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Heroes of Bronze Book Club #5 - Secret Crisis pt. 2 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Heroes of Bronze Book Club on 22 Panels, where today we will discuss the second issues of Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars and DC.
0:16
Tad Eggleston: Crisis on Infinite Earths. I am joined by City Lits, Brian Pastor, Mark Pratt, and Sean Harkerwood. This is almost the City Lit podcast now. If it weren't for that guy Dan in Fargo actually showing up this time.
0:31
Dan Newland: Absolutely.
0:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
0:34
Tad Eggleston: So so yeah, we we We… we dove deeper into these two storylines, and… and my… my, brief, brief
0:46
Tad Eggleston: two cents to lead off, like I did last time, is, like, the dichotomy between this is a story and
0:54
Tad Eggleston: This is a lot of words to…
0:58
Tad Eggleston: To… justify having all of these characters to make action figures of has, been…
1:09
Tad Eggleston: what's the word I'm looking for? Reinforced by these issues.
1:15
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, those are… that's… that's… that's my… my two-cent opinion, though I did still enjoy them both.
1:21
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, I'm kinda…
1:24
Tad Eggleston: More and more blown away each time that… that… I've read Secret Wars many, many times, and this is my first read of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
1:34
Mark Pracht: Bet you've never even heard of anthro before, huh?
1:39
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. No, I hadn't.
1:42
Mark Pracht: I think most people in 1985 hadn't heard of anthro.
1:45
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I had not.
1:47
Dan Newland: Lot of deep cuts in these books as we go along.
1:51
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:51
Mark Pracht: Well, You know, like… just basic…
1:57
Mark Pracht: what I thought second issues is, like, Marv Wolfman and George Perez.
2:06
Mark Pracht: Just, like, okay, they were like, okay, we got the pieces on the board, now let's just blow the whole thing, like, wide.
2:12
Mark Pracht: Because now it's like, okay, all right, we're, we're dealing with Anthro, who, and
2:19
Mark Pracht: Commandee, who might be slightly more well-known than Anthro at that time, but, you know, I think Commandee is actually more well-known now than he would have been in, like, the mid-'80s.
2:29
Tad Eggleston: Probably.
2:31
Mark Pracht: You know, the region… And it just keeps… it keeps going wider.
2:38
Mark Pracht: And I think that.
2:41
Mark Pracht: Secret Wars just sort of stays.
2:44
Mark Pracht: Right where it was, you know?
2:47
Brian Pastor (they/them): I mean, I would even argue, Mark, that Secret Wars is structured in such an odd way that
2:53
Brian Pastor (they/them): it stays where it was, but it, like, jumps around in time. It's so odd to me. It's like, okay, this reminds me of a time in college
3:04
Brian Pastor (they/them): When I wrote what I thought was the absolute best paper on Irish history that was ever written, and I decided that I was going to be cool and I was going to.
3:14
Brian Pastor (they/them): start off the paper by talking about the Easter Rebellion, because that was, like, the big, cool thing to talk about, and then I would go back and talk about stuff before that, and then I'd talk about stuff after that, and to me, it made perfect sense. And my professor looked at that and was like, B-, maybe, I don't know, that's kind of crap.
3:33
Brian Pastor (they/them): And that's kind of how I felt reading Secret Wars. I was like, Jim Shooter's trying to, like, get into the action, he's trying to, like, you know, impress us with
3:43
Brian Pastor (they/them): all the fighting, and get all the action figures going at each other, and you're like, wait, where… where the are we? Did we… did we skip something? Where'd Magneto go? Where the heck is Dr. Doom?
3:55
Brian Pastor (they/them): What is happening? And then you sort of get it, you know, as you go later on in the thing. And to me, that didn't it wasn't nearly as effective, at least for me, as I think Mr. Shooter hoped and expected.
4:09
Sean Harklerode: To me, the Secret Wars, I got the sense.
4:13
Sean Harklerode: And you know, it may be unfair from, you know, maybe there was some predicate for the thinking, but it felt like a kid playing with his toys.
4:23
Sean Harklerode: It was like, alright, let's have these guys fight.
4:25
Sean Harklerode: And then, oh, here's Doctor Doom, he's gonna and Magneto's what's he doing? And
4:31
Sean Harklerode: It… it did just feel… You know. Well, it's us.
4:38
Sean Harklerode: It's there to showcase, introduce these characters, and…
4:42
Sean Harklerode: Kevin D'Yeah, it didn't feel like it moved anything this month. Well, you know.
4:51
Sean Harklerode: Jan's taken hostage.
4:53
Sean Harklerode: Ben loses his powers. So, you know, not nothing happened.
4:58
Mark Pracht: For now. I mean, the.
5:00
Tad Eggleston: The way you… the way you say that, it makes me realize part of why I did appreciate it so much at the time, and for many years after, is that, like.
5:14
Tad Eggleston: I've always viewed action figures, particularly of, like, the Star Wars variety, where they had all of the characters, rather than the more modern variety, where, like, here's 6 different Jack Sparrows, but we don't have any random pirates.
5:33
Tad Eggleston: As creative toys.
5:36
Tad Eggleston: You know, because, like.
5:39
Tad Eggleston: You didn't know what this character that you'd seen on screen for 3 seconds could do until you started doing it with them.
5:49
Tad Eggleston: So, there is an element, like Sean said, where it's just taking the action figures and having them do stuff.
5:55
Sean Harklerode: Right.
5:56
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
5:57
Tad Eggleston: So, to a certain extent, it feels like playing with your action figures with your friends. Yeah, I mean, I…
6:03
Sean Harklerode: I know I've told Mark many times, I have a real affinity for early Iron Man, in the gray suit.
6:11
Sean Harklerode: You know the the original iron suit.
6:14
Sean Harklerode: Because I didn't have an Iron Man figure, but I had a Tin Man from.
6:18
Tad Eggleston: No?
6:19
Sean Harklerode: Oz.
6:20
Dan Newland: the.
6:20
Sean Harklerode: That was my Ironman when I played Adventure.
6:25
Sean Harklerode: And Quasar, the guy, the big tall guy, remember, had a… had a… Most.
6:31
Mark Pracht: The the light beam thing. Yeah.
6:34
Dan Newland: And then…
6:35
Mark Pracht: The alien that he fought had, like, a reflector.
6:38
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, he was. He was Ant-Man for me, or giant man.
6:42
Mark Pracht: Alright, man.
6:43
Tad Eggleston: Dan?
6:44
Dan Newland: Well, I mean, it used to be very much like…
6:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I honestly think that there's a great meta-comic, or… or… even, like, video, where somebody takes action figures and… and…
6:58
Tad Eggleston: and make… remake Secret Wars without even really changing the plot, but just adding in the kids that are… that are playing the game, and the fights they have over, no, you can't do that! What do you mean? Of course I can't!
7:12
Sean Harklerode: Well, there's a great… do you guys ever read Bizarro Comics?
7:17
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes, yeah.
7:19
Sean Harklerode: And there was a one of those was great. It was an Aquaman story, and it was told.
7:26
Sean Harklerode: By a kid playing with toys.
7:29
Sean Harklerode: I love it.
7:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
7:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah.
7:33
Dan Newland: I think this one.
7:34
Mark Pracht: hear what Dan.
7:35
Dan Newland: Yeah, it's like, this is like a classic Marvel Kirby Lee.
7:40
Dan Newland: joint, basically. You know, it is… you take a bunch of characters, and you throw them together, and they all fight for whatever reasons they fight.
7:47
Dan Newland: This… this feels very much like classic Marvel to me, but they've just decided to amp it up by throwing everybody in instead of just a few. You know, this is… this is like one of those anniversary extravaganzas. But there's nothing there.
8:02
Dan Newland: really for plot development. There's nothing there for any real, like, growth for the characters or anything like that. It's just literally people… people punching each other, and then occasionally somebody bloviating on… on something or another.
8:18
Mark Pracht: And.
8:19
Dan Newland: That's… That's what…
8:20
Mark Pracht: Word. Great word.
8:25
Dan Newland: Jim
8:25
Dan Newland: Some of the text in this, there's a point where, like, you know, Reed Richards says something, and Captain America's like, it's no wonder the name Mr. Fantastic is renowned for compassion as well as courage. You give added meaning to the word hero, Richards.
8:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, no, you never…
8:42
Dan Newland: the.
8:42
Tad Eggleston: Shooter grew up on Stan Lee. Yeah, yeah.
8:46
Mark Pracht: Actually, I don't even know that, like, really, what's interesting, I think, is that Jim Shooter was trained under, Mort Weisinger.
8:56
Mark Pracht: So, like, I… in a way, this feels like one of those Silver Age-y…
9:03
Mark Pracht: DC books to me, where it's like, okay, we gotta have a lot of shit happen, but…
9:09
Mark Pracht: Does it amount to much? I don't know. The next issue, everything's gonna be back to normal.
9:13
Sean Harklerode: Very little care.
9:14
Mark Pracht: I mean, like, I do think…
9:17
Mark Pracht: And actually, I think… I was actually thinking about this. This is kind of a good format, I think, for the show, is if we talk about Secret Wars for a while, and then we talk about…
9:26
Tad Eggleston: You know?
9:28
Mark Pracht: Because if we start going back and forth, it's gonna get messy. Right. But,
9:33
Mark Pracht: I think that, you know, I would never say that this was a bad book, right? No, no. It's well drawn.
9:39
Tad Eggleston: blue.
9:40
Mark Pracht: the… I mean, I kind of agree with Brian in that it does kind of… like, it… there's so many pieces on the board, and it's, like, moving around, and…
9:50
Mark Pracht: I mean, I did… there was, at one point, we were talking about, like, this is possibly one of the best Doctor Doom stories ever, because really, it is interesting that Doom feels like the primary
10:04
Mark Pracht: I don't want to call him the protagonist, but the motivator of the story, right? He's the only one who seems to understand what is going on and what is really at stake. Everybody else is just sort of.
10:13
Sean Harklerode: Paradise Lost.
10:14
Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, everybody else is just sort of wandering around, going, like, what's happening? I don't know. But.
10:22
Mark Pracht: But the other thing is, like.
10:23
Tad Eggleston: actually.
10:25
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
10:25
Tad Eggleston: I actually loved that, like, he stated a couple of times, like.
10:31
Tad Eggleston: Why are they just playing by the rules?
10:34
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
10:36
Tad Eggleston: How do they not see that, like.
10:40
Tad Eggleston: Whatever this beyonder has told us.
10:44
Mark Pracht: Right.
10:45
Tad Eggleston: By playing by his rules and beating up on each other, what on earth are we going to.
