Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / 22 Panels Episode #241 - Persepolis cont.

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22 Panels Episode #241 - Persepolis cont. · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Tad Eggleston: You're looking good.
• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody! Welcome back to 22 Panels, a late-night Sunday recording with a late-inning reliever, Matt joining me tonight, because
• 0:14
  Tad Eggleston: Phil got sick, and Tyler had to go to a movie, and I get all of that, but I… I'm OCD, and if I don't record an episode on the weekend, I… I would get upset.
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: So thank you, thank you, Matt. Thank you, Bill, for joining me, and not having me out of a panic attack, because…
• 0:34
  Tad Eggleston: Cause…
• 0:35
  Tad Eggleston: That… that makes me feel better. This is episode 241, which is kind of insane. It's even more insane when I remind myself that, like, I have more of other types of episodes than I have of
• 0:47
  Tad Eggleston: This type of episode.
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: But, 241, we'll talk some more Persepolis in a bit, but first we'll start with some news. Ibrahim Mustafa's retroactive.
• 1:00
  Tad Eggleston: Which is one of my favorite of his works, and I love all of his works, is in development for Hulu.
• 1:08
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if they're gonna…
• 1:11
  Tad Eggleston: make it a movie or a series, I think it could work as either, because it's kind of like the… the time travel…
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: Spy agencies?
• 1:21
  Tad Eggleston: You know, different countries are… are… are… are like…
• 1:25
  Tad Eggleston: Going back in time to try to… Change things to their… their benefit.
• 1:33
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:34
  Tad Eggleston: Great book. Great book. Ibrahim does phenomenal work.
• 1:39
  Matt & Belle: Almost like Time Cop there from the 90s, with the…
• 1:42
  Tad Eggleston: Probably a little bit of that, but did Time Cop also have to… to… to get his grandmother placed in a memory care unit?
• 1:53
  Matt & Belle: No.
• 1:54
  Tad Eggleston: Because that was the side plot.
• 1:57
  Matt & Belle: Nice.
• 1:59
  Tad Eggleston: You know, you got this guy dealing with, like, real life, real life stuff, while also being…
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: James Bond, the time traveler.
• 2:07
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, that's actually kind of cool.
• 2:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I loved it. Also, Aggregate Inc.
• 2:15
  Tad Eggleston: has teamed up with Hoopla to bring indie comics to the library digital platform. So stuff like my friend, Jonathan Bayliss's Sew Buttons is now… now available on Hoopla as well, which is kind of cool.
• 2:31
  Tad Eggleston: In terms of what kind of week has it been, normally this is where we get really sad and angry, Matt and Bell, but the Obama Presidential Center opened.
• 2:45
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 2:46
  Tad Eggleston: And Barack gave a great speech, and as always, Michelle gave an even better one, and I remembered what it's like to, like.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: feel patriotic and hope, so I'm just gonna stick with the good feelings right now, and we'll get into all the shit again next week, and or when we're talking about Iran and Persepolis later.
• 3:10
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, I remember… I remember Obama's campaign speeches from before his presidency. I was like, he's gonna run.
• 3:19
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and the thing is, I mean, I've read his autobiography, and I don't think he's joking, he didn't realize he was gonna be running then.
• 3:28
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, it just made sense.
• 3:29
  Tad Eggleston: That's when other people started deciding that he should run.
• 3:33
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 3:34
  Tad Eggleston: And, you know, he spent a long time as the, but I'm a junior senator, before eventually people said, look, you know, the moment doesn't come that often.
• 3:44
  Tad Eggleston: This isn't really a thing that you can, like…
• 3:48
  Tad Eggleston: decide… I'm not… I mean, it's kind of like they talk about in sports, you know?
• 3:54
  Tad Eggleston: If you're… if you're a playoff-bound team, even if your long-term plan hadn't involved making
• 4:01
  Tad Eggleston: Trades at the deadline to improve your team this year.
• 4:06
  Tad Eggleston: You do it, because, like, every season is… Sacred, and, like… You don't go, oh…
• 4:15
  Matt & Belle: We'll wait till next year.
• 4:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right, cause next year might not happen.
• 4:19
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 4:20
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. But, but so, so, yeah, I'm sticking to the fun, the, the good, warm stuff this week. I'm certain that we will have plenty about, like, reflecting pools and other shit next week.
• 4:36
  Matt & Belle: And paint peels, and energy. Hydrogen peroxide.
• 4:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 4:42
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway, we have a brand new catalog out.
• 4:45
  Tad Eggleston: Initial orders are due by July 23rd. The first book I wanna…
• 4:52
  Tad Eggleston: highlight is… is a new Archie No. 1 from Ben H. Winters, and the absolutely phenomenal Brazilian artist Fabio Moon.
• 5:04
  Tad Eggleston: From, Onei Press. For his entire life, 17-year-old Archie Andrews has had it all, adoring friends, football glory, and a natural charm that always seems to make him the center of attention.
• 5:16
  Tad Eggleston: Now, through his eyes, experience the warmth and wonder of Riverdale and its near-infinite roster of residents, the popular kids, the endearing oddballs, and everyone in between. As Archie embarks on a whirlwind all-star adventure through his town's past, present, and future, beginning with a local film festival that's about to turn everything upside down.
• 5:39
  Tad Eggleston: And at the center of it all lies an enigmatic.
• 5:42
  Tad Eggleston: An enigmatic paradox that only Archie's pal Jughead Jones can possibly unravel. This will be coming out from Onei Press. Final order cutoff is July 27th, in stores on September 2nd.
• 5:56
  Tad Eggleston: Matt, you picked a good one.
• 5:58
  Matt & Belle: I did, because everything by Jeff Lemire is good.
• 6:02
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, normally I like Lemire working by himself best, but if he's not working by himself, I like him working with Dustin Wen. So…
• 6:11
  Matt & Belle: Ever since I read Descender, I was hooked. So I saw this lineup, and I was like, this is my pick. Crowbound 1.
• 6:20
  Matt & Belle: It's all dark.
• 6:22
  Matt & Belle: But all is not lost. Rose isn't special, she works in a factory just like everyone else. A dark, sprawling, monolithic structure that runs along the coast and cuts the world in two. Pardon me.
• 6:35
  Matt & Belle: That's all that's left now are desolate settlements that exist in its shadow, made up of submerged villages, derelict woods.
• 6:45
  Matt & Belle: and deadly swamps. No one knows what's left of the world on the other side, but when Rose's young daughter, Ava, is violently taken from their shantytown home a year before she is meant to join the workforce.
• 6:57
  Matt & Belle: Rose will come face to face with the surreal, harrowing forces outside the factory's walls, including a terrifying figure called the Scarecrow Queen, who has an offer, one last chance to save her daughter in exchange for her soul.
• 7:13
  Tad Eggleston: From Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen at Image Comics, final order cutoff is August 10th.
• 7:19
  Tad Eggleston: in stores on September 2nd.
• 7:22
  Matt & Belle: Yes, I might… I might have to call my LCS and have them set one aside for me. We've got two.
• 7:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, by then, you're gonna be here, so you should have…
• 7:35
  Matt & Belle: I went to my local Primic Shop.
• 7:36
  Tad Eggleston: You should have Lee set it aside.
• 7:38
  Matt & Belle: Heck yeah. Yes.
• 7:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Tad Eggleston: So… Firefly, number 1.
• 7:48
  Tad Eggleston: the great Firefly crew returning comics from Mark Russell and Lorenzo Ray at Dynamite. As this all-new adventure begins, Mal Reynolds is desperate for cash to keep Serenity flying. That sounds about right.
• 8:07
  Tad Eggleston: While Simon and Kaylee must pose as a married couple to pull off a heist. They're only posing? When are they gonna actually tie the knot? But end up with more than they bargained for when an old caper comes back to haunt them. Final order cutoff is August 10th in stores on September 2nd.
• 8:26
  Matt & Belle: Okay, so I picked Spawn77 by Todd McFarlane and Mark Spears. It comes out from Image. The final order cutoff is August 17th, will be in store September 9th.
• 8:40
  Matt & Belle: In 1977, a young artist had his first ideas for a character he would name Spawn. Now, 49 years later, Spawn is an international sensation that has spawned, pun intended.
• 8:52
  Matt & Belle: A movie, toys, games, an animated series, and an animated series.
• 8:57
  Matt & Belle: It has been translated into over a dozen languages with fans across the globe.
