish.
• 7:33
  Mark Pracht: Spanish.
• 7:34
  Sean Harklerode: Okay.
• 7:34
  Tad Eggleston: Spanish.
• 7:35
  Mark Pracht: Well, it's still the European thing, you know.
• 7:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 7:37
  Mark Pracht: I mean, that's, yeah. France, Spade, Italy, whatever.
• 7:46
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, that could explain… some…
• 7:50
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 7:50
  Sean Harklerode: And, you know, not to get into my… my…
• 7:54
  Sean Harklerode: biases and American ignorance, but, you know.
• 7:57
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 7:58
  Sean Harklerode: part of me thought it was like, I did think maybe this is a different sensibility than
• 8:05
  Sean Harklerode: than we're aware of. Not that I think they would… not that I think that he's revered as a hero, even, anywhere.
• 8:11
  Mark Pracht: now.
• 8:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, he…
• 8:13
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, go ahead.
• 8:14
  Sean Harklerode: We have, you know.
• 8:16
  Tad Eggleston: Let me first, just because I… like, I've…
• 8:21
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read all of the series, but I've read a lot of the series. And I don't disagree with any of the things that you're saying. I also think that we learn things over time, which is why I'm gonna…
• 8:32
  Tad Eggleston: cheat, and… go to the Wikipedia character history.
• 8:40
  Tad Eggleston: and just read, like, part of this paragraph. Luca Torelli is born in Sicily circa 1903 to a poor, broken home marked by spousal abuse. His parents are presumed to be Vittorio Torelli and Luciana
• 8:55
  Tad Eggleston: Petrosino, although his older brother's real father was actually their grandfather who raped his own daughter. It is implied that Luca's own biological father was the local Mafiosa kingpin who raped Luciana
• 9:09
  Tad Eggleston: in exchange for mediating peacefully in the feud between the Torellis and the Petrosinos. Luca loses his older brother to a severe beating by their drunken father, orchestrates a vengeance against the latter by using a vindictive neighbor as an unwitting agent, and finally witnesses their mother dying of sorrow upon her son's and husband's consecutive deaths.
• 9:30
  Tad Eggleston: Thereupon being fostered by his uncle Vincenzio.
• 9:35
  Tad Eggleston: Despite the fact that he engineered his father's death at the hands of their neighbor, the ancestral institution of vendetta prevails, and Luca kills him with his uncle's aid. This is implied to be his first direct murder.
• 9:47
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 9:51
  Mark Pracht: I still don't see how that justifies.
• 9:53
  Tad Eggleston: I don' No, no, no, no, no, it doesn't, it doesn't,
• 10:02
  Tad Eggleston: I'm forming this thread, so kind of bear with me for a second, because it started… it popped into my head when Sean said it made him think… rethink James Bond. I wonder if…
• 10:18
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know the right word to hear… use to hear. Part of me wants to say purpose, part of me wants to say value. In these comics is the women, because the women…
• 10:30
  Tad Eggleston: I think…
• 10:33
  Tad Eggleston: And I noticed this more on this read-through, and I didn't get as far as I'd wanted. Strike me as more realistic than your typical anti-hero…
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: going after the woman. None of them fall into his arms.
• 10:48
  Tad Eggleston: You don't have the, oh, I hated you, now I'm falling into your arms. You know, the only one that even did that was the one that at all did that, was the one that was using him.
• 11:00
  Tad Eggleston: And then he got, you know…
• 11:02
  Tad Eggleston: he got pissed off when she left him the same way. Right. And then there's… it's heavily implied that the person he said to kill her did exactly what he did, and didn't kill her!
• 11:13
  Sean Harklerode: Right, right.
• 11:15
  Mark Pracht: You know, but, look, I think that there is.
• 11:21
  Tad Eggleston: He gets out-thought by the woman that he was gonna double-cross.
• 11:25
  Tad Eggleston: In the one where they set up the ladder so that… He could be at the… The, you know.
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think he is an anti-hero. I think he's a bad guy.
• 11:39
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but I mean, like, look, I would say this about, like, everything you're saying about the female characters. It's… it… they may, like.
• 11:50
  Mark Pracht: I still think it's an… it's an entirely misogynistic mindset.
• 11:55
  Mark Pracht: And I, I, I, I do not… look…
• 12:00
  Mark Pracht: I can look at James Bond, and I know that that character is misogynistic, I do not think that…
• 12:08
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 12:12
  Mark Pracht: I don't necessarily… that doesn't necessarily make
• 12:16
  Mark Pracht: oh man, how do I put this? Like, I…
• 12:21
  Mark Pracht: Reading this made me think something about the writer.
• 12:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 12:26
  Mark Pracht: I mean, in a very real way, and like.
• 12:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, but here's…
• 12:29
  Mark Pracht: I don't necessarily… like, when I read the Bond books, I'm like… I tend to think, okay, this character is specifically intended to be misogynistic.
• 12:39
  Mark Pracht: And I think that Ian Fleming knew that he was writing a misogynistic character, and I think that… but I also think that Ian Fleming was coming out of the society that Ian Fleming lived in, you know, in the time that Ian Fleming lived in, and that… that… that…
• 12:53
  Mark Pracht: Justifies a lot… that doesn't justify, but it explains a lot of things, right?
• 13:00
  Mark Pracht: I think that this goes beyond that. And whether or not the women don't fall into his arms or whatever, or manage to out-think him, I mean, there's women that manage to out-think James Bond.
• 13:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right, but my, I guess…
• 13:15
  Mark Pracht: But… but that… that still ends up with him beating raping. Right. And, and… terrorizing people.
• 13:28
  Tad Eggleston: I guess what I'm asking is…
• 13:32
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't know that I, you know, I don't know that I can wrap my head around an answer for this personally even yet, but the question that this brings up in me is, which is…
• 13:47
  Tad Eggleston: More misogynist from a writer's standpoint, to write a misogynist character where his misogyny is supposed to be entertaining, or to write a misogynist character where his misogyny is deeply uncomfortable.
• 14:04
  Mark Pracht: D.
• 14:05
  Mark Pracht: I would argue that I think these books are supposed to be entertaining.
• 14:10
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 14:11
  Mark Pracht: I think… I… I really do think that. I mean, I think that there… I mean, and look, there is a long tradition of this sort of stuff. You know, there's Mac Bolin, there's, the Executioner, there's, like, stuff that is… that are, in a lot of ways, the…
• 14:29
  Mark Pracht: you know, Timu version of James Bond, right? You know?
• 14:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 14:36
  Mark Pracht: And that's… that's really belittling Mac Bolin and the Executioner, but that's… that's a different story altogether. But,
• 14:45
  Mark Pracht: which have value on their own level. I, like… and look, and I would never say that this is without value, because, like, clearly there's artistic credibility.
• 14:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right.
• 14:53
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, you know, the… but…
• 14:55
  Tad Eggleston: No, I…
• 14:55
  Mark Pracht: The thing about it is, I just think… I think that, in a lot of ways, what you're saying by saying he's a bad guy, clearly he's a bad guy, but I mean, like.
• 15:04
  Mark Pracht: there's… there's a bad guy, and there are victims. It's like a slasher movie, right?
• 15:09
  Mark Pracht: Like, there's no one to root for here, really.
• 15:13
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like.
• 15:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, I root for the victims, and I'm generally disappointed.
• 15:19
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah. So occasionally not.
• 15:22
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, but, like, it's… it's…
• 15:24
  Mark Pracht: almost… wow. Now I feel like I'm fucking Jerry Falwell all of a sudden. It's almost like pornography, right?
• 15:32
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 15:32
  Mark Pracht: it's… it's just like you're waiting for horrible things to happen, right? It's… it's like… like, one of the weirdest experiences of my young life was that I went to a drive-in movie theater on Friday the 13th, where they played all the Friday the 13th movies.
• 15:49
  Mark Pracht: that had made up to that point, and I think it was up to, like, 6, right? And, like, very quickly, you begin to realize how
• 15:58
  Mark Pracht: empty those films are, right? Like, that they are nothing but sensate… like, the… the vicarious
• 16:08
  Mark Pracht: Enjoyment of pain being inflicted, right?
• 16:12
  Mark Pracht: And in a way, I think that that… like, I… I really don't like horror as a genre, and I think… I… when I think back to it, I think that that experience is probably why I don't like horror as a genre, because it, like, it's gotta be… it's gotta be something more than that. And I don't… I don't see any… I'm like…
• 16:31
  Mark Pracht: I… I kept reading, like, when we went back and we saw his childhood, the shoeshine thing with the cop, which is about the only time that I felt anything for this character, you know?
• 16:43
  Mark Pracht: I was like, oh, he got fucked over, and now he's gonna fuck that guy over, and I was like, I understand this, this makes sense, there's a logic to it, and then…
• 16:53
  Mark Pracht: That just dissipates.
• 16:55
  Mark Pracht: Right? And… I mean, and, you know, like… I don't know.
• 17:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, he's an utterly and completely broken character.
• 17:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the only reason I read the…
• 17:13
  Tad Eggleston: the… the… the history is that, like, he is predictably… I mean, based on…
• 17:21
  Tad Eggleston: the internal story history, he is predictably and utterly and… and… Totally heartless, broken individual.
• 17:34
  Mark Pracht: But… but, you know, what's funny? Like, here's… here's… when you were reading that history.
• 17:40
  Mark Pracht: I was like, wow, that sounds an awful lot like Vito Corleone.
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 17:45
  Mark Pracht: And… and what happened with those losses that Vito suffers, Is he becomes more… Welded to his family.
• 17:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 17:56
  Mark Pracht: Right? And that, in a way, he… it makes him… While still amoral.
• 18:04
  Mark Pracht: a man with a very… Absolutely. …oral code in the… at the center.
• 18:10
  Mark Pracht: And the thing is, is, like, that… that…
• 18:13
  Mark Pracht: you know, like… I don't… I don't know. I just… it just really… the whole thing…
• 18:23
  Mark Pracht: like, down to the good art, actually. It just felt so…
• 18:27
  Mark Pracht: Like, there was something about all of this that just struck me as, like, Not… not for me, okay?
