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Fourth World Book Club #13 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels and the Fourth World Book Club, where we are…
• 0:09
  Tad Eggleston: Nearing the end of our journey through Jack Kirby's…
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: Fantastic world. This… this month we… we looked at, Mr. Miracle issues 12.
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: to 15. And I wanted to… I wanted to actually lead off this time, because… It was in…
• 0:31
  Tad Eggleston: Issue 13.
• 0:34
  Tad Eggleston: I think is the most… Autobiographical Jack Kirby.
• 0:43
  Tad Eggleston: panel.
• 0:44
  Tad Eggleston: Ever.
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it just… it hit me on so many different levels, it wasn't even funny. So let me share my screen…
• 1:11
  Tad Eggleston: We, we have.
• 1:12
  Sean Harklerode: Oh.
• 1:13
  Tad Eggleston: Ted, with his head down,
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: Scott trying to console him by saying, Hey, but you won!
• 1:25
  Tad Eggleston: And… Big Barda's saying… Forget it. Put your life on automatic drive.
• 1:34
  Tad Eggleston: Just coast happily along, as Ted's sitting there going, it was a horrible experience. It was hunted like an animal by men with dogs. I lost myself in wild, remote country, and was listed as dead by the army.
• 1:53
  Tad Eggleston: And this, I mean, this reminds me of everything I know about Jack's… service…
• 1:58
  Tad Eggleston: But it also, like, it hits in terms of…
• 2:03
  Tad Eggleston: a lot of his comics career, too, where, you know…
• 2:08
  Tad Eggleston: He's striving for things, and people are going, oh, but you're the king! Or… or…
• 2:15
  Tad Eggleston: oh, you know, yeah, that sucked, but just put it behind you. It's like… his…
• 2:25
  Tad Eggleston: Jack… Jack feels like he had not only a lot of
• 2:30
  Tad Eggleston: weight and burdens, but a lot of people around him that were very well-meaning, but not actually…
• 2:39
  Tad Eggleston: Acknowledging of the emotions that he was going through.
• 2:44
  Tad Eggleston: And it just… it felt like it came out on this page.
• 2:49
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, I would agree with you. Just putting your life on automatic drive and not thinking about your problems…
• 2:55
  Sean Harklerode: He isn't.
• 2:56
  Sean Harklerode: the way… To handle life?
• 3:00
  Tad Eggleston: I would say that it's, it's not recommended, no, Sean.
• 3:06
  Tad Eggleston: Do I need to call in the psychocomicology guys? Do I need to see if we can have an emergency appearance from one of our therapists?
• 3:13
  Sean Harklerode: Although, I mean, like…
• 3:16
  Mark Pracht: that is coming from BARDA.
• 3:18
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it's not like… I think… I think that…
• 3:24
  Mark Pracht: you know, I… like, my dime store psychology of that is that, you know.
• 3:30
  Mark Pracht: I think that you're right, I think that this panel does encompass a lot of Jack's World War II experiences, but I also think…
• 3:37
  Mark Pracht: that…
• 3:42
  Mark Pracht: I, I think…
• 3:43
  Mark Pracht: Jack's World War II experiences are a very interesting thing to talk about. There's a… there's a documentary that's out there called Kirby at War.
• 3:53
  Mark Pracht: Which I found very interesting, but I also think it speaks to a lot of the, the,
• 4:02
  Mark Pracht: the weird, vaguely schizophrenic way that he dealt with his war experience. Like, it obviously comes into his books a lot.
• 4:10
  Mark Pracht: He obviously had things about that experience that affected him for the rest of his life.
• 4:18
  Mark Pracht: But he also was, like, always, always there with a war story.
• 4:23
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 4:25
  Mark Pracht: He, like, he thought of it as, you know, like, he had plenty of stories that he liked to share with people.
• 4:32
  Mark Pracht: But I do also think that… I think that this whole comment about automatic drive is really about living in the moment, right?
• 4:40
  Mark Pracht: And he's probably talking to people that he knew, were…
• 4:47
  Mark Pracht: you know, deeply affected by the war that couldn't let it go. I mean, and we can take that to any war experience. We can take that to Vietnam, we can take that to… and I'm not trying to belittle that at all, but that…
• 5:01
  Mark Pracht: You know, that was an experience that happened, and now we have to live in the here and now, you know?
• 5:08
  Mark Pracht: And, I mean, yeah, it's, like, in a way, like, this book, of the four that we read.
• 5:16
  Mark Pracht: Is probably the most interesting.
• 5:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 5:21
  Tad Eggleston: There were interesting parts of the other three.
• 5:23
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 5:24
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah.
• 5:26
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and, you know, it's… Jack's still got things he wants to talk about, and he's still…
• 5:35
  Mark Pracht: You know, and he's still got big ideas.
• 5:39
  Mark Pracht: But a lot of these felt like just punching a clock.
• 5:44
  Tad Eggleston: Really quickly, before I forget, I want to toss out that Kirby at War is streaming for free on Tubi, so anybody who wants to go dig into that…
• 5:55
  Mark Pracht: It used to be on, it used to be free on Prime Video, too, but I don't know.
• 6:00
  Tad Eggleston: It might be there, too. I just went… when I saw that there was a Tubi link, when I was looking it up.
• 6:07
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 6:08
  Tad Eggleston: I know that they're always free, so…
• 6:12
  Sean Harklerode: So you're saying you can watch it on…
• 6:15
  Sean Harklerode: To be or not to be.
• 6:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, yeah, it is also free on Prime Video.
• 6:23
  Tad Eggleston: So if you have a prime… Prime, prime…
• 6:26
  Tad Eggleston: subscription. You know, to quote the recent.
• 6:29
  Mark Pracht: Muppets, show thing. You know, I have a sharp pain in my left arm. What's that about?
• 6:36
  Mark Pracht: It's certainly not about clapping.
• 6:42
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 6:43
  Tad Eggleston: No, I think…
• 6:44
  Mark Pracht: I, you know, and I, like, I do want to say that, like, I think that There is this…
• 6:53
  Mark Pracht: In my experience.
• 6:55
  Mark Pracht: there is this sort of, you know, as with many things involving Jack Kirby, there is this bit of a hierographic hero worship element that comes into his war experiences, you know?
• 7:08
  Mark Pracht: And that's… again, I'm not… I'm not trying to belittle them, I'm just saying that, like.
• 7:14
  Mark Pracht: a lot of times, I read people talking about what his war experiences were, and…
• 7:21
  Mark Pracht: I'm… I'm not quite sure… I'm not quite sure how much… is…
• 7:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's… and that's why I actually specified. I don't know if it's entirely his… his war experience that he's specifying here, or…
• 7:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, Jack had some very legitimate
• 7:42
  Tad Eggleston: Sure. Gripes and trauma from the comics industry as well.
• 7:47
  Tad Eggleston: And in that industry, even more so, he had a mixture of people, but you're the greatest! And…
• 7:54
  Tad Eggleston: get over it. Nobody gets that, just, like, understand the business that you're in.
• 8:01
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, yeah, it's… it… look…
• 8:04
  Mark Pracht: There is a… there is a whole…
• 8:08
  Tad Eggleston: And also, Mark, I want to make it clear that I'm also
• 8:12
  Tad Eggleston: I'm complimenting Jack's writing on this panel.
• 8:16
  Mark Pracht: Well, the words don't matter, Tad. I thought that's what we had arrived at. No. No, I… I,
• 8:25
  Mark Pracht: I don't… I don't know. I think that there is…
• 8:31
  Mark Pracht: In a way, this Mr. Miracle book.
• 8:37
  Mark Pracht: probably, like, it… it's interesting, it's the one that survives the purge of the Fourth World.
• 8:44
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 8:45
  Mark Pracht: There was a number of things I thought while I was reading these. One is that by having the main character be an entertainer, it does sort of put
• 8:57
  Mark Pracht: make it possible to talk about a lot of Jack's…
• 9:03
  Mark Pracht: Problems and feelings and desires into the book in some format.
• 9:10
  Mark Pracht: It, you know, it also…
• 9:16
  Mark Pracht: Allows us to see what he thinks about you know, cause…
• 9:26
  Mark Pracht: You got Ted, Ted, Ted.
• 9:34
  Tad Eggleston: Forget Ted's last name, too.