• 9:02
  Matt & Belle: Now in collaboration with acclaimed artist Mark Spears, Todd McFarlane brings a vision of his original idea to the Spawn universe. So…
• 9:11
  Matt & Belle: Spawn… okay, oh, wait, final order cutoff is, again, August 17th, and it will be in stores September 9th.
• 9:19
  Matt & Belle: And I picked… I picked this because,
• 9:23
  Matt & Belle: what Tom McFarlane did with Swan.
• 9:26
  Matt & Belle: was industry-changing. He took one character and just blew it up.
• 9:30
  Matt & Belle: And, you know.
• 9:32
  Matt & Belle: creator-owned work, and, you know, the whole… the whole 90s. I mean, it was, you know, it's very encompassing, and I… I…
• 9:40
  Matt & Belle: I remember seeing his original sketch for Swan, and was really disappointed he didn't do a number 300 cover with it.
• 9:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, they're… they're, they're doing a whole series with it.
• 9:52
  Matt & Belle: So, now that they're doing a whole series, I'm very excited, because it's pretty cool.
• 9:57
  Tad Eggleston: So, we're rebooting Star Trek.
• 10:01
  Tad Eggleston: with a new number one, 2026 number one, from Christopher Cantwell and Dennis Meneer. Cantwell already did Star Trek,
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: I hate it when I suddenly lose the word.
• 10:19
  Tad Eggleston: Defiant. Did Star Trek Defiant already in the last run. So he's got his Star Trek bona fides going.
• 10:30
  Tad Eggleston: And I can attest for the fact that he's a crazy nutso Star Trek fan. So, final order, cut off of August 17th, in store September 23rd. Their mission is new, their legacy is not.
• 10:42
  Tad Eggleston: The Enterprise G is on a desperate mission from beyond the known galaxy to relocate the dying Averan people.
• 10:51
  Tad Eggleston: When his crew finds a perfect new home in a region of unknown space called the Epsilon Corridor, three pristine Class M worlds, the Trinity, await the refugees. No signs of civilization, no detectable threats, a colonists' dream.
• 11:05
  Tad Eggleston: But the dream fractures fast. When Captain Seven of Nine and her divided, fast-tracked crew begin exploring the Trinity, they uncover disturbing contradictions, vanished structures, inexplicable artifacts, time skips, and evidence of a presence Starfleet's century-old probes never detected.
• 11:25
  Tad Eggleston: Each world houses a different ecosystem, different physics problems, and different secrets, as if they've been curated
• 11:32
  Tad Eggleston: or quarantined. But from whom?
• 11:35
  Tad Eggleston: or from who or what. The first arc of Star Trek delivers a prestige, mystery-driven, high-stakes psychological thriller of an opening salvo. New worlds, new species, new existential threats, anchored by Seven, Jack, and Crash LaForge.
• 11:55
  Tad Eggleston: Fighting to keep the mission together as the galaxy's oldest ghosts awaken. Again, final order cutoff is August 17th, in stores on September 23rd. Love me some Cantwell Star Trek.
• 12:09
  Tad Eggleston: And now you got my other Chris friend. I can't say Chris around the house anymore. My wife will go…
• 12:14
  Matt & Belle: Who's who?
• 12:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, my wife responds, Condon or Cantwell?
• 12:18
  Matt & Belle: Amazing.
• 12:19
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, that's funny. So I picked that Texas Blood, Hell Comes to Allison Ranch, number 1 by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips. Final order cutoff is August 31st, will be in shop September 23rd. I picked this because I love that Texas Blood.
• 12:37
  Tad Eggleston: So good.
• 12:38
  Matt & Belle: Chris Condon is one of the first creators I talked to on 22 Panels.
• 12:42
  Matt & Belle: That's good.
• 12:43
  Tad Eggleston: Guy.
• 12:43
  Matt & Belle: Anyway, on March 19th, 2003, Sheriff Joe Bob Coates and Deputy Wilson Hart are called to the Allison Ranch.
• 12:52
  Matt & Belle: The largest and richest ranch in the United States, where family grievances are blooming into full-blown war. The first issue will be loaded with bonus materials, including behind-the-scenes peeks, newly conducted interviews, essays, cartoons, and more.
• 13:08
  Tad Eggleston: So, some of the behind-the-scenes stuff is they are developing for television, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago on
• 13:17
  Tad Eggleston: 22 panels, which is why this is actually a re-solicit. We had talked about That Texas Blood number 21 a while back, and it got pulled and put back out as Hell Comes to Allison Ranch number 1. I've read the first issue. It is amazing. Also, probably one of the interviews in the back, but if not, you can go to Forever Wars and read it.
• 13:41
  Tad Eggleston: Spencer Ackerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign Intelligence… reporter.
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: Who, who, who covered the forever wars quite well.
• 13:54
  Tad Eggleston: for a long time, and now gets to do it again as we're starting another one, but we'll get to that with Persepolis. Interviewed Chris, because, March 19th, 2003,
• 14:06
  Tad Eggleston: may have been a, a, a specific day in, in the forever war cycle. And it, it features into the book in that, that…
• 14:17
  Tad Eggleston: That, caught Spencer's attention.
• 14:21
  Tad Eggleston: Also, he knows Chris, because Chris is awesome, and he's from New Jersey.
• 14:26
  Tad Eggleston: So, some graphic novels coming up. This one just caught my eye, and I don't even really know the publisher, but it looks so awesome that, like, I'm all over it.
• 14:36
  Tad Eggleston: Anatomy of Comics from Damian McDonald at Rizzoli, An Illustrated history of the most important and exceptional comics of the past 150 years. A comprehensive history of the world's best comics.
• 14:53
  Tad Eggleston: that includes Our comics art includes masterpieces.
• 14:59
  Tad Eggleston: by cartoonists from Richard Felton Occult to… in 1896 to Chris Ware Today.
• 15:06
  Tad Eggleston: These comics, populated by metahumans, hybrids, and superheroes, present imagined fantastical worlds that have attracted generations of devoted followers. A critical reference, this book is also a celebration of the characters who have accompanied readers from their forays
• 15:22
  Tad Eggleston: into reading through adolescence and on into adulthood, from Tarzan to Tin Tin, Little Nemo to Betty Boop.
• 15:30
  Tad Eggleston: The Fantastic Four, to Batman, The Silver Surfer, to Sin City, or the underground comics of R. Crum.
• 15:39
  Tad Eggleston: A motley crew of characters, spandex-wrapped heroes with impossible muscles, hard-boiled detectives in soft hats, emancipated vamps, space opera acrobats in chainmail, underpants.
• 15:52
  Tad Eggleston: Zombies and scrawny underground freaks span all genres of this international art form, featuring important American and European artists. This broad retrospective decodes the symbolism and artistry of a richly creative form of reading pleasure.
• 16:09
  Tad Eggleston: So… Yeah, I, I, I… I like me some comics history.
• 16:18
  Tad Eggleston: Final order cutoff is August 3rd, in stores on September 1st.
• 16:23
  Tad Eggleston: I get to go again.
• 16:25
  Tad Eggleston: This one I have read. I feel so blessed to have been able to read it. The Dissidence by Durf Bechterf.
• 16:32
  Tad Eggleston: We've been here before… But we forgot.
• 16:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's 1960. President Woodrow Wilson, a deeply divisive authoritarian who's also a white supremacist with open contempt for constitutional rights, sits in the Oval Office. Racial tensions?
• 16:50
  Tad Eggleston: unprecedented economic inequality, a groundswell of support for unionization, and the rise of both a reactionary far-right militia and a growing radical opposition shake the very foundations of American society.
• 17:05
  Tad Eggleston: A pandemic is two years away, and the 1900s have only just gotten started.
• 17:12
  Tad Eggleston: America is a country on the brink of chaos. The Dissonance follows a group of real and influential political cartoonists who worked for the magazine The Masses, Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Cornelia Barnes, and others, dominant in their day, but now forgotten, as well as fictional young German immigrant from
• 17:31
  Tad Eggleston: Cleveland Joe Hertel, who has come to New York to make his name.
• 17:35
  Tad Eggleston: They rub elbows with the great opposition voices of the day, such as journalists Max Eastman and John Reed, and radical provocateur Emma Goldman.
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: What they document in their cartoons and illustrations is a country spiraling into darkness, under attack by German saboteurs and private militias, plagued by racism and rocked by class war. For the crime of documenting the times they live in.
• 18:00
  Tad Eggleston: These cartoonists are indicted for sedition and put on trial by the U.S. government, with 20-year sentences hanging over their heads.