10:53
Tad Eggleston: Or on Battleworld, I guess. Are we going to achieve?
10:57
Mark Pracht: But to put it in Doom thought process, though, it's like, why on earth are we doing that when we could just take his power somehow?
11:05
Tad Eggleston: Right.
11:05
Mark Pracht: Because, you know, that's what… that's what Doom is after, right? It's always what Doom is after. And, but, you know, I think the other thing that becomes very apparent is, like, if this was a four-issue miniseries, it'd probably be…
11:20
Mark Pracht: spectacular, right? Because, like, it does feel like it's like, well, we told Mattel we'd give them 12 issues.
11:29
Tad Eggleston: So…
11:30
Mark Pracht: Like, I'm gonna have, like, this'll happen, and that'll happen, and blah blah blah, you know, and like, and…
11:37
Mark Pracht: You know, like, I love how, like, we're only at issue 2, and the leadership of the villains has already switched 3 times. Oh, yeah, yeah.
11:45
Sean Harklerode: If this were a modern comic, this story would be.
11:49
Tad Eggleston: And people are starting to question Captain America, and notice that when Magneto attacked, the X-Men were absent.
11:59
Brian Pastor (they/them): mysterious.
12:00
Sean Harklerode: Belay that talk, Captain.
12:03
Tad Eggleston: That's Captain Marvel.
12:06
Brian Pastor (they/them): That's right.
12:07
Brian Pastor (they/them): So Mark's point about the, about…
12:11
Brian Pastor (they/them): The leadership, you know, it is funny when they, you know, they the villains go back to their base and they're like, we're not going to listen to you, doom. And then they have a skirmish. And then, you know, who is it? Ultron or somebody?
12:24
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
12:25
Mark Pracht: Well, they don't even have a skirmish. They just show up there and then Ultron like blasts somebody.
12:30
Brian Pastor (they/them): Right, and they're like, oh, that's enough of that. And literally, then the next, you know, 3 panels are just them being… it's like, you know, the wrecker saying, like.
12:40
Brian Pastor (they/them): Well, I just want a place to sleep and some food. I guess anybody could leave. I don't care. You know, it's like they're all just like, whatever.
12:48
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, look.
12:50
Mark Pracht: this… here… like, I think one of the basic problems here is that this reward, right, it seems so magnificent, but it's also, like, so…
13:04
Mark Pracht: Nebulous.
13:05
Brian Pastor (they/them): like.
13:05
Mark Pracht: What does that mean?
13:07
Mark Pracht: Right? What does it mean to anybody, right? Like… And I think what Shooter… like, one of the things that Shooter misses there is, like, maybe having, like, moments of reflection where everyone thinks about, like, well, if we do win.
13:21
Mark Pracht: What do I want? Right?
13:24
Mark Pracht: you know, like…
13:26
Mark Pracht: What if… what if you had a scene where Spider-Man was like, well, look, if we win this, and I can have anything that I want.
13:33
Mark Pracht: Do I get Uncle Ben back?
13:36
Mark Pracht: You know, or… or do I…
13:40
Dan Newland: Yep.
13:40
Mark Pracht: Do I get it?
13:41
Dan Newland: Oh, and the other problem…
13:42
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
13:43
Dan Newland: You kind of talked about this, I think, last time when I listened to the episode, is that
13:47
Dan Newland: we already know what happens. Everybody's back by the time these are coming out. So when he says, I am from beyond, slay all your enemies, and all you desire shall be yours. Well, guess what doesn't happen? Nobody slays all their enemies, because they're back in comic books already, having returned. We know Spider-Man doesn't get slayed.
14:06
Tad Eggleston: Well, and apparently all they wanted was the black costume.
14:09
Dan Newland: Yep. The, the stakes are out.
14:11
Tad Eggleston: 2-0?
14:12
Dan Newland: And they make no sense. So.
14:14
Mark Pracht: Well, you know, and the thing… and the thing is, is like, but… I think that…
14:19
Mark Pracht: I think that, you know, what Dan said about it sort of being, like, it is, like, a very early Marvel book, in that it's just like, okay, yeah, I mean, like, look, this is all… it's an interconnected universe, great, but…
14:33
Mark Pracht: Ultimately, whatever we do here, we can turn over in the next book, or whatever. You know, and… and…
14:40
Mark Pracht: But the… The logistical problem that they had.
14:46
Mark Pracht: And if, in fact.
14:49
Mark Pracht: I'm doing what I said I didn't want to do. If, in fact, crisis was a response to this.
14:56
Mark Pracht: That somebody over there was like, you know what they fucked up on? Is that they should have done a year of books.
15:03
Mark Pracht: Where everybody was gone.
15:05
Mark Pracht: And I know it would be really hard to carry on an Amazing Spider-Man book. If Spider-Man's not there. But, you know, you certainly could have carried on the X-Men, you could have carried on… you could have had Sue, you know.
15:20
Mark Pracht: pregnant, and… putting together a team of, you know, Fantastic Four team to take care of things.
15:30
Mark Pracht: There's all sorts of things you could have done that would have been really interesting and would have maintained the sense of Jesus, what's going to happen, right?
15:39
Mark Pracht: But… And I think that.
15:42
Mark Pracht: what…
15:44
Mark Pracht: I think that what Shooter thought, really, was that by doing things like having Peter come back and have the black costume.
15:51
Mark Pracht: made everybody think, oh, gonna change, something's gonna, you know, stuff's gonna happen, or… you know, and I know that the, like,
16:01
Mark Pracht: Peter and Kitty break up in the X-Men. That's one of the big fallouts of this thing. And Ben.
16:07
Sean Harklerode: Ben doesn't come back, I mean, that's…
16:08
Mark Pracht: Right, right.
16:09
Sean Harklerode: Yes.
16:11
Mark Pracht: Because, yeah, like, and they, you know, like, Ben losing his powers, it's like, it's like, wow, wow, what's happening? And then, you know.
16:20
Mark Pracht: Well, I don't want to talk about future issues, but I mean, you know, it, it, it's all sort of
16:26
Mark Pracht: it's such, like… I don't know.
16:31
Dan Newland: It's weird too, because when you mentioned that, you know, if it had been shorter, it would have been better. Not only am I looking at an entire page where all that happens is Galactus basically stands up.
16:41
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
16:41
Dan Newland: That's an entire page right.
16:44
Sean Harklerode: But.
16:46
Dan Newland: But they did that as well. They did, Contest of Champions a few years earlier, and it was, like, 3 issues, and it was a better series. It was actually a lot of fun. I liked Contest of Champions. So, there is… there's a lot of wasted space here. They could have done 6 months, or whatever.
17:02
Dan Newland: Gotten the characters back faster, and probably had a much better…
17:07
Dan Newland: You know, like, when DC does this, they do superheroes in, what, 4 or 5 issues? And that was more than enough.
17:13
Brian Pastor (they/them): I would have loved to have been in those.
17:15
Brian Pastor (they/them): those, you know, those room… writers' rooms sort of discussing, like, what is the plan here? I guess, you know, we talked a little bit…
17:24
Sean Harklerode: Writer's room on this one?
17:25
Brian Pastor (they/them): Well, yeah.
17:26
Brian Pastor (they/them): Okay. Jim Shooter.
17:28
Dan Newland: His head is the writer's room and he doesn't talk to anyone, I don't think.
17:31
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, but that's what we… that's what we know of Marvel in the 80s, was just like…
17:35
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
17:36
Mark Pracht: It's whatever Shooter wanted.
17:37
Brian Pastor (they/them): Right, exactly.
17:38
Brian Pastor (they/them): But, you know, this goes back to what you were saying about, Mark last episode, about how…
17:46
Brian Pastor (they/them): Wolfman and stuff were, you know, developing his thinking about this and the ramifications of this over a series of years, right? Which sort of negates the idea that it was a knee-jerk response to what Marvel was doing, but rather actually a
18:01
Brian Pastor (they/them): More well-thought-out sort of plan to how to…
18:06
Brian Pastor (they/them): You know, make this whole…
18:09
Brian Pastor (they/them): You know, multiverse, really, you know?
18:11
Sean Harklerode: Hired a historian.
18:13
Dan Newland: Nope.
18:14
Brian Pastor (they/them): And… and I don't… again, yeah, I think you're right, Mark, it just came out of Shooter's head, right? I mean, and it's just whatever he came up with that was gonna appease the toy company and looked cool on the page. Well, and…
18:30
Mark Pracht: And that's fine, man. Like, look, I'm a big fan of, like, the Micronaut series, and, you know, like, a lot of those, but that's what it consistently feels like to me. It feels like a licensed book. And not only that, it kind of feels like one of the lesser licensed books. It feels kind of like.
18:49
Mark Pracht: God bless, we're gonna talk about another book that Jim Shooter wrote, Team America, where, you know, where…
18:55
Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's like, exactly. Oof.
19:00
Dan Newland: I'm like, you really, you really want to hurt this book.
19:04
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, but it does kind of feel like that. It's like, okay, well, we've got these toys, right? Or US-1 Electric Trucking. That was a great book.
19:14
Mark Pracht: But, you know, and it was, like,
19:19
Mark Pracht: It actually… it's really funny, because I am reading that Tomorrow's book about crisis, right? And the guy who's writing that book is obsessed with this idea that crisis completely came out of
19:31
Mark Pracht: DC's financial disaster, and, you know, and that they almost licensed their books to Marvel, and I think we talked about this before, but, you know, I'll go over it again, it's just like.
19:42
Mark Pracht: that this idea that Warner Brothers was going to Marvel and saying, why don't you just publish the books, and we'll take the marketing?
19:50
Mark Pracht: Okay, so…
19:52
Mark Pracht: On one hand, there's zero evidence that anybody from Warner Brothers was talking about this. The only evidence is this memo that Shooter wrote to Jim.
20:04
Mark Pracht: Jim, whatever.
20:10
Sean Harklerode: Back there.
20:11
Mark Pracht: Yeah, I just did a thumbs up on this thing for no reason.
20:16
Mark Pracht: But Jim Galton and But the other thing is, like.
20:25
Mark Pracht: The one thing that's very clear about Shooter in the 80s is he understood the value of licensing.
20:32
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yes, yes, absolutely.
20:34
Mark Pracht: like, and I think he knew, and there's many things on his website where he's talking about how important licensing was to the value of the Marvel characters, and I'm like, then why would you just want to publish the books?
20:46
Mark Pracht: You know, like… But,
20:50
Mark Pracht: I getting back to a point about secret wars is like, look, they made this deal.
20:57
Mark Pracht: And Jim was like, we'll give you, we'll give you a year of comics.
21:00
Mark Pracht: Great.