• 9:35
  Mark Pracht: I forget Ted, the son of the original Mr. Miracle, you know, the Ted is this hype man sort of promotional dude. I mean, that… that can be seen as, like, what he saw as the best parts, like, there's obviously no, like, animosity towards that character in these books, and that could be seen as what he saw as the best parts of, like, Stan.
• 9:54
  Mark Pracht: Right. You know? And maybe, maybe during the course of working on this, he started to realize, like, what Stan had actually brought to their partnership, you know?
• 10:04
  Mark Pracht: because there certainly is this sort of idea that Ted is their partner in this whole enterprise, but…
• 10:11
  Mark Pracht: You know,
• 10:14
  Mark Pracht: The other thing that came to me, actually, just recently was, you know, I think it's really interesting how we had that dead man
• 10:23
  Mark Pracht: guest-starring thing in Forever People, which was obviously trying to goose sales, but… Really?
• 10:31
  Mark Pracht: like, I kind of wanted Mr. Miracle and Dead Man to work together, because they were, like, they're both performers, they're both…
• 10:39
  Mark Pracht: you know, carniacs, essentially, you know? That might have been interesting.
• 10:46
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, no, like…
• 10:55
  Mark Pracht: There's part of me,
• 11:03
  Mark Pracht: I'm always interested in how Jack gets…
• 11:06
  Mark Pracht: get certain things really right, and certain things not right, you know? Like, there's, you know, this, on page 13, there's the element where they have, like.
• 11:16
  Mark Pracht: the gallery is crawling with swastikas, which is an oddly Western symbol, but, you know, we know that the swastika is also an Indian symbol, or a Native American symbol.
• 11:27
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 11:28
  Mark Pracht: You know, I… I think it's… it's… I, I…
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and for that matter, Before, it was the… the… the German cross, it was…
• 11:41
  Tad Eggleston: It's got a long history as a cross, and it's used… in various…
• 11:49
  Tad Eggleston: various Christianity-type stuff, so… Sure. Yeah.
• 11:54
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, I also… and I also thought it was really interesting how you have this guy, a former Nazi, goes into hiding, and he's, like, hiding in some sort of…
• 12:01
  Mark Pracht: looks like, Eastern… Eastern, you know,
• 12:09
  Mark Pracht: cultish sort of thing. I think… I think it's all kind of fascinating. But it is sort of this… it's exactly what Kirby always does, he just throws all these ideas into a pot.
• 12:18
  Mark Pracht: And… Whatever comes out, comes out.
• 12:22
  Mark Pracht: Although the big mystery of it is, like, especially on page 13, like, he gives the whole thing away, like, in two panels. It's like, who is this guy? Oh, there's swastikas all over the place. And here's a statue that says, Da Fura.
• 12:40
  Mark Pracht: Okay, okay, wait a minute, let me guess, who is this?
• 12:43
  Mark Pracht: Making me think of the…
• 12:44
  Sean Harklerode: Donald Duck cartoon.
• 12:46
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. The Fura?
• 12:51
  Sean Harklerode: You do not salute the furra?
• 12:53
  Sean Harklerode: which, if anybody wants to watch some…
• 12:57
  Sean Harklerode: Donald Duck anti-Nazi cartoons, they're on… the internet.
• 13:03
  Sean Harklerode: Since they were funded by the government, they are in the public domain, so…
• 13:11
  Sean Harklerode: But yeah, I mean, I… For me, getting back to… To, that panel, I think…
• 13:21
  Sean Harklerode: On the next page, you know, there's a nice panel where they both have their hands on his shoulders and saying, you know.
• 13:29
  Sean Harklerode: You've got a world of friends, Ted, we'll all look after each other.
• 13:33
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely. Well, and even with that panel.
• 13:36
  Tad Eggleston: what I… what I appreciate the most, why I think it's a, like, dead perfect panel, is that…
• 13:46
  Tad Eggleston: As much as those are words that we hear a lot, and sometimes…
• 13:53
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes they're either hard to hear, not helpful, or sometimes even not completely, like…
• 14:02
  Tad Eggleston: authentic from the people that are coming. The way he draws both Scott and Barda… Yeah. …make it clear that they're doing the best they can.
• 14:13
  Tad Eggleston: That it's not… a dismissiveness. That it's not… it's a… This shit is hard.
• 14:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, it's like, in one panel, just like… A,
• 14:30
  Tad Eggleston: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 14:33
  Tad Eggleston: encapsulation of one of the hardest parts of human existence, which is, like…
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: Not just dealing with one's own trauma, but how…
• 14:45
  Tad Eggleston: How to be helpful? How to be…
• 14:49
  Tad Eggleston: There, for the people that you love.
• 14:52
  Tad Eggleston: As they deal with theirs.
• 14:55
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 14:56
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Tad Eggleston: You know? I, like, I just…
• 15:01
  Tad Eggleston: It struck me. I love so much Kirby stuff, and it struck me as I read it as, like, this panel here might be the greatest
• 15:10
  Tad Eggleston: to me, Kirby panel I've ever seen.
• 15:14
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 15:14
  Sean Harklerode: Wow.
• 15:15
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I think… I think that… I think that there's a, it is…
• 15:26
  Mark Pracht: how do I put this? I think that it is a real shame That this experiment…
• 15:33
  Mark Pracht: that Jack was doing here, with all of… well, four of these books.
• 15:37
  Mark Pracht: got cut short as it did. It is a shame.
• 15:41
  Mark Pracht: Because I think that… During the course of the books that we've read so far, he was learning
• 15:50
  Mark Pracht: How to.
• 15:52
  Mark Pracht: Tell stories on his own, right?
• 15:56
  Mark Pracht: And I think… And…
• 15:59
  Mark Pracht: Kirbyites are gonna come out with the pitchforks and everything, because, like, really, all of his best… all of his…
• 16:06
  Mark Pracht: biggest… and most important work was always done with a partner, right? Up until this point.
• 16:13
  Mark Pracht: And I think that… I think that, and this panel was an excellent example of it, is, like.
• 16:21
  Mark Pracht: to just… Speak the truth, It's sort of like acting, you know? Speak the truth.
• 16:30
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, that doesn't mean, like.
• 16:34
  Mark Pracht: You know, there's an awful lot of hyperbole in these books.
• 16:38
  Mark Pracht: And I think that he learned that from Stan, you know, and I think he was trying to emulate Stan. And this panel…
• 16:44
  Mark Pracht: Has virtually none.
• 16:47
  Mark Pracht: And I think that Jack would have been far more serviced if he'd just spoken the truth, rather than…
• 16:55
  Mark Pracht: Trying to play this sell, sell, sell game, you know?
• 16:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 17:00
  Mark Pracht: And I think that… because, I mean.
• 17:02
  Tad Eggleston: I'm…
• 17:03
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 17:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just to compare him to a contemporary, it's one of the differences between him and Eisner.
• 17:10
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 17:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 17:13
  Mark Pracht: Well, I think, you know…
• 17:15
  Tad Eggleston: Jack is most comfortable being bombastic.
• 17:19
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 17:19
  Tad Eggleston: And Eisner is most comfortable Being up close and personal.
• 17:25
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, people often say, you know.
• 17:29
  Sean Harklerode: that, what if, you know, Jack…
• 17:32
  Sean Harklerode: Had just done war comics of his war stories.
• 17:37
  Sean Harklerode: allowed himself to tell those personal stories. I think then we'd have something closer to the, you know, what is it, the Dropsea Avenue, you know, Contract with God trilogy.
• 17:49
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:49
  Sean Harklerode: But, you know, he… Either… Didn't want that, or never…
• 18:00
  Sean Harklerode: Got the chance to do it.
• 18:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 18:03
  Mark Pracht: I mean…
• 18:05
  Mark Pracht: I think that that's true, but I also think that, you know, when you talk about Eisner versus Kirby.
• 18:10
  Mark Pracht: there is…
• 18:15
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, like, Kirby's art just lends itself to bombasticity.
• 18:19
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 18:20
  Mark Pracht: And I think that… but I mean, that's sort of the point that I'm making with this panel, is that…
• 18:26
  Mark Pracht: like… Even in this panel, like.
• 18:30
  Mark Pracht: The body language is extreme, the… the… the… you know, like, there's that extremity in the artwork that…
• 18:39
  Mark Pracht: is really served By the honesty of the words.