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: Two others are forced to flee the country into exile. Others are incarcerated by the U.S. Army and scheduled for execution. In the dissidents, Bachturf…
• 18:17
  Tad Eggleston: deliver…
• 18:18
  Tad Eggleston: unique account of U.S. history, making connections to the events of today as they relate to the seeds that were sown over a hundred years ago. The Dissidence is his magnum opus. It's a gripping tale of political passion, artistic ambition, love, and betrayal, with great characters and unexpected twists. It's a suspenseful and fascinating American story that is almost completely forgotten today.
• 18:41
  Tad Eggleston: and a terrifying and relevant warming from the past. Again, I… I…
• 18:47
  Tad Eggleston: I'm almost done with my read of this, and it is so good. I love Dersh's work.
• 18:53
  Tad Eggleston: to begin with, but, like, this… this is absolutely his magnum opus. Kent State is amazing. Trash is amazing.
• 19:01
  Tad Eggleston: Everybody knows my friend Dahmer. This is… this is the Derf Bechterf book that you need to read. Final order cost is August 10th, in stores on September 16th from Abrams.
• 19:18
  Tad Eggleston: And you get to go public domain on us!
• 19:21
  Matt & Belle: Yes, and that's why I picked Popeye Man Overboard, by Antoine Ozenam and Luis Oblaze.
• 19:31
  Matt & Belle: Well, it's Lelly's.
• 19:32
  Tad Eggleston: From a blaze.
• 19:33
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, so Blaze is the publisher, so yeah.
• 19:35
  Tad Eggleston: Many, many European artists go by one name.
• 19:38
  Matt & Belle: Sure. Picasso.
• 19:41
  Tad Eggleston: Mobius.
• 19:46
  Matt & Belle: So anyway, final order cutoff is August 10th.
• 19:50
  Matt & Belle: We will be in shop September 16th.
• 19:53
  Matt & Belle: Everyone knows him, the loud-mouthed, one-eyed sailor who performs feats of strength after gobbling down canned spinach.
• 20:00
  Matt & Belle: With his distinct way of speaking and his catchphrases, Popeye is a funny and unforgettable character.
• 20:07
  Matt & Belle: He's also a courageous and good man, a true hero, brought down to Earth in his… in this acclaimed reinterpretation by French writer Antoine
• 20:17
  Matt & Belle: Azanam, and multi-award-winning Brazilian artist. How'd you say it?
• 20:22
  Tad Eggleston: I said Lalis?
• 20:23
  Matt & Belle: But I could be wrong. That works for me. Down on his luck in a world of commercial fishing.
• 20:34
  Matt & Belle: My crew, called Popeye by some, faces further upheaval when olive oil enters his life. Between romance, family troubles, and economic woes, Popeye still finds time to agree to a scheme hatched by Olive's brother, a search for fabulous treasure.
• 20:53
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 20:53
  Tad Eggleston: This looks good.
• 20:55
  Tad Eggleston: Now you get to go again, since I went two in a row.
• 20:58
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, no, it's fine. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
• 21:00
  Tad Eggleston: Hell yeah.
• 21:01
  Matt & Belle: So, Wandering Sun by Shimura Takako, Fanta Graphics is publishing it.
• 21:09
  Matt & Belle: The final order cutoffs, August 10th, will be in shop September 16th, middle school, a threshold puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence.
• 21:19
  Matt & Belle: Shyuki Netori and his new friend Yoshiano Tak…
• 21:26
  Tad Eggleston: Probably just Yoshino.
• 21:27
  Matt & Belle: Yoshino Takasuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of their life that is awkward for anyone.
• 21:39
  Matt & Belle: Suki is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Wandering Sun portrays sushi?
• 21:49
  Tad Eggleston: Chuishi?
• 21:50
  Matt & Belle: Tsuishi and Yoshino's journey with affection, sensitivity, and gentle humor as they are figuring out their respective genders and take tentative age-appropriate steps towards transitioning.
• 22:05
  Tad Eggleston: School.
• 22:07
  Tad Eggleston: Collections, I, I actually, I picked extra ones, or an extra one, and I'm gonna go out of order.
• 22:14
  Tad Eggleston: Because I picked the extra one for a reason. I picked two Archie collections. There's gonna be Archie, The Decision and Other Stories Deluxe Edition.
• 22:24
  Tad Eggleston: From Tom King and Dan Parent. Archie's big decision, who will it be? The good-natured Betty, or the stylish Veronica? Both of whom have been vying for Archie's affections while trying to maintain a friendship of their own. The three get to navigate the follies of teenage romance in a place like Riverdale, where…
• 22:43
  Tad Eggleston: No one minds their own business and is sure to have an opinion of their own. No pressure.
• 22:49
  Tad Eggleston: No pressure, Archie.
• 22:50
  Tad Eggleston: Plus.
• 22:51
  Tad Eggleston: Explore a decade-spanning collection of Archie's greatest escapades, past and present, curated by King and Parent, featuring legendary creators Dan DiCarlo, Marty Epp, Joe Edwards, Mario Aquaviva, and many more, alongside guest appearances by fan favorites like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Josie and the Pussycats, Kevin Keller, and more.
• 23:14
  Tad Eggleston: And the reason I read this one first, even though it's not quite alphabetically first, is that
• 23:20
  Tad Eggleston: we read the single issue, Archie, The Decision, and it led to us reading
• 23:26
  Tad Eggleston: they each had a top 10 Archie stories, and we dug up the ones we could find, and we read them, and we commented that wouldn't a great Archie collection be just taking their… and I don't know if they're doing their whole top 10 list, because some of them are kind of long, that sort of thing, but to have a Tom King and Dan Parent
• 23:45
  Tad Eggleston: curated collection of classic Archie stories, I think.
• 23:49
  Tad Eggleston: He's a fantastic jumping-on point for…
• 23:56
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody who, like, has been hearing about this Archie thing and thinks they might like it, but has only picked up a couple of digests at the grocery store and didn't wind up digging them, because they didn't have the right stories.
• 24:10
  Tad Eggleston: these will probably have the right stories. One of the ones that I discovered because of them.
• 24:17
  Tad Eggleston: is Afterlife with Archie. The deluxe Edition is coming out from Roberto Aguiar Sacasa and Francesco Francavilla.
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: When a tragic death befalls Jughead Jones' closest companion, his grief drives him to the doorstep of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and into the thrall of a dark magic that will soon turn the whole of Riverdale
• 24:40
  Tad Eggleston: This pack of undead zombies fueled by a desire for human flesh. Hunted by the reanimated corpses of their friends and loved ones, can Archie, Betty, Veronica, and the rest of America's most beloved teenagers battle back a legion of the dead, and live long enough to stop the entire world from being consumed by the same unholy hunger?
• 24:59
  Tad Eggleston: Pal versus pal, classmate versus Classmate, living versus dead. They swore to be friends until the end, but they never expected the end to look quite like this. This is from Oni Press. Final order cutoff is August 24th in stores on October 27th.
• 25:17
  Tad Eggleston: I get to go some more. Karl Barks, Pencils and Storyboards, King Scrooge, The First, and Other Stories, the Phantographics Studio Edition by Carl Barks, edited by Kim Weston, who also gave us an introduction,
• 25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Carl Barks, the Phantographic Studio Edition collects Barks' preliminary pencil pages, or storyboards, of comics he wrote after he retired from penciling and inking, serving as a perfectly legible graphic storytelling map
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: the finishing artist could follow. These are fully written and designed stories which include Bark's hand lettering, and can be read as easily as the rendered final versions. The advantage to these original art renditions is that the reader can not only appreciate, but positively savor Bark's gorgeous, nuanced penciling.
• 26:04
  Tad Eggleston: These pages display the architecture beneath
• 26:07
  Tad Eggleston: Barks' final inked pages, revealing how fluid, vital, and effortless his finished panel-to-panel storytelling was.
• 26:14
  Tad Eggleston: And how the subtlety of his character's facial expressions were baked into the pencil work. Writing the story and breaking down the page graphically is the cartoonist's first step to creating a comic, and here's an opportunity to see one of the 20th century's greatest cartoonists thinking as drawing. Karl Barks is one of my favorite artists, the idea of being able to look at
• 26:34
  Tad Eggleston: oversize.
• 26:36
  Tad Eggleston: Real link.
• 26:38
  Tad Eggleston: Bark's Pages is… Exciting to me.
• 26:43
  Matt & Belle: Worse.
• 26:45
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 26:46
  Matt & Belle: Alright, my pick… this Harbinger Classic Omnibus.
