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Pulp Blotter Book Club #19 - Corto Maltese · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody! Welcome back to the Pulp Blotter Book Club on 22 Panels. I have with me, again, playwright.
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: and actor Mark Pratt and actor Sean Harklrode to talk some comics. Before we jump into Coder Maltese, I do have to, like, quickly…
• 0:23
  Tad Eggleston: quickly ask, how cool was it to, like, go from 3 months of talking about Jonah Hex to talking to Jimmy about Jonah Hex?
• 0:33
  Sean Harklerode: That was great.
• 0:34
  Mark Pracht: Awesome.
• 0:37
  Mark Pracht: I think I babbled my head off of. I, like, was so excited about it.
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I…
• 0:42
  Sean Harklerode: Dude, I couldn't get a word in.
• 0:46
  Mark Pracht: Well, you know, and then, you know, Jimmy sort of obliquely offered to, help me get,
• 0:53
  Mark Pracht: Get some of his wife's artwork, so…
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I'm like… Yeah, yeah.
• 0:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: But, no, I, there was… one of my new episode closing questions has been share…
• 1:09
  Tad Eggleston: A surreal experience.
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: From your time in comics, because, like.
• 1:14
  Tad Eggleston: in the only 5 years, less than 5 years now that I've done this podcast, I feel like my life is, like, completely and utterly changed. The people I count among my friends and hang out with and talk to and whatnot are just, like, people that…
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: So many of them are people that, like, 10 years ago, you'd say, oh, you're just gonna chat with this person on a regular basis, and I would have gone, yeah, fuck you.
• 1:38
  Tad Eggleston: Are you out of your mind?
• 1:44
  Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing, and that is one of those things for me, particularly because, like, I…
• 1:53
  Tad Eggleston: you know, you guys don't always get to see it, and I don't always share, but, like, I have a very autistic brain, and I also, like, have learned on a lot of things, if I don't do it right now, if I let myself think about it rather than just doing it, I'll talk myself out of it.
• 2:10
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: I literally did 80% of the legwork to get Jimmy…
• 2:18
  Tad Eggleston: While we were recording one of our… Or our th- our third…
• 2:25
  Tad Eggleston: Jonah Hex episode. You know, I'm like, oh, we really should talk to Jimmy, so I emailed Jimmy, and then I heard back from Jimmy to email his assistant, and I emailed his assistant, and then I heard back from his assistant, and then we finished our episode, and then I finished negotiating.
• 2:46
  Tad Eggleston: So, you know, it was crazy and fun.
• 2:50
  Mark Pracht: Super exciting for me, and, and, you know, I… I've…
• 2:54
  Mark Pracht: you know, I followed up with him and just thanked him for doing it. Yeah! No, he's a great guy.
• 2:59
  Tad Eggleston: I need to follow up again.
• 3:02
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I would love to.
• 3:03
  Tad Eggleston: Because he seemed interested in coming back to talk more about… All sorts of things.
• 3:07
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I'm totally down for that. And, and, the, I have pop…
• 3:14
  Mark Pracht: What's the name of the book? Pop… Pop Kill?
• 3:16
  Tad Eggleston: Kill, yeah.
• 3:17
  Mark Pracht: I need to… it's on my list to get a copy and read that, because that sounded hilarious.
• 3:23
  Tad Eggleston: It is hilarious. Totally.
• 3:25
  Mark Pracht: Vaguely offensive, and I love totally hilarious and offensive, so… Right.
• 3:30
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 3:33
  Mark Pracht: Like, intentionally, like, not… I'm not saying that Jimmy.
• 3:36
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
• 3:37
  Mark Pracht: comics.
• 3:37
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:40
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, I mean, for hilarious and offensive, well, no, not really offensive, and only kind of hilarious, we'll, we'll pivot now to, Cordo Maltese, which,
• 3:53
  Tad Eggleston: Cordo Maltese represents, to me.
• 3:56
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm so happy that so many… so many of the items that are on this list have been…
• 4:01
  Tad Eggleston: getting reprinted in the last year or two, because it represents one of those things that I had heard about, and heard about, and heard about, and heard about, and not been able to, like, lay my hands on.
• 4:15
  Tad Eggleston: to, you know, I've read a short story here, a short story there, I think I have, like, one reprint volume from God knows when.
• 4:28
  Mark Pracht: I mean, this is a book that I remember when I was in the 80s, when I was going into my LCS in Colorado Springs, they would have
• 4:38
  Mark Pracht: collected editions, and I'd always be, you know.
• 4:41
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that.
• 4:42
  Mark Pracht: I was blast.
• 4:42
  Tad Eggleston: Last time it was in print.
• 4:44
  Mark Pracht: And I mean, you know, when I was, like, I don't know, 12, 13, I was like, what the hell is that?
• 4:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 4:52
  Mark Pracht: Until, I mean, there was the moment when, you know, it…
• 4:57
  Mark Pracht: I should let Sean talk about that. The one reference to Corto Maltese that I remembered.
• 5:03
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 5:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, until… until, you…
• 5:09
  Sean Harklerode: asked us to do this podcast, I was under the impression that Corto Maltese referred to, you know, a South American country,
• 5:21
  Sean Harklerode: You know, from references in The Dark Knight Returns.
• 5:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 5:28
  Sean Harklerode: the 89 Batman film. I, I, I figured… I mean, I figured that it was…
• 5:33
  Sean Harklerode: a strip, an adventure strip, but I thought it was set in a locale called.
• 5:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 5:39
  Sean Harklerode: So…
• 5:41
  Tad Eggleston: Is… so…
• 5:42
  Sean Harklerode: Like.
• 5:43
  Tad Eggleston: That, that's, that's a, that's a perfect,
• 5:46
  Tad Eggleston: a perfect segue to one of the sillier things that I noticed that I don't want to spend a ton of time with, because I don't…
• 5:55
  Tad Eggleston: I can't answer this question, but… so, did either of you get a chance to read the Kim Thompson essay at the end? I read, like, two-thirds of it.
• 6:06
  Mark Pracht: I… in general, I don't…
• 6:09
  Mark Pracht: when we're doing something like this, in general, I don't like to read the ancillary… like, I'd rather have my own opinion about it.
• 6:15
  Tad Eggleston: That's fine.
• 6:16
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 6:17
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 6:17
  Tad Eggleston: The Kim Thompson essay, though, was actually as much, like, biographical, and kind of given the old stuff. And I noticed something, you know, something jumped out at me. His first big character
• 6:35
  Tad Eggleston: was Sergeant Kirk.
• 6:38
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 6:38
  Tad Eggleston: His second big character was Ernie Pike.
• 6:46
  Tad Eggleston: So I'm wondering… I'm wondering if… if Roddenberry was also… Yay!
• 6:56
  Tad Eggleston: Hugo Pratt.
• 6:59
  Mark Pracht: or… or… were Hugo Pratt and Roddenberry reading the same.
• 7:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's possible.
• 7:07
  Mark Pracht: Pulp Magazine or whatever that had a character named Kirk or Pike in it, you know?
• 7:11
  Sean Harklerode: Was there a character named April in this, too?
• 7:15
  Sean Harklerode: I don't remember. Was there an Abril, maybe, or something?
• 7:19
  Tad Eggleston: I don't, I don't know. But, you know, it did, particularly because it was, like, the first two.
• 7:27
  Tad Eggleston: I just went…
• 7:28
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 7:28
  Tad Eggleston: That's… That's interesting.
• 7:32
  Tad Eggleston: Also, and…
• 7:34
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, go ahead.
• 7:36
  Tad Eggleston: I was just gonna say…
• 7:39
  Sean Harklerode: The universe…
• 7:40
  Tad Eggleston: Good to go. You're going.
• 7:41
  Sean Harklerode: universal horror kid in me, you know, also fan-boyed out a little bit, to learn that Hugo Pratt is, related through his grandfather to the great British actor Henry Pratt, whom we all know as Boris Karloff.
• 7:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
• 7:58
  Sean Harklerode: It's awesome.
• 7:59
  Tad Eggleston: But, but also, it was, it was fascinating to learn that, he, he had really traveled the world, both.
• 8:09
  Tad Eggleston: As a kid, because his family moved. But then, as an adult, because, like, He was kind of…
• 8:19
  Tad Eggleston: starting to get known in Italy, but not a ton, and in Argentine…
• 8:26
  Tad Eggleston: offered to buy out their company, so it's like, sure, we'll move to Argentina and make comics.
• 8:32
  Tad Eggleston: And then eventually it was moved to France and make comics.
• 8:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's all the same comics, but…
• 8:39
  Mark Pracht: Eventually, everything moves to France to make comics, you know?
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, France is… I mean, the…
• 8:46
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 8:47
  Tad Eggleston: biggest countries for comics are the United States, Japan, and France.
• 8:52
  Mark Pracht: Sure. Well, and then, in, you know, France.
• 8:56
  Sean Harklerode: And that's just Jerry Lewis.
• 8:59
  Mark Pracht: Sorry, that…
• 9:05
  Tad Eggleston: Is he big in Japan?
• 9:09
  Mark Pracht: Oh no, oh no, there,
• 9:12
  Sean Harklerode: Nobody's big enough in France to make up for it.
• 9:15
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. Well…
• 9:17
  Mark Pracht: And plus, Jerry Lewis in Japan suggested, a, something that I didn't really want to dive into.
• 9:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:25
  Mark Pracht: But.
• 9:28
  Sean Harklerode: You know, I think… I…
• 9:30
  Mark Pracht: You're thinking of Mickey Rooney.
• 9:32
  Mark Pracht: Well, come on, Jerry too, come on.
• 9:35
  Mark Pracht: I've seen… I've seen hardly working.
• 9:41
  Mark Pracht: I thought…
• 9:41
  Sean Harklerode: theater.
• 9:42
  Mark Pracht: Oh my god. You and 3 other people. Anyway,
• 9:48
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, like, I'm always fascinated by the French… Comic…
• 9:58
  Mark Pracht: obsession with the, you know, not obsession, but I mean, like, that they really do these adventure strips very well. I mean, like, Blueberry, who I don't think… I don't think either of you have read, but I've read, like.
• 10:10
  Tad Eggleston: I have.
• 10:11
  Mark Pracht: Blueberry story.
• 10:11
  Tad Eggleston: No, I've read most of Blueberry.
• 10:14
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, dude, Mobius, before he was Mobius.
• 10:19
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 10:19
  Tad Eggleston: And I love a good western strip.
• 10:22
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 10:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 10:24
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 10:25
  Sean Harklerode: Or he was bitten by the vampire? Oh, Moe, yes.
• 10:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 10:30
  Sean Harklerode: Sorry.
• 10:34
  Mark Pracht: Look, we know who the Marvel zombie here is. But,
• 10:42
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, no, I… I'm always struck by that. I actually… you know, it does… like, that was something I was talking to Sean about. Like, the one thing that I would say about this book…
• 10:53
  Mark Pracht: that I was sort of like, ugh.
• 10:56
  Mark Pracht: is… I feel like the translation feels very literal.
• 11:01
  Mark Pracht: Rather than… An artistic translation, if that's…
• 11:08
  Tad Eggleston: Possible.