• 18:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 18:46
  Mark Pracht: And I think that…
• 18:52
  Mark Pracht: I think that Jack thought that that bombastic nature was something that he had to put into the dialogue as well, and I'm… like, the question I'm asking is, would Jack have been better served if it was
• 19:03
  Mark Pracht: Just being plain spoken.
• 19:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 19:05
  Mark Pracht: wasn't… as Jack was in real life, you know? Oh, absolutely. People talk about that all the time, you know?
• 19:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 19:11
  Sean Harklerode: Kind of hat on a hand.
• 19:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, almost all of our complaints about the dialogue are awkwardness that's, like, manufactured by… Trying to be…
• 19:24
  Tad Eggleston: Cool.
• 19:25
  Mark Pracht: Trying… well, yeah, trying to be hip, trying to, you know, like… But, you know, the…
• 19:31
  Mark Pracht: Trying to be similar to what he had just finished doing.
• 19:36
  Mark Pracht: without trying to invoke certain people. But I mean, like, I think that…
• 19:41
  Mark Pracht: there was a naturalness to what his former partners did, or his former partner did, with dialogue.
• 19:48
  Mark Pracht: For, like, that was… that was honest.
• 19:52
  Mark Pracht: Well, fuck it. I'm not gonna stop. I'm not gonna be cute about it.
• 19:56
  Mark Pracht: the bombasticity of the early Marvel stuff is Stan Lee.
• 20:00
  Mark Pracht: Like, that's the real guy. Everybody says it, you know? Yeah. And the thing is, is that I think this panel, we see the real Jack Kirby
• 20:12
  Mark Pracht: Both in the artwork and in the dialogue. And I think that that's… that's where… that's where… that's where the record slips the groove.
• 20:20
  Mark Pracht: On these books, I think.
• 20:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, and like,
• 20:24
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to that end, you don't have to do a Dropsey Avenue, a contract with God to put yourself into a book. Tom King writes comics all the time.
• 20:34
  Mark Pracht: That are superhero comics, that are very much…
• 20:37
  Tad Eggleston: personal comics, and I think
• 20:41
  Tad Eggleston: like, what this panel tells me, what this issue, to a certain extent, tells me, is that Jack had that in him, and for whatever reason, nobody encouraged it enough for us to see
• 20:54
  Tad Eggleston: as much of it as I would have liked, because… because I gotta wonder if I go from thinking Jack Kirby's one of the great and most influential superhero artists
• 21:05
  Tad Eggleston: of all time, too. Jack is one of the great and most influential cartoonists of all time, if…
• 21:14
  Tad Eggleston: He, he wrote like he spoke.
• 21:17
  Tad Eggleston: And told his stories the way he tells his stories, rather than trying to… Fit some other mold.
• 21:25
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I do think that one of the things, like, if he did, sort of, Kurtzman-style war stories.
• 21:35
  Mark Pracht: Would the artwork seem incongruous?
• 21:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 21:39
  Mark Pracht: You know? Like… Jack's…
• 21:42
  Tad Eggleston: That's a shit.
• 21:43
  Mark Pracht: work is… by its nature, Bombastic, huge, exciting.
• 21:50
  Tad Eggleston: But he doesn't have to do war stories, he could have still done the same stories. I'm only talking about changing the dialogue.
• 21:56
  Mark Pracht: I'm not… I'm not talking about… I'm… I'm not… that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, like…
• 22:01
  Mark Pracht: like, at one point, somebody was talking about, what if Jack had just done a series of comics about his war stories?
• 22:07
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 22:08
  Mark Pracht: I think that would be interesting, but I also wonder if the art wouldn't seem incongruous. Part of what makes Eisner so great is that his sort of…
• 22:18
  Mark Pracht: cartoony, yet really understated and stylized artwork that he does on, like, the Dropsey Avenue, or even the spirit books, all sort of leads to that sort of, like.
• 22:32
  Mark Pracht: contemplative…
• 22:36
  Mark Pracht: like, in his own way, Eisner is just as evocative and just as, like, bombastic in his artwork as Kirby is, but the.
• 22:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 22:44
  Mark Pracht: But there's a more…
• 22:48
  Mark Pracht: I don't want to say… like, a more realistic… I think that's probably the best word. Like, when I look at the… when I look at Contract with God, I realize that those are cartoony characters, but there's also something there that feels…
• 23:02
  Mark Pracht: like, I'm looking at real people doing real things. The thing with Kirby's artwork is that it's still genius, don't get me wrong, but it… it's like we're looking at gods.
• 23:15
  Mark Pracht: slamming into each other, you know? And that's… that's… that's… when you talk about Kirby doing something like that.
• 23:23
  Mark Pracht: Telling his war stories.
• 23:25
  Mark Pracht: it's…
• 23:28
  Mark Pracht: it… there's… like, it… it's a great mind game, but it also makes me wonder if it would have worked. Because, like, I also think there's the famously… I've never been able to find the story, but there was the story he did about growing up in the Lower East Side.
• 23:42
  Mark Pracht: You know, and I've seen the artwork, and if you look at it, it is the most busy thing that you've ever seen in your life. Like, there's… and that's probably the world as he saw it, but it doesn't…
• 23:53
  Mark Pracht: It feels like…
• 23:56
  Mark Pracht: Comin' at ya, coming at ya, coming at ya! Whereas when Eisner draws stuff, he's like, come in here, come in here, come in here, you know what I'm saying?
• 24:05
  Mark Pracht: Right. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
• 24:07
  Tad Eggleston: It does.
• 24:08
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 24:12
  Sean Harklerode: different approach.
• 24:14
  Mark Pracht: Different approach.
• 24:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and also, I mean, I…
• 24:17
  Tad Eggleston: you guys are much bigger Kirby files than I am, but I've always… had… a feeling about Kirby.
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: that… Rather than inviting you in.
• 24:30
  Tad Eggleston: He is kind of putting up a wall behind…
• 24:37
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the coming at you.
• 24:40
  Tad Eggleston: it, you know, it's like offense is defense, you know, it's…
• 24:46
  Tad Eggleston: there are parts of this that I'm… I'm…
• 24:49
  Tad Eggleston: Willing, able, and ready to share, and parts of it that…
• 24:53
  Tad Eggleston: Either… either I'm not willing, able, or ready, or I don't believe you want to see, or something.
• 25:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, something has me hold back and not…
• 25:05
  Tad Eggleston: And, and again, it shows through sometimes. It shows through in, like, the thing in… in… And what.
• 25:17
  Sean Harklerode: Man, this monster.
• 25:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, it's not completely unpresent. I mean, and I think it's interesting that a lot of the times, the places that it shows through
• 25:30
  Tad Eggleston: Are… are the books that are remembered by history,
• 25:34
  Tad Eggleston: They're the books that get talked about 50, 60 years later.
• 25:41
  Tad Eggleston: And it just makes me curious as to why he didn't do more of that.
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 25:47
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, if… if you want my gut-level reaction, why he didn't do more of that… didn't pay.
• 25:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you…
• 25:57
  Mark Pracht: Look, that's, like, one of the things that, that, like.
• 26:02
  Mark Pracht: It's… it's the… it's the through line of Kirby's life. I got a family, I gotta pay.
• 26:08
  Mark Pracht: feed this family, that this is a job. I do this job really well, but I'm going to crank out what I'm asked to crank out on a monthly basis. And it's, like, even when…
• 26:19
  Tad Eggleston: That… that, like, totally, totally tracks, actually. Because God knows that, like, editorial and… and…
• 26:30
  Tad Eggleston: particularly, like, like, what's the word I'm looking for? Corporate! Have, have always had trouble understanding, like.
• 26:41
  Tad Eggleston: The ability of making money over time, rather than making money right now.
• 26:49
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, look. But, like, I think you could say that about Jack himself. I mean, like, he was like, I'm gonna do 6 books, you know.
• 26:58
  Mark Pracht: like, at Marvel, he was doing however many books, I'm gonna draw…
• 27:01
  Tad Eggleston: But I think he also understood that the industry wasn't set up for him to easily make money over time.
• 27:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, not at all. And that's why he was… he was… he was doing what they asked for, he was doing what they told him sold, he was doing what they were willing to pay for.
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: Which means that, like, again, to me, I mean…
• 27:23
  Tad Eggleston: it's not hard to see the brilliance of some of these books that he doesn't do as many of, so if he doesn't have people jumping up and down, saying, do more of this, then the people who were in charge of making the money
• 27:39
  Tad Eggleston: didn't have particularly good taste, or an understanding of what was actually gonna be read, and could be reprinted, and could be…
• 27:47
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but Tad, you're also looking… you're also…
• 27:50
  Sean Harklerode: Granted, it was not.