• 26:50
  Tad Eggleston: some more… Great art.
• 26:53
  Matt & Belle: hungry.
• 26:53
  Tad Eggleston: David Lapham.
• 26:54
  Matt & Belle: Yup, Chimp Shooter Raven.
• 26:56
  Tad Eggleston: the first David Lapham.
• 27:00
  Matt & Belle: Really? His first published work was Harbinger?
• 27:03
  Tad Eggleston: I think so, but I'm not 100% certain.
• 27:05
  Matt & Belle: Wow. It's weird.
• 27:06
  Tad Eggleston: Way early in… His… his published work.
• 27:12
  Matt & Belle: Well, it's coming out from IDW, final order cutoff is August 3rd, and it will be in shop September 8th.
• 27:19
  Matt & Belle: Harbinger was one of those stories that I wanted to read in high school, but never got to, and so I've been re…
• 27:26
  Matt & Belle: Investigating as an adult, and…
• 27:29
  Matt & Belle: Can't wait to get the omnibus. Follow the story of Peter Stancic and his band of teenage runaways. Harbingers are a new age, born with the power to change the world or break it. Plagued by emerging psionic powers he hardly understands. Peter turns to
• 27:45
  Matt & Belle: Toyo Harada and his Harbinger Foundation, an organization dedicated to teaching young people like Peter, but when he learns
• 27:54
  Matt & Belle: to what lengths Harada will go to further his secret agenda, he turns to his mentor.
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: his mentor.
• 28:02
  Matt & Belle: Oh, he turns on, thank you. He turns on his mentor, gathering a group of like-minded rebels on the road, and…
• 28:09
  Matt & Belle: Always just one step ahead of Harana.
• 28:12
  Matt & Belle: And his hit squad of super-powered eggbreakers, these renegade harbingers will have to learn how to use their powers to change the world for the better along the way.
• 28:23
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read all of these, I need to. They're so good. I mean, imagine… imagine if Professor X wasn't completely altruistic.
• 28:33
  Matt & Belle: Yes.
• 28:34
  Tad Eggleston: Harbinger. Yup.
• 28:37
  Matt & Belle: That's why I love the story, it's so great. Right.
• 28:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 28:41
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, you get one more?
• 28:42
  Matt & Belle: Yes, Usagi Yojimbo, by Chiato?
• 28:47
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, it's Kaido84 is the subtitle.
• 28:51
  Matt & Belle: Oh, oh, okay! Zach Rosenberg, Jared Cullum, my Dark Horse.
• 28:56
  Matt & Belle: Final order cutoff is August 24th, and it will be in stores November 24th.
• 29:03
  Matt & Belle: Osaka, 1984, the spirit of… why did I pick the Japanese ones?
• 29:09
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
• 29:10
  Matt & Belle: I do love Osaki Yojimbo, though.
• 29:14
  Tad Eggleston: photo.
• 29:16
  Matt & Belle: Miyamoto. The spirit of Miyamoto, Usagi lives on, not in a ronin, but in a thief. Usagi Yojimbo enters a bold new era of high-stakes action and hidden history.
• 29:28
  Matt & Belle: in the 20th century. But, when a massive payoff lands him a deal he can't refuse, Kyoto is pulled into a deep web spun by forces who know unsettling secrets about his lineage. Now, Kyoto
• 29:44
  Matt & Belle: Is not just a thief, he's a pawn.
• 29:47
  Tad Eggleston: How many different… are you like Harry Carey? You're gonna pronounce it a different way every time.
• 29:51
  Matt & Belle: It's how… it's how my brain does it, I'm sorry, it's my… That's how my tism.
• 29:58
  Tad Eggleston: Kaido, Cato, Kyoto…
• 30:00
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, you know, it's like, I don't know.
• 30:03
  Matt & Belle: Forced into a deadly mission for a legendary spear, the stakes change from payout to prophecy. His skills and those of his crew are pushed past the breaking point as they fight to outwit the city authorities, outrun a terrifying fate, and accept a destiny that demands their success.
• 30:24
  Tad Eggleston: It's been fantastic. I've been reading that as single issues.
• 30:28
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty, some final order cut off for Monday, June 29th, so let your comic shops know this week if you'd like a copy.
• 30:37
  Tad Eggleston: We've got the adaptation of John Kennedy Tools, A Confederacy of Dunces by Albert Montes at Boom Entertainment, out on September 29th. Albert Montes was…
• 30:48
  Tad Eggleston: Teamed with Ryan North to do the fantastic adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five, so I'm really looking forward to this one. Buffy the Vampire Slayer number 1, from Kelly Thompson and Stephen Byrne at Dynamite Entertainment.
• 31:00
  Tad Eggleston: out on July 22nd. Fort Psycho number 1 for Matt Kent and Brian Hurt at Oney Press, out on August 5th. I've been blessed to get to read this one, too. It is…
• 31:12
  Tad Eggleston: absolutely fantastic. Gastronomique.
• 31:15
  Tad Eggleston: Number 1 from Marguerite Bennett and Helena Macellis, out from Boom on August 12th. Miles Morales, Spider-Man number 1 from Brian Hill and Nico Leone, out from Marvel on August 12th. The Smart Division, number one, Zach Kaplan is re-teaming with John J. Pearson at Dark Horse, out on August 5th.
• 31:35
  Tad Eggleston: And,
• 31:36
  Tad Eggleston: Warbird No. 1 from Derek Kolstead, Robert Venditti, and Alex Maliv, out from Bad Idea on July 22nd.
• 31:46
  Tad Eggleston: Crowdfunding, we still have Nighthawks by Jimmy Lee at Goat's Flying Press on Kickstarter through June 25th. Devil's Dew Presents Hack Slash and Mercy Sparks from Josh Blalock on Kickstarter through June 28th.
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: The 2026 edition of the insert name, Comics and Zine Fest, run by Emily Mayer and Ryan Carey, is fundraising on Kickstarter through June 29th. They've already met their goal, but the farther above their goal they go, A, the more likely they are to pay themselves for their time, which they very rarely do, and B, the more likely they are to, like, bring in cool people and, like, pay for hotels
• 32:26
  Tad Eggleston: showrooms, or… or whatnot, so that, like, the artists are comfortable. This is, like, the super small…
• 32:34
  Tad Eggleston: Zine Fest, but it's always amazing, and I enjoy going. It'll be Sunday, August 30th, from noon to 6 p.m. at Odd Mart.
• 32:43
  Tad Eggleston: 2520 Lindale Avenue South in Minneapolis. Odd Mart is also just a comic shop that you should go to, period, and probably has the…
• 32:53
  Tad Eggleston: best… Curated selection of… Independent and alternative small press
• 33:01
  Tad Eggleston: graphic novels I have ever seen. I was really, really impressed when I was up there recently. Goblin Throne from Mel Gilman at Iron Circus is on Kickstarter through June 30th.
• 33:12
  Tad Eggleston: Comics Courier number 4 from Tiffany Babb is on Kickstarter through July 1st. If you, like me, like to get your comics reviews and interviews in newspaper form, then the Comics Courier is for you.
• 33:26
  Tad Eggleston: Noir is the new black. The noir anthology finale from Fair Square Graphic is on Kickstarter through July 1st. Forgotten Divine from Mark Russell and Russ Braun at Ahoy on Kickstarter through July 2nd. I have read this, I have talked to Mark Russell, I've talked to Russ Braun on this podcast, it's amazing.
• 33:45
  Tad Eggleston: order your copy now, go listen to the podcast, because they're fun guys.
• 33:50
  Tad Eggleston: Buy Visibility, Bye Bye Bye, a bisexual comic book anthology from Cat Klamia at Lifeline Comics on Kickstarter through July 2nd. Grogore and Shanks, numbers 1 and 2, A Dwarf and an Orc Solve Mysteries from John Lees and Joe Mulvey at Comics Tribe on Kickstarter through July 3rd. We should reach out to John Lees again sometime soon.
• 34:12
  Tad Eggleston: Haven't talked to my Scotsman in a while.
• 34:15
  Tad Eggleston: Scar Tissue Bargains from Stephen Fox is on Kickstarter through July 12th.
• 34:19
  Tad Eggleston: Nerd Emergencies and Other Misunderstandings, a comic showcase of Neurodivergent Perspectives, from Andrew Coltran.