• 11:09
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think it feels very word-to-word, and it feels kind of stilted at times. You know, I mean, I'm not…
• 11:18
  Mark Pracht: and I think
• 11:19
  Mark Pracht: value… there's value in doing that, but there's also value in taking it and allowing it to be, adapted into the idiom of the English language, you know?
• 11:29
  Tad Eggleston: Though the one thing that I will also mention is there are a couple of spots where I think
• 11:36
  Tad Eggleston: They do something… that I wonder if it happens more in foreign comics?
• 11:42
  Tad Eggleston: Where… where it'll end one thought bubble with your ellipsis.
• 11:48
  Tad Eggleston: and start the next one with it, and I think that it's… rather than being, oh, this is continuing that sentence, it's supposed to indicate, oh, and they talk for 10 more minutes, and wrap up with this.
• 12:04
  Tad Eggleston: That's possible.
• 12:06
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because it threw me, like, the first time I saw it, but as I saw it more times, I'm like, oh, I don't think this is just supposed to be, oh, this is finishing the sentence. The reason that this doesn't…
• 12:20
  Tad Eggleston: doesn't read quite right, is that you're supposed to kind of infer that there was more discussion, but these are the parts that you need.
• 12:30
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 12:31
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I also, you know, I thought it… one thing that I did think about as I was reading it, and again, like, this is all very light criticism, like, I really enjoyed reading this, is, like, I thought… I thought about…
• 12:45
  Mark Pracht: when we're in our Kirby series, like, what you often say of, like.
• 12:50
  Mark Pracht: I wish there was fewer words.
• 12:53
  Mark Pracht: there are times when I'm like.
• 12:55
  Mark Pracht: it seems to me that they could have, like, let the art carry this a little more. Definitely.
• 13:01
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 13:02
  Mark Pracht: And, the art style is super cool. I mean…
• 13:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 13:10
  Mark Pracht: and I love the characters, I love… it's got a very,
• 13:18
  Mark Pracht: You know, it's sort of like… 8.
• 13:23
  Mark Pracht: I hate to… I hate to invoke Lucas, but it's got kind of that Star Wars thing of, like, okay, here we are.
• 13:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I, I actually…
• 13:31
  Sean Harklerode: No.
• 13:32
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I'll invoke Lucas in a different way, particularly reading that first multi-part story.
• 13:39
  Mark Pracht: Good.
• 13:39
  Tad Eggleston: the Fable of Venice, it felt so Indiana Jones.
• 13:46
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah. I mean, like, this whole thing feels Indiana Jones to me.
• 13:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, I would be shocked if Cordo Maltese wasn't a major influence on Indiana Jones.
• 13:59
  Mark Pracht: What? Oh, excuse me.
• 14:03
  Sean Harklerode: to me, it, it, definitely Indiana Jones. It reminded me most, and I think the art style, too, reminded me of Roy Crane.
• 14:12
  Sean Harklerode: Captain Easy.
• 14:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Sean Harklerode: And obviously, he's influenced by Pat Ryan from Terrian Pirates. I mean, that's…
• 14:20
  Tad Eggleston: No, he, he, he's…
• 14:21
  Sean Harklerode: He's still…
• 14:21
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely, I mean, in the essay at the end, it talks about him being a major Kniff.
• 14:26
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 14:27
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, his first appearance.
• 14:29
  Tad Eggleston: disciple. Right.
• 14:30
  Sean Harklerode: It's, you know, an homage to…
• 14:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 14:33
  Sean Harklerode: Niff image, so…
• 14:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 14:35
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, I mean, like, I think… I think that a lot of this stuff, you know, I think…
• 14:40
  Mark Pracht: Terry and the Pirates, and Kniff, is such…
• 14:46
  Mark Pracht: like, I think that that is ground zero for so much of this stuff.
• 14:51
  Mark Pracht: as it went forward. I mean, it's sort of.
• 14:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and Captain EZ… I forget which came first, Captain Easy or Terry and the Pirates. They were right… I think Captain Easy was a little bit ahead. But yeah.
• 15:06
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like, the whole thing, like, I can see…
• 15:11
  Mark Pracht: it's very clear to me that there were hundreds and hundreds of cartoonists all over the world who opened up their newspaper and saw Terry and the Pirates and were like, what's this? Oh my god! You know, and it's like.
• 15:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 15:24
  Mark Pracht: And we're chasing that for a long time. I mean, even down to, you know, you can go as far as to say…
• 15:30
  Tad Eggleston: Captain Easy… Predates Terry and the Pirates by about a year.
• 15:36
  Mark Pracht: Although…
• 15:37
  Tad Eggleston: A little bit more.
• 15:40
  Mark Pracht: like, the only thing that I'll say about that, I think Captain Easy is… like, I intellectually know what Captain Easy is.
• 15:46
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
• 15:47
  Mark Pracht: I have never seen… a panel of Captain Easy.
• 15:51
  Tad Eggleston: Well, we should fix that.
• 15:53
  Tad Eggleston: We should fix that. We did a… I mean, we've done both Milk Kniff and Roy Crane on our,
• 16:00
  Tad Eggleston: Comic strip.
• 16:01
  Tad Eggleston: book club, and… and I love them both, but Roy… Roy…
• 16:07
  Tad Eggleston: Roy Crane is, like, the cartoonist cartoonist.
• 16:10
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I think Kniff might actually be a slightly better writer.
• 16:14
  Tad Eggleston: But… but…
• 16:15
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 16:16
  Tad Eggleston: Crane is… Crane is, like, in a lot of ways, he's like the Kirby of…
• 16:20
  Mark Pracht: Fight words, Tad. Kniff is, like, to me, Kniff is the master.
• 16:24
  Tad Eggleston: I love Kniff! I love Kniff! I'm not… I'm not, like, trying to bash Kniff at all.
• 16:30
  Mark Pracht: I… Tad, I know, I'm making a joke.
• 16:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:32
  Sean Harklerode: I came across an episode of Steve Canyon last night on H&I.
• 16:36
  Mark Pracht: Oh, my God.
• 16:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 16:39
  Mark Pracht: Steve Canyon. I like the Steve Canyon.
• 16:40
  Tad Eggleston: Strip a lot, too.
• 16:42
  Mark Pracht: I, you know, but that's… the DNA of all that stuff is so deeply embedded in this, and then, you know, and the DNA of this, and pairing the pirates, and… and, you know…
• 17:00
  Mark Pracht: all those, you know, the serials, the movie serials, you know, all of that carries over into Raiders of the Lost Ark. I mean, it's.
• 17:09
  Tad Eggleston: It's just…
• 17:09
  Mark Pracht: It is a… it's a straight-through line.
• 17:13
  Mark Pracht: You can even put… you can put,
• 17:17
  Mark Pracht: the spirit in there, you can put, like, you know, like, all of that stuff is very…
• 17:23
  Tad Eggleston: Another… another listed reference of…
• 17:26
  Mark Pracht: Yup.
• 17:27
  Tad Eggleston: of, of Prot was… was the spirit. He was reading Terry and the Pirate, and the spirit, and…
• 17:32
  Tad Eggleston: And what was the other one that they…
• 17:34
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I think… I think that it also, like, one of the things that I think
• 17:39
  Mark Pracht: Really needs to… especially with these.
• 17:41
  Tad Eggleston: Hal Foster's Tarzan.
• 17:43
  Mark Pracht: Or…
• 17:44
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 17:44
  Mark Pracht: faster.
• 17:45
  Tad Eggleston: And Will… I don't know this one, do you know this one, Sean? The Will Gould's Red Berry?
• 17:51
  Sean Harklerode: No, I didn't. I saw.
• 17:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm gonna have to…
• 17:54
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know that.
• 17:54
  Tad Eggleston: Look that one up.
• 17:55
  Sean Harklerode: To me, particularly that second story, in the collection, they don't mention it, but to me, that was very Qubert-like.
• 18:07
  Sean Harklerode: Very Joe Kubert.
• 18:11
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I have to say, I kind of like the shorter stories better than the long ones were.
• 18:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 18:16
  Sean Harklerode: they're all…
• 18:18
  Sean Harklerode: using the same rep… reference. They're all influenced by the same people, right? Yeah, yeah. They're all influenced by Kniff.
• 18:25
  Sean Harklerode: And,
• 18:27
  Sean Harklerode: But yeah, that one just felt… there was just several panels in that one that I was like, wow, this could be Joe Hubert.
• 18:35
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 18:36
  Sean Harklerode: I will also say, you know, reading this on Kindle,
• 18:40
  Sean Harklerode: it's best to read this in as large size as you can. There's something about the compression of these images. It doesn't look very good, and then you… and then you make it larger, and it's like, oh, wow, this is great!
• 18:55
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:56
  Sean Harklerode: But, just the compression,
• 18:58
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I was struggling.
• 18:59
  Tad Eggleston: This is where we should quickly point out for listeners, this is the first time on this book club that we're previewing a book. This is available in stores on March 17th.
• 19:11
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why we had PDFs to read, none of us had physical copies, even those of us who much prefer the physical copies, because, like, they don't exist yet.
• 19:20
  Mark Pracht: What, yeah.
• 19:20
  Tad Eggleston: was kind enough to grace us with some PDFs.
• 19:23
  Sean Harklerode: And that's in no means… it's gorgeous work.
• 19:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 19:28
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. And I'm really looking forward, and they're doing full color, they're doing a series. They're gonna do a full thing, like, six.
• 19:35
  Tad Eggleston: That's their plan.
• 19:37
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I don't.
• 19:38
  Sean Harklerode: Quick fell.
• 19:38
  Mark Pracht: Graphics does digital editions for… sale.
• 19:43
  Mark Pracht: I do.
• 19:45
  Mark Pracht: I… I don't know, because I've been trying…
• 19:48
  Tad Eggleston: They have a lot of them. They don't do it for all of their stuff. Right. So it depends on what the rights are. They do less of the comic strips, but, like, all the peanuts are available digitally.
• 20:00
  Mark Pracht: I mean, yeah, that's all.
• 20:03
  Tad Eggleston: available digitally.
• 20:05
  Mark Pracht: I love phantographic stuff, I… just that, the one thing… the one that I was really, seeing you in San Diego, I think they published, and it's never come out digitally, and that book is so big, I've always been like, I really wish I had a digital copy.
• 20:21
  Sean Harklerode: You know, they have. It was part of a Humble Bundle package.
• 20:27
  Mark Pracht: Ugh.
• 20:28
  Sean Harklerode: A while back.
• 20:29
  Mark Pracht: I, I, I… Made contact with the author.
• 20:34
  Mark Pracht: at one point, and he actually sent me a PDF of it, but…
• 20:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, there you go.
• 20:39
  Mark Pracht: PDF, like… like, the… No, I get it. …with this…
• 20:43
  Mark Pracht: with this, working from this PDF, and this is, like, I'm complaining about technical stuff, who cares? But, I mean, to what Sean was saying, I really wanted to blow the images up, but I also…
• 20:56
  Mark Pracht: when I'm reading, I like to see the whole page.
• 21:00
  Mark Pracht: So, and without having the panel-by-panel.