• 27:51
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 27:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Like, none of this stuff was being reprinted.
• 27:55
  Tad Eggleston: No, not yet.
• 27:56
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, yeah.
• 27:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's another massive oversight that, that, like, I mean, and again, I mean, yes, it wasn't happening, but, like, comic strips were, so it's not like… it's not like there was nobody with the idea that there was…
• 28:11
  Mark Pracht: But I think… I think that… I think that you're taking… look.
• 28:16
  Mark Pracht: Bluntly, I think that you're taking the world that we live in now.
• 28:20
  Mark Pracht: and applying it to a world that was then, right? Like… This was disposable entertainment, right?
• 28:27
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 28:27
  Mark Pracht: Now, like, and that when you talk about the newspaper strips, that was a whole different world.
• 28:34
  Mark Pracht: Like, it was an entirely different world, and everyone talks about that. That's why all of these comic book guys really wanted a newspaper strip.
• 28:42
  Tad Eggleston: I absolutely understand both of those things, and what I'm saying is it's evidence that
• 28:48
  Tad Eggleston: Throughout time, the money has been short on vision.
• 28:55
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that, that's, that's fair enough to say, but what I'm saying is that if, if, like, the… if…
• 29:05
  Mark Pracht: if… no one thinks If everybody thinks we're gonna print this public… this pamphlet, this month.
• 29:16
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, it might stay on the newsstand for 2 months or whatever.
• 29:21
  Mark Pracht: And then it's gonna get pulled off, and they're gonna rip the cover off, and they're gonna send it back, and we're gonna pay them for the un…
• 29:27
  Mark Pracht: You know, because that was the newsstand market.
• 29:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, like.
• 29:31
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 29:31
  Tad Eggleston: the…
• 29:32
  Mark Pracht: Well, all I'm saying is, no one, no one thought there was anything more.
• 29:37
  Tad Eggleston: No. Right. Well, that's not entirely true, because Bill Gaines started doing collections of Mad pretty quickly.
• 29:46
  Mark Pracht: But Mad… well, yeah, but MAD was also a magazine, you know, it wasn't…
• 29:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but it didn't… it was only a magazine because the other comic…
• 29:54
  Tad Eggleston: companies who were on their way out of business forced it to become one. What I'm saying is it's, yes, it would have taken somebody who was at least mildly visionary
• 30:05
  Tad Eggleston: But… but I don't think that there was not enough evidence that it was possible there for Martin Goodman to have made Marvel a powerhouse, rather than…
• 30:17
  Tad Eggleston: sending it into multiple rounds of bankruptcy before Disney bought it.
• 30:24
  Mark Pracht: Well, multiple rounds of bankruptcy also happened well after Martin Goodman gave up the company.
• 30:30
  Tad Eggleston: I understand, like.
• 30:32
  Mark Pracht: Look, there was…
• 30:34
  Tad Eggleston: I would, I would slam… I mean, like…
• 30:38
  Tad Eggleston: And again, none of this has a ton to do with Kirby, so it's not a huge, huge point. It's not a huge, huge point. I'm not saying that Kirby should have fought the battle to make the money
• 30:51
  Tad Eggleston: be smarter about the money, I'm saying that it's a shame how much it… in a capitalistic society, when there's an imbalance of power, the money often also lacks vision.
• 31:07
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but I'm also saying… but what I'm saying is… what I'm saying, Ted, is that, in a lot of ways, because
• 31:14
  Mark Pracht: These were disposable.
• 31:16
  Mark Pracht: entertainment. It also meant, oh, who gives a shit? Just put it out. Right? So that if somebody wanted to sneak stuff in, they could.
• 31:27
  Mark Pracht: Right? That's true. And we see it all through history. And the thing is, that's… that's just as true as anything else. But the fact of the matter is, is like, when you talk about a capitalistic society, if… if…
• 31:41
  Mark Pracht: like…
• 31:42
  Mark Pracht: it wasn't until somebody did something and it sold, because, like, they were reprinting things occasionally, like, you know, there's all sorts of things where there's, like, war books at DC where they're reprinting various things, you know, along with new material. There's, you know, Marvel Tales started fairly…
• 32:01
  Mark Pracht: fairly early in the Marvel thing, to where they were just reprinting stuff.
• 32:05
  Sean Harklerode: But I mean… There's some backups.
• 32:07
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:08
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, what I'm saying is that… De…
• 32:14
  Mark Pracht: it wasn't until this fandom thing erupted that there seemed to be this hunger to, like, oh, I'd like to have a nicely bound version of this, you know? Like, really, you don't see that until Origins of Marvel Comics.
• 32:29
  Mark Pracht: And that's… and that proved that there was a market for it, but that was also in the mid-'70s, when you had also already had this explosion of a fandom culture, right?
• 32:38
  Tad Eggleston: And it still took them 20 more years before they started really collecting things.
• 32:44
  Tad Eggleston: Which, I mean, again, It was all…
• 32:50
  Tad Eggleston: all really just a… I dream of an alternate history where somebody
• 33:00
  Tad Eggleston: Had slightly more foresight about… about… the… Staying power of comics.
• 33:13
  Tad Eggleston: Because it would have… it probably would have made Jack Kirby more money, and it also would have made us…
• 33:21
  Tad Eggleston: be able to read more truly great Jack Kirby comics.
• 33:27
  Tad Eggleston: That's all I'm saying.
• 33:29
  Tad Eggleston: I understand the reasons against it. Money doesn't want to gamble. And there wasn't evidence… there were a million reasons that they could come up with for why it wouldn't work, and not a lot of reasons why they could come up with for why it would.
• 33:43
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, but that's… that's the history of… like, that's… but that's business. I mean, like.
• 33:49
  Tad Eggleston: I know!
• 33:49
  Mark Pracht: if… but I mean, like, look, there's…
• 33:52
  Mark Pracht: not everybody… not every Walt Disney has a Roy O. Disney who's, like.
• 33:57
  Mark Pracht: Just let him cook, and I'll figure out how to pay for it.
• 34:01
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but also, not every Walt Disney…
• 34:06
  Tad Eggleston: Has a market where there is…
• 34:10
  Tad Eggleston: Enough real competition that there is…
• 34:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, even if you look at Disney, they take less risks the bigger they become.
• 34:21
  Tad Eggleston: When you actually have…
• 34:23
  Mark Pracht: Tad, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about now, I'm talking about, like, in the 1950s, I'm talking about in the.
• 34:29
  Tad Eggleston: I am too.
• 34:30
  Mark Pracht: When the company is on financially shaky ground.
• 34:35
  Mark Pracht: And Walt says, I want to build an amusement park.
• 34:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right!
• 34:39
  Mark Pracht: And Roy Disney is like, we're gonna go bankrupt doing this, but I'll figure it out for you, because I believe in your vision.
• 34:47
  Mark Pracht: That's… like, I think that… I think that you keep… like, this conversation keeps going towards what a conglomerate is now, as opposed.
• 34:55
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, but…
• 34:56
  Mark Pracht: talking about.
• 34:57
  Tad Eggleston: Mark, what I'm saying is… That kind of risk… Is… is easier to take.
• 35:05
  Tad Eggleston: When you're not trying to compete with a conglomerate, which they weren't at the time.
• 35:11
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 35:12
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I was saying.
• 35:14
  Mark Pracht: But they're all conglomerates now, right? Right. And now… but… and they're all responding to exactly what
• 35:21
  Mark Pracht: They're exact… they're responding to exactly what they're on.
• 35:24
  Tad Eggleston: But this is also what I was saying about Goodman. Comics might not have had conglomerates, but publishing already did. And Goodman thought of himself more as a publisher than a comic book publisher.
• 35:35
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 35:36
  Tad Eggleston: So, so he did not have incentives to take risks.
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: That's all I was saying.
• 35:43
  Mark Pracht: No. But I mean, like, Goodman's also not a great example, because Goodman was a… was a… was a,
• 35:51
  Mark Pracht: unrepentant bandwagoner, you know?
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: Well, absolutely.
• 35:55
  Mark Pracht: For them, we'll do our own version of it. But look, look, man…
• 35:59
  Tad Eggleston: But I don't know who ran DC at the time.