• 18:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 18:34
  Mark Pracht: It's… it's not… like, and that's… that's… that's neither here nor… you've… I know there are people who love this kind of stuff, and, like, I… I…
• 18:43
  Mark Pracht: get that. Like I said, I love amoral characters, but there's just some sort of… it's, at one point.
• 18:53
  Mark Pracht: like, I was talking to my brother-in-law about playing,
• 18:58
  Mark Pracht: I think it was Red Dead Redemption, the Western video game, you know? And that you can make choices to be… either be, like, completely a bastard, or… or be altruistic, right? And that my…
• 19:12
  Mark Pracht: My instinct…
• 19:14
  Mark Pracht: like, I was fine playing it as an amoral character, like, he's an outlaw, he steals, he blah blah blah, but when it came down to it, like.
• 19:23
  Mark Pracht: I couldn't just go and kill people.
• 19:25
  Mark Pracht: Right? Like, I… it just was not in my nature, and… That was…
• 19:36
  Mark Pracht: fully… in this video game world, I was fully capable of, like, killing somebody if there was a reason behind it. There was a… there was even a selfish need for it, right? But that…
• 19:49
  Mark Pracht: Just doing something awful for no reason just felt wrong.
• 19:54
  Mark Pracht: And it… so much of this book feels like doing awful things for no reason.
• 20:01
  Mark Pracht: And that's… There's a reality to that, and I'm sorry I'm pontificating now.
• 20:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, no!
• 20:08
  Mark Pracht: Reality to that, but that's also, like,
• 20:13
  Mark Pracht: I think that in this Pulp Fiction kind of version of this.
• 20:21
  Mark Pracht: That's not quite the venue for that, right?
• 20:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 20:25
  Mark Pracht: like, I can read… Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and understand that that, as an elevated form of literature.
• 20:35
  Mark Pracht: Is operating on a, Satirical level, right?
• 20:46
  Mark Pracht: And that movie is operating on a satirical level.
• 20:49
  Mark Pracht: And that character… and that… that character's awfulness is designed as a satire.
• 20:56
  Mark Pracht: But I'm not… there's no satire here. I feel like we're supposed to enjoy the… the… I feel like we're supposed to enjoy the pain he inflicts. I think that…
• 21:07
  Mark Pracht: We're supposed to feel like might makes right, and that's weird to me.
• 21:11
  Mark Pracht: And I'm gonna stop talking now, because I've talked way too much, and I probably don't have anything else to say.
• 21:16
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, I…
• 21:18
  Sean Harklerode: That is… and Tad, I think this is your second time reading this? I see what you're saying?
• 21:24
  Tad Eggleston: It might be my third, because, like…
• 21:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, understand that part of me is playing as much devil's advocate as anything.
• 21:34
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because… I get everything that Mark's saying.
• 21:41
  Tad Eggleston: And the only, like, point that I don't know if I agree on…
• 21:46
  Tad Eggleston: Is whether or not it's meant to be satirical.
• 21:52
  Mark Pracht: You think this is a satire?
• 21:54
  Sean Harklerode: That's what I… that's what I was gonna ask.
• 21:57
  Sean Harklerode: Because… to see if everyone else had the same feeling I did, and it seems like Mark did, I kept waiting
• 22:08
  Sean Harklerode: for… For it to hit.
• 22:12
  Sean Harklerode: I… I kept waiting for the moment when I would go,
• 22:16
  Sean Harklerode: I see what they're doing here.
• 22:19
  Sean Harklerode: And, and I… and it never came.
• 22:25
  Sean Harklerode: And… So that's… that's where I kind of had… had… had that issue.
• 22:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, on one side, it never came, and on the other side, it came immediately, because from the get-go…
• 22:40
  Tad Eggleston: You thought of… torpedo as a…
• 22:44
  Tad Eggleston: Horribly, not just amoral, but immoral, guileless…
• 22:52
  Tad Eggleston: man. Like, like, so, the question is, like…
• 22:57
  Tad Eggleston: Can it be satire if it's not explicit?
• 23:02
  Tad Eggleston: Can it be satire if there's not the wink to say.
• 23:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you're supposed to hate this guy.
• 23:09
  Mark Pracht: But that… Satire would indicate there's something funny.
• 23:14
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, satire might not be the right word. Commentary.
• 23:16
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 23:17
  Tad Eggleston: Social commentary.
• 23:20
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I don't get the commentary.
• 23:22
  Mark Pracht: Me neither.
• 23:22
  Sean Harklerode: To me, to me, it feels, I think Mark's, you know, comparing it to pornography, you know.
• 23:30
  Sean Harklerode: is… it seems apt to me. It seems like there's a purient interest
• 23:36
  Sean Harklerode: in seeing what he does, which I'm not gonna knock, you know? If people want to… that's for other people, right? You know, my DVD collection, you know, is…
• 23:48
  Sean Harklerode: Not for everyone.
• 23:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 23:52
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, like, it's… it's, it's, like, I was just having this conversation with somebody the other day, it was, or actually, last night, that,
• 24:01
  Mark Pracht: how I feel like… It's not for you has become kind of a club instead of a shield?
• 24:09
  Mark Pracht: You know? Like…
• 24:13
  Mark Pracht: you know, like, it's… whatever… whatever you like, in terms of your reading material, or your viewing material, or whatever, it's yours. And no one… no one else has any right to come in and say, that's awful.
• 24:29
  Mark Pracht: Right. For something that you want to read, and I'm certainly, like.
• 24:33
  Mark Pracht: I can see where there would be people who love this. And I… good and just and righteous people who love this, who think that this is really great. And I understand that.
• 24:44
  Mark Pracht: But, like… Not… it's not for me, and that's…
• 24:49
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 24:50
  Mark Pracht: And that's… Right.
• 24:51
  Sean Harklerode: So what.
• 24:51
  Tad Eggleston: That makes sense.
• 24:52
  Sean Harklerode: spirical point.
• 24:54
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's, that's a really… yeah.
• 24:57
  Sean Harklerode: If it's satire, what is the… what is.
• 24:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this popped in my head again when you talked about James Bond, and then when Mark talked about
• 25:06
  Tad Eggleston: Vito Corleone is, is that, like… that… those…
• 25:14
  Tad Eggleston: stories are largely fantasy, and, like, we don't really get to understand why Vito Corleone managed to create his own moral code from that.
• 25:29
  Tad Eggleston: Horrible.
• 25:30
  Tad Eggleston: Beginning with no examples of moral code, with people
• 25:35
  Tad Eggleston: In his own family, abusing each other, killing each other, you know, for no reason whatsoever.
• 25:45
  Tad Eggleston: So, like…
• 25:53
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I… I… look, I would push back on that, because I think that… I think that…
• 26:00
  Mark Pracht: I'm just saying that… and certainly, like, if you just wanted to say that this is a… this is a… this is a version of a man who lives in this world that does exist, right?
• 26:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:13
  Mark Pracht: Like, this kind of cruelty does exist, there's no doubt about it, you know?
• 26:20
  Mark Pracht: that, you know, I think Stephen King said it someplace, where it was like, you know, I just believe that there are evil people in the world, and that it's not that you're
• 26:29
  Mark Pracht: in inimitable Stephen King style, it's like, it's not because your mother put your penis in a vice or whatever, you know, it's that you were just born evil. And I think that…
• 26:41
  Mark Pracht: I think that that's a little… Easy.
• 26:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 26:45
  Mark Pracht: Because, like, I think everyone's background informs what they become, and I think that… I just…
• 26:52
  Mark Pracht: For… and again, for myself.
• 26:56
  Mark Pracht: I don't necessarily see…
• 27:02
  Mark Pracht: Look, if you just wanted to say that this is, like, it's a slice of life of a terrible man who does terrible things, okay, great.
• 27:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But…
• 27:11
  Mark Pracht: that's… I don't think that's satire.
• 27:18
  Tad Eggleston: And that's fair. I mean, I don't know if satire's the word that I was looking for either. Right. Because satire, you're right, is generally funny, and I don't know that there's anything funny about this at all.
• 27:29
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, I think that… it's not… but to Sean's point, it doesn't necessarily have to be funny, but at some point, the satire has to become…
• 27:39
  Sean Harklerode: We see the… the world.
• 27:40
  Mark Pracht: We understand.
• 27:41
  Sean Harklerode: Friends.
• 27:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, and you're like, oh, okay, yeah.
• 27:45
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, it is interesting to make the point about The Godfather, because I don't know if you have read
• 27:51
  Sean Harklerode: further, torpedo 72.
• 27:57
  Sean Harklerode: They're watching The Godfather, and this is a bully with the 100 bullets, guys.
• 28:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Eduardo Riso.
• 28:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yep.
• 28:05
  Sean Harklerode: So that is interesting.
• 28:09
  Sean Harklerode: And obviously, look, I mean, that's one thing. There are several moments, several times through here,
• 28:18
  Sean Harklerode: where they're at movies, and there's a lot of movie references. Of course, from what we read, the Frankenstein.
• 28:27
  Sean Harklerode: Which I think is also kind of a tribute to…
• 28:32
  Sean Harklerode: we haven't talked about Torpedo's design,
• 28:37
  Sean Harklerode: you know, I kind of felt he looked like, oh, what's his name?
• 28:42
  Tad Eggleston: ish? Ghoulish?
• 28:45
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, well, he looks… he looks like, karloff.
• 28:51
  Tad Eggleston: Mmm.
• 28:51
  Mark Pracht: Carlof, yeah.
• 28:53
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely.
• 28:54
  Sean Harklerode: But also, I think more specifically, John Anderson. I don't know if you recall the veteran actor John Anderson.
• 29:05
  Sean Harklerode: But, but I think he's, too, look like Karloff, and they're…
• 29:10
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. Definitely looks like.
• 29:12
  Sean Harklerode: where he…
• 29:12
  Tad Eggleston: Anderson, too.
• 29:13
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 29:15
  Mark Pracht: I, you know, it's interesting, I was just flipping through this.
• 29:19
  Mark Pracht: not to… not to jump off the thing, but we were talking about the Toth thing, and how he…
• 29:25
  Mark Pracht: would've… like, that he was like, I can't do this. This is not my… this is not my thing.
• 29:32
  Mark Pracht: I'm flipping through the Toth, episodes that we read.