• 21:04
  Mark Pracht: thing that you get with the Comixology stuff, and mostly, like, because it… that was… it was… it was a little frustrating. Not terribly so, but…
• 21:15
  Mark Pracht: That's… that's… that's neither here nor there. That's me complaining about a stupid technical thing.
• 21:22
  Mark Pracht: Meh. Anyway, but.
• 21:24
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Hugo Pratt was dead before that technical thing was even, like, possible, so…
• 21:30
  Mark Pracht: I should've seen the future, Ted.
• 21:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, look…
• 21:38
  Mark Pracht: I understand what you're saying, but it's also, like, you know, other companies have figured out how… Oh, I know. I've taken those things and broken them up. I'm just saying.
• 21:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, again, though, that's where this is the galley copy.
• 21:50
  Mark Pracht: Sure, of course, of course.
• 21:52
  Tad Eggleston: I'm certain that there will be panel by panel, or if they do it digitally at all, it will be available that way.
• 22:01
  Mark Pracht: What we're saying here is just go ahead and buy it in whatever format you would like, because you.
• 22:05
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 22:06
  Mark Pracht: Everyone should buy it.
• 22:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 22:10
  Mark Pracht: Mark Pratt, advanced reader, is… is just whining about something that…
• 22:16
  Mark Pracht: Was troubling to him as he was reading.
• 22:19
  Sean Harklerode: Well, look, I mean…
• 22:20
  Mark Pracht: This has nothing to do with the material itself.
• 22:22
  Sean Harklerode: It all goes back to, you know, Burke Brevin complaining for years about the size of how his strips were printed. Schultz, too, everyone. You know, they were just squeezing
• 22:36
  Sean Harklerode: So many comics, and it just… the work, you can't see how great it is at that small size sometimes.
• 22:45
  Mark Pracht: I did have a point that I wanted to make about the whole Terry and the Pirates thing, and the spirit, and how much influence those had. I don't… I think that there is a very real connection between the fact that both of those… like, all of that stuff…
• 22:58
  Mark Pracht: was in newspapers.
• 23:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 23:00
  Mark Pracht: It wasn't something that you had to go find on…
• 23:05
  Mark Pracht: On a newsstand, or, or,
• 23:10
  Mark Pracht: you know, there weren't any comic shops at that time, of course, but, like, you didn't have to go looking for it. It was actually delivered to your home. And…
• 23:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 23:18
  Mark Pracht: I think that that… I think it is very,
• 23:27
  Mark Pracht: I think it's just very important to remember that
• 23:32
  Mark Pracht: you know, there was… that… that getting this stuff in front of more people makes it more impor… like, I don't know what I'm trying to say now. Forget it.
• 23:41
  Sean Harklerode: But it…
• 23:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It's gonna… it's gonna have a greater influence the more people…
• 23:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the thing about it being in the newspaper strip is
• 23:55
  Tad Eggleston: It would wind up in the homes of people who weren't actually buying comics.
• 23:59
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 24:00
  Mark Pracht: Well, and then in the case of, like, the spirit, like, there was an actual comic book stuck inside your newspaper, you know, and that's… Right.
• 24:07
  Mark Pracht: That's super cool.
• 24:09
  Tad Eggleston: I have one of those.
• 24:12
  Mark Pracht: Oh.
• 24:14
  Tad Eggleston: I have an actual insert from…
• 24:16
  Tad Eggleston: That I came across at Half Price Books for, like, 10 bucks once.
• 24:21
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, wow.
• 24:21
  Tad Eggleston: A spirit insert from, like… 1940-something.
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: It's incredible.
• 24:28
  Sean Harklerode: I would say regarding the translation we were talking about, I found that mostly in the first story. I don't know if I got used to it, or if maybe it was a different translation, but it felt…
• 24:42
  Sean Harklerode: The, the short, the shorter stories… .
• 24:46
  Mark Pracht: I think… I think the shorter stories also are less dense with.
• 24:52
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 24:53
  Mark Pracht: back matter. You know, there's a lot of… there's a lot of exposition in that first story.
• 25:00
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that first story…
• 25:02
  Tad Eggleston: as well as reminding me of… of Indiana Jones heavily, it had me think of, like, that issue of From Hell, where they're just riding around London, and he's giving him the… the Masonic history of the.
• 25:17
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 25:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
• 25:19
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah!
• 25:20
  Mark Pracht: I didn't… I didn't make that connection, but I remember…
• 25:23
  Sean Harklerode: Well, that book is so dense.
• 25:25
  Mark Pracht: I'm… like, for me, personally, actually, the last story, the So Much for the Gentleman of Fortune, is actually the one that really made me think of Indiana Jones, quite honestly.
• 25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 25:34
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Mark Pracht: Because, I mean, it was like, you know, it was sort of the video game logic of, like, okay, you get this thing, and you put it here, you know… but, I mean,
• 25:44
  Mark Pracht: It also was just simple and direct, and like…
• 25:47
  Mark Pracht: here's the thing, and, you know, and you have Rasputin as a villain, which… Right.
• 25:52
  Mark Pracht: That's a… like, there was things in this that I… I wasn't sure if Pratt was just dropping us into the something without explanation, or… like, again, because I am not that familiar with… I'm familiar with Cordo Maltese, but I'm not…
• 26:09
  Mark Pracht: familiar with Cordo Maltese.
• 26:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right, me too.
• 26:12
  Mark Pracht: like.
• 26:13
  Mark Pracht: are these taken from the middle of the run? Because it seemed like he had this relationship with Rasputin, and I'm like, God, what a great villain that no one has, like.
• 26:24
  Mark Pracht: like, people have used it, but, I mean, like, I was sitting there thinking, God, wouldn't Rasputin have been a fucking incredible Indiana Jones villain?
• 26:33
  Mark Pracht: Well, he was.
• 26:34
  Sean Harklerode: He's a Kingsman villain.
• 26:36
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's true.
• 26:37
  Sean Harklerode: Heh,
• 26:38
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I think, because even in the first story, you know, when he's dreaming, you know, when he's knocked out, he dreams of Rasputin.
• 26:47
  Sean Harklerode: Which I just thought was random at that point. But yeah, I mean, I think this is not the first of the run.
• 26:53
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 26:53
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think it is.
• 26:54
  Sean Harklerode: Probably a teaser.
• 26:56
  Sean Harklerode: You know, to get people interested in the bigger…
• 26:59
  Tad Eggleston: We've got… well, among other things, we've got,
• 27:04
  Tad Eggleston: For… for… for part of it, it's original…
• 27:09
  Tad Eggleston: Copyright is 1970, and for part of it, it's 77.
• 27:14
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 27:14
  Sean Harklerode: This is, like.
• 27:15
  Mark Pracht: Well, it's…
• 27:16
  Sean Harklerode: At least 2-3 years in.
• 27:18
  Sean Harklerode: But I… because I also got that with Silver Legs, and… or Silver Leg, and Boak, or Bowie.
• 27:25
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  Sean Harklerode: However you say his name.
• 27:27
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, there's… there's the suggestion that there's these relationships, and I kept thinking, man, I wish I… I wish… I bet you this was deeper if I knew what the relationship… it actually very much reminded me, way back at the beginning of this particular book club, when we were reading.
• 27:42
  Sean Harklerode: Ms. Tree.
• 27:44
  Mark Pracht: And those reprints started…
• 27:48
  Mark Pracht: with, like, the DC Comics 90s issues, if I'm remembering correctly. Right. Because Max Allen Collins thought that was the best stuff they did, and they wanted to hit the…
• 27:59
  Mark Pracht: to get people hooked with that, and then they could go back and do the stuff that he considered weaker. I do not agree with him, but… but yeah, it's probably a similar thing to that.
• 28:13
  Mark Pracht: But I do have to say that when you…
• 28:15
  Mark Pracht: When you read a series that does have some… that feels like it… this anyway, feels like it has some actual continuity going on here.
• 28:24
  Mark Pracht: It does leave you thinking, Wow, I feel like I'm kind of in the deep end of the pool.
• 28:30
  Mark Pracht: I don't necessarily hate that, but at the same time, I'm like, God.
• 28:35
  Mark Pracht: what is this? You know?
• 28:38
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, but I kind of liked that quality, because it was like, you remember there was a time when, like, well, even…
• 28:48
  Sean Harklerode: Indiana Jones, and jake Bond films.
• 28:52
  Sean Harklerode: Used to start with the end of an adventure.
• 28:55
  Mark Pracht: Right, right, right.
• 28:56
  Sean Harklerode: And so you're dropped in, and you don't know what's going on, you just know that Porto Maltese is in trouble.
• 29:04
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 29:05
  Sean Harklerode: And he's got to get out of it, and there's usually a short scene, and that was particularly those… the shorter stories reminded me of that feeling of, here I am!
• 29:18
  Sean Harklerode: You don't know him?
• 29:19
  Sean Harklerode: And that's also… and I think that's maybe why people look at this as literature.
• 29:27
  Sean Harklerode: Because there is so much…
• 29:31
  Sean Harklerode: story and so much explaining to do later, right? Right. Yeah, I, I think… his… You know, his…
• 29:44
  Sean Harklerode: Exposition is really well-timed.
• 29:48
  Sean Harklerode: And, and, thought out and illustrated.
• 29:54
  Sean Harklerode: Right? When it kind of goes into, you know, you're almost getting hieroglyphics on some pages.
• 30:01
  Sean Harklerode: It's a nice break. Again, it's an art… artistic choice that I… that I enjoy.
• 30:06
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, I, I think, I think that that can absolutely work, where
• 30:14
  Tad Eggleston: and sometimes it even winds up giving the creator that much more to play with going forward. Go ahead and just introduce the character when it makes sense in the story, and let them be somebody that they know already, and then suddenly you have another story to tell sometime.
• 30:33
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 30:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know, rather than…
• 30:36
  Mark Pracht: I…
• 30:36
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than having to spend half of each new story, oh, I'm gonna meet this person, no, you already know them.
• 30:44
  Sean Harklerode: Hey, you don't know how Indiana Jones met Salah. We still don't know how Indiana Jones met Salah.
• 30:51
  Mark Pracht: titled as Jalaba.
• 30:53
  Sean Harklerode: What?
• 30:53
  Mark Pracht: I'm just… I'm sorry, I made a bad joke based on that John Reese Davies story about shooting the… the scene where he was… he was suffering with gastric distress.
• 31:05
  Mark Pracht: And filled his jalaba.
• 31:10
  Mark Pracht: Anyway. Sorry.
• 31:12
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. No, no, and look, I'm not… I'm not trying to be… like, I'm saying that as I met these characters, it felt like there was something that had come before.
• 31:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:22
  Mark Pracht: to know what that was. So that may, if when those books come out, I will want to read those to find out what it was. I'm just saying.
• 31:31
  Mark Pracht: sometimes… I understand the point of putting out something that's the strongest first, but…
• 31:39
  Mark Pracht: There is that part of me.
• 31:41
  Mark Pracht: The complete…
• 31:42
  Sean Harklerode: The completeest part of…
• 31:43
  Mark Pracht: The sweetest part of me is, like, there's something that happened before, and I want to know what it is.
• 31:48
  Sean Harklerode: Right, correct.