• 34:28
  Tad Eggleston: Bartley Robot Industries and Zuzu Cartoons on Kickstarter through July 14th. I have read this, I have talked to Andrew twice and Zuzu once on this podcast. It is amazing. Learn how people like me…
• 34:44
  Tad Eggleston: live and deal with crazy stuff.
• 34:49
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and, you know, help out some cool artists, too. Also a friend of the podcast, Daria Faruhar has a comic in the anthology. Stellar Remnant number 2 from Damon George Hampton, who's also done a, a…
• 35:05
  Tad Eggleston: 22 panels in support of this, is on Kickstarter through July 15th.
• 35:10
  Tad Eggleston: And Tezuka, God of Manga, the documentary from Jason Cohn, will be launching soon on Kickstarter. Sign up to be.
• 35:19
  Tad Eggleston: notified upon launch, and go back and listen to my talk with Jason Cohn, because it was also quite fun.
• 35:26
  Tad Eggleston: Couple of humble bundles right now. Cadansha presents Boys Love, Yuri, and more from Itchy Chinsha.
• 35:34
  Tad Eggleston: Dollars for 61 items, which represents more than 100 volumes, to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and it's been extended to June 26th. And Sonic the Hedgehog, the 30th anniversary.
• 35:48
  Tad Eggleston: from IDW, $18 for 27 items to support the Children's Miracle Network.
• 35:56
  Tad Eggleston: on Humble Bundle through July 10th.
• 36:00
  Tad Eggleston: So, I'm probably gonna have to get that one, because I've been hearing great things about the Sonic and Hedgehog…
• 36:05
  Tad Eggleston: Stuff forever, and just, like, not been able to bring myself to, like… Research and or spend money.
• 36:13
  Tad Eggleston: But if you can spend $18 to get a bunch of things.
• 36:18
  Tad Eggleston: Then… then you can kind of dig in and figure stuff out.
• 36:22
  Matt & Belle: Hmm.
• 36:22
  Tad Eggleston: Supposedly, they're actually really, really fantastic kids comics.
• 36:27
  Tad Eggleston: Is what I have heard.
• 36:31
  Tad Eggleston: So, anyway, any of that sound cool to you? Getting your, checkbook out, Bell?
• 36:39
  Matt & Belle: Haha, yeah, right.
• 36:42
  Tad Eggleston: You're about to bring in the big bucks as a student.
• 36:46
  Matt & Belle: We'll see, we'll see.
• 36:48
  Tad Eggleston: Three amazing books this week. I loved Dog Tag No. 2, the World War II comic from Mark Russell and P.J. Holden at Mad Cave. I loved, Pear Shape.
• 37:00
  Tad Eggleston: the anthology of all sorts of comics, from Nick Thorburn at Fanographics Underground. I also loved his album that just came out, The Cream.
• 37:13
  Tad Eggleston: Which, I got my vinyl copy.
• 37:16
  Tad Eggleston: This week.
• 37:19
  Matt & Belle: Oh, nice.
• 37:20
  Tad Eggleston: When you can have… when you can have your… an album and a comic drop in the same week.
• 37:26
  Tad Eggleston: You know you're doing something right.
• 37:28
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 37:30
  Tad Eggleston: And of the Earth from Chris Condon, Andrew Eric, and Charlie Adler.
• 37:37
  Tad Eggleston: of the Earth continues to be great. There were a lot of great comics this week, but we won't go through them all. I'm… I'm done with that. I'm ready to move on. There's no Phil, so there's no walk with Phil. There is a One Piece race, but…
• 37:51
  Tad Eggleston: Not really, because I've been becalmed. I'm stuck at 693 chapters right now. I gotta get over the… I'm gonna challenge myself to get over the hump to 700 by…
• 38:04
  Tad Eggleston: by… by next week. Though, I have 5 episode… er, 3 episodes of static to watch, and a volume of…
• 38:13
  Tad Eggleston: of Saga to read for tomorrow, so I don't know if I'll get any of the…
• 38:19
  Tad Eggleston: the One Piece reading done tomorrow. I'm almost… I'm, like, halfway, Matt.
• 38:24
  Tad Eggleston: I've been reading One Piece for 104 weeks, and…
• 38:27
  Matt & Belle: Huh?
• 38:28
  Tad Eggleston: I'm about halfway.
• 38:31
  Matt & Belle: That's not bad.
• 38:34
  Tad Eggleston: really long. It's really good, but it's really long.
• 38:38
  Tad Eggleston: I keep getting one-piece toys. I have one right here.
• 38:41
  Matt & Belle: Oh, very cool. Are you watching the live action on Netflix?
• 38:45
  Tad Eggleston: I am not.
• 38:48
  Tad Eggleston: I might at some point.
• 38:50
  Tad Eggleston: I think I'm most looking forward to… there's another animated one coming to Netflix next year.
• 38:57
  Matt & Belle: Cool.
• 38:58
  Tad Eggleston: That looks like it's a style of animation that's… that's more my speed.
• 39:04
  Tad Eggleston: I've watched some of the animation of the current animated one that's been going for a long time, and is almost even with the books.
• 39:15
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, back during COVID, the girls and I were watching that.
• 39:19
  Tad Eggleston: But it's got some of the…
• 39:21
  Tad Eggleston: Some of the anime things that you gotta get used to.
• 39:25
  Matt & Belle: Yeah. Oh, for sure.
• 39:27
  Tad Eggleston: that they're… I mean, and I mostly have gotten used to them in manga, so I'm certain that I could get used to them in…
• 39:34
  Tad Eggleston: And… An anime as well, but it looks like the new one coming is gonna have more of a…
• 39:43
  Tad Eggleston: Ghibli feel to it than a typical…
• 39:49
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know all the anime studios.
• 39:52
  Tad Eggleston: But I think you know what I'm talking about.
• 39:57
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
• 40:01
  Tad Eggleston: now, and I was so happy that it turned out that we didn't even have to get rid of our great responsibility for this week, because I spent most of the week
• 40:10
  Tad Eggleston: doing my reread of Persepolis, and I actually got through it.
• 40:13
  Tad Eggleston: None of us got far enough last week.
• 40:19
  Tad Eggleston: That… that we were done… ready to be done talking about it, so…
• 40:23
  Tad Eggleston: So, now I got through it, and… It's wonderful and heartbreaking, and…
• 40:33
  Tad Eggleston: And… and something that everybody needs to read.
• 40:37
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly when we're at war in the Middle East, but really just in general. We have so much trouble
• 40:45
  Tad Eggleston: Thinking of different cultures as utterly different from us.
• 40:50
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 40:51
  Tad Eggleston: And they're not.
• 40:54
  Tad Eggleston: People are people.
• 40:56
  Matt & Belle: Right. I'm actually grateful this book was part of my high school curriculum, so I was lucky enough to read this as a freshman or sophomore in high school, for credit. So we had lots of class discussions about it, and it was really cool. This was the first comic book that I'd ever read for an English class. And growing up with a dad that did comics, that felt really…
• 41:14
  Matt & Belle: really cool to me, so…
• 41:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is… this is a pretty common one, and…
• 41:20
  Tad Eggleston: In, high school classrooms at this point.
• 41:24
  Matt & Belle: Good, it should be…
• 41:25
  Tad Eggleston: this and American-born Chinese, and I think… I think they hit kind of the same areas.
• 41:33
  Tad Eggleston: With different socio-political context.
• 41:36
  Tad Eggleston: I, I guess where, where this, this…
• 41:44
  Tad Eggleston: where this hits me the hardest, what I was reading it, is all the times where there's, like, talk of.
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: Them, like, pulling the shades to have a party, because…
• 41:54
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, or to play chess. Right.
• 41:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right, they, they didn't wanna, they didn't wanna… but, but, like…
• 41:59
  Matt & Belle: Because your neighbors will turn you in.
• 42:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly over the last… what? 3 years now since…
• 42:09
  Tad Eggleston: the, the, the October 7th attacks.
• 42:14
  Tad Eggleston: Too often, we've heard things like, you know, all Palestinians are…
• 42:24
  Tad Eggleston: Whatever, and it's.
• 42:25
  Matt & Belle: Fantastic.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: Are they, though?
• 42:26
  Matt & Belle: Right.
• 42:27
  Tad Eggleston: Are they?
• 42:29
  Matt & Belle: I'll bet you most of them are just trying to live and, you know.
• 42:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 42:32
  Matt & Belle: day-to-day.
• 42:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 42:34
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 42:35
  Tad Eggleston: And I would bet… I would bet that that would be even more so the less… the less staying alive had to be a major part of their life.
• 42:43
  Matt & Belle: Exactly. Right?