• 29:36
  Tad Eggleston: And I… I am very struck by…
• 29:39
  Mark Pracht: The sex and… the sex, in particular, is all either in shadow.
• 29:46
  Mark Pracht: or, like, it's very close up, so that, you know, like, Geordi Brene, and God bless Jordy Brene, because, like, I love Geordi Brene's art, and I love how Jordy Brene draws women, but I mean, like, Geordi Brene was like, here's boobs, you know?
• 30:01
  Sean Harklerode: And, and .
• 30:04
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like, I'm looking at even the first page of the Toss story, it's like, there's the picture of the girl in the bed, and she's naked, but her arms are very specifically here, and you just barely get a hint of nipple.
• 30:16
  Mark Pracht: Whereas Brene would have just drawn her laying there.
• 30:20
  Mark Pracht: You know, fully revealed, you know?
• 30:24
  Mark Pracht: I… that was just interesting, thinking about what you guys were saying about Toth, and… and that… that…
• 30:31
  Mark Pracht: That… the reason that he opted out…
• 30:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's fascinating to me.
• 30:38
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and…
• 30:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I… I think, yeah.
• 30:41
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I don't know, I think…
• 30:45
  Mark Pracht: I just, I mean, like, every, every story has its own reason for being, and everybody, every writer, and I'm… look, I am 100%,
• 30:54
  Tad Eggleston: In this particular context.
• 30:58
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, a freedom of speech
• 31:00
  Mark Pracht: absolutist, right? You know, if you want to write a story about anything, no matter how horrible.
• 31:06
  Mark Pracht: write it, right? And…
• 31:08
  Mark Pracht: you… the audience gets to have whatever reaction they want, but you still get to write that story, and try to sell it, and try to find an audience for it. Because that's… that's what it is. And the thing is, is that if you write a story about a horrible thing, it doesn't necessarily make you a horrible person.
• 31:24
  Mark Pracht: Right? And I think that there's a lot of people in this world who try to make that
• 31:29
  Mark Pracht: Right. That connection, and I think that it's bullshit.
• 31:33
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 31:36
  Mark Pracht: So, like, even putting it in that context, I have to walk back what I said earlier, because
• 31:43
  Mark Pracht: just because these stories, and I don't think it's just the character, I think the stories are deeply misogynistic, that,
• 31:54
  Mark Pracht: That doesn't necessarily mean that, how do you say his name? .
• 31:58
  Tad Eggleston: Bully.
• 31:59
  Mark Pracht: A bully is a misogynist, but he's definitely written a misogynist story, and maybe he… maybe… maybe his idea was to be, satirical or make a commentary on society, but I'm just not seeing it. I don't get it, and I don't… I don't know.
• 32:18
  Sean Harklerode: Where were these originally published? I mean, because now I'm thinking maybe these were published…
• 32:23
  Tad Eggleston: Spain.
• 32:23
  Sean Harklerode: In, like, a… import.
• 32:26
  Tad Eggleston: emotions in.
• 32:26
  Sean Harklerode: what publication, you know? I feel like maybe this was a men's magazine, like… Penthouse comics.
• 32:34
  Mark Pracht: Like, Penthouse Comics or something like that.
• 32:37
  Tad Eggleston: No, it was actually for… well…
• 32:39
  Tad Eggleston: First published in issue 32 of the Spanish horror comics magazine, Creepy.
• 32:48
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like.
• 32:49
  Sean Harklerode: But, well, I think, Mark, I'm sorry to cut you off there, but I think it's important,
• 32:57
  Sean Harklerode: None of us have said this is bad.
• 33:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 33:00
  Sean Harklerode: There's… so, you know, it's art, it's got us talking, it's got us thinking.
• 33:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and that was… that was the… that was literally the point that I was gonna bring up next.
• 33:09
  Sean Harklerode: Right. So, I mean, it is not… we're having reactions to it.
• 33:13
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 33:13
  Sean Harklerode: You know, look, there's terrible things, like, you know.
• 33:17
  Sean Harklerode: that I have watched that I'm never gonna even talk about, you know, it's like, I've read, like, that's just not interesting to me. So this is very interesting.
• 33:28
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. And very well done, and it's provocative.
• 33:32
  Sean Harklerode: So, I just wanted to make sure that we're not…
• 33:35
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no.
• 33:35
  Sean Harklerode: You're under the impression that this is bad stuff, this is…
• 33:38
  Mark Pracht: -
• 33:38
  Sean Harklerode: Gorgeous, and it's well written.
• 33:40
  Sean Harklerode: It's…
• 33:42
  Mark Pracht: I, yeah, to… to your point, I also, like, again, with what I'm saying, is… like…
• 33:51
  Mark Pracht: If someone was to ask me about this book, I would be like, it's gorgeous, it's well-written, it made me deeply uncomfortable, and I didn't want to read any more past it.
• 34:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 34:01
  Mark Pracht: And that's… you may have the same reaction, maybe you'll get something out of it, maybe somebody, like, I… I don't feel like, and not to… not to… not to be aggressive, Tad, but I mean, like, I don't feel like anybody in this discussion has made a…
• 34:19
  Mark Pracht: a real argument as to how it's a satire or a commentary on something that somebody else may be able.
• 34:27
  Tad Eggleston: And I think I've even said as I've made my comments that I don't know that I'm there. What I do love about this book, and why I do return to it.
• 34:38
  Tad Eggleston: is that…
• 34:42
  Tad Eggleston: I like reading things or watching things that make me ask questions about the work and the world.
• 34:50
  Tad Eggleston: And this book always makes me ask questions. Doesn't necessarily give me any answers, I don't know if the questions that I'm being asked are ones that the author intended me to ask, and frankly, I don't care.
• 35:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 35:05
  Mark Pracht: 100%.
• 35:06
  Tad Eggleston: But the work makes me think.
• 35:11
  Tad Eggleston: And I appreciate that. It is!
• 35:13
  Mark Pracht: I will say…
• 35:15
  Tad Eggleston: Go ahead.
• 35:16
  Mark Pracht: No, I will say, there was one episode in this book that actually made me chuckle out loud, and that's when it was the girl who was in the relationship with the black man.
• 35:27
  Mark Pracht: And they were… it was like a whole scam to… to get money out of her father, and then the cops showed up, and then the story ended with…
• 35:36
  Mark Pracht: the cop and the black man and the girl in some sort of polyamorous, relationship, and that made me laugh out loud. I was like, okay.
• 35:47
  Mark Pracht: Like, that… but… and if there was more things like that.
• 35:52
  Mark Pracht: I think that I probably would have liked it a lot more, but I think…
• 35:58
  Mark Pracht: to… to your point, like, I think…
• 36:01
  Mark Pracht: like, art is in the eye of the beholder, always, right? And I think that… that that is…
• 36:11
  Mark Pracht: one of the troubling things in our society right now, because I think everybody
• 36:17
  Mark Pracht: thinks that their… their vision of something should be shared by everyone, otherwise they're being oppressed in some way, you know what I'm saying?
• 36:27
  Mark Pracht: Like… What the hell?
• 36:30
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, no.
• 36:31
  Mark Pracht: because, like, I was thinking about this, I actually… and now I'm…
• 36:36
  Mark Pracht: I'm flying off the reservation, so if you want to drive me back, please. I was… yesterday, or this week, while I was working, I watched a, Happy, Sad, Confused, 10th anniversary interview with Zack Snyder about Batman v Superman.
• 36:52
  Mark Pracht: And I was watching this and listening to him talk, and I'm like, this guy always strikes me as a really pleasant and interesting and thoughtful man who made these choices. And then I thought about… and then I started looking at the comments.
• 37:07
  Mark Pracht: Never look at the comments. But I mean, like, the way people talk about that movie is insane.
• 37:13
  Mark Pracht: Right? Like… People who are pro it, people who are against it, they're all nuts. And they're all…
• 37:22
  Mark Pracht: But they're all obsessed with this idea that their version of whatever that film is has to be everybody's version, or else somehow they're… like, and me, armchair psychologist, armed actor.
• 37:36
  Mark Pracht: you know, interpreting people's… people's words. I'm like, it's because they're all deathly afraid that they're wrong.
• 37:45
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 37:47
  Mark Pracht: And, and that the ability to say
• 37:51
  Mark Pracht: And I'm gonna pat myself on the back. The ability to say, I read this, I think it has some value, but it's not for me.
• 38:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 38:01
  Mark Pracht: is… A lost art in our society.
• 38:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 38:07
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 38:10
  Mark Pracht: And that it has value, because somebody else might love it.
• 38:14
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that's… I think that's part of why
• 38:18
  Tad Eggleston: I've started becoming really attracted to things.
• 38:22
  Tad Eggleston: that… Make me ask questions, rather than…
• 38:28
  Tad Eggleston: Because it is such a lost art, so I see that as, oh, this is a lens to try to look at
• 38:35
  Tad Eggleston: Again, whether intended or not, this is a lens to try to look at, like, what's the perspective of somebody who loves this for this reason, or that reason, or whatever.
• 38:46
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's funny that you brought up
• 38:49
  Tad Eggleston: Batman vs. Superman, because I still haven't seen it.
• 38:55
  Tad Eggleston: essentially because of what you were just describing. I, I, like.
• 39:00
  Tad Eggleston: I do kind of want to see it. I was happy to dodge the bullet initially, like, my son went with somebody else before he could have gone with me.
• 39:13
  Tad Eggleston: And didn't like it enough, at least in the moment, to want to go see it again immediately.
• 39:19
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 39:23
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm… I'm among the people who thought that Snyder's Superman, sure, it was a good movie, I get the people who like it because they thought it was a fantastic film, but it wasn't a Superman movie to me.
• 39:38
  Tad Eggleston: And again, like, it's… that falls a little bit into what you were talking about.
• 39:44
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 39:45
  Tad Eggleston: But, but I also, I, I never, I never said.
• 39:49
  Tad Eggleston: that it couldn't be somebody else's Superman. Like, I wasn't a Superman movie to me. It wasn't my Superman. And that's why I wasn't particularly excited about Batman v Superman, because regardless of whether or not it became a Batman movie that was mine, I didn't expect it to be a Superman movie that was mine.