• 36:02
  Mark Pracht: Bill Gaines… Bill Gaines is probably your best example.
• 36:05
  Mark Pracht: Because he had… he had a vision of what… of doing something that was better, and doing something that reached out into a… Sean's sneezing, because he's like, fucking shut up. But I mean, like, Bill Gaines had a vision to try to… to reach out to a larger audience, had a vision that this was more than just disposable entertainment.
• 36:27
  Mark Pracht: Like, and it was a small vision, but it was a vision, right?
• 36:32
  Mark Pracht: And the thing is, is that a whole load of shit that happened culturally and business-wise conspired to…
• 36:41
  Mark Pracht: to hamstring what he was doing. Because, look.
• 36:46
  Mark Pracht: like, we can talk about… we can talk about how the commas code is set up to crush EC, which is absolutely true, as far as I'm concerned. But it also was responding to a very real… very real feeling within the audience, right? And the thing is, is like.
• 37:03
  Mark Pracht: All of this stuff always comes back to the audience. If the… if… if the audience wrote in.
• 37:11
  Mark Pracht: like, and this is the thing, Stan was listening to people, so when they were like, you know what, I missed all those early Fantastic Four issues, it'd be great if you could reprint them, so Stan was like, hey, we'll do a thing called Marvel Tales, and we'll put out… we'll put out reprints of those books so that people can read them, you know? And the thing is, it's like, that…
• 37:31
  Mark Pracht: A, The audience was changing.
• 37:36
  Mark Pracht: And that the… the… that… that… and that they were actually writing letters that weren't just, like, you know.
• 37:45
  Mark Pracht: what, you know, were, like, kids writing in saying that I love Casper the Ghost, or whatever, you know, they were actually, like.
• 37:52
  Mark Pracht: like, what he's talking about is true, even though he's also making it up on some levels. But…
• 37:59
  Mark Pracht: all I'm saying is that I think that there is a very real… there's this… there's this… this…
• 38:07
  Mark Pracht: Cultural desire to look at things that were
• 38:12
  Mark Pracht: then, as things are now, and say that all things are equal, which they're not. And that when you're talking about
• 38:21
  Mark Pracht: you know, like, we can look at… like, and I've said it in this podcast, we can look at Kirby's books. This is 1971, 72, 73, right? Like, these books are coming out AFTER
• 38:36
  Mark Pracht: O'Neill and Adams put out the Hard Traveling Heroes thing in Green Lantern and Green Arrow, right? And that…
• 38:44
  Mark Pracht: That was where the industry was heading, and Kirby is doing this stuff, which feels like it doesn't understand that, right?
• 38:54
  Mark Pracht: And that's… and that's…
• 38:56
  Mark Pracht: we can look at it now and be like, oh, I see all the stuff that he's trying to do, but that in that moment, it was not the right moment for it, right?
• 39:05
  Mark Pracht: I don't… I'm going way off topic now, so anyway.
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: My only comment at all is that I try more to look at decisions that were made in the past to see how they form where we're at, rather than trying to project where we're at onto the past.
• 39:26
  Tad Eggleston: You know, again, I… I… I understand.
• 39:30
  Tad Eggleston: the whys of this, but I also understand how some of that led to where we are now, and in both good and bad ways.
• 39:40
  Tad Eggleston: Because, again, the great comics showed through, which means we get more of them. It just took time for people to decide to make more of them, because it took time to go, oh, wait, all of these were disposable, but that one wasn't.
• 39:54
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, it's why Will Eisner is able to do much more interesting stuff in the spirit.
• 40:00
  Tad Eggleston: Than he would have if that book had been on the newsstands.
• 40:04
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 40:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, it was on the newsstands, it was just in newspapers, on the newsstands.
• 40:09
  Mark Pracht: Well, it was… but it was also coming into your home with your Sunday paper.
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 40:15
  Mark Pracht: So, like, he wasn't… He… he wasn't subject to…
• 40:21
  Mark Pracht: returns. He wasn't subject to, like… like, a newspaper vendor couldn't
• 40:27
  Mark Pracht: tear off the cover of a spirit and send it back and get money back for it, right?
• 40:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 40:34
  Mark Pracht: But… but…
• 40:35
  Tad Eggleston: Or worse, later on, where they did affidavits, and somehow they regularly had more returned than they sold.
• 40:44
  Tad Eggleston: But the newsstands were mobbed up, so they weren't gonna argue.
• 40:50
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 40:51
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 40:53
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 40:55
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, have a good day.
• 40:59
  Tad Eggleston: But we have… We saw…
• 41:00
  Mark Pracht: everything, Chuck.
• 41:01
  Tad Eggleston: about.
• 41:02
  Mark Pracht: mobbed up, you know? I mean, hell, half the comic book publishers were mobbed up, too, so…
• 41:07
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 41:08
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 41:13
  Mark Pracht: So, I, I wanna know, I wanna know what Sean's… before we started, Sean said, I want to talk about the total bullshit of Issue 15.
• 41:23
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, to me, This whole arc…
• 41:29
  Sean Harklerode: arc. But it's a new direction for the book, starting with issue 12, right?
• 41:36
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 41:37
  Sean Harklerode: And so, it's a… it was a big change for me, reading it, because I kept waiting, in the back of my head.
• 41:47
  Sean Harklerode: For how does…
• 41:48
  Sean Harklerode: how does Mistevac, you know, tie into the Fourth World? And I was like, wait, he's not going to tie into the Fourth World. This is Earthbound technology.
• 41:59
  Sean Harklerode: So, that… that, for me, took some…
• 42:06
  Sean Harklerode: Just rethinking in my head, you know, to get… To accept it.
• 42:13
  Sean Harklerode: And there are a couple of references to where BARDA and I started, etc.
• 42:21
  Sean Harklerode: I'm not sure what… Purpose Ted Brown…
• 42:27
  Sean Harklerode: serves in the book. It feels like, to me.
• 42:32
  Sean Harklerode: to me, it's like, you either need Ted or you need Oberon. I don't need both of those characters. Right.
• 42:42
  Sean Harklerode: But I did think it's interesting, you know, that, you know, he put Ted in the Korean War, so I guess trying to young him up a little from…
• 42:53
  Sean Harklerode: from where Jack was.
• 42:56
  Mark Pracht: Well, I… I think that…
• 43:00
  Mark Pracht: there's clearly some… okay, well, first of all, we know the Fourth World… the Fourth World is quote-unquote dead, right?
• 43:08
  Mark Pracht: They killed it. So, now…
• 43:11
  Mark Pracht: I think it's a double-edged sword. I think that there is a certain amount of freedom that comes with not having to tie into that.
• 43:18
  Mark Pracht: That allows him to be like, okay, it's just a superhero book now.
• 43:22
  Mark Pracht: But then… you realize… After a few issues, you're like, oh wait.
• 43:32
  Mark Pracht: the real uniqueness of this book was the tie-in to the Fourth World.
• 43:37
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 43:38
  Mark Pracht: Because, like, the whole deal, like, we've discussed this several times, too. Like, this whole super escape artist thing is… is great, except we never really
• 43:49
  Mark Pracht: it's always this deus ex machina thing, you know?
• 43:52
  Sean Harklerode: And that continues.
• 43:53
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. What, oh, the…
• 43:55
  Sean Harklerode: All Batman's utility belt.
• 43:57
  Sean Harklerode: His entire suit is the utility belt.
• 44:01
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 44:02
  Mark Pracht: And, and… You don't really, like, it's weird because it doesn't feel earned.
• 44:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the evil eyes… issue where he suddenly had this ability to…
• 44:18
  Tad Eggleston: Send out these waves from his suit to…
• 44:22
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 44:23
  Tad Eggleston: Find… not only find the person he was looking for, but then…
• 44:28
  Tad Eggleston: Influence their decisions and thoughts and speech.
• 44:34
  Tad Eggleston: From afar, it's like… I feel like this is a power that we would have heard about before now.
• 44:41
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 44:42
  Tad Eggleston: We just discovered this one?
• 44:44
  Sean Harklerode: That's kinda weird.
• 44:47
  Mark Pracht: You know.
• 44:47
  Sean Harklerode: re…
• 44:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 44:48
  Sean Harklerode: I realize I kind of misspoke, when I talked about Mistavac being, Earthbound technology, because, of course, he's… he's an alien trapped in a little dome. Reminded me of Dalek.