• 42:45
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know…
• 42:47
  Matt & Belle: I mean…
• 42:48
  Tad Eggleston: We need to go through checkpoints to get to work?
• 42:53
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, multiple checkpoints to get to work?
• 42:57
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, exactly.
• 42:59
  Tad Eggleston: When, like… Kids get thrown in jail?
• 43:05
  Tad Eggleston: You know, another thing coming out this month that I'm certain will get talked about more, or another thing in the catalog this month is a facsimile of the first…
• 43:16
  Tad Eggleston: first issue of Joe Sacco's Palestine.
• 43:20
  Tad Eggleston: And I can't… I can't emphasize enough, anybody who hasn't read Palestine or…
• 43:26
  Tad Eggleston: footnotes from Gaza should go read them.
• 43:29
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like, he… he just spends time on the ground, talking to people, and learning about things, and… and…
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: you know… Trying not to jump to conclusions.
• 43:43
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, reading this, and thinking of Marjane, and like…
• 43:51
  Tad Eggleston: how lost she felt, I mean, the…
• 43:55
  Tad Eggleston: The biggest heartbreak for me was, like, she couldn't fit in in France because nobody was willing to let her.
• 44:02
  Tad Eggleston: But then she went home, and it wasn't better, because…
• 44:08
  Tad Eggleston: Now she knew even more about
• 44:12
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, we don't have to live this way, except we do here.
• 44:19
  Matt & Belle: Great.
• 44:21
  Tad Eggleston: You know, how wise her parents were, and being able to see that
• 44:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this isn't the marriage that's gonna last.
• 44:32
  Tad Eggleston: But… but, like, for her, I think it was as much, like…
• 44:37
  Tad Eggleston: I've got something here, and I'm not allowed to have just a fling. That's not allowed in this country. The only way I can do that is if we're married. I'm not ready to leave this country yet.
• 44:50
  Tad Eggleston: So… so we have to get married, and as soon as they were married, as soon as there wasn't that, like…
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they got to discover that, no, we can't live with each other.
• 45:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, thank God they had two bedrooms.
• 45:06
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 45:09
  Tad Eggleston: But that's also just so human. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I, long ago, was the proponent of, like.
• 45:17
  Tad Eggleston: Spend real time with your future spouse before making them your spouse, because… like…
• 45:28
  Tad Eggleston: You can't think of the things that are…
• 45:31
  Tad Eggleston: easy and hard. You just have to experience them to discover them.
• 45:36
  Tad Eggleston: You don't know whether their cold feet will bother you at night. You don't know… you don't know whether knocking on the wall is gonna bother them at night so much that you have to sleep in another bedroom, and will that be okay? Will it be cool?
• 45:52
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I was scared to death when my wife and I got to that point where it's like, you know, maybe for the health of our marriage, we need to have separate rooms, and it has nothing to do with us not liking each other. It has to do with we have completely different sleep needs.
• 46:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 46:11
  Matt & Belle: Oh, I get it. I get it.
• 46:13
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, the more you can figure that sort of thing out.
• 46:19
  Tad Eggleston: Ahead of time, the more you can build the foundation for figuring that stuff out before you've
• 46:25
  Tad Eggleston: Committed to, like… give up half your stuff if stuff doesn't work out. Yeah.
• 46:36
  Tad Eggleston: You know, for that matter, I love that with the dad, the look, you know, you're gonna say these things. You're gonna tell me these things if you're gonna marry my daughter.
• 46:50
  Tad Eggleston: That… that we're both…
• 46:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they were the equivalent of treat her right and let her walk away if
• 47:03
  Tad Eggleston: If she's not happy, but, like…
• 47:06
  Tad Eggleston: And a time and place where that was…
• 47:12
  Tad Eggleston: A much bigger statement.
• 47:14
  Tad Eggleston: Because there was no law to back it up.
• 47:17
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, sure.
• 47:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know… And I love how, like…
• 47:25
  Tad Eggleston: it subtly did the hat tip to, oh yeah, all this shit? We're going through it because of the US and Britain.
• 47:35
  Tad Eggleston: We had a leader that we elected and was in favor of modernizing the country, but he also took the oil away from foreign oil companies to pay for modernizing the company.
• 47:50
  Matt & Belle: Country. Crunchy, yeah.
• 47:51
  Tad Eggleston: And… and they didn't like that, so… so they funded the…
• 47:57
  Tad Eggleston: The guy that was gonna make us wear headscarves again.
• 48:02
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 48:04
  Matt & Belle: There's always someone willing to sell out there.
• 48:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, it's… it's one of the oldest stories… in America diplomacy, we're… we're…
• 48:16
  Tad Eggleston: We're in favor of democracy for the most part at home.
• 48:20
  Tad Eggleston: And, in words abroad, but not in practice if it happens to get in the way of our business interests.
• 48:30
  Matt & Belle: Absolutely.
• 48:31
  Tad Eggleston: If your democracy will cost American companies money, then… no. No, we don't like it anymore.
• 48:39
  Matt & Belle: Yep. Corporate greed. Gross.
• 48:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it made me,
• 48:50
  Tad Eggleston: I hate it when names aren't coming to my head.
• 49:06
  Tad Eggleston: Jonathan Katz wrote a great book about…
• 49:13
  Tad Eggleston: It's called The Gangsters of Capitalism.
• 49:18
  Tad Eggleston: And it was… it was framed around a guy named Smedley Butler.
• 49:22
  Tad Eggleston: who rose to, I think, the, the second highest… in the Marine Corps.
• 49:32
  Matt & Belle: Hmm.
• 49:33
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, his… his time in the Marine Corps… saw them…
• 49:39
  Tad Eggleston: Most celebrated warfighter of his time.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: Is what he was. But, but his time… Saw them…
• 49:55
  Tad Eggleston: Seize Guantanamo.
• 49:57
  Tad Eggleston: annexed the Philippines.
• 50:01
  Tad Eggleston: take the land around the Panama Canal, lead troops into China twice, invade and occupy Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico.
• 50:11
  Tad Eggleston: But in his retirement, He… he… he… like, in looking back on things, Butler had gone… had said.
• 50:23
  Tad Eggleston: war is a racket. I was a racketeer for capitalism. Like, as he looked back on this incredibly celebrated life as a Marine, he's like, oh, yeah, we went in places, and we used guns to…
• 50:39
  Matt & Belle: Further?
• 50:40
  Tad Eggleston: Protect and or further American business interests.
• 50:44
  Matt & Belle: It wasn't.
• 50:45
  Tad Eggleston: It wasn't about freedom, it wasn't about the people that, that, like, we were…
• 50:51
  Tad Eggleston: you know, the people that we were going, and they weren't a threat to American citizens.
• 50:57
  Matt & Belle: Nope.
• 50:57
  Tad Eggleston: We weren't protecting them from their governments, you know, the only thing that we were doing was… You know…
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the reasons that, like, we've been so steadfast on our blockades of Cuba is that, like.
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: It costs American business a lot of money.
• 51:20
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 51:24
  Tad Eggleston: You know?
• 51:28
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, no, it was… it was… it was a very interesting perspective. I think Marjane was in her…
• 51:35
  Tad Eggleston: Late 20s when she drew this.
• 51:37
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, you know, clearly… Had both vivid memories and probably kept a diary, just cause…
• 51:43
  Matt & Belle: Oh, sure.
• 51:43
  Tad Eggleston: We got the…
• 51:48
  Tad Eggleston: The perspective of a teenager.
• 51:52
  Tad Eggleston: Seeing all of this stuff.
• 51:55
  Tad Eggleston: you know, for that matter, the… not being able to tell her parents that she was homeless in France because
• 52:02
  Tad Eggleston: I should let them down.
• 52:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 52:05
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, sure.
• 52:06
  Tad Eggleston: how real is that? I asked Belle. I mean, I don't think you've recently been homeless or anything, but how real is, like, not wanting to tell your… not wanting to tell your parents when you screwed up?
• 52:18
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, that's…
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly if you feel like they're going through their own tough stuff.
• 52:23
  Matt & Belle: Yep, it's extremely relatable, and, very scary, so I can… I can… I feel for her.
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and that, of course, is why graphic novels get banned.
• 52:37
  Tad Eggleston: Because…
• 52:39
  Matt & Belle: They're relatable.
• 52:40
  Tad Eggleston: They're relatable.
• 52:43
  Tad Eggleston: They're all about empathy.
• 52:46
  Tad Eggleston: They induce empathy at a level that, like, almost nothing else does.