• 40:09
  Sean Harklerode: As I've always said, it's the Elseworlds where Superman was raised by assholes.
• 40:14
  Sean Harklerode: There you go.
• 40:16
  Mark Pracht: Well, okay, like, we could get into that discussion.
• 40:18
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I don't love Man of Steel. I like Man of Steel, and I do love Batman vs. Superman. I think it's… it's operatic. It's working on an operatic scale. Well, look, I have very… I do have…
• 40:38
  Sean Harklerode: I do have problems with the Kent's, actions.
• 40:42
  Tad Eggleston: I will say that the single biggest thing that annoyed me about Man of Steel
• 40:49
  Tad Eggleston: was… was a very autistic annoyance. It had very little to do with, They had whispers.
• 40:59
  Tad Eggleston: Of.
• 41:00
  Tad Eggleston: John Williams Superman theme.
• 41:03
  Tad Eggleston: all the time, and never actually went into it. And it just completely threw me.
• 41:10
  Tad Eggleston: Because they whispered it enough that I expected a point where we would go full into it. I was waiting and watching for a point where we would go full into it, and the music was supposed to tell me, this is the critical point. And not even in the credits.
• 41:29
  Tad Eggleston: did we get the full-on Superman theme?
• 41:34
  Mark Pracht: Well, okay, look, now this… we're… now we're… now we're… because I… you have seen Man of Steel.
• 41:39
  Sean Harklerode: Now we've gone afield.
• 41:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
• 41:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, we've all…
• 41:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's all related.
• 41:44
  Mark Pracht: I think that this is my feeling about that. I think that that movie needed to eject the Williams theme completely.
• 41:53
  Tad Eggleston: I agree.
• 41:53
  Mark Pracht: for the most part, they did. I think that Superman Returns was deeply flawed because
• 42:01
  Mark Pracht: it didn't star Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. I think that that story just doesn't work unless it's Christopher Reeve.
• 42:10
  Mark Pracht: I think… I think that, I think that, I… I think that, James Gunn's version has numerous problems for me. But I will address my feelings about this cancer assholes. I think that… I think that…
• 42:28
  Mark Pracht: The choice that was made there is that… They don't know.
• 42:35
  Mark Pracht: what Clark is.
• 42:38
  Mark Pracht: And therefore, they're reacting as parents trying to protect their child.
• 42:45
  Mark Pracht: Right? And you can… you can like that, you can dislike it, or whatever, but Jonathan feels that he has to maintain his
• 42:57
  Mark Pracht: like, that if he reveals himself to the world, that he will be in danger, right? And in a way.
• 43:03
  Mark Pracht: The movie sort of shows that to be right, but it also shows that that… that was the path that he had to take, right?
• 43:11
  Mark Pracht: And I think that, like, I was reading something from Mark Waid where he was talking about that he… his favorite moment in that movie is that when
• 43:24
  Mark Pracht: Jonathan tells Clark not to save him during the tornado, because he was like, that's genius.
• 43:31
  Mark Pracht: And, but then he doesn't…
• 43:36
  Mark Pracht: he didn't feel like it was played out correctly, which… neither here nor there. But the fact of the matter is, is that
• 43:44
  Mark Pracht: living in the world of that movie, I understood why Jonathan was doing that.
• 43:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 43:49
  Mark Pracht: And I actually also understood why Clark was like, what do I do?
• 43:55
  Mark Pracht: what do I do? It's… it's the same moment in a… it's actually a more intense version of Jonathan collapsing and dying of a heart attack.
• 44:06
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 44:07
  Mark Pracht: I could have saved him.
• 44:11
  Sean Harklerode: Except… I could have seen.
• 44:13
  Sean Harklerode: In that instance, he literally could have saved him.
• 44:17
  Mark Pracht: Sure, but… like… Look, if your father said, don't do that.
• 44:26
  Mark Pracht: would that cause you to be like, what do I do?
• 44:31
  Mark Pracht: Like, I… if I put that… look.
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 44:34
  Mark Pracht: My father right now is in hospice care, and I can't go and visit him, and… and repeatedly, my mother has told me that my father is like, no, you stay there and take care of Colleen, right?
• 44:48
  Mark Pracht: Am I still?
• 44:50
  Mark Pracht: Thinking?
• 44:51
  Mark Pracht: How do I do both things?
• 44:53
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 44:55
  Mark Pracht: That's what that moment is. And the moment plays out
• 45:00
  Mark Pracht: Because it's about Clark trying to figure out what the right choice is.
• 45:06
  Mark Pracht: My biggest problem with Man of Steel is that
• 45:10
  Mark Pracht: I think the fight at the end
• 45:13
  Mark Pracht: I understand intellectually what they're trying to do.
• 45:17
  Mark Pracht: Like, that if Clark stops fighting Zod, Zod's just gonna kill 50 people, you know? Like, that there's no time to stop to go save that bus, or to, you know, like, that it's just… it's power beyond imagination, right?
• 45:31
  Mark Pracht: But the thing about it is, is that you needed to have one moment where Clark does try to save, like, a bus full of people.
• 45:39
  Mark Pracht: like, he's… Zod throws a bus full of people, Clark catches it, puts it down, saves their lives, turns around and watches Zod…
• 45:46
  Mark Pracht: Crush an entire building.
• 45:48
  Mark Pracht: You know, and then visually, That says to us.
• 45:53
  Mark Pracht: there's no way out of this, right? That you have to confront the source of it. You can't go around trying to play triage with everything that's going on around you, you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
• 46:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 46:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 46:06
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this…
• 46:08
  Mark Pracht: Like, we've gotten way off that. We've gotten.
• 46:10
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no!
• 46:12
  Mark Pracht: I thought… I thought the other thing that I wanted to say was when you said you were playing devil's advocate, like.
• 46:18
  Mark Pracht: in these… these exact kind of conversations, these exact kind of conversations about something as… as non-essential to… I mean, I think that's the wrong way to put this, because I do think art is essential to the world, but in terms of something that is totally about
• 46:38
  Mark Pracht: opinion. And that's… that's… that's the other thing that the world has not been able to grapple with in the last few years, is that your reaction to a piece of art is an opinion.
• 46:49
  Mark Pracht: opinion is valid. Period. Right?
• 46:54
  Sean Harklerode: I, I…
• 46:55
  Sean Harklerode: I have news on that front. We'll share that for after the call. Sure, okay. Someone who does not think that opinions are valid.
• 47:04
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah. But,
• 47:06
  Mark Pracht: you know, I have had these similar kind of conversations, and I said, well, like, look, just playing devil's advocate. And I have been told on a number of occasions, the devil never needs an advocate. And I'm like, the devil always needs an advocate. Somebody always, especially in a conversation like this, where we're talking about a piece of art.
• 47:25
  Mark Pracht: Everyone should… like, somebody should always be like, yeah, but what if… what if this is the thing?
• 47:31
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 47:31
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. And that's…
• 47:33
  Mark Pracht: That's…
• 47:33
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you for that being where you were going, because for a second there, I was gonna… I thought you were gonna give me a hard time, and I was… I was preparing my answer for… No, no, no. I think it's actually more important in conversations like this to do that, because that's where you, like…
• 47:47
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna use… I'm a tangential thinker, that's why I love it when we go off track. I'm gonna use something that I have to use at school all the time. You know, kids will ask, you know, when am I ever gonna use this math again?
• 48:01
  Tad Eggleston: And I say, well… You know, you're a football player.
• 48:05
  Tad Eggleston: Do you lift weights?
• 48:07
  Tad Eggleston: Do you ever bench press on the football field?
• 48:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, but I gotta, I gotta build those muscles.
• 48:13
  Tad Eggleston: you're building muscles that you will use by doing this math. When I play devil's advocate in a conversation that doesn't have global significance, it's building the muscle for playing devil's advocate in the conversation that does.
• 48:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 48:31
  Mark Pracht: I mean, but the other thing is, is like, if.
• 48:33
  Tad Eggleston: And as you pointed out, we've gotten really bad at it, as a society, being able to go.
• 48:38
  Tad Eggleston: Let's try to understand each other's opinions, or think about where somebody else might come from, rather than just labeling, your opinion is bad, my opinion is good, their opinion is bad, their opinion is good.
• 48:51
  Mark Pracht: Right. Well, yeah, especially…
• 48:53
  Sean Harklerode: The window of what we're able to discuss is close.
• 48:58
  Mark Pracht: Right, yeah, and the thing about it is, is like, if you're talking about something as stupid as a superhero movie, right? And I say that with love.
• 49:05
  Tad Eggleston: Bye!
• 49:06
  Mark Pracht: Like, as stupid and inconsequential as to whether this movie about a guy who's an alien, and a guy who's a billionaire, who has a lot of equipment, fighting.
• 49:17
  Mark Pracht: or having a conflict, that's the better way to put it in the context of that movie. Having a conflict is…
• 49:25
  Mark Pracht: Not a place where
• 49:28
  Mark Pracht: somebody should be like, okay, this is what this means, period, end of story. Like, who gives a shit, right?
• 49:35
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why I can't emphasize enough that, like, my assessment of Man of Steel is not that it's a bad movie, it's not that it shouldn't be anybody's Superman, it's that it's not my Superman, and I can see enough of why other people think that it's a good movie, that I also know that if somehow it was a movie that wasn't Superman, I probably would have enjoyed it more, and that's on me.
• 50:00
  Tad Eggleston: It's kind of like, you know, in a much smaller sense, the thing that I hate the most
• 50:06
  Tad Eggleston: about Christopher Nolan's Batman, and it's a really, really little thing.
• 50:12
  Tad Eggleston: Floss in Batman Begins.
• 50:16
  Mark Pracht: The big, fat.
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: greasy, Shaking down the falafel Floss.
• 50:24
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not that I mind that character existing.
• 50:28
  Tad Eggleston: But I've read Batman Year 1, and I know who Floss is in Batman Year 1, and that is about as far from Floss in Batman Year 1 as you can possibly get, and there are a billion names in the world. Why not just name that character something else?
• 50:46
  Mark Pracht: Well, it's just sort of… it's sort of, like, if you really want to talk about that, it's… it's just like Eckhart in, in Tim Burton's Batman. That's really, Bullock.