21:02
Mark Pracht: And then…
21:06
Mark Pracht: But, you know, because they were doing this as a licensing deal, there was no way to change the characters.
21:15
Sean Harklerode: I mean, I feel like they should have… they should have taken it out of Universe. It should have been…
21:21
Sean Harklerode: a one-off. Everyone could be on model, Hulk could be savage.
21:26
Mark Pracht: Yep.
21:27
Sean Harklerode: Sue could be there.
21:28
Dan Newland: That would have been… that would have been really ahead of the game for the early 80s, though. Like, there's… is there even any…
21:37
Dan Newland: Any precedent for them doing anything like that?
21:41
Mark Pracht: would be the closest.
21:41
Dan Newland: you'd come.
21:42
Brian Pastor (they/them): Exactly.
21:44
Sean Harklerode: Just have the Beyonder say, I've, you know, taken…
21:48
Mark Pracht: Hey, yeah.
21:49
Sean Harklerode: From Mary…
21:50
Dan Newland: Good.
21:51
Sean Harklerode: times.
21:51
Mark Pracht: You have this ultimate power, because, like, yeah, but it also falls into the licensing model, because every time they got a licensed book, they would put it in directly into the Marvel Universe.
22:01
Mark Pracht: not even thinking that now, 50 years later, when people are like, I would really love reprints of that Shogun Warriors book, and they're like, well, we can't reprint it.
22:11
Dan Newland: Yup.
22:12
Sean Harklerode: Incredible Hulk 296, where he fights Rom.
22:15
Mark Pracht: Yep.
22:16
Dan Newland: Yeah, I will say that ROM, because of the fact they couldn't do anything else with it, I think maybe one of the greatest Marvel stories, like, complete stories ever written.
22:27
Dan Newland: Because you got one author, it's like 80 issues, and you see the beginning of ROM, and you see the end, and it's a complete story. And it's one of the few times in Marvel history you've ever had that. So…
22:39
Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, there was… it was funny, I was on, Threads or something, and some guy was like, you know what, I'll tell… I… I can tell… I can tell, Kevin Feige how to fix the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he put up a logo for ROM. And I'm like, they don't own it.
22:56
Dan Newland: What do you want?
22:57
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
22:58
Mark Pracht: Great book. Rom is a great fucking book.
23:02
Mark Pracht: Great book.
23:04
Mark Pracht: But…
23:06
Mark Pracht: No. What, you know, but I, like, but I think that, I think that Sean's absolutely right. Like, it would have been better to take this, like, have the, you could even say that it's, it, like, you could even still have them all go into the thing, right?
23:20
Mark Pracht: In the books, but then have the Beyonder say, like, I have brought together the most
23:27
Mark Pracht: the, the prime versions of all of their characters. You'd have the, you'd have the, the, the Savage Hulk. You'd have Tony Stark in the, in the Iron Man costume. You'd have the full Fantastic Four. You'd have.
23:44
Mark Pracht: I don't know. I mean, like, you could have… You could do, you know.
23:49
Sean Harklerode: Dad Molecule Man at the top of his powers.
23:53
Mark Pracht: Right, instead of broken, right?
23:55
Brian Pastor (they/them): And actually, they… in this issue.
24:01
Brian Pastor (they/them): show that the Beyonder has that kind of power, right? And they keep saying things like, you know, Cyclops is like, hey, I woke up in my bed.
24:10
Brian Pastor (they/them): Right. And then I was zapped away. And here I am in full costume. Yeah. You know, like that. The Beyonders been tinkering with things to improve the readiness.
24:22
Brian Pastor (they/them): Of this as a fight.
24:24
Brian Pastor (they/them): world, so the Beyonder has the power to do stuff like that, obviously, and… Yeah.
24:32
Mark Pracht: When Storm says that the air is thick, which makes her powers work even better, and it's like, okay, the whole thing, you're changing, you know, like, you can change… look, it's God, right? It's God.
24:45
Mark Pracht: Okay? William Shatner would be so happy.
24:49
Mark Pracht: There's a joke. But,
24:54
Mark Pracht: But yeah, it's… it seems like…
24:57
Mark Pracht: it's… it… there's ambition, and then there's no ambition, right? It feels like there's two things slamming into each other.
25:04
Mark Pracht: And…
25:05
Dan Newland: There's a weird question here.
25:07
Dan Newland: what if, and the things from, like, the 70s and the like, did Uatu just talk about what could have happened? Or was he looking into actual other dimensions? Is there a Marvel multiverse in the 70s and early 80s, even?
25:21
Dan Newland: Because it seemed to me that there really isn't. Like, Marvel is a single timeline, and DC was the one with the actual Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth 3.
25:31
Sean Harklerode: Well, there's altar earth, or what's it called? You know, it's, it's in exact.
25:36
Dan Newland: Counter Earth? Counter Earth. That's the one with, like, the… the… the, what's his…
25:42
Sean Harklerode: the.
25:43
Dan Newland: name goes.
25:43
Sean Harklerode: Dream is from there, right? Is that?
25:46
Dan Newland: Oh, maybe?
25:49
Dan Newland: Squadron Supreme would actually be a good example of that. Yes. When do they come out?
25:56
Dan Newland: So there are.
25:58
Mark Pracht: I mean, I know that Squadron Supreme beat Watchmen out by a couple of years.
26:02
Mark Pracht: I think…
26:03
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, but I mean the Squadron Supreme as characters.
26:06
Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, yeah.
26:07
Mark Pracht: No, look, I think… I think that you can argue that whether it's stated or not, because, like, when we talk about a multiverse, right, like.
26:16
Mark Pracht: That's definitely the DC thing, right? And this is probably a good point. We can start shifting the conversation, but.
26:24
Sean Harklerode: I got a multiverse.
26:26
Mark Pracht: is the… the DC thing.
26:28
Mark Pracht: But, like, I think that you have to take what if, especially because they started revisiting some of those stories, you know, as…
26:38
Mark Pracht: At least a window into… alternate realities, right?
26:44
Sean Harklerode: Oh.
26:45
Sean Harklerode: Every storyline they did of the Hulk and what if came to pass.
26:49
Mark Pracht: Right.
26:50
Sean Harklerode: Jones became the Hulk. General Ross became the Hulk.
26:53
Sean Harklerode: became intelligent.
26:58
Sean Harklerode: I, I, and the.
26:59
Mark Pracht: wrote.
26:59
Sean Harklerode: What if Jane Thor? What if Jane Foster became Thor? Yeah.
27:03
Mark Pracht: Yep.
27:04
Mark Pracht: At some point, everybody is like…
27:05
Brian Pastor (they/them): Fault becomes a spaceship, but you know, they should have.
27:10
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, they left that one.
27:13
Mark Pracht: But, you know, look.
27:15
Sean Harklerode: think.
27:15
Mark Pracht: Just in the pure plot mechanics of what's going on in this book, it really was like, all right.
27:24
Mark Pracht: The heroes finally find a base.
27:28
Mark Pracht: That's… So ungodly huge that it doesn't make much sense, but that's okay.
27:34
Sean Harklerode: Totally tubular.
27:36
Mark Pracht: Totally.
27:39
Mark Pracht: But I mean, like, you know, it's like also one of those things, okay, look, I know you're trying to be awe-inspiring, but if it's 54 Pentagons or whatever, and you're like.
27:50
Mark Pracht: There's 12 of you, or 15, or 20, or however many there are, like…
27:54
Mark Pracht: How do you find anybody? Like, if you call a meeting, does it take them an hour to get there?
28:00
Brian Pastor (they/them): Took him, like, like, 10 minutes to get to the frickin', you know, power station to confront Magneto.
28:07
Brian Pastor (they/them): you know, by that time he's practically done, and then carries off the wasp. And they say earlier, like, hey, let's meet at the meeting room on the 451st floor. I was like, are you kidding me?
28:20
Dan Newland: So.
28:21
Sean Harklerode: Oh, buddy. Bears.
28:23
Sean Harklerode: Paul, take the stairs.
28:28
Dan Newland: Was Mike Zeck a good choice for this book?
28:30
Mark Pracht: No.
28:31
Dan Newland: case.
28:32
Mark Pracht: No.
28:32
Dan Newland: To me, he seems like a… he's great on Captain America, and he's great on fight scenes and stuff, but he's more of almost like a… a ground-level kind of guy. He's good at physical muscularity and stuff like this, but in terms of awe-inspiring 54 Pentagon stuff.
28:49
Dan Newland: That is not his thing.
28:50
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, and the thing, like, imagine, imagine, okay, imagine this book written by, written by Stan and drawn by Jack.
28:58
Mark Pracht: It'd be… incredible. Like, and it would… and it would be… and I think…
29:05
Mark Pracht: As much as… as much as I think that Shooter is… a good writer.
29:11
Mark Pracht: In many ways a great writer like his, his, I think his, I think his, Legion, Legion books in the 60s.
29:20
Dan Newland: Absolutely.
29:20
Mark Pracht: really great. But, you know, I think that Stan could have…
29:27
Mark Pracht: taken the Priestess here, and he probably would have understood, oh, let's just take, you know, it's sort of like that Silver Surfer graphic novel that he did with Jack, you know? Like, okay, we're gonna tell the story again, but we're just gonna take it out of…
29:42
Mark Pracht: you know, the Fantastic Four isn't involved. And it's like, oh, okay.
29:46
Mark Pracht: And, you know, I don't need to explain that, it's just a comic book, right, you know, and,
29:52
Mark Pracht: And I think that.
29:54
Mark Pracht: But I do think… I absolutely agree with you, I think I love Mike Zek on The Punisher, I love Mike… I love Mike Zek on Captain America, but in this book, like, it feels… and I think I was reading somewhere where he wasn't the first choice, he was just the one who could get it done, right? Because they were running…
30:14
Mark Pracht: way behind, again, you know…
30:18
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
30:18
Mark Pracht: And… I don't know who the original, you know.
30:24
Dan Newland: No, no.
30:25
Mark Pracht: It would be, you know, like… Honestly, like,
30:31
Mark Pracht: even Romito probably wouldn't have been…
30:34
Dan Newland: Yep.
30:34
Mark Pracht: Great on this book.
30:36
Mark Pracht: The question.
30:37
Dan Newland: Classic Marvel guys, I mean, like, I would have loved to see Starlin do it, but him and…
30:41
Dan Newland: those two would have killed each other. I think Shooter and Starlin together, the book would have never actually been finished, but if it had, you know… or better yet, if you just think about
30:52
Dan Newland: if you just switched the artists on this. And Perez had not… because of Jim Shooter, basically, is the reason he left, I think, and went to DC. But if he'd still been there, and he'd done Secret Wars, and Zach or somebody like a normal artist had done Crisis, we'd probably be talking a different situation than we are right now, you know?