• 45:00
  Sean Harklerode: Really.
• 45:01
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 45:02
  Sean Harklerode: and I think…
• 45:04
  Sean Harklerode: it's a very golden age, or a Jack thing to do, to have that creature just get killed.
• 45:13
  Sean Harklerode: You know, whereas I was like.
• 45:15
  Sean Harklerode: These people have been imprisoning him for thousands of years.
• 45:21
  Sean Harklerode: And… and we're just going to kill him off.
• 45:24
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 45:25
  Sean Harklerode: Right? I, I, I thought.
• 45:26
  Mark Pracht: Because he's the problem.
• 45:28
  Sean Harklerode: Right! He's obviously the problem, not the people who've been abusing him for millennia.
• 45:35
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Right?
• 45:38
  Sean Harklerode: But I think I probably put more thought into that than Jack did when he was drawing it that day. He was like, well, I gotta get rid of this guy, and…
• 45:46
  Sean Harklerode: You know, these kids aren't gonna care, but I mean, I do think that had this book… had this book come out now.
• 45:53
  Sean Harklerode: you would have, you know, Mr. DeVac would have either still been evil and had a second career.
• 46:01
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 46:01
  Sean Harklerode: evil on his own, or would have thanked Mr. Miracle profusely and dedicated his life to, to, to, righting the wrongs that he…
• 46:12
  Mark Pracht: Right. Committed. Well, you know, it is one of those things, it's like, Jack seems…
• 46:18
  Mark Pracht: and this may… this may be a holdover from the… the, the Marvel thing, is he, like, he seems pretty intent on…
• 46:28
  Mark Pracht: Getting rid of anything that he creates new.
• 46:32
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 46:33
  Mark Pracht: Like, oh no, you're not gonna use it again, because I'm getting… it's gone. It's gone, you know?
• 46:39
  Sean Harklerode: The chests are gold in him.
• 46:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's right.
• 46:42
  Sean Harklerode: But I mean…
• 46:44
  Mark Pracht: It's also comics, so, I mean, like, you know, they're gonna bring it back. Like, I don't know, I think…
• 46:51
  Mark Pracht: It just feels so, like… I've talked about it before, how these books feel very Golden Age-y.
• 46:59
  Mark Pracht: And I think now, it feels even more so.
• 47:04
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 47:06
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, because, yeah, it is… it is real narrative whiplash, where you're like, I… what… what happened to all of this? You know, every once in a while, they'll mention Darkseid, or, you know…
• 47:18
  Mark Pracht: I don't know.
• 47:19
  Sean Harklerode: But, speaking of…
• 47:22
  Sean Harklerode: Tad, you had… Hugh had brought up, you know, your panel, and I had marked a panel in that same book, issue 13.
• 47:29
  Sean Harklerode: It's the first panel… the second panel on page 3.
• 47:35
  Sean Harklerode: Where I was looking at it, and this is the first time… so I read these on a Kindle,
• 47:43
  Sean Harklerode: As opposed to reading in my big omnibus.
• 47:46
  Sean Harklerode: Just to kind of see how it worked. And that panel of the train just about to strike Scott.
• 47:54
  Sean Harklerode: If I were Roy Lichtenstein, That'd be… That'd be my… Panel to copy.
• 48:04
  Sean Harklerode: I just think that is quintessential Kirby.
• 48:09
  Sean Harklerode: You know, you've got the crackle, you've got… impact…
• 48:15
  Sean Harklerode: And it's great. I just wish… that I had seen how…
• 48:20
  Sean Harklerode: Mr. Miracle gets away from that train.
• 48:25
  Sean Harklerode: you know.
• 48:26
  Mark Pracht: It… yeah.
• 48:27
  Sean Harklerode: That… but, I mean, that is… I mean, that…
• 48:30
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, I've talked about it last month.
• 48:33
  Sean Harklerode: And it continues, you know, throughout this, even with BARDA.
• 48:39
  Sean Harklerode: you know.
• 48:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, we saw, he just stood up on the other side of it after it crushed everything.
• 48:46
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 48:48
  Sean Harklerode: I just… and I think, Mark, maybe you have said that, you know, had…
• 48:54
  Sean Harklerode: Had Jack, you know, passed this off to…
• 48:57
  Sean Harklerode: Steranko, or someone, you know, Steranko…
• 49:02
  Sean Harklerode: Could have, you know, shown some of those escapes.
• 49:07
  Mark Pracht: Well, you know.
• 49:07
  Sean Harklerode: Like, at Ditko. Like.
• 49:11
  Sean Harklerode: I'm thinking back of its, Spider-Man, you know, it's the… it's being pressed under the weight.
• 49:20
  Sean Harklerode: you know, 34, or…
• 49:22
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 49:25
  Sean Harklerode: That's such a fantastic sequence, and it is… Spider-Man, under stress.
• 49:33
  Sean Harklerode: Having to escape, having to press this huge weight up, and… And we see everything.
• 49:40
  Mark Pracht: Mr. Bear.
• 49:40
  Sean Harklerode: have to face something like that, I think it would be amazing.
• 49:46
  Mark Pracht: I… it just struck me that what I think, you know, Jack is obviously trying to build tension.
• 49:54
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 49:55
  Mark Pracht: It… it is…
• 49:57
  Sean Harklerode: He does build the tension, but then…
• 50:00
  Mark Pracht: It's gone.
• 50:00
  Sean Harklerode: It's Deusi Komagana.
• 50:02
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, it's funny how, like, modern… modern storytelling would tell you that that should come at the end of the page.
• 50:12
  Mark Pracht: So then you have to turn the page, you know.
• 50:14
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 50:15
  Mark Pracht: But the other thing is, is, like, the way to keep that is that…
• 50:20
  Mark Pracht: oh my god, Scott, how did you escape? And then have Scott…
• 50:25
  Mark Pracht: like, actually show us how Scott escaped, you know?
• 50:28
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 50:29
  Mark Pracht: Not… and not like… because, like, and… you know, look, Kirby's not a detail guy. He's never been a detail guy. I don't think he cares about the details. Because I remember there was the one thing where it was like the…
• 50:41
  Mark Pracht: It was several issues back, but it was, like, the killer car wash thing, where he got locked in the, like, sarcophagus deal that went through the deal, you know, it was, like, flames and everything, and it turned out that he had lasers on the bottom of his shoe that dropped… that cut the floor, and he dropped through. And you were like, okay, but you never see it.
• 51:02
  Mark Pracht: He just says, oh, I had laser cutters on the bottom of my boots.
• 51:07
  Mark Pracht: And it's like, okay, well, that's really…
• 51:10
  Mark Pracht: That's kind of a wet fart, isn't it?
• 51:13
  Mark Pracht: But I mean, yeah, I, like…
• 51:16
  Mark Pracht: It's such a great gimmick, right?
• 51:20
  Mark Pracht: the super escape artist thing is such a great gimmick. Like, it is such a great gimmick, and I never, like…
• 51:28
  Mark Pracht: for all the… all the… all the great things that Jack does, I never felt like… I don't ever feel like he really…
• 51:38
  Mark Pracht: Uses that gimmick to its fullest.
• 51:41
  Mark Pracht: potential.
• 51:44
  Sean Harklerode: Wow.
• 51:46
  Mark Pracht: And, that's… and that's great. You guys have a great day.
• 51:50
  Sean Harklerode: So, you know, what… what I…
• 51:54
  Mark Pracht: I really want to hear, because you sounded mad about…
• 51:57
  Sean Harklerode: Well, yeah, I was very disappointed in this. So, at the end of issue 14,
• 52:05
  Sean Harklerode: we get, without his mask, we can all recognize Mr. Miracle as scot-free, but…
• 52:11
  Sean Harklerode: Who is the real Big Barda?
• 52:17
  Sean Harklerode: Hey, man, I'm gonna… we're gonna…
• 52:20
  Sean Harklerode: Are we going back to the Fourth World? Are we going back to Apocalypse? What's happening in this next issue?
• 52:29
  Sean Harklerode: Okay, it's the new, young superhero, alright, it's about Shiloh. Well, it opens on Big Barda.
• 52:37
  Sean Harklerode: And then… She's doing stuff, but no, no, no, no.
• 52:45
  Sean Harklerode: Where am I going to find out about the real big BARDA?
• 52:48
  Sean Harklerode: Chapter 3, I still haven't found a real big Barda.