• 31:48
  Mark Pracht: Like, you know, like, I always get into these mindsets where I'm like, you know, even when the books are not published in chronological order, I'm always like, what's the chronological order? Because I want to read it that way, right?
• 32:01
  Mark Pracht: And.
• 32:02
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, just, like, I'm looking at the… the European comics chronological… Releases,
• 32:17
  Tad Eggleston: It was the 8th volume.
• 32:20
  Tad Eggleston: Fable.
• 32:21
  Mark Pracht: This one?
• 32:22
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, wow. It's the eighth volume.
• 32:24
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
• 32:30
  Mark Pracht: I mean, also, like.
• 32:33
  Mark Pracht: This is the thing, I would also like to talk about Corto Maltese as a character.
• 32:38
  Mark Pracht: Because I find him…
• 32:41
  Mark Pracht: super interesting, because… yeah, there's some Indiana Jones sort of thing to it, but it's really a lot more, to make the easy connection, it's really a lot more Han Solo.
• 32:54
  Mark Pracht: Or even…
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: Parker.
• 32:56
  Mark Pracht: even Parker. I don't think… I don't think quite as cold-blooded as Parker can be.
• 33:02
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 33:04
  Mark Pracht: very mercenary. Like, people… people act like Indiana Jones is a mercenary character, but he really isn't. He's always acting for a higher level, or a higher…
• 33:15
  Tad Eggleston: Belongs in a museum.
• 33:17
  Mark Pracht: Belongs in a museum.
• 33:18
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 33:19
  Sean Harklerode: Walking in glory, kid.
• 33:21
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 33:22
  Mark Pracht: Glory. But the fortune and glory is in putting it
• 33:25
  Mark Pracht: in a place where other people can see it. Whereas…
• 33:28
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I would argue that at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he is a mercenary, and it's when he hears the children cry, that's when we see the birth of Indiana Jones as a hero.
• 33:42
  Mark Pracht: when you.
• 33:42
  Sean Harklerode: But we can get into that on another podcast.
• 33:44
  Tad Eggleston: But what about in young Indiana, Joe?
• 33:48
  Mark Pracht: Wait a minute, wait a minute, are you talking… wait, are you honestly saying that… that Temple of Doom…
• 33:54
  Mark Pracht: Has value as a story, because there's many people who claim that it doesn't.
• 34:00
  Mark Pracht: I would… I would just…
• 34:01
  Sean Harklerode: We were just with one the other night.
• 34:03
  Mark Pracht: Yup.
• 34:06
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, no, I think, I think that, but I… but I do think, like, taking all that aside, let's not, like, let's not get lost in Indian Jones conversation, but I think that Corto Maltese is…
• 34:21
  Mark Pracht: there is that element… there is that sort of… it is kind of Parker-ish, I don't think he's that cold-blooded, but it definitely has that Han Solo, like, he'll shoot first.
• 34:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 34:32
  Sean Harklerode: I think my favorite… oh, go ahead.
• 34:34
  Mark Pracht: Go ahead.
• 34:36
  Sean Harklerode: So, I think my favorite moment in,
• 34:40
  Sean Harklerode: in the whole series. It's not my favorite story, but I think… and it's in that… I think it's in Fable of Venice.
• 34:47
  Sean Harklerode: Where the guy is lying there, dying.
• 34:51
  Sean Harklerode: He says, tell me where… where it is.
• 34:54
  Sean Harklerode: And, maltese says, No.
• 35:00
  Sean Harklerode: I'm like, why not?
• 35:01
  Sean Harklerode: Because I'm mean.
• 35:07
  Sean Harklerode: That was not mean?
• 35:10
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, no, I think, like, the end of, the,
• 35:16
  Mark Pracht: The last story, the gentleman of,
• 35:20
  Mark Pracht: Whatever it's called, I can't remember now. Just that,
• 35:27
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm flipping through it now, and I'm really… the seagull's fault and all that stuff, I just…
• 35:33
  Mark Pracht: I think that there is something so…
• 35:39
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I love that seagull image, and just the idea of it.
• 35:45
  Mark Pracht: I actually kind of forgot about that seagull story. That's a great fucking story.
• 35:51
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, I love… you know, I think that…
• 36:00
  Mark Pracht: I think that, you know, part of the other interesting thing is, and looking at it from a modern sensibility, is, like, I think all the female characters are pretty well… they're pretty strong and self… self-acculizing, but they're not necessarily good people.
• 36:14
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. And that's… I mean, like, and some… some people might call that misogynistic, but I think, I… I don't.
• 36:23
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 36:24
  Sean Harklerode: vote.
• 36:25
  Mark Pracht: They're just villains, you know?
• 36:27
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, and there's no… there's no real pandering, at least in this that I see. You know, there's no cheesecake.
• 36:35
  Sean Harklerode: You know, because Mr. Kniff could… Could… could do that.
• 36:41
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yes.
• 36:43
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 36:44
  Sean Harklerode: But yeah, there was… there was none… none of that, really.
• 36:48
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I, you know, like, look, I've already said I love the artwork, but I will say, like, there is no cheesecake, and I think that…
• 36:57
  Mark Pracht: his skills don't lean towards that. I think that some of the…
• 37:03
  Mark Pracht: Even when he's drawing a quote-unquote beautiful woman,
• 37:08
  Mark Pracht: It… it just doesn't… like, to me, it's like, oh… That's interesting.
• 37:15
  Mark Pracht: interesting, because I… it's not the… the drawing doesn't immediately make me say, oh my god, what a beautiful woman, you know?
• 37:23
  Mark Pracht: It's not like just reading, reading, Jonah Hex and talking to, you know, Joey.
• 37:34
  Tad Eggleston: Give me.
• 37:35
  Mark Pracht: Jimmy.
• 37:36
  Mark Pracht: Jordy Bernay.
• 37:40
  Mark Pracht: they would always write women in, because he drew beautiful women. And, like… and I think, quite honestly, I see a lot of… I see a lot of continuity between Jodi Bernay and… and Pratt in artwork.
• 37:55
  Mark Pracht: Just my thought.
• 37:56
  Mark Pracht: Jimmy and Jordy.
• 38:00
  Mark Pracht: I don't know what I'm talking about anymore, somebody else talk.
• 38:03
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I, I, I…
• 38:05
  Mark Pracht: I have… I have babbled long enough.
• 38:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I… you know, it's come up multiple times that I've fallen in love with…
• 38:15
  Tad Eggleston: with really, like, paying attention to panel design and whatnot. And first, I loved his use of the 12-panel grid.
• 38:26
  Tad Eggleston: But then, I love it even more when he'll just suddenly drop out of it.
• 38:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, during that first story, it's… the Fable of Venice is almost entirely a 12-panel grid. I mean, it's a modified 12-panel grid in that, like, there'll be the double panel or the triple panel, but it's all… all the…
• 38:48
  Tad Eggleston: But then, I felt like there was…
• 38:52
  Mark Pracht: I will tell you this, I'm flipping through.
• 38:55
  Mark Pracht: I'm flipping through the, I'm flipping through the seagull story, and I don't see a single… oh, there's.
• 39:04
  Tad Eggleston: No!
• 39:04
  Mark Pracht: One 12-page.
• 39:06
  Tad Eggleston: That was where I was about to go, is, is, like, the Fable of Venice is almost entirely a 12-panel grid, except for page 39,
• 39:16
  Tad Eggleston: Which is close to a 12-panel grid, except that we got rid of the grid lines.
• 39:23
  Tad Eggleston: And then, like, one of my favorite
• 39:26
  Tad Eggleston: Pages is the beginning of the Seagull story, because…
• 39:32
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the flashback scene, the part that's supposed to indicate his loss of memory, It's just, like…
• 39:43
  Tad Eggleston: so brilliantly done.
• 39:47
  Tad Eggleston: In such a way, not just to…
• 39:55
  Tad Eggleston: Emphasize that, that, that, that… that confusion that he has, but I love that…
• 40:04
  Tad Eggleston: It's one of those pages that you're supposed to read in, like.
• 40:10
  Tad Eggleston: a curve. You read, read, write.
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: left to right to left to right, to left to right. But because of the way the, like, cloud… you know, the clouds are drawn around it, it takes you…
• 40:28
  Tad Eggleston: all the way…
• 40:30
  Tad Eggleston: And does so in a way where it's… you realize that you're not completely in order, and I wonder if they are…
• 40:40
  Tad Eggleston: Publishing in… in internal chronological order?
• 40:46
  Tad Eggleston: Just because this… page…
• 40:53
  Tad Eggleston: Seems to show tidbits of all of the stories that have come before it in this volume.
• 41:02
  Tad Eggleston: So, at the very least, I think that this is supposed to be… you know, after Venice, after…
• 41:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I think that it's certainly after Venice, but…
• 41:15
  Mark Pracht: like, I don't know, I don't remember…
• 41:17
  Sean Harklerode: Mama.
• 41:18
  Sean Harklerode: Venice.
• 41:22
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I don't remember all of it.
• 41:24
  Tad Eggleston: So, I don't know for sure… John, I hate arrogant men.
• 41:28
  Mark Pracht: Sorry. You set it up for this, Tad. We're gonna do India.
• 41:32
  Tad Eggleston: I know!
• 41:32
  Mark Pracht: jokes the whole way.
• 41:33
  Tad Eggleston: I'm all for it. I'm all for it.
• 41:37
  Mark Pracht: But, I don't remember… like, there is, and maybe I'm just… maybe my brain is not working here, but,
• 41:48
  Mark Pracht: There is a couple of things in that cloud of memories that are not… there's,
• 41:57
  Mark Pracht: Tara… Taro? Taro? Tara… taro… Taro?
• 42:03
  Mark Pracht: I don't remember… him.
• 42:09
  Mark Pracht: Pandora? I don't remember Pandora.
• 42:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 42:12
  Mark Pracht: Maybe I'm just losing this. Maybe I'm losing the plot.
• 42:17
  Tad Eggleston: No, no.
• 42:18
  Mark Pracht: It's been a little while.
• 42:18
  Tad Eggleston: As I was looking at it… as I was looking at it again, it fell apart in… in my… my thinking.
• 42:29
  Mark Pracht: John's got coffee grounds.
• 42:30
  Sean Harklerode: As can happen, yep.
• 42:33
  Mark Pracht: That means he's smuggling drugs.
• 42:38
  Sean Harklerode: Every time I go through the airport with a pound of coffee, gonna need to look at your bag. Okay.
• 42:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, no, I think that,
• 42:52
  Mark Pracht: I will say, I do think, and this kind of goes back to what you were saying, Ted, I think that part…
• 43:01
  Mark Pracht: I will be honest, I got a little… frustrated with the Venice story.
• 43:09
  Mark Pracht: By about two-thirds of the way.
• 43:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 43:12
  Mark Pracht: And I think that it… it was a combination of a number of things. I felt like…
• 43:19
  Mark Pracht: And I do think that this speaks to what you were talking about, about the evolution of the artwork.
• 43:26
  Mark Pracht: Is that there was a lot… It felt to me like…
• 43:31
  Mark Pracht: The thing… the story was absolutely exposition heavy. Like, it was swamped in exposition.