31:12
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, at the very least…
31:15
Sean Harklerode: Nope.
31:16
Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
31:17
Dan Newland: Nope.
31:18
Mark Pracht: Although, you know, it's funny. Sean and I talked about this on a couple of occasions, that really, the AB of this sort of would be to do Infinity Gauntlet, but I don't even know that that's true, because I don't think that
31:34
Mark Pracht: My memories of Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity War are so much.
31:40
Mark Pracht: They just really aren't… even… even those aren't as large a scale
31:45
Mark Pracht: as crisis, right? They are… my memory is they go to that That,
31:52
Dan Newland: There's nothing like crisis in the superhero world.
31:55
Dan Newland: Simply because the characters have been developed for so long, I mean, the number of characters they kill off, and as we get to it later, not to do spoilers, but there are… there are scenes and books that literally just knocked me on my ass when I was 15 years old, you know?
32:11
Dan Newland: And I don't think…
32:14
Brian Pastor (they/them): You know, and we talked earlier, Dan, about all these characters.
32:18
Brian Pastor (they/them): in… in those comics, you know, Tad's experiencing this for the first time, and he's like, who's that character, right? But that's kind of the beauty of the DC universe, in a way, is it's got all these characters from all these, you know.
32:32
Brian Pastor (they/them): you know, decades and decades and decades of books, and even, you know, they can invent stuff, too, and… And of course, you know, the idea of the multiverse was pretty well thought out.
32:44
Brian Pastor (they/them): And so you're… you're getting different versions of these characters together at the same time.
32:49
Dan Newland: And… Yup.
32:51
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yet they're doing a good job of distinguishing them, helping you understand who they are.
32:57
Brian Pastor (they/them): I don't… like, I don't know how well… was Psycho Pirate well-known at the time? I don't know.
33:03
Dan Newland: know.
33:04
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
33:05
Dan Newland: the JLA a few times and.
33:06
Mark Pracht: Yeah, it was…
33:07
Dan Newland: some.
33:08
Mark Pracht: It was a pretty much.
33:08
Dan Newland: GSA crossovers. Yeah.
33:10
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah. So like, you know, these sort of important characters in this in the storyline.
33:15
Brian Pastor (they/them): That are… are utilized really…
33:18
Brian Pastor (they/them): really smartly, that… that you don't have… the point is that as the reader, you don't have to know all their history. You don't have to know everything about them or what their power set is right away. The story is sort of guiding you through it.
33:33
Mark Pracht: Well, and to that point, to start gushing.
33:38
Mark Pracht: They also, like… Shooter stops every issue to be like, let me explain all of these characters to you.
33:47
Mark Pracht: Right?
33:48
Sean Harklerode: Right.
33:49
Mark Pracht: And Wolfman.
33:51
Mark Pracht: Puts the characters in situations that allows you to understand who they are.
33:56
Mark Pracht: Right? There's no… we don't stop and say, this is Anthro, and Anthro is blah blah blah, and Anthro blah blah blah. It's like, we just put them in this situation, and it's like… and in… in some ways, it's…
34:10
Mark Pracht: There are things about it that become kind of like that insufferable Marvel Cinematic Universe of, oh, look at the Easter eggs.
34:17
Mark Pracht: Oh, I know that, I know that, you know? But it's also, like.
34:21
Mark Pracht: it's also, like, to do it in such a way that it's, like, it's not really that important. Like, when, Kamandi is… Kamandi is climbing the device, and he says something about Dr,
34:38
Dan Newland: and.
34:39
Mark Pracht: Whatever, it was,
34:40
Dan Newland: His, his mentor?
34:42
Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's like… Yeah.
34:44
Mark Pracht: Dr. Canis would have told me about this. And it's like, who the hell is Dr. Canis? Oh, okay. Well, it's somebody that he knows. Fine. Great. He's somebody… and the context of what he's saying makes you go, like, oh, he's some sort of scientist or something who knows about this technology, and then you just move on.
35:00
Mark Pracht: And, and… You know, and…
35:03
Dan Newland: Mind you, you say that, but then also…
35:07
Dan Newland: You don't need to know who these guys are.
35:09
Mark Pracht: No!
35:10
Dan Newland: But if you do know, like, for those of us who have been studying the Marvel DC universes for years, this is…
35:17
Dan Newland: fucking traumatic. I'm watching, you know, I've got every issue of Commandee, right?
35:22
Sean Harklerode: Right. Wow.
35:23
Dan Newland: And I'm watching characters that I had invested in. Right. Potentially just being erased universe by universe. I'm a huge fan of Earth 2, and I had all of, like, the All-Star Squadron comics, and all of this sort of stuff.
35:37
Dan Newland: Well, they didn't really, at this point, I'm a kid living on a farm in Minnesota, I don't know what's gonna happen to all my universes. Are they just gonna Marvel Comics it, and everybody will be fine in 12 months, like's happened in Secret Wars? Or is this actually gonna do what they're threatening?
35:53
Dan Newland: And they're just erasing generations of DC history to compact things. And we don't know, really, at this point, I think, if you're reading these in 85,
36:04
Dan Newland: just… just what's going on. Is all this stuff coming back? Because that's what we've been trained to believe. Nobody really dies in comics, right? It's all gonna be okay eventually, right? You guys can, you know, reassure me of this. I'm not actually losing all these characters, right?
36:21
Dan Newland: But you start to see as it goes along, shit, this is… this is bad.
36:26
Brian Pastor (they/them): And we talked about real stakes, right? I mean, Mark said earlier, right, it's clear in the crisis stories that there's real stakes from the beginning. And, you know, Marvel stories, you know, at that point in time, there were some
36:40
Brian Pastor (they/them): you know, real stakes in the universes. Uncle Ben is one of those things, right?
36:46
Brian Pastor (they/them): But, of course, every one of the, like, sacred things have been reversed by now.
36:53
Brian Pastor (they/them): But there were some real stakes, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of real stakes, right, when you're reading Secret Wars, whereas there's definitely, clearly, you're watching universes disappear in front of you.
37:06
Brian Pastor (they/them): And maybe those minor characters that you suddenly are viewing for the first time, or the second time, or whatever, are gonna be important to the future of whatever is left, you know? I mean, it's really… it really grasps…
37:20
Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like, I think what's really cool is, okay, so we got issue one starts off with, we see
37:25
Mark Pracht: A a.
37:28
Mark Pracht: B tier, but somewhat known alternate earth.
37:34
Mark Pracht: utterly destroyed, right?
37:36
Sean Harklerode: You're moving to crisis?
37:38
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
37:39
Mark Pracht: Sorry, I guess we're on to crisis now.
37:42
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
37:43
Sean Harklerode: Joe, I had a couple of things. I… on, Secret Wars. So, I'm reading the facsimile, it's a larger, the gallery edition, archive edition, it says.
37:54
Sean Harklerode: I wonder, and I wanted to get your guys' take.
37:58
Sean Harklerode: when we were talking about Mike Zech's art.
38:04
Sean Harklerode: I'm reading it at a larger size.
38:08
Sean Harklerode: And I think it would look better.
38:11
Sean Harklerode: At comic book size.
38:13
Brian Pastor (they/them): Hmm.
38:14
Mark Pracht: We're.
38:15
Sean Harklerode: Which is the opposite of how I feel about Parents.
38:20
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
38:20
Sean Harklerode: But I feel like it's… It's really geared to… Be smaller.
38:26
Sean Harklerode: And it looks more detailed at that smaller size, that when it's enlarged like this.
38:33
Sean Harklerode: It looks more kind of cartoony and not as great.
38:38
Sean Harklerode: To me.
38:38
Dan Newland: Hmm.
38:39
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, and I'm, I'm reading it on my Kindle, right? Which is even, is smaller than a concept.
38:45
Mark Pracht: And… and I think that… I think you're probably right. I mean, like, I… I don't want to on Mike Zeck, because, like.
38:51
Sean Harklerode: No, no, absolutely not.
38:52
Mark Pracht: But I just think that… I think it is, sort of,
38:58
Mark Pracht: what Dave's or Dan said. That it is a…
39:08
Mark Pracht: His skill set is just not cosmic majesty, right? It is like the fight scenes are all pretty great, you know, the punching and the kicking and stuff like that, right?
39:21
Mark Pracht: I will also say, While we're talk… while we're back on this subject.
39:26
Mark Pracht: I do love the fact that Magneto's
39:30
Mark Pracht: Face looks like a giant magnet.
39:33
Sean Harklerode: Hey, man. It's a toy.
39:38
Mark Pracht: I know. I mean, it's like, it really does. It is one of those moments where you're like, wow, toyetic right there.
39:45
Sean Harklerode: laughter.
39:46
Brian Pastor (they/them): you.
39:47
Sean Harklerode: I also had to point out, so I'm looking at the bullpen bulletins.
39:54
Sean Harklerode: And I see an ad for, or a blurb for in the hype box.
39:59
Sean Harklerode: Heartburst, a graphic novel by Rick Veitch.
40:03
Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah.
40:04
Mark Pracht: remember that book.
40:04
Tad Eggleston: Right.
40:05
Sean Harklerode: Will, Baich? Wow, I had 3 chances.
40:10
Sean Harklerode: Who I love from Swamp Thing.
40:13
Sean Harklerode: Wrote and drew this daringly different science fiction adventure tale set on a far-distant Earth colony where people worship the sponsor. It stars a guy by the name of Sonoko Firestone.
40:29
Sean Harklerode: It's an outer space love story with commercial interruptions. And if you want to find out just what that means, you'll have to pick up the novel, won't you? I've never heard of this, and I… I have to read this now.
40:42
Mark Pracht: app.
40:43
Dan Newland: Good book. He made some crazy stuff. Oh, my Lord.
40:47
Tad Eggleston: And Vite's just done lots of stuff through the years, just, like, absolutely lamblasting, like, various corporate sponsorship or corporate whatever.
40:58
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
40:58
Mark Pracht: Was Brat Pack his book?
41:02
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
41:04
Mark Pracht: Because man, Brat Pack is.
41:06
Mark Pracht: Nasty.
41:09
Dan Newland: I think Veitch had it.
41:11
Mark Pracht: I mean, and I say that.
41:12
Dan Newland: Graphic novel.
41:13
Mark Pracht: Like, it is not, like.
41:14
Sean Harklerode: I don't…
41:14
Mark Pracht: that.
41:15
Sean Harklerode: Track pack.
41:17
Tad Eggleston: No, it is his.