• 52:51
  Matt & Belle: Yeah. And I think it's… the art's responsible for that.
• 52:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:55
  Matt & Belle: 100%.
• 52:57
  Matt & Belle: Well.
• 52:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 52:58
  Tad Eggleston: One of my theories, and I don't know how you do… you're the scientist, Bill, so you can put together the experiment, but one of my theories is that, like.
• 53:11
  Tad Eggleston: The reason why it becomes deeper in graphic novel form Than in either film or…
• 53:19
  Tad Eggleston: Bros, is in film, you're watching somebody else.
• 53:24
  Tad Eggleston: In prose, you're living it, but you're also translating it to your own culture, even… even if the prose is…
• 53:34
  Tad Eggleston: kind of making it a different one. Like, you're not feeling like you're re… you know, you're more likely to feel like you're reading a white person, even if you…
• 53:44
  Matt & Belle: Okay.
• 53:44
  Tad Eggleston: aren't.
• 53:45
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 53:46
  Tad Eggleston: And it's also one of the reasons why people who aren't white can often relate to
• 53:52
  Tad Eggleston: Books by white people, because they're often seeing people that aren't white, even though…
• 53:58
  Tad Eggleston: That's not what was necessarily the intention of the… but particularly, you know, when there… how often does skin color get described in a book?
• 54:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, does it ever talk about Holden Caulfield's white skin? We assume he's a white guy, but I don't know that there's anything in Salinger that requires that he be white.
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know? Oh, God.
• 54:20
  Matt & Belle: You are… you just pissed off so many people in the public.
• 54:23
  Tad Eggleston: I'm certain…
• 54:24
  Matt & Belle: Georgia!
• 54:24
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry!
• 54:25
  Matt & Belle: One example, specifically.
• 54:26
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I will totally say that it's unlikely that, you know, an Upper West Side.
• 54:34
  Matt & Belle: No, but it's just funny to think about. Yeah.
• 54:37
  Tad Eggleston: named Caulfield would be anything but white, but I don't know that there's anything that requires it.
• 54:45
  Tad Eggleston: in the book.
• 54:47
  Tad Eggleston: Other than a knowledge of history and the fact that it's just most likely.
• 54:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:53
  Tad Eggleston: But in comics, even the black and white ones.
• 54:59
  Tad Eggleston: there's generally just enough in terms of… I mean, I think about it in Loving Rockets all the time, because I think… I think they deliberately made it not…
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: One of the reasons that they work in black and white, is because…
• 55:17
  Tad Eggleston: The features will kind of tell you that they're things other than white, but, like, you…
• 55:24
  Tad Eggleston: You're forced to empathize in so many different directions, because you just don't know.
• 55:29
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 55:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so in comics, like…
• 55:34
  Tad Eggleston: You've got that, that, that pros…
• 55:38
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, when you're reading prose, you really kind of become the characters, you fall into the story. I think you do that in comics, too, in a way that you don't with movies. But because you've got the visual there.
• 55:50
  Tad Eggleston: You cannot… project Yourself in the same way you would in a prose book.
• 55:58
  Matt & Belle: Right, and you basically give.
• 56:00
  Tad Eggleston: You have to become the character.
• 56:03
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 56:03
  Tad Eggleston: More like a roleplay with a comic.
• 56:05
  Matt & Belle: Right.
• 56:07
  Matt & Belle: And it's contextual, it's not… it's not you only get pictures sometimes, it's pictures all the time. It's every single page, multiple pictures per page. You can't… you can't escape the immersive experience with a comic book.
• 56:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 56:22
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why they're so dangerous, because, like…
• 56:26
  Matt & Belle: so awesome.
• 56:27
  Tad Eggleston: It is why they're so awesome, but, like, if you… if you are… are… if your power, if your whatever is… is predicated on people
• 56:40
  Tad Eggleston: Thinking that other people are different and lesser or whatever, comics is a medium that's gonna fuck with you every time.
• 56:49
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 56:54
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it just… it's not a great medium for propaganda.
• 57:00
  Tad Eggleston: It's not a great medium for lying.
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's… it's not.
• 57:08
  Tad Eggleston: It's not great for it.
• 57:11
  Tad Eggleston: You know… But Persepolis, like…
• 57:16
  Tad Eggleston: I need to read more of her work. I need to watch her movies, because she became a director later in her career. She's got, like, 4 or 5 movies under her belt.
• 57:25
  Tad Eggleston: Starting with the animated Persepolis.
• 57:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, like… And just like movie movies.
• 57:34
  Matt & Belle: Hmm.
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean, that's one of the things that… that…
• 57:41
  Tad Eggleston: attracted me when I started looking at them is like, oh, like, Persepolis is kind of a book that has…
• 57:50
  Tad Eggleston: A, a…
• 57:53
  Tad Eggleston: a message, though at the same time, I think that's just sometimes something that we project, when really, like, she was just… it was her… it was her… you know, for her, it was the same thing that Fun Home is to Alex and Bechdel. But nobody thinks of Fun Home as…
• 58:09
  Tad Eggleston: as, like…
• 58:14
  Tad Eggleston: Activism.
• 58:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 58:17
  Tad Eggleston: Nobody thinks of blankets. Craig Thompson's blankets as activism.
• 58:23
  Tad Eggleston: But all of these are just personal memoirs. But, like, as a director, she did…
• 58:31
  Tad Eggleston: Like, this one caught my eye. There's a movie called The Voices with Ryan Reynolds.
• 58:41
  Tad Eggleston: Where what it says is, a likable guy pursues his office crush with help from his evil-talking pets, but things turn sinister when she stands him up for a date.
• 58:56
  Tad Eggleston: with Ryan Reynolds and Anna Kendrick.
• 59:03
  Tad Eggleston: That's just…
• 59:08
  Tad Eggleston: Directing a movie.
• 59:11
  Matt & Belle: Yeah?
• 59:12
  Matt & Belle: I love Ryan Reynolds. So do I.
• 59:15
  Tad Eggleston: But I was commenting recently, how weird is it that his first turn as Deadpool?
• 59:21
  Tad Eggleston: They had the non-speaking Deadpool.
• 59:24
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, right.
• 59:25
  Tad Eggleston: It's weird enough that they had the non-speaking Deadpool, but that they had Ryan Reynolds as the non-speaking Deadpool.
• 59:33
  Matt & Belle: Well, no one said… what was that? That was X-Men… was that 3? No, that was…
• 59:37
  Tad Eggleston: so.
• 59:38
  Matt & Belle: I guess so. I mean, no one said that was a good movie.
• 59:41
  Tad Eggleston: No, but, like, I'm just… the idea that they would cast Deadpool so perfectly…
• 59:48
  Matt & Belle: And then deeply his mouth, yeah.
• 59:50
  Tad Eggleston: And then take away the only thing that makes Deadpool interesting.
• 59:57
  Matt & Belle: Yep, you're not wrong.
• 1:00:01
  Tad Eggleston: It's just… you know… Weird.
• 1:00:07
  Tad Eggleston: Nope. So…
• 1:00:09
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway, how about we move towards wrap-up, because we're coming up on 9 o'clock my time, 10 o'clock your time, it's a Sunday night, people might want to sleep, who knows? I've heard it's a good idea.
• 1:00:22
  Matt & Belle: Canby from time to time.
• 1:00:23
  Tad Eggleston: Can be. Can be. So I'll start out with the books I know are spectacular coming out this week.
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: Starting with the Eye Collector No. 1 from Jonathan Ball and GMB Chamachuk.
• 1:00:36
  Tad Eggleston: From Image Comics. I read this on a whim.
• 1:00:41
  Tad Eggleston: From… from a stack… well, not a stack, a,
• 1:00:45
  Tad Eggleston: bunch of advanced PDFs I had from Image, because it didn't look like it was going to be my type of book. I thought… I was thinking,
• 1:00:53
  Tad Eggleston: what is it? The… the… the… the Corinthian in Sandman.
• 1:00:59
  Tad Eggleston: So I was thinking we were gonna have some sort of horror-type thing, and, like, it's got a little bit of that, but it's way more sci-fi.
• 1:01:06
  Tad Eggleston: And… and weird, and cool, and I liked it, and the art was great.
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: That said, like, I don't think it's gonna be one of the top three comics next week, so I wanted to make certain I talked about it now, particularly because one of the books that I will be talking about as an amazing comic next week will absolutely be…
• 1:01:28
  Tad Eggleston: Mind Management New and Improved, number one, I've read it a few times.