• 43:38
  Mark Pracht: And that's… I mean, Jesus Christ, what is this, page… 55?
• 43:47
  Mark Pracht: It's a 12-panel grid, and… The first, like, 6 panels are… more dialogue
• 43:57
  Mark Pracht: than art, and 4 of them are the same guy, just in different… different angles.
• 44:09
  Mark Pracht: And I think that's… that's kind of what… what was awesome about the second couple of stories is that the artwork got… just the action got more dynamic, right?
• 44:20
  Mark Pracht: And there was more stuff going on. There was a… I just felt like there was a lot of establishing shots.
• 44:27
  Mark Pracht: in filmmaking terms, it felt like there was a lot of two shots in that Venice thing.
• 44:32
  Sean Harklerode: That… and I'm…
• 44:35
  Mark Pracht: My stupid hand. I'm gonna lower my hand now.
• 44:39
  Mark Pracht: in our recording. But that's just… that's me being hyper… just…
• 44:47
  Mark Pracht: getting really granular about the things I felt about it, because I was super excited… I was super excited to read this.
• 44:56
  Mark Pracht: Never, never read this, had known about it, had seen those things in the 80s, never picked it up, never looked at it.
• 45:04
  Mark Pracht: knew about it, was very excited, and I have to admit that by the time I got about half… like I said, about two-thirds of that way through that Venice thing, I was like, ugh.
• 45:12
  Mark Pracht: God, I hope that this picks up. And… it did, you know, for me.
• 45:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:22
  Mark Pracht: And that's… that's not to take anything away from… like, the story was…
• 45:27
  Mark Pracht: the story was interesting, the art is amazing, it's just… it felt… it felt like somebody figuring it out, rather than somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. So, my assumption would be that the Venice story was pretty early in the process for him.
• 45:43
  Mark Pracht: but I could be wrong. Who knows?
• 45:47
  Tad Eggleston: No, it actually looks like it's the 1977 part of it.
• 45:55
  Sean Harklerode: Well, when you, when you had said page 55, I actually, turned to page 52 by accident, and that reminded me of something, you know, when we talk about
• 46:06
  Sean Harklerode: his influences, you know, who did he influence? And, obviously…
• 46:12
  Mark Pracht: I know who you're gonna say.
• 46:13
  Sean Harklerode: Thompson, you know, says Milo, Monara, or Milo Minara.
• 46:19
  Mark Pracht: Finally.
• 46:19
  Sean Harklerode: this panel, I think there's a reason Frank Miller.
• 46:25
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 46:26
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 46:27
  Sean Harklerode: Porto Maltese in, The Dark Night. Looking at this page, it's page 52 here. Bonnie here? Yeah. I'm looking at it, I was like, well, that's…
• 46:36
  Sean Harklerode: That's the Joker!
• 46:38
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 46:39
  Sean Harklerode: You know, I…
• 46:40
  Mark Pracht: 100%.
• 46:40
  Sean Harklerode: Whether that's a…
• 46:42
  Mark Pracht: You know.
• 46:43
  Sean Harklerode: I think that has to be intentional.
• 46:45
  Sean Harklerode: Fair enough.
• 46:46
  Mark Pracht: Do you know who else I…
• 46:47
  Sean Harklerode: rhythmic minds.
• 46:48
  Sean Harklerode: Reminded me of Dark Knight a bit in this. And part of that is…
• 46:54
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 46:56
  Sean Harklerode: Go ahead. I see Kyle Baker in all this.
• 46:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I can see that too.
• 47:01
  Sean Harklerode: Yep.
• 47:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 47:03
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, go ahead, you, you were…
• 47:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, no, I… and I don't know if that is, you know… you know, your mind makes connections, right? So I'm… you're probably looking for Frank Miller connections in all this, just from my, first exposure to the… to the words.
• 47:22
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, even, even that…
• 47:24
  Sean Harklerode: obvious.
• 47:26
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, I would say, like, the other thing is, you know, Frank Miller has said oftentimes that he feels like a trench coat is as much a cape as anything else, and I think, Corto Maltese's, trench coat, or peacoat, or whatever it is, is… functions in that way as well.
• 47:43
  Mark Pracht: It's certainly a dynamic kind of visual thing.
• 47:48
  Mark Pracht: not as extreme as what Miller does, or… but it's definitely part of it.
• 47:55
  Tad Eggleston: So, I do think it's, it's also…
• 48:00
  Tad Eggleston: interesting and kind of cool. I mean, particularly because we can see different styles at use, etc, but, like.
• 48:09
  Tad Eggleston: the first Cordo Martis is in 1967, so, like, 22 years into Pratt's career.
• 48:18
  Mark Pracht: L.
• 48:19
  Tad Eggleston: He, he had, he had definitely been…
• 48:25
  Tad Eggleston: Honing his craft on a lot of things.
• 48:29
  Tad Eggleston: That kinda, kinda wound up in this.
• 48:34
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm actually interested, apparently, he adapted some classics. You know, Kidnapped in Treasure Island,
• 48:46
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know which other ones.
• 48:49
  Tad Eggleston: that I wonder if there are English versions of, because I'm always interested
• 48:55
  Tad Eggleston: And how an adaptation looks when it's done by somebody who…
• 49:01
  Tad Eggleston: Really, really values the work.
• 49:04
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
• 49:11
  Tad Eggleston: No, this is… I'm quite happy to have finally read some some Cordo Maltese, I am…
• 49:23
  Tad Eggleston: Looking forward to reading more.
• 49:29
  Tad Eggleston: as I now realize that it's the older stories with the more interesting panels, I wonder if a little like Kirby, in his older age, he would sometimes…
• 49:42
  Tad Eggleston: Give himself more structure.
• 49:44
  Tad Eggleston: For, for probably both speed and, and, like…
• 49:51
  Mark Pracht: Well, I… I do… I also wonder, like.
• 49:58
  Mark Pracht: There's a lot of times where it seems like
• 50:00
  Mark Pracht: their stock, especially with Cordo Maltese himself, it feels like there's somewhat stock… Images of him.
• 50:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 50:11
  Mark Pracht: I was… this started with me when we see him in profile.
• 50:16
  Mark Pracht: it kind of reminds me of a little bit of Chester Gould and the way he drew Dick Tracy, you know?
• 50:23
  Tad Eggleston: racing.
• 50:23
  Mark Pracht: Like, the… the… and that… maybe…
• 50:28
  Mark Pracht: you know, as he got further along, he was like, oh, you know what, I can…
• 50:32
  Mark Pracht: stat in this thing, and, you know, like, here's this profile that I drew here, we'll just put it over there, too, you know?
• 50:40
  Mark Pracht: You know what I just…
• 50:42
  Tad Eggleston: noticed.
• 50:43
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, the fact that I just noticed says… I mean, A, it says a lot about how big the word balloons sometimes are, but B, it says a lot about how well he uses his characters and the backgrounds when he uses them.
• 51:00
  Tad Eggleston: There's a massive number of his panels that really don't have any background.
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, or, or, or definitely, like, limited background.
• 51:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, you'll have… you know, you'll know you're in the jungle because of the one tree trunk.
• 51:19
  Tad Eggleston: and the one leaf. And other ones will give you a much deeper one, but, like, particularly when there's action going on,
• 51:28
  Tad Eggleston: He, he, he won't… He won't, won't muddy the panel.
• 51:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I think, I think that that…
• 51:41
  Tad Eggleston: There's a certain amount of confidence Required?
• 51:47
  Tad Eggleston: 2… do that. I think it's something that… that… Not always, but…
• 51:54
  Mark Pracht: But often that you see from artists later in their careers, the willingness to…
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the first time I noticed it at all was, like,
• 52:07
  Tad Eggleston: the first panel in Saga, where there was no background, is like…
• 52:13
  Tad Eggleston: In the forest on the way to the rocket ship.
• 52:20
  Tad Eggleston: well, on the way to the Rocket Ship Forest, I guess, but the different forest.
• 52:26
  Tad Eggleston: But it was like a Marco mic drop moment.
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: And it's like, oh, Fiona knew, or Brian knew, somebody knew that this needed to be just Marco, don't let anything, you know, don't…
• 52:41
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 52:43
  Tad Eggleston: Whoa.
• 52:43
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 52:44
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I think to… to Mark's point about the profile, you know.
• 52:50
  Sean Harklerode: That makes me think, you know, that statue, the statue of Cordo Maltese at Lake Geneva.
• 52:57
  Sean Harklerode: You know, he's angled away.
• 52:59
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately, the one in Switzerland, not the one in Wisconsin, so… much harder to go see it.
• 53:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yes, yes, yes.
• 53:08
  Tad Eggleston: Whatever.
• 53:09
  Sean Harklerode: It's kind of angled away, so typically, you know, a statue is where we're facing the statue, but he's facing the lake, and it's where most people, you're going to encounter it, seeing that profile.
• 53:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 53:25
  Sean Harklerode: And also, I will say that I… Ghould a couple of dimes.
• 53:30
  Sean Harklerode: Did, straight on, shots of Dick Tracy, and it's the weirdest thing.
• 53:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it always looks weird.
• 53:38
  Tad Eggleston: Always looks weird.
• 53:39
  Sean Harklerode: There are no straight-on shots in marching.
• 53:42
  Sean Harklerode: That's part of the style.
• 53:45
  Mark Pracht: Wow.
• 53:45
  Tad Eggleston: Archie?
• 53:46
  Mark Pracht: I'm.
• 53:46
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 53:48
  Sean Harklerode: Archie will always be turning one way or the other.
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: I… I've been rereading…
• 53:54
  Tad Eggleston: Archie… well, not rereading, I've been finally reading more of Married Life with Archie. I'll have to see if… if that's true.
• 54:04
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean.
• 54:05
  Tad Eggleston: There.
• 54:05
  Sean Harklerode: That's the house style, I mean…
• 54:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but, I mean, anytime, any, like, Married Life with Archie is almost in Elseworlds Archie, and it's… it's Norm Brayfogel, and I wonder if they, like…
• 54:21
  Tad Eggleston: would be as…
• 54:25
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I don't know about.
• 54:26
  Tad Eggleston: I'm curious about the style, you know. And I don't know how much the… I mean, in terms of the new Archie, which is the stuff that I read the most of.
• 54:35
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if they have the same style rules going on.
• 54:40
  Sean Harklerode: And now, with the Oni deal.
• 54:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. I'm particularly looking forward to… new collections, because I've been…
• 54:53
  Tad Eggleston: that the Archie collections that I've read have been… .
• 55:02
  Mark Pracht: I, I'm…
• 55:05
  Tad Eggleston: Go ahead.
• 55:06
  Mark Pracht: Sorry, I just…
• 55:08
  Mark Pracht: I got totally off the subject because you talked about the Corto Maltese statue, and I was like, there's a statue of Corto Maltese? And I had to go look it up, and I'm like… Well, if you…
• 55:18
  Tad Eggleston: If you've read the… there's a picture.
• 55:21
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, there's a picture. We could have saved that.
• 55:24
  Mark Pracht: I didn't go that far. I told you I don't read the editorial stuff.