• 52:52
  Sean Harklerode: Chapter 4 is titled, The Real Big Barda.
• 52:58
  Mark Pracht: Okay!
• 53:02
  Sean Harklerode: Where in this do I find the real big BARDA?
• 53:09
  Sean Harklerode: Is it the fact that she says that she couldn't let Scott die?
• 53:15
  Sean Harklerode: Is that the real Big Barda?
• 53:19
  Sean Harklerode: What part of this am I missing?
• 53:25
  Mark Pracht: I'm guessing…
• 53:26
  Sean Harklerode: Did… did Carmine say, you're not going back to Apocalypse, we're not telling the story of the real big Barda?
• 53:34
  Mark Pracht: Or… or were they working on it, and Mark Ivanier was like, Jack, the last issue ended saying, you're gonna show the real big Barna.
• 53:43
  Mark Pracht: And he's like, oh, I'll just… I'll throw it in on the last act.
• 53:48
  Sean Harklerode: I mean… I was like… I mean, look, we've got Mr. Fez, who… you know, clearly…
• 54:03
  Sean Harklerode: you know, Yavut Koto would have played him in the movie.
• 54:07
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 54:08
  Sean Harklerode: But, I just felt like I was bait and switched.
• 54:14
  Mark Pracht: Well, look, I think… I… as I was reading these.
• 54:19
  Mark Pracht: I'm… I'm really struck by how everything… every one of these issues is Mr. Miracle and…
• 54:27
  Mark Pracht: Mr. Miracle and Big Bardav, Mr. Miracle and Oberon, Mr. Miracle and Ted Brown, you know, it's like… like…
• 54:36
  Mark Pracht: it… it… I think he's clearly looking for something.
• 54:41
  Mark Pracht: to hook people.
• 54:43
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 54:44
  Mark Pracht: And then it's like, Shiloh.
• 54:47
  Mark Pracht: Okay?
• 54:50
  Mark Pracht: Because, you know, and what golden age thinking is that? Okay, we're kind of struggling, sidekick.
• 54:59
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 55:03
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, I, I totally agree with you. I, I will say.
• 55:08
  Sean Harklerode: I have.
• 55:09
  Mark Pracht: Warren.
• 55:10
  Sean Harklerode: I will say…
• 55:12
  Mark Pracht: Go ahead.
• 55:13
  Sean Harklerode: So I'll share this after, I don't think we need to…
• 55:16
  Mark Pracht: I will say that…
• 55:17
  Sean Harklerode: Larson's dirty laundry again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:21
  Mark Pracht: One of, like, it's not quite as intellectually interesting as the panels you guys were talking about, but…
• 55:30
  Mark Pracht: The… the page 2 and 3…
• 55:34
  Mark Pracht: double-page spread in issue 15 is probably my favorite Kirby… artwork.
• 55:43
  Mark Pracht: Ever. If I could, in my wildest dreams, have one… I guess two pages of original Kirby artwork, it would be this one. There's something about the giant…
• 55:55
  Mark Pracht: Pair of pliers.
• 55:57
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 55:57
  Mark Pracht: That is just so… like, that's the most Kirby frickin' thing I've ever thought of, you know?
• 56:06
  Sean Harklerode: There's a really good, another one that I, that I also picked up on page,
• 56:14
  Sean Harklerode: I think it's 15… yeah, page 15 in the middle, the wham.
• 56:20
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 56:22
  Sean Harklerode: So it's in the middle.
• 56:23
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 56:23
  Sean Harklerode: That is just a fantastic explosion… .
• 56:29
  Mark Pracht: That is a… that is a great panel.
• 56:32
  Mark Pracht: That you can draw really fast.
• 56:35
  Sean Harklerode: Right But…
• 56:38
  Mark Pracht: That's… you know, it's like, this is that period of Kirby where it really… it does… and I'm not… this is not me trying to be a jerk, but watching Jack find ways
• 56:50
  Mark Pracht: to go faster, Always cracks me up.
• 56:55
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 56:59
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 57:01
  Mark Pracht: But, I felt that these were enjoyable.
• 57:05
  Sean Harklerode: I, I, I enjoyed all four of them.
• 57:08
  Sean Harklerode: hello.
• 57:11
  Sean Harklerode: Irritated… 15.
• 57:15
  Sean Harklerode: But, you know, it's like… it felt… it felt different from what we had seen before.
• 57:23
  Mark Pracht: 100%. I think that's… I think that's the double-edged sword of what I'm talking about. I think that there is… there is sort of… he's released from the… the… the…
• 57:31
  Mark Pracht: the… the… Chains of having to tie into this whole Fourth World thing.
• 57:40
  Mark Pracht: You know, so it can be a little more free in terms of what he does, but at the same time, it loses the focus of it.
• 57:52
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 57:54
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 57:55
  Sean Harklerode: head?
• 58:00
  Mark Pracht: pads.
• 58:03
  Tad Eggleston: Ted had,
• 58:08
  Tad Eggleston: minor, non-Kirby-related thing pop up that he's dealing with while trying to be part of the conversation as well.
• 58:15
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, okay. Well… But, I mean, I do… look, I…
• 58:22
  Sean Harklerode: I'm excited for the next issue.
• 58:25
  Tad Eggleston: I am too.
• 58:27
  Sean Harklerode: Because I'd like to see, I mean, obviously.
• 58:30
  Tad Eggleston: Shiloh's actually kind of cool, so I'm looking forward to…
• 58:33
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, exactly.
• 58:34
  Tad Eggleston: To seeing more of him.
• 58:35
  Sean Harklerode: And I do like the fact that… I haven't heard of Shiloh in the intervening 50 years, so…
• 58:39
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's true.
• 58:39
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know where this goes.
• 58:41
  Tad Eggleston: It might be that he only has these two issues.
• 58:43
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 58:44
  Tad Eggleston: But also, while we didn't actually get to know the real BARDA, we have been getting to know more BARDA.
• 58:54
  Tad Eggleston: Like, she acknowledged briefly that she has feelings for Scott when he was in danger at one point, and…
• 59:02
  Tad Eggleston: Scott's kind of acknowledged that he has feelings for her, and… and, you know… I mean…
• 59:10
  Sean Harklerode: Which I…
• 59:11
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe they'll pass each other a note at study hall.
• 59:15
  Sean Harklerode: To me, that seemed like a bit of retconning.
• 59:19
  Sean Harklerode: To… to… I mean, they've been close this entire time!
• 59:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but they, they were platonically closed.
• 59:29
  Sean Harklerode: At least, maybe.
• 59:31
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 59:36
  Mark Pracht: You know, what are we…
• 59:38
  Sean Harklerode: On issue 15…
• 59:40
  Mark Pracht: I'm gonna say this. Scott and Barta have been,
• 59:44
  Mark Pracht: Bumpin' ugly since, like, issue 10.
• 59:51
  Sean Harklerode: What a woman!
• 59:53
  Mark Pracht: Word.
• 59:56
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, this is the 50s. Nobody… or no, I mean, it's the 70s, but it feels like the 50s. Nobody bumped uglies in Jack Kirby's time.
• 1:00:07
  Tad Eggleston: Babies came from cabbage patches and storks.
• 1:00:11
  Mark Pracht: I'm just saying, look, I think, you know, it's…
• 1:00:16
  Sean Harklerode: I have been to that Cabbage Pash hospital.
• 1:00:19
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 1:00:24
  Sean Harklerode: Have you ever been there?
• 1:00:25
  Mark Pracht: I've… I've read about it, yeah.
• 1:00:27
  Mark Pracht: You know, I think…
• 1:00:31
  Sean Harklerode: North of Georgia.
• 1:00:32
  Mark Pracht: This… this is one of those things, I think that…
• 1:00:37
  Mark Pracht: you know, we talk about the… the book kind of feels like a Golden Age book in a lot of ways, like, I… you know, I've talked about the whole, like, where the rest of the comics was. There's this whole fandom that's arising that I think is influencing Jack, but it's funny, because I think he still thinks he's writing for 10-year-olds.
• 1:00:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  Mark Pracht: And, and… That's clear.
• 1:01:00
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, like, I… Quite honestly, looking at the world of, you know.
• 1:01:07
  Mark Pracht: like, I think that that is… that is a…
• 1:01:11
  Mark Pracht: I think that there is a nice middle ground that you can get to between writing so it's accessible to children, and also not insulting to adults.