41:19
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
41:20
Mark Pracht: That… but that book is a… a nasty, satirical superhero book. I mean, like, and… and I don't mean that in terms of, like, God, don't read it. I mean, like, it is just… it gets right down into the muck with it, and…
41:33
Tad Eggleston: wow.
41:35
Mark Pracht: Anyway.
41:36
Dan Newland: know.
41:37
Tad Eggleston: Its 30th anniversary is available at his… well, no, I guess… I guess it links to Amazon from his website, but yeah, the 30th anniversary of… of…
41:49
Tad Eggleston: So… Brat Peck.
41:51
Tad Eggleston: has been released.
41:54
Dan Newland: There we go.
41:58
Brian Pastor (they/them): Precursor to the boys, maybe, Mark?
42:03
Brian Pastor (they/them): Different, different vibe.
42:05
Mark Pracht: different.
42:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the description here is subversively subtle, yet completely over the top. Brat Pack is uncompromising, uncomfortable, and unforgettable. It's also an essential.
42:15
Tad Eggleston: for every graphic novel collection. Publishers Weekly says Brat Pack completes the troika of immortal works dissecting the superhero genre, the other two being Dark Knight and Watchmen.
42:26
Mark Pracht: And.
42:28
Dan Newland: I'm just…
42:29
Tad Eggleston: Just reading what.
42:30
Mark Pracht: No, no, no, I know, I know, I know. It's, it's, like, look, there's definitely, there's definitely Brat Pack DNA in The Boys. The Boys, to me, is just kind of a pure ripoff of, martial law myself, so… Yeah.
42:47
Mark Pracht: That's my opinion. So, anyway.
42:53
Mark Pracht: But yeah, no, I think, I think that, I think Zach is a great artist, I just think that.
42:59
Mark Pracht: It's just not the right guy for this book, in my opinion.
43:04
Brian Pastor (they/them): And, you know, you're talking about the detail of Perez's art versus Zach in these series.
43:11
Brian Pastor (they/them): Dan mentioned before we came on, on air that this crisis book has a million panels. I mean.
43:21
Brian Pastor (they/them): Tons of panels, and yet the detail work.
43:25
Brian Pastor (they/them): That you can see in those images shrink down so small at times is incredible.
43:32
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
43:32
Mark Pracht: So it is it.
43:34
Mark Pracht: reading…
43:36
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I can say this about any of any of those Perez books or Perez, any of their Perez books where he's really going for it.
43:47
Mark Pracht: are just overwhelming to read, you know? I would… even… even those,
43:53
Mark Pracht: Like his original attempt at at Jla Avengers.
43:57
Mark Pracht: like, when you look at that artwork that never got published, that's amazing. But even the books that actually came out, you know, you can tell that he's just like, okay, I've wanted to do this for my whole life, so here it is. And I'm gonna go… I'm gonna go for it. Right. And… and it is… it is…
44:14
Mark Pracht: Stunning.
44:15
Mark Pracht: And I think that his work, like, and clearly, like.
44:21
Mark Pracht: I think the big difference, if we talk about Zach versus Perez.
44:26
Mark Pracht: The real problem is, is like Zach seems like the guy that could get it done, right? And Perez seems like, well, we know there's only one person that can draw this book.
44:37
Dan Newland: Yep.
44:38
Mark Pracht: And.
44:38
Mark Pracht: And… Because, I mean, like… like, you think about the… the DC… A.
44:50
Mark Pracht: The DC, pardon.
44:55
Mark Pracht: the DC… The DC, pan… not Pantheon, but the, the, the, the bullpen, or the, the, the…
45:07
Mark Pracht: batting lineup, or whatever. Like… They have a bunch of good artists, right, but they don't have anybody, like.
45:16
Mark Pracht: you know, maybe they could have brought over Dave Gibbons to do it, maybe they could have, you know, like… but… but, like, I think that it needed to be somebody who was totally steeped in what this was. And this is exactly… it is what
45:30
Mark Pracht: Perez always loves to do. It's give me a billion characters, give me a big team book, give me… give me stuff that's gonna make me draw a lot of stuff. And…
45:41
Mark Pracht: The the joyful energy that goes into doing it, it just comes through at every single panel, right?
45:49
Mark Pracht: I, like.
45:50
Dan Newland: It amazes me.
45:52
Mark Pracht: What?
45:53
Dan Newland: What amazes me is… Romeo Tangal is the guy I'm used to inking him.
45:59
Dan Newland: Dick Giordano being the inker of this book kind of surprises me, because I would not have thought, at his age.
46:07
Dan Newland: Giordano would want to take on a job like this, because inking Perez on this book.
46:12
Dan Newland: is just a nightmare. Like, it is, you know, Perez rubble. People talk about, like, you know, that, like, Carl Barks drew all the little hamsters and everything in his stuff, and he had all this detail. But there is nobody for detail like George Perez. To go in and have to…
46:31
Dan Newland: to actually ink these books. You know, like the, early on, when they've got Commandee and that, that sort of, Jack Kirby Tower. Yeah. And, oh my god, there's, like, 10,000 lines in that stupid thing, you know?
46:45
Dan Newland: It would be just a nightmare to have to…
46:48
Sean Harklerode: Facebook needs Vince Coletta.
46:53
Dan Newland: 7.
46:55
Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, yeah, we don't need backgrounds.
46:57
Dan Newland: Oh my.
46:58
Mark Pracht: That tower could just be, like, a big silo. Be great.
47:03
Mark Pracht: But, no, I think that,
47:06
Mark Pracht: But I think… I think you're right. I mean, like, you know, Giordano…
47:11
Mark Pracht: I read all, you know, I read all these interviews with people and they talk about Giordano and how
47:17
Mark Pracht: What a what an incredible person he was, and how he was a he was a teacher, and he was but you know, and I think that
47:24
Mark Pracht: at his age, would he want to do it? I mean, and like, this is very close to when he became the EIC there, or…
47:31
Dan Newland: Yep.
47:32
Dan Newland: He had power at this point.
47:34
Mark Pracht: Yeah, so I would… I would guess…
47:38
Mark Pracht: That he must have wanted to do it?
47:40
Mark Pracht: But here's the other thing.
47:42
Dan Newland: Yep.
47:43
Mark Pracht: Here's the other thing is that you know we've talked about how they had. They had a historian that clearly they were putting this together.
47:52
Mark Pracht: For… for a long time, right? They were setting the, you know, and it… and it has such a…
48:01
Mark Pracht: Point of view, and a… Clear target as to what they want to get done.
48:08
Dan Newland: Yep.
48:08
Mark Pracht: I… I'm betting, you know, you wonder how long they, you know, like… did… did Giordano have…
48:16
Mark Pracht: a lot of time to get it done, you know. It also makes me like it is, you know.
48:25
Mark Pracht: You wonder… they started working on this so early, you know, everybody is like, well, you know, Secret Wars came out first.
48:33
Mark Pracht: But did did Shooter go like, well, we could do 12 issues because I hear Marvel or her DC is working on some big 12 issue thing, right?
48:40
Tad Eggleston: That… that feels more likely.
48:43
Mark Pracht: Yeah, and we can get it done first. And not understanding what they were doing, You know?
48:49
Mark Pracht: Clearly, and that how, you know, but…
48:55
Dan Newland: I would bet Giordano decided to be on it because
48:58
Dan Newland: he, you know, he's a great artist. I've loved it, I loved his inking on Adams, obviously. He was, I think, Neil Adams' best inker, but…
49:06
Mark Pracht: 100%.
49:07
Dan Newland: this is just one of those things where he's like, you know, this is a truly landmark thing. He probably had seen a few of the Perez pages coming in. He's like, you know, if I'm gonna do something, this is worth investing my time in. Right. And so… Yeah, but he did a fantastic job, too. Yeah, yeah. They are… they are beautiful.
49:26
Brian Pastor (they/them): No, I think… I was thinking about with, you know, because those… obviously, with all those panels, it can be…
49:33
Brian Pastor (they/them): I mean, I think it's visually arresting, but, you know, there's probably…
49:36
Brian Pastor (they/them): And I've been, like, overwhelmed by it. And one of the things that…
49:41
Brian Pastor (they/them): I think is great about reading these comics today, and I know, Mark, you read them on your Kindle, and if you can do, you know, the modern, like, dynamic.
49:54
Brian Pastor (they/them): you know, reading…
49:55
Mark Pracht: Panel by panel.
49:56
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
49:57
Brian Pastor (they/them): actually… It actually enhances your ability.
50:02
Brian Pastor (they/them): to read and experience all of that, and all of that detail, and then it zooms out and you get the whole picture. And that's what's cool, too, is, like, reading in that format.
50:14
Brian Pastor (they/them): kind of exposes a little bit of the shortcomings of, you know, or the limitations, I should say, of the art in
50:23
Brian Pastor (they/them): And Secret Wars, where it actually enhances the experience of seeing that art in, in crisis. I think it's a cool thing, just for modern readers.
50:35
Mark Pracht: I think the other thing I think about Perez and, you know, in a way this series could just turn into.
50:42
Mark Pracht: like, George Perez is… A fucking genius.
50:46
Mark Pracht: You know.
50:47
Dan Newland: If it's not, it should be. Alright.
50:50
Mark Pracht: But, you know, Wake, I do use the Zoom In, you know, especially those double page, you know, 'cause there's always the double page spread right at the beginning of the book. And, you know, there's no way to read that on a Kindle.
51:03
Mark Pracht: So, I gotta zoom in, but I resist using it because I love the way that George
51:12
Mark Pracht: You know, designs, pages. Because not only is there a billion fucking panels, but it's…
51:19
Mark Pracht: clear how to go through it. Like, you don't get lost.
51:22
Mark Pracht: It's like, okay, then we're going here, then we're going here, then we're going here, then we're going here, and you're going here. And the thing is, is, like, I've been reading some other stuff where I'm just like, well, well, in the, the, the, John Sable book that we were, we were doing in the other thing, like, occasionally you're like, okay, where, where am I going now?
51:40
Mark Pracht: And George never falls into that trap, never falls into that trap, and the thing is, is like
51:49
Mark Pracht: But…
51:51
Mark Pracht: The one thing that, you know, and, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna belittle, I don't wanna, I, but I do wanna talk about this story because it, it, this issue is really good and the funny thing is, is like, I think.
52:04
Mark Pracht: that…
52:05
Mark Pracht: Because I'm trying to remember, because I did not buy all of… I did not buy these series off the rack when I was a kid, but I remember getting a couple of issues, right? And I know that this is the first issue of Crisis that I read.
52:21
Mark Pracht: And the way…
52:24
Mark Pracht: The way it keeps the… that it keeps jumping into these stories, these individual stories, as they're traveling around trying to do this stuff, and yet never lets this threat of the…
52:39
Mark Pracht: of the the antimatter wall coming.