• 55:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, but yeah…
• 55:31
  Mark Pracht: I'm like…
• 55:32
  Tad Eggleston: Really quick, because otherwise it will stick in my head. All Archie collections that I've come across so far are… are…
• 55:41
  Tad Eggleston: kind of hit or miss. There'll be, like, one good story and three that I don't like, so I'm hoping that they've got some tighter, best-of type…
• 55:49
  Tad Eggleston: Stop.
• 55:50
  Mark Pracht: well.
• 55:51
  Sean Harklerode: Director Mark Williams.
• 55:52
  Sean Harklerode: Have you heard Mark Waid's?
• 55:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, but I'm talking… because I know there's enough of the old-school Archie that… but I wonder if it's, like, a good duck artist type thing, where, like, you have to really…
• 56:06
  Tad Eggleston: cherry-pick, like, and if you read the Karl Barks, it's amazing, and if you read…
• 56:11
  Sean Harklerode: Dan DiCarlo, Dan Goldberg.
• 56:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right, but, but, but… I don't know how well they've been collected that way yet.
• 56:19
  Mark Pracht: Now, here's the other thing about Archie, and wow, this is way off subject, but I mean, you know, like, look, Archie…
• 56:27
  Mark Pracht: It'll be… it's a gag strip, you know? It's like…
• 56:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:33
  Mark Pracht: really, I mean, like, for the vast majority… the vast majority of the history of Archie, it's a gag strip, right? So, like, this idea that, like, you're gonna read one, and you're gonna think that's pretty funny, and then you're gonna read two, then you're like, ugh…
• 56:48
  Mark Pracht: You know, and it's like, I think that that's just the nature of the beast. It's almost like, you know, if you're looking at,
• 56:57
  Mark Pracht: and I know this is stuff that Sean loves, so he may disagree with me, but I think he probably will. It's like, if you read Richie Rich from Issue 1 to whenever it ended.
• 57:11
  Mark Pracht: You would probably find that, like, 1 out of 4 was a re… was a good…
• 57:18
  Mark Pracht: solid story, right? Would… Would you disagree with that?
• 57:24
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I think you have to re…
• 57:27
  Sean Harklerode: We… we're not really the audience.
• 57:30
  Mark Pracht: Of course. Right? Of course, yeah.
• 57:33
  Sean Harklerode: But yeah, I mean, look, there's… look, there was a time, I think Harvey was putting out
• 57:40
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know, 20… Yeah. Richie Rich titles?
• 57:44
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. It was more than Casper. I mean, it was a lot of Richie Rick. Right.
• 57:49
  Sean Harklerode: So, yeah.
• 57:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no.
• 57:53
  Sean Harklerode: Quality.
• 57:53
  Mark Pracht: I'm just sick.
• 57:53
  Sean Harklerode: Amount of quantity was…
• 57:55
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think, I think that's just.
• 57:57
  Tad Eggleston: That's essential.
• 57:57
  Mark Pracht: or the B.
• 57:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but that's essentially exactly my…
• 58:01
  Tad Eggleston: point is that, like, if I'm really only expecting 1 in 10 to be good, I'd love it if somebody else curates that 1 in 10.
• 58:12
  Mark Pracht: Now, I'm not saying that it's 1 in 10. I said 1 and 3.
• 58:17
  Tad Eggleston: No, I know you did. I was saying that my expectation is actually kind of lower than that, because if… for the simple reason that Archie strikes me as, like, one of… even… even more than… than a lot of,
• 58:37
  Tad Eggleston: superhero comics, it strikes me as, like, the… the…
• 58:45
  Tad Eggleston: soap opera of the comics world, where they just make so many of them that, like, quality control is really difficult.
• 58:53
  Tad Eggleston: Which doesn't mean that there's not great stuff there.
• 58:56
  Mark Pracht: I… look, I'm just saying that, like, I think that you're absolutely right, there's a soap opera, but it's actually…
• 59:04
  Mark Pracht: it's more like a sitcom, right? Because I don't think for the va… okay, and I am to
• 59:10
  Mark Pracht: for the vast majority of the history of that book, right? It wasn't like a continuity that was going… you know, like, it wasn't like, well, this happened with Archie and Betty last week.
• 59:19
  Tad Eggleston: But
• 59:20
  Mark Pracht: So, yeah.
• 59:21
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I should, I should clarify, I only compare it to a soap opera in, in… in…
• 59:28
  Mark Pracht: quantity.
• 59:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, in quantity terms.
• 59:30
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but I'm just saying…
• 59:33
  Sean Harklerode: opera of the comic book world was the triangle Era of Superman.
• 59:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yes!
• 59:39
  Sean Harklerode: That shit.
• 59:40
  Tad Eggleston: Which I've been thinking about revisiting, too.
• 59:43
  Mark Pracht: I, I would go to bat for the, the, Stan Lee John Romita Sr.
• 59:49
  Tad Eggleston: Era.
• 59:50
  Sean Harklerode: That's right.
• 59:51
  Mark Pracht: Man, that was soap opera.
• 59:54
  Mark Pracht: Speaking of curation, I just, one of the lovely gifts that my beautiful, beautiful wife got me for Christmas was this here, Unforgettable Stories, the Folio Society printing, curated by Patton Oswalt and Jordan Bloom.
• 1:00:12
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 1:00:13
  Mark Pracht: So.
• 1:00:14
  Sean Harklerode: just saw that last night advertised. I didn't realize Patton, put it together.
• 1:00:20
  Sean Harklerode: Polio's having a sale, too, to check. Yeah, I know.
• 1:00:23
  Mark Pracht: I've actually been very much looking at their, their Captain America, Fantastic Four, and the Batman and Superman sets. But, maybe even Spider-Man. It's a lot of money.
• 1:00:39
  Mark Pracht: I… I'm gonna say…
• 1:00:40
  Sean Harklerode: Those James Bond books on sale, though.
• 1:00:43
  Mark Pracht: I'm gonna say about this, which I am holding up because this is an audio thing, is, I'm… I love this. It's amazing. What a random collection of stories.
• 1:00:56
  Sean Harklerode: Click, look.
• 1:00:57
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it's stuff that's like one issue of a continuing story, and you're like.
• 1:01:03
  Mark Pracht: okay, what happened before and after? I… okay, I'll go look it up.
• 1:01:10
  Mark Pracht: Anyway… But, but yes, to the idea of curation, Yeah.
• 1:01:18
  Mark Pracht: I don't know what I'm talking about now.
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, the idea of curation is that, like, anytime you have something that's prolific, but But not necessarily…
• 1:01:34
  Tad Eggleston: Wow. Consistent. It's great to have…
• 1:01:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is what a good comic shop does in terms of helping you get into superheroes. They say, look, if you love all of Spider-Man, then sure, read the Clone Saga, but if you think you might want to learn about Spider-Man, here, have…
• 1:01:56
  Tad Eggleston: have Ultimate Spider-Man, and I know you're going, oh, but trust me, this is where you'll get to know Peter Parker better.
• 1:02:04
  Sean Harklerode: Oh my, you know?
• 1:02:06
  Sean Harklerode: ultimate spot.
• 1:02:07
  Tad Eggleston: Are those spiting… are those fighting words for you, Sean?
• 1:02:10
  Sean Harklerode: Now, never did I misjudge a series worse than I misjudged Ultimate Spider-Man. I bought that first issue, and I was like.
• 1:02:19
  Sean Harklerode: Man, do we have to go through all this again? And I just stopped.
• 1:02:23
  Sean Harklerode: And then, about a year later, everyone was talking about how great it was, and so I bought a collection, and I was like, oh, what did I do?
• 1:02:32
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:02:33
  Tad Eggleston: Because essentially, it was, we are going through all of this again, but we're going through it in a much more readable, enjoyable, and compact manner.
• 1:02:42
  Sean Harklerode: I loved it.
• 1:02:44
  Mark Pracht: I might argue with the readable and enjoyable, but I mean, like, it's just as readable and just as enjoyable for me. I, like, because I was with Sean, I was like, what is this? I don't need this. I don't want this. And then I got the first trade, and I was like, this is fucking incredible. And then I went back, and I still… I still never bought the first six issues, and now I can't afford
• 1:03:08
  Mark Pracht: to buy the first six issues. But,
• 1:03:13
  Mark Pracht: You know, I have every issue from 7 onward, and the first trade, so…
• 1:03:18
  Sean Harklerode: I've got 1, and then 13 on.
• 1:03:22
  Mark Pracht: I think, I have… it is…
• 1:03:25
  Mark Pracht: the only two series that I can say that are…
• 1:03:30
  Mark Pracht: 21st… because, yeah, it was 21st Century Series, that I have every
• 1:03:35
  Mark Pracht: single issue of is Ultimate Spider-Man and Jonah Hex.
• 1:03:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:03:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they're… they're…
• 1:03:45
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have every issue of Aldo and Spider-Man, because my kids were born when it was still running, so I had to drop off, but I… I think I actually… I have the…
• 1:03:55
  Tad Eggleston: the double… because I don't know if you guys remember, because both of the first two issues sold out.
• 1:04:04
  Tad Eggleston: They did a second printing that was the two of them together, so I don't have an Issue 1, but I have an Issue 1 and 2, and I have 2 onward, until at least, I think, 50?
• 1:04:25
  Tad Eggleston: I think I'm closer to having all the powers, though, in 21st Century Series.
• 1:04:31
  Sean Harklerode: The Ultimate Spider-Man, another great soap opera comic, really.
• 1:04:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Tad Eggleston: And… Well, except that the curation was done on the spot.
• 1:04:40
  Sean Harklerode: Right. And…
• 1:04:44
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, it's a little easier when you have it kind of mapped out. Although, they varied and made it interesting enough, made enough.
• 1:04:52
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:04:53
  Sean Harklerode: changes. It's like…
• 1:04:54
  Sean Harklerode: I think Under the Dome, the Stephen King miniseries, people were complaining about it, you know.
• 1:05:00
  Sean Harklerode: making so many changes, and Stephen King was like, well, why… if they're not gonna change anything, why would they even make it?
• 1:05:07
  Sean Harklerode: Like, what's in it for you to watch it if they're not gonna change anything?
• 1:05:13
  Mark Pracht: I have… Stephen King's attitude towards that sort of stuff is so awesome, you know? A, because, like, if you contact him and you want to do a student film version of one of his short stories or something, he'll be like, send me a buck.
• 1:05:27
  Mark Pracht: And then, every time somebody complains about something, he's like, look, man.
• 1:05:32
  Mark Pracht: It's right there on the shelf.
• 1:05:34
  Mark Pracht: You wanna read it? There it is. Like, but this was this adaptation, and, like, what a fucking healthy attitude about stuff. But…
• 1:05:43
  Mark Pracht: to that point, I will say that because Sean said that, I went and looked at the Folio Society, one of the books that's on sale, Sean, is The Hulk.
• 1:05:52
  Sean Harklerode: I saw that, and to your point, Immortal Hulk number 2 is included.
• 1:05:59
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:06:00
  Sean Harklerode: Seems a bit…
• 1:06:01
  Tad Eggleston: Not number one.
• 1:06:02
  Sean Harklerode: But not number one.
• 1:06:04
  Sean Harklerode: Because I looked at the, at the selection, just to be curious.