• 50:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right!
• 50:58
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 50:59
  Mark Pracht: And that's, you know, whatever. I mean, like, look, I find Batman begins to be really interesting in that it's sort of, like, halfway between what Christopher Nolan obviously wanted to do, and somebody wanting to reboot the Burton sort of thing. Like, it feels…
• 51:18
  Mark Pracht: like, when you watch those movies in order, like, that feels like a comic book movie, and then suddenly Dark Knight starts, and it's like, wow, this is something…
• 51:27
  Mark Pracht: Right. Totally different, you know?
• 51:29
  Mark Pracht: And I love it for that reason, because it's a step… it's a step to something else, but…
• 51:37
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, I think…
• 51:42
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, we've kind of gotten off the subject, but I just think that… I think that…
• 51:46
  Tad Eggleston: We have and we haven't, because I think… I think overall, the… the subject that… that…
• 51:52
  Tad Eggleston: Torpedo is, is… like… How do you talk about art that isn't your own thing? How do you talk…
• 52:01
  Tad Eggleston: You know, how do you examine art that makes you uncomfortable?
• 52:05
  Tad Eggleston: that you can recognize is, on some level, very good art, but not for you.
• 52:13
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, I think that's the theme of our conversation. These book clubs don't have to have the theme of the book.
• 52:22
  Tad Eggleston: They can find things around…
• 52:23
  Sean Harklerode: Talk to Jimmy Palmiati.
• 52:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he did the.
• 52:28
  Sean Harklerode: He did the trans- translation?
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: translation, I forgot to mention that, so yeah.
• 52:32
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:33
  Tad Eggleston: Last three!
• 52:35
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 52:38
  Mark Pracht: Wonder.
• 52:39
  Mark Pracht: I wonder how he feels about that.
• 52:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, the next time we talk to him, we'll have to ask.
• 52:44
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 52:46
  Mark Pracht: Color, design, and co… oh, wow, I didn't notice that. Color, design, and Color by Darwin Cook.
• 52:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:53
  Mark Pracht: Damn.
• 52:53
  Tad Eggleston: Jimmy and Darwin were involved in this book.
• 52:57
  Mark Pracht: Ugh.
• 52:58
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I totally get it, because from an artistic standpoint.
• 53:04
  Tad Eggleston: It's really… I totally get it.
• 53:06
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I totally get it too, because I'm… I… clearly, like, Jimmy can get into the mindset of this kind of stuff, right?
• 53:13
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 53:14
  Mark Pracht: I think if Jimmy wrote this, it'd be better, but that's just me.
• 53:17
  Tad Eggleston: That's entirely possible. Though that's also where we gotta wonder…
• 53:20
  Sean Harklerode: Or, more to your taste.
• 53:22
  Mark Pracht: more.
• 53:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 53:23
  Tad Eggleston: I, I mean…
• 53:24
  Mark Pracht: When I say that it's better, that is more to my taste, yeah.
• 53:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:28
  Mark Pracht: That's what I'm meaning.
• 53:29
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. I like things that are good.
• 53:31
  Mark Pracht: Oh, shut up.
• 53:32
  Tad Eggleston: He got what he meant, and I also love that Sean gave him a hard time.
• 53:37
  Tad Eggleston: Shot and sweet!
• 53:38
  Mark Pracht: Can we… can we develop a shorthand for the conversations in here that we all just accept?
• 53:44
  Tad Eggleston: But what I also actually, you know.
• 53:48
  Tad Eggleston: A, I think it's meaningful what time period he chose to set the story. I think… I think that that… I don't… I don't have anything more to say about it right now, but that's something that kind of rattles around in my head, too, when I'm… when I'm thinking about this, is, like, this was written in the 80s, so they could have chosen any.
• 54:06
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 54:06
  Tad Eggleston: And this is the period they chose.
• 54:09
  Sean Harklerode: It's specifically 1936.
• 54:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, every… well, every store… every different story has a year… has a year tied to it.
• 54:20
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I mean, you brought up the 72. The thing… the thing that struck me when I was reading 72 is, like, oh, like, he does not age well, not just in terms of.
• 54:33
  Tad Eggleston: The reader, but in that world.
• 54:36
  Sean Harklerode: Right. Like, the people around him are much less…
• 54:40
  Tad Eggleston: accepting of his behavior in Torpedo 1972.
• 54:45
  Sean Harklerode: And it has Parkinson's.
• 54:47
  Tad Eggleston: Great!
• 54:47
  Sean Harklerode: And there's a callback, actually, to… When his assistant
• 54:54
  Sean Harklerode: You know, didn't kill that girl, because he does it again.
• 54:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:59
  Sean Harklerode: You did this to me. You did this to me before.
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 55:03
  Sean Harklerode: And, and, but here's where the… Somehow.
• 55:10
  Sean Harklerode: The line is, no, not with the shaky hand, not with the bad hand. It hurts worse.
• 55:18
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 55:18
  Sean Harklerode: So he has one hand that's, I guess, palsied, or shaken, whatever, from Parkinson's.
• 55:24
  Sean Harklerode: And it's like, it hurts worse if he hits him with that hand.
• 55:28
  Sean Harklerode: Which I don't understand.
• 55:31
  Sean Harklerode: I read…
• 55:32
  Sean Harklerode: No one with Parkinson's ever gets mad enough to hit me, and then I'll learn.
• 55:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's not fun.
• 55:40
  Tad Eggleston: I work senior care, remember?
• 55:42
  Sean Harklerode: Is the bad hand worse? Is that…
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: Not automatically, but it's not uncommon for the bad hand to be the stronger arm, and they have less control over it.
• 55:51
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, okay.
• 55:53
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because it's the shaky arm.
• 55:57
  Sean Harklerode: Hmm. Blake.
• 55:57
  Tad Eggleston: They can't pull the punch.
• 56:00
  Tad Eggleston: If they're making the pot, they don't have enough motor control, so even if it's not the stronger arm, like…
• 56:08
  Tad Eggleston: when… I don't do a lot of punching, but when you're punching, you can kind of decide how hard you're gonna hit.
• 56:14
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 56:15
  Tad Eggleston: If you're missing motor control, you don't have that precision.
• 56:20
  Tad Eggleston: And it wasn't Parkinson's, but the worst one, too, I ever got was from a… 67 pound…
• 56:29
  Tad Eggleston: 98-year-old woman.
• 56:31
  Tad Eggleston: who was, like, constricted, so she didn't even really do it on purpose. Something made her just suddenly go…
• 56:41
  Tad Eggleston: And the left had a big, huge rock.
• 56:46
  Tad Eggleston: It wasn't just the BAM, it was… actually, the BAM was nice, because it meant the rock missed with the second hit. The rock, like, went between my lips because my mouth was open.
• 56:58
  Sean Harklerode: Oof.
• 57:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no. These are the danger… these are why, like, when we talk about healthcare workers, we don't talk about the biggest reasons that they should be paid more. They deserve combat pay, because they often deal with combat pay, and it's not even because the people are trying to be mean to her.
• 57:20
  Tad Eggleston: them. This, like, the second worst
• 57:24
  Tad Eggleston: I had… I almost got choked out by a resident once, and both of those residents liked me.
• 57:33
  Mark Pracht: But they had dementia.
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: And there were moments that happened to…
• 57:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, literally, the one that almost choked me out when I managed to get somebody to come and release me, you know, like, the second the other person that came in and said, hey, why are you doing that? He stopped doing it, and when I started coughing, he's like, hey, buddy, are you okay? You know, what happened? And I'm like, you were just choking me. I was?
• 57:59
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry!
• 58:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'd just been tying his shoes, and he wound up grabbing me.
• 58:09
  Tad Eggleston: And I was making $14 an hour.
• 58:13
  Tad Eggleston: As… as the supervisor.
• 58:16
  Sean Harklerode: Wow.
• 58:17
  Tad Eggleston: I was in a leadership role. Wow. And this wasn't actually… I mean, it was like a decade ago, but, like…
• 58:26
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe 15 years ago?
• 58:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, the pay hasn't increased that much for a lot of those jobs.
• 58:35
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why, like, every time I heard a, like, executive say, oh, if we pay so… too much, we won't get people who have their hearts in them sitting there going.
• 58:45
  Tad Eggleston: Walmart already pays way better, so I think the people who are here have their hearts in it. Right.
• 58:58
  Mark Pracht: Wow.
• 58:59
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, so, I mean, to bring that full circle, I think that…
• 59:08
  Tad Eggleston: We often don't try to think very hard about the parts of the world that aren't our lives. I think it's one of the reasons that allows us to become
• 59:16
  Tad Eggleston: polarized, I mean, The number of times…
• 59:23
  Tad Eggleston: I'll be in a conversation about art, and people will talk about, oh, nobody behaves like that, and I'm like, man, do you live in a very…
• 59:32
  Tad Eggleston: set group of people. You're saying the people you know don't behave like that. I know a wide group of people. I can name people that I know that absolutely behave like that.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, you hear it with good and bad behavior, you know? Oh, I'm good at suspending disbelief with this fantasy thing, but it's hard to swallow here, and I'm like, it's hard to swallow in this thing that doesn't strike me as fantasy at all?
• 59:59
  Mark Pracht: You, you think that it's…
• 1:00:01
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, part of this is… part of reading this, I think, is we're hoping that there aren't people that behave the way that Torpedo behaves. We want to believe a world where this character is unbelievable.
• 1:00:16
  Tad Eggleston: And that this is some pornographic fantasy.
• 1:00:22
  Tad Eggleston: But at the same time, is it?
• 1:00:26
  Tad Eggleston: Aren't there people? You know, and you brought up the Stephen King, and like, I agree with his statement until he says that they're born that way. I don't think there are many people born that way, but I think that sometimes it feels like it, because generational trauma is a real thing.
• 1:00:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, no, no, look, I think.
• 1:00:43
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:00:44
  Mark Pracht: Steve, I think, Steve, I think that there is… there are people with,
• 1:00:50
  Mark Pracht: who maybe have some switch in their brain that makes them more susceptible to certain things, but I mean, like, it's also, like.