52:43
Mark Pracht: like, it never… like, sort of what I was trying… starting to say, you know, the first issue, it's… we see a world destroyed. We see what's gonna happen. That's… that's the result, right? And then…
52:55
Mark Pracht: Then we go to this issue and it's like, okay, you've already seen what's going to happen, but now we have, okay, here's the plan.
53:03
Mark Pracht: Just like a classic Justice League of America story, they break into teams and they go off to do each thing, right?
53:10
Mark Pracht: But then they keep cutting, to, What is it?
53:19
Mark Pracht: Like, there's the page where they cut to Oa.
53:23
Mark Pracht: And the Guardians are like, how did we not see this? How did we not see this coming, you know? And when they cut back to the conversations between the Beyonder and Harbinger.
53:36
Mark Pracht: You know, like, it continues… it allows the action to proceed.
53:44
Mark Pracht: In ways that's easily to, to, to stay on top of and then it's like, okay, but remember.
53:50
Mark Pracht: The coming, the coming, the coming, you know, and,
53:56
Dan Newland: And it's building mystery at the same time.
53:58
Mark Pracht: Yes.
53:59
Dan Newland: you're starting to see that there's something up with Lila, there's something up with Harbinger, where…
54:04
Dan Newland: You know, she's not just working for who we think she is, she's not a good guy, necessarily, and we're starting to see that not only are these universes being destroyed, but there is some sort of force behind that that's actually sort of…
54:19
Dan Newland: bringing about all of this destruction that the Monitor's gonna have to face. And we don't know who that is necessarily yet, but…
54:27
Dan Newland: It really is a story that's building tension at every moment, you know?
54:31
Dan Newland: There's boulders running downhill, and then there's people trying to figure out even, you know, we don't even know who we can trust. We get this weird pariah guy popping in that we don't really know what his deal is at this point.
54:45
Mark Pracht: Well, that.
54:45
Dan Newland: crazy.
54:46
Mark Pracht: That page with Psycho Pilot, Pirate, and Pariah, It's horrific.
54:52
Mark Pracht: Yeah. Like, when you really think about it, it is horrific what Psycho Pirate is doing to him, and it… it… it… it… like, and again, it's like… it's like I was talking about character through action, right? And, and, and.
55:11
Mark Pracht: filling in gaps through action, like… like, that page shows you just how insane Psycho Pirate is, and how evil Psycho Pirate is, right? And… and the… the horrificness of it is… is… you know, it's like…
55:28
Mark Pracht: it's one of those things where I'm like, every time, you know, I'm not the biggest horror fan in the world, and sometimes when I'm like, well, every horror movie has to be rated R, and blah blah blah blah, and there has to be gore and butts and stuff, I'm like, no, man, this is horror, right? This is, like, somebody…
55:46
Mark Pracht: Violating someone in a very.
55:50
Mark Pracht: You know, PG rated way and it, and it is incredibly unsettling.
55:57
Mark Pracht: I'm just gonna… let me go through a couple of the things that I wrote. Like, when they cut back to, like, that… when Superman and Batman meet up, and Pariah appears to them, and I love it where it's like, Superman is like, Batman sounded scared, and that's not good.
56:13
Dan Newland: It's never good. Yeah.
56:17
Mark Pracht: But, you know, I can go through this book and there's little moments that I love immensely. Like when Commandee meets Solovar.
56:29
Mark Pracht: And it's sort of, they explain the whole commandy world thing.
56:33
Mark Pracht: In, like, 2 panels, Very quickly, right? Like, and… and also… you know, It's…
56:45
Mark Pracht: It's so cool, man. And, but yeah, and it's… it's… Yeah, I don't know.
56:56
Mark Pracht: I could go on and on. Somebody else should talk. I mean the the flash thing.
56:59
Sean Harklerode: I… oh.
57:01
Brian Pastor (they/them): Gotcha.
57:02
Sean Harklerode: I would say, and I'd be curious for Tad in his first reading, because for me, I read these as they came out, and I remember reading the first one, and…
57:15
Sean Harklerode: enjoying it, and as I think I said last week, I preferred the first issue of Secret Wars.
57:22
Sean Harklerode: this issue, and it's the three pages, page 6 through 9, with Batman and the Joker. Yep. And.
57:33
Sean Harklerode: Barry comes in. Barry Allen, the Flash.
57:37
Sean Harklerode: I… As Dan said, 15 years old.
57:42
Sean Harklerode: Blew my mind.
57:44
Sean Harklerode: You know, here's the Joker stepping straight out of the JLGL, you know, style guide.
57:51
Sean Harklerode: I mean, he looks… Perfect, as the joke.
57:56
Dan Newland: He's Marshall Adams! He's Marshall Adams Joker from, like, the 70s.
58:00
Sean Harklerode: Okay.
58:01
Mark Pracht: Marshall Rogers.
58:02
Dan Newland: Marshall Rogers, yeah, from the… from those books. Loved it.
58:06
Dan Newland: So…
58:07
Sean Harklerode: I just remember as a Marvel guy, picking that song, oh, there's the Joker, and there's Batman making a prisoner reference.
58:18
Sean Harklerode: I was like, oh, I like this, and then when Barry comes through, I was like, what is happening? That's the Flash. I know the Flash from Super Friends. And, oh my god, did they just kill the Flash?
58:31
Sean Harklerode: That… that, to me, I… I just remember… That's what… this… these are the 3 pages that hooked me on this book.
58:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, those pages were stunning, but what actually, like, really, really got me…
58:46
Tad Eggleston: Is after the two sequences that were… or, well, really kind of three sequences, because, like, we had… we had the… the… the…
58:59
Tad Eggleston: Woolly mammoths go into the…
59:01
Sean Harklerode: Right, yeah.
59:02
Tad Eggleston: into the…
59:03
Mark Pracht: yeah.
59:03
Tad Eggleston: And then somehow wound up back with your Joker, etc.
59:10
Tad Eggleston: And then, like… Barry vanishes, and you've got Batman's eyes, dear God, what is happening?
59:17
Tad Eggleston: And then… DC Comics proudly presents.
59:22
Sean Harklerode: No cinematic.
59:24
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
59:26
Tad Eggleston: You know.
59:27
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
59:27
Dan Newland: Nope.
59:28
Tad Eggleston: Cinematic in, like, the best spot… I mean, I don't actually love…
59:34
Tad Eggleston: Cinematic, as a description of a comic book.
59:39
Tad Eggleston: I think if you're trying to be cinematic with a comic book, you're in the wrong medium. Comics can do so much more than cinema. However, there are certain things that are part of storytelling.
59:51
Tad Eggleston: And something that cinema does well that comics doesn't always do as well is go… is the cold open.
59:58
Tad Eggleston: You know, so the fact that they made this incredible cold open, and just as you're starting to go, what the fuck? Just, like, pause everything.
1:00:11
Mark Pracht: Yep.
1:00:12
Brian Pastor (they/them): Tad, that's my favorite.
1:00:14
Brian Pastor (they/them): page in the whole comic book, in the whole book, because it goes from the top of the page, it's just, like, Joker having Fun.
1:00:22
Sean Harklerode: Right.
1:00:23
Brian Pastor (they/them): to… There's this amazing part in the middle where.
1:00:28
Brian Pastor (they/them): Right as…
1:00:31
Brian Pastor (they/them): you know, it looks like he's gonna conquer the Joker, and there's this negative space image of Batman, everything under the cape and cowl is just blackness, and out in the cape goes into this
1:00:47
Brian Pastor (they/them): dark blackness of, I don't know, space beyond or whatever, and then you see Barry appear. Just a gorgeous… and then… and then…
1:00:57
Brian Pastor (they/them): Panic from Batman, the eyes of Batman that look like space, and then into the shot of space with the DC Presents. Absolutely bonkers, really brilliant.
1:01:09
Sean Harklerode: Those looks on Batman's face, as Superman said, as you said, you don't see Batman looking scared. You know, he's looking here with real concern at his friend.
1:01:21
Tad Eggleston: And managing to make just white eyes in a mask look scared?
1:01:27
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yes! Yes!
1:01:29
Mark Pracht: Yep.
1:01:30
Dan Newland: Well, that is the thing, too. I actually have on my list to talk about that picture of just his eyes looking forward on the black background, because it's amazing what a storyteller that guy is. You know, we think of Perez as being the detail guy.
1:01:45
Dan Newland: But it's weird how he can also…
1:01:48
Dan Newland: like, absolutely just stop you with basically just a couple of white circles, you know? I mean, that… those… this whole page is a masterclass. You could teach an entire comics, like, course, probably, just off of this. But it's a.
1:02:04
Mark Pracht: amazing.
1:02:04
Dan Newland: Because he does that, and then there's other, like, full-plate splashes.
1:02:08
Dan Newland: But it's not a full-page splash where you're like, oh, there it is, I move. You gotta, like, eat that entire page. When he does a splash page, the whole thing is covered with stuff you need to actually process. It's amazing.
1:02:22
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, you know, this Joker sequence is so much fun, because, like, you say the Marshall Rogers.
1:02:28
Mark Pracht: That… that run, the… what do they call it, the Dark Detective run.
1:02:33
Mark Pracht: clearly inspired all of this, because, like, I love the fact that he's killing this guy to get the copyrights on some, you know, like, some comedy movie.
1:02:45
Mark Pracht: And it's like, it's exactly like the laughing fish. Like, how are you ever gonna collect on this, right? You know? Like, you know, you're… you're a fucking insane psychopathic criminal. Like, it's… it's the true, who was the writer on those books? It was,
1:03:02
Dan Newland: Englehart.
1:03:03
Mark Pracht: Englehart.
1:03:04
Dan Newland: Egglehart.
1:03:04
Mark Pracht: Inglehart would always talk about that. He's like, you know, like, when you write the Joker, he has to legitimately be insane. He can't, like… you can make him a homicidal maniac, but, like, that, like, I think his problem with O'Neill when he turned him back into a homicidal maniac was that the plots were still, like, relatively
1:03:23
Mark Pracht: straightforward crime things. Like, he was like, oh, I'm gonna kill everybody, but I want to rob a bank, or whatever, like that. And he's like, if the Joker's insane, you have to make what he's trying to do insane. And the idea of, like, trying to steal copyrights is…
1:03:42
Mark Pracht: Nutsoid, right? You know, it's like… and that's… I love that stuff. And…
1:03:50
Mark Pracht: to what Sean said, yeah, right out of the style guide, like, so much of this stuff is right out of the style guide.