• 1:01:32
  Tad Eggleston: Got to talk to Matt about it. It's so good.
• 1:01:36
  Tad Eggleston: So nice to have mind management back.
• 1:01:40
  Tad Eggleston: But then the books, I hope, will be spectacular, but we've got Exploit Number 4 from Laura Hudson and Tim Leong, with art from Emiliana Pina. This wraps up the series at Mad Cave. It's a fantastic near-future journalism story.
• 1:01:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I had Laura and Tim on. Very good. White House Robot Romance number 3 from Chip Zdarsky and Rachel Stott.
• 1:02:06
  Tad Eggleston: You know, for when you're,
• 1:02:08
  Tad Eggleston: When your AIs of the future fall in love.
• 1:02:13
  Tad Eggleston: First two issues are great, third one's finally out from Distillery. The Hab, number three,
• 1:02:22
  Tad Eggleston: Joshua Dysart's a great writer, but, like…
• 1:02:25
  Tad Eggleston: David Lapham and Bill Sienkiewicz doing art on this book?
• 1:02:30
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 1:02:31
  Tad Eggleston: And in chapter 1, there was some Jacob Phillips, too.
• 1:02:35
  Matt & Belle: Oh, nice!
• 1:02:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Colors from Matt Hollingsworth, and I forget who else is doing… like, it's just like…
• 1:02:42
  Tad Eggleston: masters across the board doing everything on this book. It's like the story of a post-apocalyptic, like, underground…
• 1:02:53
  Tad Eggleston: habitat bunker that may or may not be haunted.
• 1:02:57
  Matt & Belle: But who's… but who published it?
• 1:03:00
  Tad Eggleston: Bad idea.
• 1:03:01
  Matt & Belle: Good idea. Clearly, does.
• 1:03:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, going back to books on Final Order Cutoff right now, like, Warbird is by Alex Maliv.
• 1:03:12
  Tad Eggleston: The zero issue was by Jesse Lonergan.
• 1:03:15
  Tad Eggleston: like, one of the handful of artists that you could tell me the main artist on the book is gonna be Alex Maliv, and I'm like, what? We don't get any more Jesse?
• 1:03:28
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
• 1:03:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, another good week in comics. I mean, all of that, plus some Absolute Wonder Woman, some regular Wonder Woman, some Usagi Yojimbo Kaito, some Terror Bites, some Pretty Hate Machine, some Peril of the Brutal Dark, an Ezra Kane Mystery from
• 1:03:46
  Tad Eggleston: From Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips. Is Ted okay? From Dave Chisholm. Narco from Doug Wagner and Daniel Hilliard. In your skin, Farrell?
• 1:03:57
  Tad Eggleston: Bizarro Year None, Kevin Smith?
• 1:04:00
  Tad Eggleston: Barbarian Beyond Bars?
• 1:04:02
  Tad Eggleston: Elliot, Kalen, and… and…
• 1:04:05
  Tad Eggleston: And, Andrea Moody, and of course, the other David Lapham book, American Caper, number 8.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: With the dudes who made,
• 1:04:14
  Tad Eggleston: Grand Theft Auto doing the writing.
• 1:04:17
  Matt & Belle: Oh, nice.
• 1:04:18
  Tad Eggleston: David Lapham doing the… the… art. So, yeah, you each picked out a, giant-sized trade winner pick.
• 1:04:27
  Tad Eggleston: So, which one of you wants to go first, Bell or Matt?
• 1:04:29
  Matt & Belle: Well, you're up.
• 1:04:32
  Matt & Belle: Oh, yeah! I picked this because the title looked interesting, as my dad was reading through these. This is Dogs on Dates by Lou Keeley, and drawn in Quarterly.
• 1:04:42
  Matt & Belle: Hilariousness and awkwardness ensue as our two love dogs face misadventures, mishaps, and missteps, but also flowers, pasta, sandwiches, and maybe even love. In Luke Healy's wonderfully precise yet loose line and careful wit, dogs on dates will quickly become your favorite comic's rom-com.
• 1:05:04
  Tad Eggleston: I like Luke Healy's stuff, I'm looking forward to this.
• 1:05:07
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, I'll have to read it. Yep, and I picked the, Casanova Compendium by Matt Fraction, Fabio Moon, and Gabriel Baugh by Image.
• 1:05:16
  Matt & Belle: Casanova Quinn gets ripped out of space-time, betrays everyone he ever loved, and destroys the whole world in his wake. But it's okay, everything's going to be okay. The first four Casanova stories are now collected in one massive, brain-melting, idiom-incinerating volume.
• 1:05:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this is…
• 1:05:37
  Matt & Belle: Because how can you not like Matt Fraction?
• 1:05:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is… this is like…
• 1:05:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, we were… we were talking about the Ibrahim Moussafa's, like, James Bond…
• 1:05:49
  Tad Eggleston: Time Traveler. This is, like, Matt Fraction's version on it.
• 1:05:53
  Tad Eggleston: And… Weirder. Less action and weirder.
• 1:05:58
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, it's… I mean, it's almost reminiscent of, black science, but I'm sure it's very different.
• 1:06:04
  Tad Eggleston: No, I think it's better than Black Science.
• 1:06:06
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Tad Eggleston: This was, this was the same time that he was, adapting Odyssey to space. Remember Odyssey?
• 1:06:14
  Matt & Belle: I do.
• 1:06:15
  Tad Eggleston: This was coming out at about the same time, so this is like Matt's… weird, existential… time.
• 1:06:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I need to… I need to read Casanova, re-read Casanova. And Fabio Moon and Gabriel Baha.
• 1:06:32
  Tad Eggleston: The next Bendis Book Club is… Daytripper.
• 1:06:39
  Tad Eggleston: Which I'm…
• 1:06:39
  Matt & Belle: So, when'd that start?
• 1:06:40
  Tad Eggleston: be reading.
• 1:06:42
  Tad Eggleston: Cuz…
• 1:06:46
  Matt & Belle: when are you starting? So, I'd love.
• 1:06:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, when I say Bandis Book Club, that's the one that's on Word Balloon.
• 1:06:53
  Tad Eggleston: So if you want to be part of that, you gotta get… you gotta either get on John… John's Patreon, or… or Bendis's.
• 1:07:01
  Matt & Belle: Okay, I thought you were doing it, and I was like.
• 1:07:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I go join it.
• 1:07:05
  Tad Eggleston: I go join it, I'm there.
• 1:07:08
  Tad Eggleston: Or Bendis's substack. All you need to do to get on Bendis' sub stack.
• 1:07:16
  Tad Eggleston: Go buy an issue of Powers 25, there's a QR code.
• 1:07:19
  Matt & Belle: Oh, nice, okay.
• 1:07:22
  Tad Eggleston: And you should be reading Powers 25 anyway, because it's amazing.
• 1:07:24
  Matt & Belle: I'm sure it is, I mean, it's menus, so come on, you can't go.
• 1:07:27
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it's bed as an oming.
• 1:07:30
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 1:07:31
  Tad Eggleston: It's Pettison Omen.
• 1:07:34
  Matt & Belle: Recently just picked up United States of Murder.
• 1:07:38
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, so… United States of Murder Incorporated.
• 1:07:41
  Matt & Belle: Incorporated, yes. Yes.
• 1:07:43
  Tad Eggleston: So good.
• 1:07:46
  Matt & Belle: Yes, I picked up the… First.
• 1:07:50
  Tad Eggleston: First volume.
• 1:07:50
  Matt & Belle: Personality or less.
• 1:07:52
  Tad Eggleston: They're 3 volumes, so good.
• 1:07:53
  Matt & Belle: Yes, I'm really looking forward to tearing into this.
• 1:07:56
  Tad Eggleston: Takisoma does the colors on those.
• 1:08:00
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 1:08:01
  Matt & Belle: So, yeah, I remember our first powers read-through, and it's like, oh yeah, I'll buy that.
• 1:08:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:07
  Matt & Belle: I cannot go wrong.
• 1:08:09
  Tad Eggleston: Powers is so good.
• 1:08:11
  Tad Eggleston: One of these days, I'll get Bendis. I've had oming. I'll have oming again.
• 1:08:16
  Tad Eggleston: Taki says she's gonna make them both come.
• 1:08:20
  Matt & Belle: Nice.
• 1:08:21
  Matt & Belle: Well, let me know when that is.
• 1:08:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:08:24
  Tad Eggleston: So, To Nate67, and to everybody else, we will see you After the next page.