• 1:01:00
  Mark Pracht: It… like, I have many feelings about many things that often are… or…
• 1:01:11
  Mark Pracht: understanding than a lot of people around me. I mean, like, I think that… that… A lot of people…
• 1:01:20
  Mark Pracht: part of it… part of it I chalk up to the fact that, you know.
• 1:01:24
  Mark Pracht: I do theater, and I try to write, and I think that that's… that's an empathy game, right?
• 1:01:31
  Mark Pracht: And I think that there's far too many people in this world who want to.
• 1:01:36
  Tad Eggleston: Add to it that you live in a big city, and you see more diverse people on a daily basis than a lot of people do.
• 1:01:44
  Mark Pracht: But it's also, like, also the, like, the idea of, like, if you're picking and choosing who you have empathy for, well, I mean, I think that that's not…
• 1:01:52
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not really empathy.
• 1:01:53
  Mark Pracht: really empathy, right? Then you're just, you're just saying, oh, well, these… this person, I can empathize, but this person…
• 1:02:02
  Tad Eggleston: I'm incredibly empathetic, but… but… I don't even want to think about what MAGA voters might
• 1:02:09
  Tad Eggleston: Think or feel or whatnot, because they're just wrong.
• 1:02:12
  Mark Pracht: Or vice versa.
• 1:02:14
  Mark Pracht: Or what, what a, an independent voter who.
• 1:02:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:02:19
  Mark Pracht: Just made a choice because they thought it would be better for their family.
• 1:02:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:02:26
  Tad Eggleston: Or the guy that doesn't vote, because they… they are busy as hell, and in the… to the level that they're able to pay attention.
• 1:02:36
  Tad Eggleston: They don't see the difference.
• 1:02:38
  Mark Pracht: Or the people who don't spend every waking minute of their lives online watching.
• 1:02:42
  Tad Eggleston: That's my point.
• 1:02:42
  Mark Pracht: shit.
• 1:02:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's my point.
• 1:02:44
  Mark Pracht: You know, even somebody who's just like, you know, like, the last 4 years have sucked.
• 1:02:50
  Mark Pracht: I think we need something different. All right. Great.
• 1:02:54
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like, like, those things, like… I think that…
• 1:03:00
  Mark Pracht: and, like, we're getting really deep here, but I think that the biggest damage… like, I'm working… I'm actually working on a play right now that is sort of about internet culture.
• 1:03:12
  Mark Pracht: in a very simple way. That's a very broad-based version of what I'm trying to do, but,
• 1:03:19
  Mark Pracht: The thing is, is that diving into a very specific sort of online community.
• 1:03:24
  Mark Pracht: Has led me to understand that
• 1:03:27
  Mark Pracht: What having these specific online communities has damaged about our society is that people begin to believe that their viewpoint
• 1:03:40
  Mark Pracht: Which is reflected back to them.
• 1:03:43
  Mark Pracht: Like, it developed sort of a gut.
• 1:03:46
  Tad Eggleston: Represents the majority.
• 1:03:48
  Mark Pracht: Well, but it also represents, like, I think that it even more creates this idea that I'm really the only person who
• 1:03:55
  Mark Pracht: matters or exists, right? Like, that everyone else is some sort of…
• 1:04:05
  Mark Pracht: False.
• 1:04:05
  Tad Eggleston: I…
• 1:04:06
  Mark Pracht: I mean, what they don't matter.
• 1:04:08
  Tad Eggleston: what's, to me, heartbreaking and what I think about a lot in that realm is often it's the same tool that made them feel like they mattered, that then
• 1:04:23
  Tad Eggleston: can lead them to feeling like other people don't. Like, like,
• 1:04:28
  Tad Eggleston: Because how many people who felt completely alone in an internet world where the people that were anything like them were so spread out that finding them was nearly impossible?
• 1:04:40
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:04:41
  Tad Eggleston: Have now managed to find them, and… and…
• 1:04:44
  Tad Eggleston: Fallen so deeply into that, that they… they…
• 1:04:48
  Tad Eggleston: They have now flipped, and the people who don't think like them are…
• 1:04:54
  Tad Eggleston: somehow less human, or more raw, you know,
• 1:05:00
  Tad Eggleston: And that's why I have trouble, and I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I have trouble blaming just the technology, because…
• 1:05:09
  Tad Eggleston: you know, clearly the technology had benefits and negatives, and often the exact same technology for similar reasons. So what is it about the culture as a whole.
• 1:05:22
  Mark Pracht: Well, I think, you know, it's interesting because everybody always talks about how that there's this sort of, like, I get really uncomfortable… well, when we were talking about Batman vs. Superman, and this sort of, like.
• 1:05:33
  Mark Pracht: religious zeal to…
• 1:05:36
  Mark Pracht: say that your version of a character like Batman is the definitive version of Batman, and it's like, there is no definitive version of Batman. There can never be a definitive version of any character that is being…
• 1:05:50
  Mark Pracht: re-evaluated on a monthly basis, sometimes, by different creators and different people telling the stories. There just can't be. But that…
• 1:06:01
  Mark Pracht: that that kind of mindset has always been there. There's always been some dude at the comic book convention who would go up to the microphone to ask some creators some crazy-ass story about
• 1:06:14
  Mark Pracht: Like, why would you have Batman do blah blah blah? That's not… Batman would never do that. Batman would, you know, like, that's just wrong, and blah blah blah. But now…
• 1:06:24
  Mark Pracht: the… the…
• 1:06:25
  Mark Pracht: the existence of this pervasive… and that's… the real issue isn't the technology, it's how pervasive it's become in our lives that tells you that, A, there's all these people who agree with you.
• 1:06:40
  Mark Pracht: And that the fact that there's these people that agree with you, it emboldens your viewpoint, and also emboldens your hatred of those who disagree with you. And I… I like talking, like, in this project I'm working on, it's very much a nerd culture kind of thing, and it's like.
• 1:06:59
  Mark Pracht: this… this is what we're gonna have these kind of arguments about? It's insane. Right. And… and that I think that… that… that… for… and now I'm pitching… I'm pitching my project, sorry. But I mean, like, but.
• 1:07:13
  Tad Eggleston: I love it.
• 1:07:13
  Mark Pracht: That's…
• 1:07:14
  Sean Harklerode: But that's…
• 1:07:15
  Mark Pracht: that's… That allows me to have these conversations about our larger cultural
• 1:07:21
  Mark Pracht: the larger cultural problem that's going on with it, you know? Like, if I talk about, you know, magic card collecting.
• 1:07:29
  Mark Pracht: and YouTube channels that have blown up over that, and this insane arguments that happened there, that maybe somebody will allegorically be like, Jesus, that's exactly the same as when I talk about politics, you know?
• 1:07:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:07:44
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely. And that's where I'm actually gonna…
• 1:07:47
  Mark Pracht: And it's not about magic card collecting.
• 1:07:50
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, but I'm gonna bring up one last thing, and then, you know, I want feedback, and then we'll kind of wrap up, because I've got podcast number three in half an hour.
• 1:08:03
  Mark Pracht: But we're not important to you, Ted?
• 1:08:05
  Tad Eggleston: You're very important to me.
• 1:08:08
  Tad Eggleston: I'll invite you to podcast number 3. It's a role-playing game. We can just… you just gotta come.
• 1:08:14
  Mark Pracht: Oh my god.
• 1:08:14
  Tad Eggleston: actors fast.
• 1:08:16
  Mark Pracht: I got, I got a thing coming up this afternoon.
• 1:08:18
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, oh, so I'm not important to you, I see.
• 1:08:20
  Mark Pracht: Oh, okay, alright, see? See? It's all coming home.
• 1:08:25
  Tad Eggleston: So anyway, like… something that I always remember that, that… That has just washed…
• 1:08:35
  Tad Eggleston: I think out of the zeitgeist, is when they first started having
• 1:08:45
  Tad Eggleston: Stories in 2015 about… Fake news being churned out of…
• 1:08:51
  Tad Eggleston: autocracies in Africa, Russia, China, etc. Literal fake news. I mean, this is before fake news just became the code word for what people didn't like.
• 1:09:05
  Tad Eggleston: They were showing examples, you know.
• 1:09:08
  Tad Eggleston: They were showing how the fake news was actually coming out on massive different fronts, because… because part of it was to try to influence, part of it was to try to…
• 1:09:19
  Tad Eggleston: So… Chaos, and a lot of it was just to get hits.
• 1:09:24
  Mark Pracht: Right. Because they were profiting off of the hits.
• 1:09:27
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, the reason there was more fake news that…
• 1:09:30
  Tad Eggleston: that benefited the right was almost purely, at least at the time, that they weren't saying that it was some evil thing. There's more evidence with Russia and China in particular since then, a little bit with Iran, that there was some…
• 1:09:45
  Tad Eggleston: scale pushing deliberately, but… but they were… they were showing how it just broke down to, they got more hits! But… but… but in the article, in this, you know, the handful of articles that I was reading at the time, the… the other thing that got tons of hits that they were…
• 1:10:03
  Tad Eggleston: Churning out massive amounts of fake content and or divisive content on?
• 1:10:09
  Tad Eggleston: You wanna guess?
• 1:10:12
  Tad Eggleston: Star Wars.
• 1:10:13
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, of course. Star Wars.
• 1:10:15
  Tad Eggleston: The same… the same bots, the same…
• 1:10:18
  Tad Eggleston: Content farms that were driving all this fake news were driving…
• 1:10:25
  Tad Eggleston: you know, for that matter, like, there's a ton of evidence that the Russians have
• 1:10:31
  Tad Eggleston: totally sow discourse in the country by trying to divide Star Wars people into… Like that there are non-white people, don't like that there are non-white people.
• 1:10:44
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 1:10:45
  Mark Pracht: you know, the thing about it was, was like, I remember at one point, I have a friend of mine who
• 1:10:52
  Mark Pracht: Was, doing a master's dissertation on, you know.
• 1:11:00
  Mark Pracht: Advertising, internet advertising. And he was talking about how, apparently, within the studio system in, like, the early 2000s, they had started looking at their franchise marketing as the same thing as marketing of a sports team.