1:03:58
Mark Pracht: So, like, I love… I love…
1:04:01
Mark Pracht: The Earth 1 Superman, or the Earth 2 Superman, sorry.
1:04:04
Mark Pracht: You know, having the the little stretchy things around his wrist, you know, that.
1:04:11
Mark Pracht: There's little subtle ways, you know, and the gray hair, and the slightly different S, and you're like, oh, okay, that's the Earth 2 Superman, you know, and… And.
1:04:22
Mark Pracht: And I love how, you know, they still have this scene that's a lot like
1:04:28
Mark Pracht: you know, shooters, like, let's all line up and talk about who we are moment, you know? It comes when the Beyonder is talking to them right after the double-page spread, right? And they're all like, well, this, and this is what I'm thinking, and blah blah blah, and… but it feels so much more organic, you know?
1:04:45
Mark Pracht: It feels like they're talking to each other about what's happening rather than just
1:04:50
Mark Pracht: you know, blovating. Great word. Blovating about what the situation is, you know?
1:04:59
Mark Pracht: And I love it. And I also… you know, it's…
1:05:05
Mark Pracht: at every step, they're building this idea that this is bigger, and it's gonna keep getting bigger, because, like, the Beyonder is like, these are the people I gathered right now, there'll be others that we'll need later.
1:05:16
Mark Pracht: you know, And…
1:05:18
Mark Pracht: And that it's this idea that the story, the threat is evolving, the story is evolving, and therefore who he needs to call in for help.
1:05:29
Mark Pracht: We'll have to evolve as well, and it's just…
1:05:33
Mark Pracht: I don't know, there's so much great stuff here.
1:05:36
Mark Pracht: Yeah. I love… I love going to Atlantis, I love Aaron.
1:05:43
Mark Pracht: Or Arian, or whatever it is.
1:05:48
Mark Pracht: And I, and I love that It…
1:05:52
Mark Pracht: specifically finds the the limitations of these characters. Right?
1:05:58
Mark Pracht: You know? And the… and the… In a lot of ways.
1:06:04
Mark Pracht: It feels more like early Marvel in that every character sort of has
1:06:10
Mark Pracht: A problem, as well as this bigger problem, right?
1:06:14
Mark Pracht: It feels like to me, anyway.
1:06:16
Mark Pracht: Even if it's just… Kind of just stated in passing.
1:06:21
Mark Pracht: Anyway.
1:06:22
Dan Newland: the ability to give them all personality. Yes. So many characters, but all of them feel different and real. And in the midst of all of it, you know, you've got Commandy going, "Hold it. I hate gorillas." And suddenly there's a gorilla. And they managed to explain two worlds history while they're climbing this tower, you know.
1:06:39
Mark Pracht: two panels.
1:06:42
Brian Pastor (they/them): And I love what Dan said earlier about.
1:06:45
Brian Pastor (they/them): you know, about Lila, like, you know, what's her deal, and like… so, like, the people that have brought them together
1:06:53
Brian Pastor (they/them): are mysterious and have nuance, and we're not. And there's still mysterious forces out there. We don't yet know.
1:07:00
Brian Pastor (they/them): And so you, you know, you have Lila, who's clearly having some kind of moral crisis, you know, she keeps talking about how, you know, she loves and is… the Monitor is like a father to her, but she has to do this thing, she has to destroy his plans.
1:07:18
Brian Pastor (they/them): The monitor who had all the power to bring these people together is clearly also losing his power, and we don't quite know.
1:07:25
Brian Pastor (they/them): yet exactly who the FO or what the FO looks like.
1:07:29
Brian Pastor (they/them): And that's incredibly compelling to me. Again, you know, just quickly going back to the Beyonder.
1:07:37
Brian Pastor (they/them): We don't know anything about the beyonder except that he's like some really really powerful jerk, you know?
1:07:42
Brian Pastor (they/them): But there's so much…
1:07:44
Mark Pracht: He was selling weapons to villains. Right.
1:07:46
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah, yeah, exactly.
1:07:51
Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I think I think you know this idea like what? What a like! And that was like.
1:07:58
Mark Pracht: 2, 3 Panels in issue one, where the the shadow, the shadow demon, or whatever it is like.
1:08:05
Mark Pracht: Possessed.
1:08:07
Mark Pracht: that one… portion of Lila, you know the the cause. She splits into all the different
1:08:13
Mark Pracht: And now we're seeing that.
1:08:16
Mark Pracht: I mean, and like, this… oh, God, like, when she comes in to check on the Luther child, and now he's, like.
1:08:25
Mark Pracht: 10, or whatever.
1:08:26
Brian Pastor (they/them): The British.
1:08:28
Mark Pracht: And you see the stars, you know, and it's like, man, What does that mean?
1:08:35
Dan Newland: Oh.
1:08:38
Mark Pracht: Is it… yeah, this is… And, also, talk about the eyes. Not as… not as cool as the Batman eyes, but when, when.
1:08:49
Mark Pracht: Harbinger is Is, looking at the child.
1:08:55
Mark Pracht: And it looks like she has cat eyes?
1:08:59
Mark Pracht: And I'm like, That's.
1:09:02
Mark Pracht: Bizarre.
1:09:05
Brian Pastor (they/them): You're talking about when Lila sees the child grown up.
1:09:08
Mark Pracht: Or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah.
1:09:09
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
1:09:10
Dan Newland: Pupils are different than humans.
1:09:12
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:09:13
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
1:09:13
Mark Pracht: conflict.
1:09:14
Sean Harklerode: Right.
1:09:14
Mark Pracht: What a subtle thing, and not something that you need to…
1:09:18
Mark Pracht: And it's not apparent in any other drawing, really, right?
1:09:22
Dan Newland: Nope.
1:09:22
Mark Pracht: I mean, I suppose if you, I mean, it is George Perez. I suppose if you blew it up.
1:09:26
Dan Newland: I did a few.
1:09:26
Sean Harklerode: Got green eyes.
1:09:28
Dan Newland: up.
1:09:30
Dan Newland: It's… her eyes have… have vertical pupils in the… in the smaller panel right before it, too.
1:09:35
Dan Newland: So, yeah.
1:09:36
Dan Newland: I have not… I have not actually noticed that before.
1:09:39
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:09:40
Brian Pastor (they/them): Yeah.
1:09:40
Dan Newland: I don't know if I'd ever realized that.
1:09:44
Dan Newland: Huh.
1:09:45
Dan Newland: Yeah.
1:09:47
Mark Pracht: But, you know, and then also the foreshadowing, just to go back,
1:09:55
Mark Pracht: the, the Guardians page.
1:09:58
Mark Pracht: When the, the power battery takes them all out.
1:10:03
Mark Pracht: And it says, what began with you so many centuries ago now ends with you now.
1:10:09
Dan Newland: And… Completely unexplained.
1:10:11
Mark Pracht: completely unexplained.
1:10:14
Mark Pracht: and and you know, I remember when I finally, when I finally got a collected edition, was able to read this whole story because, like I said, I was picking up random issues as I could.
1:10:27
Mark Pracht: By the time I got that, I had read the the history of the DC universe by Wolfman Perez, and I was like, oh.
1:10:36
Dan Newland: Foreshadowing, your sign of great literature.
1:10:39
Mark Pracht: That's right. And it's like, I don't know, it's so good. And it's so… it's…
1:10:47
Mark Pracht: Not to… not to just keep beating up on Shooter. It's so much more well thought out.
1:10:54
Mark Pracht: It's so much more, like… just…
1:10:59
Mark Pracht: Yeah, like, they know what they need to get done. They know what the… they know what the…
1:11:05
Mark Pracht: The marching orders are. They know what has to happen.
1:11:10
Mark Pracht: And that what the goal, like, what things need to look like
1:11:14
Mark Pracht: It's this argument I make about the, the Star Wars sequels, right? Like, if you know where you're going.
1:11:22
Mark Pracht: If you know what the endpoint is.
1:11:26
Mark Pracht: You can make everything point to that.
1:11:30
Mark Pracht: Even if you don't explain it right now, or even if you don't…
1:11:35
Mark Pracht: even if it seems to be… even if… even if you get a better idea along the way, and you're like, oh, what if we did this? That still points to there, but we could do this, and you could change things, and you can make adjustments, but you still know where you're going, right?
1:11:49
Mark Pracht: And Wolfman clearly knows exactly where he's going. And…
1:11:56
Mark Pracht: You know, who knows how many things he was like, oh, well, this is a better idea, let's do this. And, you know…
1:12:03
Mark Pracht: Maybe, you know…
1:12:05
Mark Pracht: I got this idea, maybe we throw in Anthro. We start the second issue with Anthro, because nobody knows Anthro.
1:12:12
Mark Pracht: anthro.
1:12:14
Sean Harklerode: I don't know that I've heard of him before or since.
1:12:18
Mark Pracht: I.
1:12:19
Dan Newland: There are so many characters in this who are, like, almost, like, one-note characters. They were in, like, two issues once. Yeah. And they appear in Crisis. It's insane.
1:12:28
Sean Harklerode: But, I will say, having no other, as we have said, I get a total sense of him, his supporting cast, you know, the father, you know, and his sweet, you know, girlfriend, wife, girlfriend, whatever.
1:12:46
Mark Pracht: They get the humor out of it, you know, where he's like, that's my, Oh, look what your, your husband is, he's failing us. And then when he succeeds, like, Oh, that's my son.
1:12:57
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
1:13:00
Mark Pracht: Well, and it's just like… and it's funny, because, like, we talk about… you were talking about this whole section leading right up to the DC Comics Presents, you know, and it's the cold open, right? And…
1:13:12
Mark Pracht: It's… It's really clever, it's really clever because it's like, we start in the distant past.
1:13:22
Mark Pracht: Right?
1:13:23
Mark Pracht: And… Like, just drop you right into it.
1:13:27
Mark Pracht: And then we have this moment where they cross over with the far future.
1:13:33
Mark Pracht: And everybody's confused by it. Then we go to the far future, where this element from the past comes in, and they're all confused by it. And, on top of that, they're talking about looking for their team member, who we saw taken by the Beyonder.
1:13:48
Mark Pracht: or the monitor.
1:13:50
Mark Pracht: Jesus Christ. The monitor in the last episode, you know, in the last issue, you know, where's Dawnstar? What happened to Dawnstar? You know, so that there's this idea that this thing is reverberating out and that it actually does matter to to the world around it.
1:14:06
Mark Pracht: And that people are still living their lives. Then we have the mammoths.
1:14:15
Mark Pracht: I mean, this great line of,
1:14:19
Mark Pracht: I haven't stopped too many mammoths in my career.