• 1:06:09
  Sean Harklerode: And it comes with a facsimile of Hulk 1.
• 1:06:13
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:06:13
  Sean Harklerode: Did… did, Patton's book come with a facsimile, or…
• 1:06:17
  Mark Pracht: No, it did not.
• 1:06:18
  Sean Harklerode: I know all those.
• 1:06:18
  Mark Pracht: did not.
• 1:06:20
  Mark Pracht: But it is one of the ones that's on sale.
• 1:06:23
  Mark Pracht: Along with the Bronze Age, Silver Age, and Golden Age sets.
• 1:06:28
  Tad Eggleston: And the Spider-Man one that you have.
• 1:06:32
  Tad Eggleston: Or the Marvel Unforgettable Stories.
• 1:06:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, one year that one.
• 1:06:36
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's similar. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Mark Pracht: But, sorry, anyway, sorry, I'm yabbering now.
• 1:06:42
  Sean Harklerode: I guess, back to Corto Maltese, I guess.
• 1:06:45
  Mark Pracht: We should probably talk.
• 1:06:47
  Sean Harklerode: about this subject.
• 1:06:49
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I just… I'm so glad you mentioned that… that cloud panel.
• 1:06:56
  Sean Harklerode: From the seal. That…
• 1:06:58
  Sean Harklerode: looking at that again, it's just masterful, and it reminds me of when I had said,
• 1:07:06
  Sean Harklerode: you know, when I'd mentioned Qbert, you know.
• 1:07:09
  Sean Harklerode: Just, it's a very inventive panel.
• 1:07:12
  Sean Harklerode: That I love.
• 1:07:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Sean Harklerode: M.
• 1:07:18
  Sean Harklerode: The seagull always makes me think of the rhyme of the ancient mariner.
• 1:07:23
  Tad Eggleston: That's it.
• 1:07:27
  Tad Eggleston: Oh…
• 1:07:27
  Mark Pracht: Sorry, I'm going down the rabbit hole now.
• 1:07:30
  Mark Pracht: Captain America is sold out.
• 1:07:32
  Tad Eggleston: I was starting to go down the rabbit hole, too. But I was also, before we went down that rabbit hole, I was actually starting to wrap us up, because I felt like we'd kind of hit what we have to say about this, I think.
• 1:07:45
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I think so. Now we're just talking about other stuff, so… Right. Yeah, but I think.
• 1:07:49
  Tad Eggleston: So, I think I loved it enough that, like, A, I will continue to try to get us advanced copies of Quarter Maltese as Phantographics puts them out, and B.
• 1:08:01
  Mark Pracht: I would agree.
• 1:08:01
  Tad Eggleston: As they come out, I think it would be fun to do…
• 1:08:05
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:08:05
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because this is… this is definitely some, like, heavy DNA of everything that we've been doing.
• 1:08:13
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  Tad Eggleston: In… in this book club.
• 1:08:16
  Sean Harklerode: And this first edition is going to be black and white.
• 1:08:20
  Sean Harklerode: So you can really look at the linework, right?
• 1:08:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I think they all are.
• 1:08:25
  Sean Harklerode: No, I believe that the others are going to be full color.
• 1:08:29
  Tad Eggleston: Are they?
• 1:08:29
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:08:31
  Mark Pracht: then I'm not buying the milk.
• 1:08:35
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, this is a joke. It's a joke. You should all buy these, because, look, this is one of those things, like, this kind of stuff, maybe, you know, this kind of stuff…
• 1:08:47
  Mark Pracht: Like, if you're a lover of this form, of this… This work, you know, of…
• 1:08:55
  Mark Pracht: Graphic storytelling. These are the kind of things that you should go out and look at. Maybe you don't need to buy the whole run, or anything like that, but I mean, like, take a look at it, because, like we said, there's so much DNA of so many things in this, both leading
• 1:09:12
  Mark Pracht: To it, and coming out of it, that, it's so…
• 1:09:17
  Mark Pracht: fun to read. I mean, and like, we didn't even get into, like, story stuff, you know? No. I think that.
• 1:09:24
  Tad Eggleston: Which, I mean, isn't even really… I mean, we talked a little bit about the first story dragging. I mean, I really think that the four-part Venice thing could have been a tighter 2 or 3 part, and I would have liked it more.
• 1:09:38
  Tad Eggleston: But… like…
• 1:09:43
  Mark Pracht: And that is… and I say again, that is a very light criticism, you know?
• 1:09:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think part of the reason we didn't wind up talking a lot about story is that
• 1:09:56
  Tad Eggleston: The story is important, and how it is told is more important.
• 1:10:03
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:10:04
  Tad Eggleston: You know, like, when you talk about Raiders of the Lost Ark, you don't spend a lot of time talking about the plot.
• 1:10:14
  Tad Eggleston: In fact, when you start talking about the plot is when you sometimes do horrible things, like realize that, like, other than getting it to the warehouse, if Indiana Jones hadn't been there at all, everything else still would have happened.
• 1:10:34
  Tad Eggleston: The Nazis would have found the Ark.
• 1:10:37
  Tad Eggleston: They would have opened it on the island, they all would have died.
• 1:10:44
  Sean Harklerode: No, no, it's not for Indiana Jones.
• 1:10:47
  Sean Harklerode: They would have just taken it straight to Berlin.
• 1:10:50
  Mark Pracht: And then they would have killed him.
• 1:10:51
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, they would have killed Hitler, so…
• 1:10:52
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, so that's possible.
• 1:10:55
  Mark Pracht: Indiana Jones.
• 1:10:56
  Tad Eggleston: Prolonged the war.
• 1:10:58
  Mark Pracht: Indiana Jones made it possible for that story to exist and not break history.
• 1:11:06
  Tad Eggleston: That's a good argument. I like that.
• 1:11:08
  Tad Eggleston: And it actually…
• 1:11:10
  Sean Harklerode: It is my favorite movie, but still.
• 1:11:13
  Mark Pracht: It is… that is the movie that I would say, of any film, is perfect.
• 1:11:20
  Tad Eggleston: I agree with you. I love that movie. I think that movie…
• 1:11:23
  Mark Pracht: is absolutely perfect.
• 1:11:24
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 1:11:26
  Mark Pracht: Doesn't mean it's the best, it's perfect.
• 1:11:28
  Tad Eggleston: Which is…
• 1:11:29
  Sean Harklerode: what it needs to be. It's my favorite movie. It's not the best movie ever made, but it's.
• 1:11:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:11:37
  Mark Pracht: fights.
• 1:11:37
  Tad Eggleston: Have…
• 1:11:38
  Mark Pracht: with 1941 for my favorite movie.
• 1:11:40
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, have you guys…
• 1:11:42
  Mark Pracht: Kidding.
• 1:11:43
  Tad Eggleston: Tad is desperately trying to end the podcast. No, no, actually, I was gonna take us slightly down an Indiana Jones rabbit hole. Have you guys read any of the comics? Would it be worth trying to…
• 1:11:59
  Mark Pracht: I will tell you this.
• 1:12:01
  Mark Pracht: The first time I ever tried to subscribe to a comic book was the Marvel The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones series.
• 1:12:10
  Tad Eggleston: I have some.
• 1:12:10
  Mark Pracht: I don't know.
• 1:12:11
  Tad Eggleston: Some of those are dick cuts.
• 1:12:13
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 1:12:14
  Mark Pracht: And, John Byrne did the first two issues. And I got…
• 1:12:19
  Sean Harklerode: The Icons of Icomata.
• 1:12:21
  Mark Pracht: I, my first issue of my subscription was the final issue of the series.
• 1:12:29
  Sean Harklerode: Look, Herb Trimpey did a lot of the art, Steve Ditko did a lot of the art on it.
• 1:12:35
  Mark Pracht: I… I would… it would be fun to revisit that series.
• 1:12:39
  Mark Pracht: Britain.
• 1:12:41
  Mark Pracht: Welch.
• 1:12:42
  Sean Harklerode: Further Adventures of Indiana Jones.
• 1:12:45
  Mark Pracht: I do not, but we all know that I got rid of almost all of my comics.
• 1:12:50
  Tad Eggleston: I can manage to procure reader copies for us if we're…
• 1:12:57
  Tad Eggleston: Interested. Did you do any of the Dark Horse stuff?
• 1:13:00
  Mark Pracht: Don't ask how. I…
• 1:13:02
  Sean Harklerode: Two of them.
• 1:13:03
  Mark Pracht: I did read some of the Dark Horse, I certainly don't have any of it left. Yeah. I have some of the Dark Horse, like, compendiums, and…
• 1:13:13
  Tad Eggleston: I… I… I felt like they were… they were, like…
• 1:13:18
  Tad Eggleston: the Marvel stuff had been inconsistent, but because it was mostly one-and-done inconsistent, it wasn't… it was kind of like the shadow that we read, versus…
• 1:13:30
  Tad Eggleston: the Dark Horse was all mini-series, and some of them were just… Not good.
• 1:13:37
  Mark Pracht: Right. Spirit of Destiny, I remember liking.
• 1:13:40
  Mark Pracht: Spirit of Destiny was good. Some of them were…
• 1:13:41
  Tad Eggleston: very good.
• 1:13:43
  Mark Pracht: You know, they did one that was based on that game, yeah, but, you know… No.
• 1:13:51
  Mark Pracht: The Indiana Jones video game that was a point-and-click adventure game that everybody.
• 1:13:55
  Tad Eggleston: I remember that game, I had that game.
• 1:13:58
  Sean Harklerode: Mark just looks at me as if he was Murray Hamilton, stopped on top of a Ferris wheel with Eddie Diesen.
• 1:14:06
  Mark Pracht: It's not gonna be… it's not gonna be hard at all. I hate that guy.
• 1:14:11
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, No, this does lead to… I have… I have been trying to play
• 1:14:22
  Mark Pracht: Indiana Jones and the… the, the new video game, the… the… circle of…
• 1:14:29
  Mark Pracht: Life, or whatever the hell it is.
• 1:14:33
  Mark Pracht: I can't play it.
• 1:14:38
  Mark Pracht: No, no, it's.
• 1:14:39
  Tad Eggleston: You can't play it because it's not good, or you can't play it because it crashes.
• 1:14:41
  Mark Pracht: I… it's… it's… it… it crashes.
• 1:14:45
  Tad Eggleston: State of Atlantis, I think, was the…
• 1:14:48
  Mark Pracht: You know, Fate of Atlantis was the one that we were talking about, and actually, there were a couple of, like, like.
• 1:14:55
  Mark Pracht: first and second generation console games that I really loved. It was, like, The Emperor's Tomb, and something else.
• 1:15:02
  Mark Pracht: This is, like, they've done it all in first person?
• 1:15:06
  Mark Pracht: So… There's no, like, action sequences.
• 1:15:13
  Mark Pracht: Like, you… if you get involved in a fistfight with somebody, you're dead.
• 1:15:19
  Mark Pracht: And… and it's not even… like, and I've tried… I've tried… I've tried reducing the difficulty level, it's just…
• 1:15:28
  Mark Pracht: people sneak up on you, and it's like… it's like a stealth game. You, like, sneak into things, and that's certainly part of Indiana Jones, but, like, the whole framework is, I can't stand this game.