• 1:11:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:11:17
  Mark Pracht: that I'm on Team Star Wars, I'm on Team Lord of the Rings, I'm on Team, you know, like, that it… it became, you know, it's brand loyalty, obviously, but it's also, like…
• 1:11:28
  Mark Pracht: My team is better than your team.
• 1:11:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:11:32
  Mark Pracht: my team can beat your team. And that's also when you had things like Box Office Mojo, and this idea
• 1:11:37
  Mark Pracht: of, like, there's some… it's, you know, Rotten Tomatoes, which is, like, the most horrible thing. Like, for the art of film, I think Rotten Tomatoes is possibly one of the most damaging things that has ever existed, because…
• 1:11:52
  Mark Pracht: It makes this thing, like, good or bad becomes a number.
• 1:11:58
  Mark Pracht: And not a… A feeling.
• 1:12:03
  Mark Pracht: Right? And the thing is.
• 1:12:05
  Tad Eggleston: How do you feel between… do you feel the same about IMDB? Different?
• 1:12:11
  Mark Pracht: You know…
• 1:12:12
  Tad Eggleston: In some ways, they're competing sites.
• 1:12:15
  Mark Pracht: Kind of, but I mean, like, IMDB is also just, like… IMDB, like, started out as an industry website, so that you could look up people's…
• 1:12:23
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I understand, right.
• 1:12:25
  Mark Pracht: credits, like…
• 1:12:27
  Mark Pracht: But, like, I just… I think that Rotten Tomatoes has made liking a movie into a game.
• 1:12:35
  Mark Pracht: Right? And this obsession with box office.
• 1:12:39
  Mark Pracht: has made that into, that's the score, right? So, like.
• 1:12:44
  Mark Pracht: you know, and now, like, and I see it, I see it in, like, I see it in, like, here's…
• 1:12:50
  Mark Pracht: Sorry, I'm gonna get back into this, and then we'll wrap this up, because I'm gonna let Sean say whatever he has to say, and then we'll wrap up. But I mean, like, you can see it. Like, I see all of these content creators who, have made
• 1:13:06
  Mark Pracht: a living out of, you know, negative engagement, and, angry posts about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or Star Wars, or whatever, and, like.
• 1:13:19
  Mark Pracht: I feel already that the general public
• 1:13:23
  Mark Pracht: Doesn't care as much about this shit
• 1:13:26
  Mark Pracht: As they did 5 years ago.
• 1:13:29
  Mark Pracht: It was 10 years ago. So, like…
• 1:13:32
  Mark Pracht: and you also get to see, like, a… I can see a sort of, like, panic setting into some of these people who started to make pretty good livings, you know, making, like, Kathleen Kennedy is killing Star Wars videos, or whatever, you know, or whatever.
• 1:13:48
  Mark Pracht: or, you know, here's top 10, top 10 Easter eggs you missed in Captain America Winter Soldier, or whatever, and, like, the engagement is going down, because, like.
• 1:14:01
  Mark Pracht: Unless you're, like, already fully indoctrinated into this… this subculture.
• 1:14:08
  Mark Pracht: you're like, yeah, that's… that's 10 years ago, I don't… I'm on to something else. I'm on to K-Pop Demon Hunters, or whatever, you know?
• 1:14:15
  Tad Eggleston: I just still need to watch.
• 1:14:18
  Mark Pracht: I've heard good things. I've heard good things too, but I haven't seen it.
• 1:14:21
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:14:22
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, like, like, I… there is a desperation, and, like, they talk about, like, the convention culture is starting to fracture, and… and that, like.
• 1:14:31
  Mark Pracht: they're… the attendance is going down, and people are like, they're like, what are we gonna do? And it's like, well, maybe you're gonna have to go back to being about a niche audience, and that you can't have… you can't spend all this money, you know?
• 1:14:46
  Mark Pracht: like, Sean and I have talked about this about San Diego numerous times. Like, if the attendance at San Diego Comic-Con dropped by 10,000 people, wouldn't bother me one iota. It would probably make it a better experience, you know? Yeah.
• 1:14:59
  Mark Pracht: And… and the thing is, is that… but that… that now everything operates at this high level, and now I think that there's a lot of people who don't know what to do. Like, I see it all the time, like.
• 1:15:10
  Mark Pracht: I go to a lot of San Diego
• 1:15:12
  Mark Pracht: like, Reddit boards and things like that, because there's interesting conversations that happen, right? But then there's also these guys who are like, man, like, the badges for the last 3 years have just sucked. It's just like.
• 1:15:25
  Mark Pracht: Paramount logo. Who gives a shit? You know, why don't we get a Living Dead, or a Walking Dead badge anymore? And like… and people are like, it's because the studios don't want to pay for that shit anymore.
• 1:15:37
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 1:15:39
  Mark Pracht: Like, it's… there is no return on the investment. Like, you're…
• 1:15:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this was a major theme of the primary episode, and I'll just…
• 1:15:51
  Tad Eggleston: not go too deep in it. It's… Consolidation.
• 1:15:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, there are really only 3 companies putting on pop culture cons.
• 1:16:02
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of. Really, really only two.
• 1:16:05
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:16:08
  Tad Eggleston: But they're also putting on at a big enough scale that it's hard to compete at all. We are seeing a lot, lot more really small Comic Cons than we did 10 years ago.
• 1:16:21
  Mark Pracht: Oh, and that's… I think that's the future.
• 1:16:22
  Sean Harklerode: Charlotte Minicon this weekend.
• 1:16:24
  Tad Eggleston: I… so…
• 1:16:26
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and you're also gonna have those cons that stay really focused. Like, you know, HeroesCon obviously seems to be, like… I think HeroesCon, like, San Diego isn't going anywhere, right?
• 1:16:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:16:38
  Mark Pracht: But I think it's going to evolve into something… I think it's going to shrink down a little bit. Quite honestly, I think the Hall H stuff goes away within 10 years.
• 1:16:49
  Tad Eggleston: espresso?
• 1:16:51
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think that it's gonna… that whatever big things they need to do, they can do in the ballroom upstairs.
• 1:16:57
  Tad Eggleston: And, and that's.
• 1:17:00
  Mark Pracht: But that's… but that's, you know, like, I am famously.
• 1:17:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've always thought that Hall H was just weird, just because there are so many people that, like, their entire day is planned around being in line for…
• 1:17:14
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  Tad Eggleston: And it's like, what's the point of a conve- like…
• 1:17:19
  Tad Eggleston: Watch the movie when it comes out next week.
• 1:17:22
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, they're not watching movies, they're watching panels. I mean, there used to be… you know, I remember watching Hulk vs. Wolverine in Hall H.
• 1:17:31
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. You know, 15 years ago, or…
• 1:17:34
  Sean Harklerode: 18 years ago, when I first went.
• 1:17:37
  Sean Harklerode: Look, that's their con experience, that's what they.
• 1:17:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:17:41
  Sean Harklerode: It's not for me. I…
• 1:17:43
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I wasn't trying… I wasn't trying to bash them, I was just… I was saying that it doesn't strike me as a long-term… strikes me as the type of thing that
• 1:17:54
  Tad Eggleston: For everybody that does it every year, there are 10 that would do it once and go.
• 1:18:00
  Sean Harklerode: Right. I mean.
• 1:18:01
  Tad Eggleston: One of my favorites.
• 1:18:01
  Sean Harklerode: Favorite conic set.
• 1:18:02
  Tad Eggleston: I did it once!
• 1:18:04
  Sean Harklerode: one of my favorite con experiences ever, I was somewhere in Georgia, I don't know where the hell I was, but, I was a teenager, and it was…
• 1:18:13
  Sean Harklerode: 11 o'clock at night, and they were showing Danger Mouse cartoons, and sitting in this room with a bunch of people I didn't know, watching Danger Mouse, and it was awesome.
• 1:18:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but did you spend 11 hours in line to watch… Danger Mouse.
• 1:18:27
  Sean Harklerode: No, but, but look, I mean, look, you're in law.
• 1:18:30
  Tad Eggleston: And I say this not saying that the line experience isn't… Automatically banned.
• 1:18:35
  Sean Harklerode: Those lines aren't by themselves.
• 1:18:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right. No, no, no, I…
• 1:18:39
  Sean Harklerode: It's a community. They're hanging out.
• 1:18:42
  Tad Eggleston: I… I loved it when Nine Inch Nails did their, their in-person tickets for… for the…
• 1:18:50
  Tad Eggleston: the Aragon, because it meant that I got to give my son that experience.
• 1:18:56
  Tad Eggleston: But one of the things we talked about is, like… I'm like, when I was a kid, this was the only way you could get tickets to a big dance. Right. He's like, I'm so glad. You're like, I'm glad I did this once for the band that I love, but if I had.
• 1:19:09
  Sean Harklerode: for the show that I kinda wanted to go to.
• 1:19:14
  Mark Pracht: Well, it's sort of like, look, like, to stay on the convention thing, like, I have always said this, man, your convention experience is your convention.
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's yours.
• 1:19:22
  Mark Pracht: And that is awesome. Like, I don't… I… I have not… I have not stood in line for Hall H since the Watchmen panel, and that was when I realized, this is stupid. Why… why did I stand in line for this?
• 1:19:36
  Mark Pracht: But the thing about it is, it's also funny to watch people talk, and this is all research for this thing, but I mean, to watch, like, all of these groups act like they're the oppressed minority.
• 1:19:49
  Mark Pracht: Right? Like, that… like, if you go on a cosplay… person, channel.
• 1:19:56
  Mark Pracht: Man, they're like, we're treated like crap by all the conventions, they don't care about us, and then you go on, like, with artists, and they're like…
• 1:20:05
  Mark Pracht: I can't get a professional badge because they're giving them out to all these cosplay people.
• 1:20:10
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, and it's like.
• 1:20:12
  Mark Pracht: Like, who is really being oppressed? The real truth of the matter is, is you're not getting everything that you want.
• 1:20:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:20:20
  Mark Pracht: And that…
• 1:20:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and understand.
• 1:20:22
  Mark Pracht: That's sort of the way life is, you know?
• 1:20:23
  Tad Eggleston: My comment had everything to do with you saying that you thought Hall H was… I was speaking strictly from a business standpoint, that I'm amazed that it's lasted this long. I have no problem with the person who decides that that's their con. I even get it, because I have
• 1:20:38
  Tad Eggleston: Happily, you know, I did 18 hours in line for Phantom Menace tickets, which was more fun than the movie itself was.