• 1:01:20
  Mark Pracht: that, comics have shifted back and forth across over the decades, you know?
• 1:01:28
  Mark Pracht: But, yeah, it… And I think… In a way.
• 1:01:38
  Mark Pracht: that may be part of the problem with the whole Fourth World Enterprise as it is, is, like, it… that it…
• 1:01:44
  Mark Pracht: It seems to want to grapple with these big philosophical issues, but that…
• 1:01:49
  Mark Pracht: this idea that Jack's gotta sell books to a 10-year-old is… is always kind of holding him back from it. And now, like.
• 1:01:57
  Mark Pracht: And of course, we'll never know what Carmine said to him.
• 1:02:01
  Mark Pracht: You know, really.
• 1:02:02
  Mark Pracht: did he say, get rid of all this dark side crap and all of that?
• 1:02:09
  Mark Pracht: But, you know… That can't be entirely what he said, because, like, spoilers, it does come back, you know?
• 1:02:18
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:02:19
  Mark Pracht: I don't know.
• 1:02:22
  Mark Pracht: But, I think that…
• 1:02:29
  Mark Pracht: you know, I've said it… I've said it myself, my favorite post-Kirby work is… is Commandi.
• 1:02:35
  Mark Pracht: Although I have not read those books in…
• 1:02:38
  Mark Pracht: 15, 20 years, so I may be looking at that through Rose-colored glasses, I'll totally admit that, but…
• 1:02:46
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read it all, but I do love the Commandee Challenge.
• 1:02:50
  Mark Pracht: Randy Challenge is fun, but yeah, like, I was in love with that. But I, you know, I'm talking about the books that…
• 1:02:57
  Tad Eggleston: one.
• 1:02:58
  Mark Pracht: he would have been starting, I think, right now.
• 1:03:01
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I, I thought about that.
• 1:03:03
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:03:04
  Tad Eggleston: earlier this week, because Phantographics sent me a… Advance of the… Barry Windsor Smith… In the Savage Land.
• 1:03:15
  Tad Eggleston: Book that they've got coming out, and, like… It's… really kinda…
• 1:03:26
  Tad Eggleston: So many artists of that era started out by being Kirby.
• 1:03:31
  Tad Eggleston: and then developing their own style. And that's really what you see throughout
• 1:03:40
  Tad Eggleston: that… that volume, is that, like, he's… he's perfecting Kirby, and then…
• 1:03:46
  Tad Eggleston: and then branching out. I mean, his Khazar looks so much like Commandee, it's not even funny.
• 1:03:54
  Mark Pracht: Like, I mean, like, you look at Keith Geffen's early stuff, it is Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, you know?
• 1:04:01
  Tad Eggleston: Neil Adams. Alarm.
• 1:04:05
  Mark Pracht: Although, I… I… I don't know, I think Neil is way too, well-trained as an artist.
• 1:04:16
  Mark Pracht: to… totally be a Kirby clone?
• 1:04:21
  Tad Eggleston: I think he… I think he moved away from it faster, but I think if you look at a lot of his early, early stuff.
• 1:04:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it has more polish than some Kirby, and that's part of what you love about Kirby, is the way it's sometimes rough around the edges. But he used a lot of Kirby poses, he used a lot of Kirby…
• 1:04:45
  Tad Eggleston: Layouts.
• 1:04:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, when I talk about being heavily influenced by Kirby, I'm very rarely talking about just… the… .
• 1:04:59
  Mark Pracht: Well, you…
• 1:05:01
  Tad Eggleston: Character design itself.
• 1:05:03
  Mark Pracht: Well, and, and, you know, like.
• 1:05:06
  Mark Pracht: it… it's part and parcel of loving Kirby, is like, Kirby does not give a wit about anatomy, or…
• 1:05:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:14
  Mark Pracht: or accuracy in that regard, you know.
• 1:05:20
  Mark Pracht: It's also… he's also famously, you know, the costume designs tend to…
• 1:05:27
  Mark Pracht: shift back and forth, you know? Like,
• 1:05:31
  Mark Pracht: I'm… that's… like, I think that Neil Adams
• 1:05:37
  Mark Pracht: Training as an illustrator made him so… Aware of anatomy.
• 1:05:43
  Mark Pracht: that it… it… like, I've never really thought of atoms, like…
• 1:05:48
  Mark Pracht: I think everybody, especially everybody that has worked at Marvel, is influenced and trained to try to use the Kirby style… not style, but the Kirby layouts and the Kirby sort of dynamic poses and things like that. But I think that…
• 1:06:06
  Mark Pracht: when I look at… when I look at artists.
• 1:06:09
  Mark Pracht: who are clearly influenced by Kirby,
• 1:06:13
  Mark Pracht: And I would… Adam's definitely influenced by Kirby, but I mean, like, I think his handle on anatomy is so much stronger and more ingrained in him.
• 1:06:22
  Mark Pracht: that,
• 1:06:26
  Mark Pracht: it's hard for me to just see him as sort of a Kirby acolyte, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:06:31
  Mark Pracht: Famously, I remember on Comic Book Men, when Neil Adams showed up on that show, they were looking at a print of the, Kryptonite Nevermore cover.
• 1:06:42
  Mark Pracht: And Adams would not stop talking about how he hated that drawing.
• 1:06:47
  Mark Pracht: Because he had to…
• 1:06:50
  Mark Pracht: He had to extend one of the legs to get the text in between them, and he's like, it's totally wrong anatomy.
• 1:06:58
  Mark Pracht: And I'm like, I'm looking at it, and I'm like.
• 1:07:01
  Mark Pracht: Looks pretty good to me. I mean…
• 1:07:04
  Mark Pracht: Alright, alright, Neil. But he's like, yeah, that leg's too long, it's too thin, it's… you know, I'm like… and then, of course, you know, I'm looking at it again, I'm like, yeah, you may be right, but I don't give a shit, you know?
• 1:07:15
  Mark Pracht: Right. I mean, and that's… I think that…
• 1:07:18
  Mark Pracht: in a way, that's the whole Kirby ethos. Yeah, it might not be accurate, but who gives a shit, you know?
• 1:07:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:07:26
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 1:07:27
  Sean Harklerode: And the chains bursting.
• 1:07:29
  Mark Pracht: chains bursting.
• 1:07:31
  Mark Pracht: But, anyway.
• 1:07:33
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that was the giveaway that Scott was okay, is that, like, that panel had chains bursting flying out from the train, but you saw no tattered costume, no severed heads or limbs.
• 1:07:50
  Tad Eggleston: Just flying chains and rocks. Now, I'm curious… curious as to where the rocks came from.
• 1:07:58
  Sean Harklerode: Really?
• 1:07:59
  Sean Harklerode: into the ground right before it hit him.
• 1:08:03
  Mark Pracht: I've sh…
• 1:08:03
  Tad Eggleston: There we go, we now know how Scott survived. The rocks came from… he went down first, and then came up, and he tossed up rocks.
• 1:08:14
  Tad Eggleston: See? You figured it out. It was there all along, Mark.
• 1:08:19
  Mark Pracht: I'm gonna tell you.
• 1:08:20
  Sean Harklerode: Right now, I haven't…
• 1:08:21
  Mark Pracht: Even a simpler answer for you?
• 1:08:23
  Mark Pracht: Every time Scott does an escape, it's a follower.
• 1:08:30
  Mark Pracht: It's one of those bodies that they can project themselves into.
• 1:08:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, okay.
• 1:08:36
  Mark Pracht: I've been there all along. So every time he's in an escape, it's a follower, the follower gets destroyed, and then Scott steps out and goes, hey!
• 1:08:46
  Mark Pracht: I'm the greatest skateboarder.
• 1:08:48
  Tad Eggleston: It doesn't explain the rocks.
• 1:08:56
  Mark Pracht: Not being detail-minded.
• 1:08:59
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, have you ever walked along the railroad track?
• 1:09:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, but I've also seen trains go by the railroad tracks, and those rocks don't fly up while they're doing it.
• 1:09:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I've seen that train, and it ain't never coming back.
• 1:09:19
  Tad Eggleston: Oh…
• 1:09:20
  Mark Pracht: Anyway… I should probably wrap up, guys.
• 1:09:24
  Tad Eggleston: For the Fourth World Book Club on 22 Panels. This has been Mark Pratt and Sean Harkle Road, and we will see you after the next page.