• 1:15:40
  Mark Pracht: And I hate it, because I have played through and thoroughly enjoyed almost every Indiana Jones video game they've ever put out, and I want them to put out more, but I'm just like…
• 1:15:55
  Mark Pracht: I… I… I… I'm just, like, I… this… it's not an enjoyable experience for me.
• 1:16:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:16:02
  Mark Pracht: I need a mod where it makes it third person.
• 1:16:04
  Mark Pracht: And that would at least make me feel a little more involved in it. Strangely enough.
• 1:16:10
  Mark Pracht: It's just like, I…
• 1:16:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I… No.
• 1:16:13
  Mark Pracht: We're talking about video games, and I don't…
• 1:16:15
  Tad Eggleston: I…
• 1:16:16
  Mark Pracht: It's like…
• 1:16:16
  Tad Eggleston: I… I… when you said first person, I just found myself going… But… But…
• 1:16:25
  Tad Eggleston: then you don't even have the hat! I mean, so it only feels like Indiana Jones when you have…
• 1:16:32
  Tad Eggleston: You have.
• 1:16:33
  Sean Harklerode: Well, you're wearing the hat?
• 1:16:35
  Mark Pracht: Right, so there's this game mechanic.
• 1:16:37
  Tad Eggleston: But you have to.
• 1:16:38
  Sean Harklerode: Sitting in your basement wearing the hat.
• 1:16:40
  Tad Eggleston: Oh…
• 1:16:42
  Mark Pracht: You're… but, like, one of the game mechanics is when.
• 1:16:44
  Sean Harklerode: I don't hug.
• 1:16:45
  Mark Pracht: out.
• 1:16:46
  Mark Pracht: when you get knocked down, your hat is laying there, and you can crawl over and put it back on and get some energy back, and I'm like, this is the dumbest mechanic I've ever heard of. But.
• 1:16:57
  Sean Harklerode: I get no kidding.
• 1:16:59
  Sean Harklerode: And I get up again.
• 1:17:00
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:17:01
  Mark Pracht: But, like, one of the things that happened just in the last couple weeks is there's also this Avatar game, and I know I'm not… I actually kind of enjoy the world of Avatar
• 1:17:13
  Mark Pracht: I don't think they're the greatest movies of all time, but I enjoy the visuals of it. So they have a video game that was all first-person, so I tried playing it, and I got really frustrated, and I stopped.
• 1:17:23
  Mark Pracht: But now, they've just released an update that you can play it all third person, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go revisit this game now, because it seems like something that I can enjoy. Because what I… I want to see the person that I'm supposed to be.
• 1:17:36
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I'm saying.
• 1:17:36
  Mark Pracht: Especially if you're playing an iconic character.
• 1:17:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:17:40
  Mark Pracht: Like, I want to see Indiana Jones.
• 1:17:42
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:17:43
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Anyway…
• 1:17:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:45
  Mark Pracht: over.
• 1:17:46
  Mark Pracht: That's why. That was totally my.
• 1:17:48
  Tad Eggleston: heart.
• 1:17:50
  Mark Pracht: That's why, when that Cordo Maltese game comes out.
• 1:17:54
  Tad Eggleston: We'd better be able to see the sailors.
• 1:17:56
  Mark Pracht: better be able to see… it should all be in profile.
• 1:18:00
  Mark Pracht: Okay.
• 1:18:05
  Mark Pracht: It's just one of those platform games, where…
• 1:18:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, no, that's… that's the…
• 1:18:10
  Mark Pracht: Somebody should be.
• 1:18:11
  Tad Eggleston: Tracy game.
• 1:18:12
  Mark Pracht: Somebody should… I was just gonna say that, somebody should pitch a Dick Tracy video game that's all in profile all the time.
• 1:18:21
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway… Okay, I think we're completely out of the rails. Now we're totally off the rails, and…
• 1:18:28
  Sean Harklerode: I don't think so.
• 1:18:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if he is, like, Patreon, jesus.
• 1:18:35
  Mark Pracht: You know, patreon.com.
• 1:18:37
  Sean Harklerode: I love Toinette.
• 1:18:38
  Tad Eggleston: Slash, slash, 22 pounds.
• 1:18:42
  Mark Pracht: Oh, God.
• 1:18:43
  Tad Eggleston: Stop. You can pay, pay for… pay for hosting, or my new PlayStation, or whatever.
• 1:18:50
  Mark Pracht: quelching every Dick Tracy project that comes up.
• 1:18:54
  Mark Pracht: Warren, come on!
• 1:18:58
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway.
• 1:19:00
  Mark Pracht: You're… you're 90 years old, you're not gonna play Dick Tracy again. Sorry.
• 1:19:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, now…
• 1:19:05
  Sean Harklerode: What's to play.
• 1:19:06
  Tad Eggleston: He wants to play,
• 1:19:10
  Tad Eggleston: lips, or one of the wrinkly guys. He'd be perfect for it.
• 1:19:16
  Mark Pracht: I…
• 1:19:16
  Tad Eggleston: Now he's really not gonna give me his money.
• 1:19:19
  Mark Pracht: well.
• 1:19:20
  Mark Pracht: And I'm actually a big fan of that movie, I think it's gorgeous.
• 1:19:23
  Sean Harklerode: Great movie.
• 1:19:24
  Mark Pracht: It is a good movie. Yeah. It is a good movie.
• 1:19:26
  Tad Eggleston: I used to… I used to have the poster on my wall.
• 1:19:29
  Mark Pracht: Very true to the comic, yeah.
• 1:19:35
  Tad Eggleston: Ma'am.
• 1:19:35
  Mark Pracht: I even… I even believe Warren Beatty when he says, when they asked him about, like, why didn't you do mic-up on yourself to make you look more like the drawing? And he's like, I'm the one character you have to look at the whole movie, and at a certain point.
• 1:19:48
  Mark Pracht: A makeup design that's kind of totally designed to always be in profile is not gonna work.
• 1:19:58
  Mark Pracht: And I was like, that makes sense. Anyways, sorry, we are way off the reservation.
• 1:20:03
  Tad Eggleston: That's… I mean, again, this is…
• 1:20:06
  Tad Eggleston: This is what I adore about Book Club, but I do have grandkids, and they are here, and my mother and brother have been kind enough to keep them at bay, but I should probably go spend some time with them.
• 1:20:20
  Mark Pracht: Go… go see some… go spend some time with your spawn.
• 1:20:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so…
• 1:20:27
  Mark Pracht: And I say that with love and sweetness.
• 1:20:29
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, so have you read any, have you read any Gunslinger Spawn?
• 1:20:34
  Tad Eggleston: after talking.
• 1:20:35
  Mark Pracht: Did she?
• 1:20:35
  Tad Eggleston: Amy?
• 1:20:36
  Mark Pracht: I, I, honestly.
• 1:20:38
  Tad Eggleston: I want to say the first collection's about to come out.
• 1:20:41
  Mark Pracht: I will definitely check that out, because I love Jimmy. I love Jimmy's work.
• 1:20:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's mystery, or it's, I'm sorry, it's Westerns again.
• 1:20:49
  Mark Pracht: Western.
• 1:20:49
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, yeah.
• 1:20:51
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I think that that is, that's definitely… there's lots of stuff on my list. This last two weeks has been sort of…
• 1:20:57
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I get it.
• 1:20:59
  Mark Pracht: Like, plus, I'm getting through some of the stuff that Colleen got for me for Christmas. I also got a,
• 1:21:06
  Mark Pracht: a graphic novel called Lucas Wars, which is sort of a…
• 1:21:10
  Tad Eggleston: I… I have that on Kindle, but I haven't read it yet, but I need to.
• 1:21:14
  Mark Pracht: I'm… I'm about…
• 1:21:15
  Tad Eggleston: started it.
• 1:21:16
  Mark Pracht: 20% into it. I really… it's very… it's very fun.
• 1:21:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I've been excited about it since they announced the translation, so…
• 1:21:26
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. As somebody who knows an awful lot about Lucas, you can… I can tell you there's plenty of stuff that they just sort of bump over, but that's…
• 1:21:35
  Tad Eggleston: Of course.
• 1:21:36
  Mark Pracht: like…
• 1:21:37
  Mark Pracht: myself and the plays I wrote, there's no room to be critical of that, I'm just saying that it's there, because, like, it's clear that that's… it makes the storytelling better, so…
• 1:21:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I talked to… and I'm remembering this because my wife kindly made a sweatshirt for me with the dancing, or one of the dancing scenes from it, but I talked to Leonie Bischoff.
• 1:22:03
  Tad Eggleston: about her Anna E. Nin book, and one of the things that she did that she thinks you almost have to do to make it really good, particularly in comic form, but really in any…
• 1:22:16
  Tad Eggleston: Biography that's not some big, huge tome is pick a particular period or event.
• 1:22:24
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:22:25
  Tad Eggleston: And just stick to that. Because, you know, if you try to go from birth to death, you just…
• 1:22:34
  Mark Pracht: I mean, this thing started…
• 1:22:35
  Tad Eggleston: It becomes too hard to tell a good story.
• 1:22:38
  Mark Pracht: It starts earlier than I thought it would,
• 1:22:42
  Mark Pracht: it does go into his childhood and stuff, but it also relates it all to Star Wars, so… Okay.
• 1:22:47
  Mark Pracht: you know, like, and again, I'm looking at my Kindle right now, I'm 18% into it, so… Right. Like, the whole thing could fall apart in the next 5 pages. The other thing.
• 1:22:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's really well regarded, so I think that that's unlikely.
• 1:23:03
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because…
• 1:23:05
  Sean Harklerode: Lucas in Love?
• 1:23:08
  Sean Harklerode: A short film?
• 1:23:10
  Mark Pracht: I guess.
• 1:23:11
  Sean Harklerode: Fantastic.
• 1:23:13
  Mark Pracht: I will say, I did like the… in the book, the relationship with Marcia is… is nicely done.
• 1:23:19
  Sean Harklerode: Nice.
• 1:23:20
  Mark Pracht: And, also doesn't… fall into that trap of saying, well, you know, Marcia did it all.
• 1:23:29
  Mark Pracht: Which, I just don't.
• 1:23:30
  Mark Pracht: 100% believe.
• 1:23:32
  Mark Pracht: The other thing I read that relates back to this is, I did finally get to issue 50 in Jonah Hex.
• 1:23:41
  Mark Pracht: And count it out.
• 1:23:43
  Mark Pracht: Because of Jimmy's insistence.
• 1:23:46
  Mark Pracht: Jonah does kill 50 people.
• 1:23:49
  Tad Eggleston: I love it. I love it.
• 1:23:50
  Mark Pracht: And, it's also…
• 1:23:54
  Tad Eggleston: I had forgotten how great a Tallulah Black story it is. It is.
• 1:24:01
  Mark Pracht: I love how Darwin Cook draws Tallulah Black.
• 1:24:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:24:06
  Mark Pracht: It's not as viscerally scarry, but it's really nicely done.
• 1:24:09
  Tad Eggleston: That… that is the perfect place to wrap up. For Mark Pratt, for Sean Harklrode, this has been the Pulp Blotter on 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.