• 1:20:50
  Tad Eggleston: It took me long, but I'm just…
• 1:20:53
  Mark Pracht: It was, actually.
• 1:20:57
  Tad Eggleston: It was actually a lot of fun.
• 1:20:59
  Mark Pracht: But, yeah, no, look.
• 1:21:01
  Tad Eggleston: I know we need to wrap up. I've stood in line for Cubs tickets, I've stood in line for Nine Inch Nails with my son, that sort of thing. Like, the line experience can be great, particularly if you've got a good group to… and sometimes even when you didn't, like, I've stood in line for Cubs tickets where I went alone, but, like, because everybody's in line for Cubs tickets, you're in a group.
• 1:21:21
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:21:22
  Mark Pracht: Well, it's the same thing.
• 1:21:23
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't think… I don't see it as a sustainable business model.
• 1:21:28
  Mark Pracht: Well, no, I mean, like, look, but…
• 1:21:31
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, but, like, you're not… look, it's…
• 1:21:36
  Mark Pracht: FOMO is a real, real thing with a very niche group of people, right? And those niche… like, when you have 150,000 people in San Diego for a convention, you can have
• 1:21:50
  Mark Pracht: like, you can have 35,000 people decide that they have to be in Hall H, which holds, I think, 6,000 or whatever, and they'll all get in line, and they'll wait, and they'll wait, and they'll wait for the room to cycle out.
• 1:22:05
  Mark Pracht: You know, because there are people who are like, I just want to see this thing at 10am, and then I'm gonna go out to the convention floor, or whatever. Like, that's all reasonable, but I'm just saying, like, I remember that year that there was the, actors' strike, and the writers' strike, and,
• 1:22:21
  Mark Pracht: You know, when…
• 1:22:24
  Mark Pracht: on this Reddit board that I'm on, with a bunch of really rational people who've been going for a long time, and, like, are just interested in looking at how the convention evolves, there was… there was a strong feeling that there would not be any Hall H programming that year.
• 1:22:41
  Mark Pracht: Because what was gonna go in there, you know? Yeah. And and eventually there was. I don't remember what was in there, but it wasn't…
• 1:22:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's…
• 1:22:52
  Mark Pracht: Excited, and…
• 1:22:53
  Tad Eggleston: That's actually my point, I think.
• 1:22:57
  Tad Eggleston: as well as you guys do, but I feel like Hall H became a thing because they had a couple of things that were on their own.
• 1:23:04
  Tad Eggleston: FOMO.
• 1:23:06
  Tad Eggleston: And then at some point, they're trying to create FOMO, and it's so much harder to create FOMO.
• 1:23:12
  Tad Eggleston: then have FOMO happen organically. And when you start trying to create it, that's when it becomes something that's gonna have diminishing returns. So, like.
• 1:23:21
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:23:22
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I think Hall H will go away.
• 1:23:24
  Tad Eggleston: Permanently, there can always be something that would make them go, oh, we should do it this year.
• 1:23:31
  Sean Harklerode: Right. Right. But that's… but that's… I think… I think…
• 1:23:34
  Mark Pracht: I think that the other thing it comes down to is how long will the studios, or the one of the two studios, apparently now.
• 1:23:45
  Mark Pracht: Will decide that it is worth their time and their money.
• 1:23:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:23:50
  Mark Pracht: to bring people in for something to… like, and I've always said this, your audience that you get at Comic-Con is sort of like…
• 1:24:00
  Mark Pracht: You've already got those people.
• 1:24:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:24:03
  Mark Pracht: Why are, like… like… and the thing is, is, like, I have to…
• 1:24:11
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's the other pro… from a business standpoint, that's the other problem with Hall H, because you've already got those people, so you're gonna put them in a line where they can't buy concessions, where they can't spend money on all the ways that you're making more money off of them.
• 1:24:23
  Mark Pracht: Oh, but the studios don't care about that.
• 1:24:25
  Tad Eggleston: No, but the con does. Sure.
• 1:24:29
  Mark Pracht: Sure, in the convention center, that's why they're…
• 1:24:31
  Tad Eggleston: They're only gonna bring the studios in if the studios are willing to pay a certain amount.
• 1:24:36
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but the studio… Yeah, I mean, in the studio, but the studio has to fly in the talent, have to get the talent, the rooms, and we know the rooms are fucking expensive as shit.
• 1:24:48
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, and, like, look,
• 1:24:51
  Mark Pracht: all of those things, you know, they… like, the real question is, and this is a much bigger question that I think we can't even get into, but is, like, what is the state of quote-unquote nerd culture right now?
• 1:25:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's a whole different episode that I'd want to bring in a lot of different voices. It might be worth doing at some point, but I'd want to…
• 1:25:14
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think it's… I think it's a super interesting thing to think about. I mean, I think about, you know, I think about my own work.
• 1:25:21
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, at a certain point, is it just passe, you know? Like, the four-color plays, is anybody gonna care about comic book people?
• 1:25:31
  Mark Pracht: you know…
• 1:25:31
  Tad Eggleston: I think so, and partially because…
• 1:25:34
  Mark Pracht: I'm not… I'm just saying that when we talk about, like… I'm only stopping you, Tad, because I know we need to wrap up, and I don't want to get onto another conversation, but I'm just.
• 1:25:44
  Tad Eggleston: this thing.
• 1:25:45
  Mark Pracht: that… but when you, like, as a creator, you want to find an audience, and you want to think that there's an audience out there, and I think that there is, but what I'm saying is.
• 1:25:56
  Mark Pracht: The thing that's always forgotten about in these conversations is
• 1:26:00
  Mark Pracht: the quote-unquote civilians. The people who are just like, I want to see a movie this weekend, I want to see something that's fun to watch.
• 1:26:09
  Mark Pracht: And… At a certain point, it seems like… They're not exactly choosing
• 1:26:18
  Mark Pracht: Superman, or Fantastic Four, or whatever, they're saying… or they're staying home, or whatever, you know?
• 1:26:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and… And I think…
• 1:26:27
  Tad Eggleston: That's where my quick point, and then I feel like we cut Sean off earlier, so I'm gonna let him have the last word, is I think it's part of the homogenation of nerd culture, rather than allowing it to be comic culture and theater culture and…
• 1:26:41
  Mark Pracht: Yup.
• 1:26:42
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and I think a lot of things go through waxing and waning periods, so I don't think your audience will go away as much as it will become more…
• 1:26:52
  Tad Eggleston: The comic audience mixed with the history audience, mixed with the theater audience, rather than the overall nerd culture audience.
• 1:26:59
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:27:00
  Tad Eggleston: you know.
• 1:27:02
  Tad Eggleston: Sean?
• 1:27:03
  Tad Eggleston: Tell us how crazy we are.
• 1:27:06
  Sean Harklerode: No, I mean, I… you know, and I don't remember what my point was earlier, but .
• 1:27:10
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry. I can't say that…
• 1:27:12
  Sean Harklerode: At this point, you know, with…
• 1:27:15
  Sean Harklerode: The media conglomerations and the consolidations, etc,
• 1:27:21
  Sean Harklerode: I think, for me as an artist.
• 1:27:27
  Sean Harklerode: you know, I think we just have to start
• 1:27:34
  Sean Harklerode: doing things ourselves, and I think that
• 1:27:37
  Sean Harklerode: There's going to be less diversity in these huge… Big movies and studio content.
• 1:27:47
  Sean Harklerode: And… You know, hopefully it'll lead to a democratization, of…
• 1:27:56
  Sean Harklerode: The artwork, with people doing more independent work.
• 1:28:01
  Sean Harklerode: That hopefully people will see.
• 1:28:07
  Sean Harklerode: But I… I do find that… I think there's just… it's…
• 1:28:13
  Sean Harklerode: Much less interesting. I think there's gonna be much less interesting work.
• 1:28:17
  Sean Harklerode: Coming out of… of… Hollywood.
• 1:28:21
  Sean Harklerode: Hollywood and, and, and.
• 1:28:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say.
• 1:28:25
  Sean Harklerode: But, you know, and that's… it's sad, but I think we also have to look at it as an opportunity, and maybe an exciting thing that…
• 1:28:36
  Sean Harklerode: that people will turn to that as… maybe the audience will get bored with… with those sorts of things. And I, you know, I'm an avid moviegoer,
• 1:28:49
  Sean Harklerode: And it makes me sad when I talk to someone, and they're like… and someone, like, I'm on a date, and they're like, I haven't been to a movie in 3 years, I just stream. I'm like.
• 1:29:02
  Sean Harklerode: Okay… .
• 1:29:05
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sometimes guilty of that.
• 1:29:06
  Mark Pracht: Next! Yeah.
• 1:29:10
  Tad Eggleston: Though it's not always because I don't appreciate the experience, it's just…
• 1:29:15
  Mark Pracht: Well… Yeah, look, I…
• 1:29:18
  Mark Pracht: to bring it back to our subject, like, I think that Sean's right. I mean, I think that a… a book like Torpedo.
• 1:29:26
  Mark Pracht: is not something that a DC or a Marvel would publish, right? And…
• 1:29:33
  Mark Pracht: Maybe rightly so, but it's also not like… It… it's not…
• 1:29:40
  Mark Pracht: It's not for everybody, and… but it's… it's worth considering if you're into that kind of thing.
• 1:29:48
  Tad Eggleston: And it's, I mean, it's worth considering if you're not into that kind of thing, and you're willing to subject yourself to that kind of thing. You know, I mean, that's…
• 1:29:56
  Tad Eggleston: That's another… I mean, I talk about…
• 1:30:01
  Tad Eggleston: I only like to talk about things that I like on this podcast, but that's not quite true. I only want to talk… I only like to talk about things that I can do something other than bash.
• 1:30:11
  Tad Eggleston: I guess is what I really mean.
• 1:30:15
  Tad Eggleston: So, thank you guys so much, stick around for a minute so we can figure out what to read next and talk scheduling a little bit. But for the Pope Blotter, this has been Mark Pratt and Sean Hoggerwood, and we will see you after the next page.