1:14:23
Mark Pracht: And I just love that shot of him about to pick up the mammoth, and then the mammoth disappears, but it's like he's so gently, like, reaching down to pick it up like it's a cat or something. It's just, like, it's fantastic. And then, you know.
1:14:39
Mark Pracht: And then, the future…
1:14:41
Mark Pracht: Fades now to the present and then we get Batman and the Joker and it's like, okay.
1:14:48
Mark Pracht: like, time, space, It's all… everybody's in trouble.
1:14:55
Mark Pracht: You know?
1:14:56
Dan Newland: It's all on the table, it's not just a couple things, you know.
1:15:00
Mark Pracht: Well, and the thing is, is, like, what's really interesting about this
1:15:05
Mark Pracht: a multiversal level is that this this
1:15:08
Mark Pracht: The, the anti-matter thing apparently is coming.
1:15:13
Mark Pracht: Like, in all times, at the same time, you know, and that's…
1:15:19
Mark Pracht: It's fucking awesome, you know? And… Yeah.
1:15:24
Mark Pracht: Just love it. Just… it's… it's so good.
1:15:28
Tad Eggleston: Really is.
1:15:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm kind of embarrassed that it took me so long to read it.
1:15:36
Mark Pracht: And you should be. Well, look…
1:15:38
Dan Newland: We haven't hit, and we haven't hit the good stuff yet.
1:15:40
Mark Pracht: Yeah, we haven't even gotten.
1:15:41
Dan Newland: issues.
1:15:42
Mark Pracht: hard.
1:15:42
Dan Newland: You know, like 7 and 8 that just.
1:15:44
Tad Eggleston: literally.
1:15:44
Dan Newland: They break you and leave you laying in a puddle crying.
1:15:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think part of it is, like, so few events pay off.
1:15:54
Tad Eggleston: Another part of it is, as much as I love Secret Wars, I think I love it a lot for sentimental reasons. So, like, I always kind of wondered, because I had them wrapped in my head together, if…
1:16:09
Tad Eggleston: if reading Crisis so much later would have it hit the same way, or if I was gonna wind up in a position where I was gonna be shitting on somebody's sandbox because they loved it from having read it when it came out, and I'm like, yeah… okay. But…
1:16:28
Mark Pracht: Here's the thing about crisis is you can see that every crossover since this book has been chasing this book. Every crossover that Marvel has done, every crossover that DC has done, every single one of them was like, Jesus, we got to do it's got to be that good, and it never can be right.
1:16:47
Tad Eggleston: No. So many of them are much closer to Secret Wars. So, in my head, they were all chasing that as well. So, like, I… again, like, and I'm fully acknowledging, like, my… my…
1:17:05
Tad Eggleston: own ignorance through the years, but I'm trying to explain where it came from, is that, like… because again, so many people, like. particularly when I'm working in a comic shop, and that was probably the time where I had the most people saying, oh, you haven't read Crisis on Infinite Earths? You should read Crisis on Infinite Earths.
1:17:23
Tad Eggleston: The last thing I want to do is… is get into a position where I am telling something that the… somebody that the thing that they love
1:17:35
Tad Eggleston: I don't like, or worse yet, I think is not that good, right? It's one of the reasons that I haven't read Scott Snyder's whole run on Batman yet, because there are parts of it that I love a lot.
1:17:49
Tad Eggleston: But I don't like it the way a lot of the fans like it, and I just didn't want to put myself in the position where I was…
1:17:57
Tad Eggleston: Arguing with the customers against something being good.
1:18:01
Tad Eggleston: But.
1:18:02
Mark Pracht: Well, it's like the absolute books over there. Like, that is just not for me. It is not something that I want to read, so I'm not reading it. And it's like, it's just because I know, like.
1:18:14
Mark Pracht: I know myself and I'm going to be like, this is just not for me. And then I'll be on social media and I'll say, this book is just not for me. I didn't really like it. I just thought, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then somebody is going to be like, what the fuck's wrong with you? You know?
1:18:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I will say two of them have been absolutely outstanding. One of them has absolutely transcended everything…
1:18:36
Tad Eggleston: you know about superhero comics. Like, Absolute Martian Manhunter is… Like…
1:18:43
Mark Pracht: Someday.
1:18:44
Tad Eggleston: Someday… someday, I think you should read that, regardless of whether or not you read any of the rest of the Absolute Universe at all.
1:18:53
Tad Eggleston: But that's what I am. And it's not required.
1:18:56
Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like, go ahead, Dan.
1:18:58
Dan Newland: I was just gonna say, I'm happy that Tad isn't enjoying this. Yeah. Because I think that there is really something to be said for the fact that
1:19:07
Dan Newland: it was, you know, the reason I loved it partly was I didn't know what was gonna happen. And in many cases, you know, you have been… you've lived your whole life in the post-crisis universe.
1:19:20
Tad Eggleston: For the most part, yeah.
1:19:21
Dan Newland: characters don't necessarily matter if you weren't reading at the time, or you weren't concerned at the time. You know, I'd spent 5, 6 years of my childhood invested in
1:19:33
Dan Newland: every year, there's a Justice League Justice Society crossover, and I'm reading All-Star Squadron, and I loved a lot of these things like Commandee. Legion of Superheroes was my thing. So I'm watching all of these… these teams and these characters that I really cared about at that time, because I was a, you know, a comic geek.
1:19:54
Dan Newland: in real harm, in jeopardy. You know, they had the advertisements that they're like, worlds will live, worlds will die.
1:20:00
Mark Pracht: that.
1:20:01
Dan Newland: DC will never be the same. Well, if the universe is never the same, I don't know which of these guys is surviving, and it's obvious not everybody is.
1:20:09
Dan Newland: So, the fact that the stakes aren't maybe there as much, because you kind of know what's come out the other end and what hasn't, that the Legion still exists, that, you know, Superman and Batman are still out there.
1:20:20
Dan Newland: But you can still kind of get that.
1:20:22
Dan Newland: that urgency and enjoy it, I think is really cool.
1:20:26
Mark Pracht: Well, and I think that, you know, like, it really does, like, when you read this, like, one of the things about it is, you know.
1:20:36
Mark Pracht: When you read something that was sort of the foundational.
1:20:40
Mark Pracht: version of something?
1:20:43
Mark Pracht: I think sometimes it can either be good or bad, right? Because…
1:20:48
Mark Pracht: Like I'm a big fan of that John Carter movie, right? I think that that movie was great.
1:20:53
Mark Pracht: But there is a legitimate truth to saying that when you watch that movie, you can say, well, that's Star Wars, that's blah blah blah, that's Superman, that's blah blah blah, you know, like, you can see all the pieces that went into other things, and you can say to somebody, well, yeah, but this is where it all came from, and they don't care, right? Because they've already seen all that stuff, right?
1:21:12
Mark Pracht: And the thing is, is like, what's… what's…
1:21:16
Mark Pracht: been maddening to me about the DC universe post-crisis, is that
1:21:22
Mark Pracht: They made this decision that I thought was amazing, right? And that was… resulted in…
1:21:30
Mark Pracht: in, frankly, a cleaner universe, right? You know? Not to… not to spoil, but,
1:21:38
Mark Pracht: And then they spent, like, 20 years chasing
1:21:41
Mark Pracht: How to fix little fucking things, right?
1:21:45
Mark Pracht: Right? You know, like…
1:21:46
Mark Pracht: John Byrne creating his little pocket universe so that Superman could still be part of the Legion and, and, and, and.
1:21:55
Mark Pracht: all of that and it's like… and then it's like, oh, and then we gotta do Zero Hour, and we gotta fix this thing again, and then it's like, you know, Grant Morrison swans in and was like, I like the multiverse, let's put the multiverse back, you know, and I'm like…
1:22:07
Mark Pracht: You know, there is a point, like, I do think that it's worth saying.
1:22:13
Mark Pracht: Every 30 years or so.
1:22:16
Mark Pracht: Break it down and restart.
1:22:18
Mark Pracht: that's great, you know? I think it's… I think it's a smart thing to do.
1:22:23
Mark Pracht: But…
1:22:24
Mark Pracht: The thing is, is that the problem is, is that they've spent 30 years, like, every 3 years, breaking it down and trying to restart, you know?
1:22:32
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the big problems that I see with it is post-crisis.
1:22:39
Sean Harklerode: Burns Superman universe.
1:22:43
Sean Harklerode: took a lot of the charm out of… out of Superman.
1:22:48
Sean Harklerode: You know, it was much more serious, a little more grounded.
1:22:55
Sean Harklerode: But, you know, I think people have decided, well, I kind of like…
1:23:00
Sean Harklerode: all that quirky stuff. I like Superboy, I like Supergirl, I like, you know, the monkey, I like… you know, the Bottle City of Kandor, I like…
1:23:11
Sean Harklerode: all these things.
1:23:14
Sean Harklerode: And so, it's been getting back… bringing back some of that Silver Age, you know.
1:23:22
Sean Harklerode: Just wander.
1:23:24
Mark Pracht: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I think that there could be there are ways to do that, I think, that you could have done in story rather than try, you know, and like that's what they were trying to do with the the pocket universe to to allow Superboy to be part of the Legion.
1:23:38
Mark Pracht: But, you know, I'm just saying in general, I think, you know, I think what
1:23:47
Mark Pracht: Now we're talking about the fallout from it.
1:23:49
Mark Pracht: You know, like, specifically with… I did think that Byrne had a point when he said that, you know, making him one of the…
1:23:58
Mark Pracht: 13.5 million, survivors of the planet Krypton, kind of.
1:24:06
Mark Pracht: put…
1:24:07
Mark Pracht: took something away from the character, right? You know, and… and I think that you could have had a story where he found Kandor.
1:24:14
Mark Pracht: And been like, oh, you know, and then you could have revisited that in a different way.
1:24:19
Mark Pracht: I do think… yeah, I mean, I have mixed feelings about that. Certainly, we can also… we can talk about Miller's revamp of Batman, which I don't think anybody hates.
1:24:31
Mark Pracht: Some people do, I'm sure.
1:24:33
Mark Pracht: There's all those people…
1:24:35
Sean Harklerode: One of my favorite that comes out of this.
1:24:38
Sean Harklerode: is the Wally West Splash.
1:24:42
Sean Harklerode: But also.
1:24:45
Sean Harklerode: after that started, I went back and read The Trial of the Flash, so that last Barry Allen story arc, and that's one of my things from high school that I remember, because I was, like, again, until I read this, I was a Marvel guy. Yep. I'm reading this book, and I'm like you, Tad.
1:25:04
Sean Harklerode: or, you know, I would have known… I knew Batman, the Joker, Superman, and the Flash in this… in this issue.
1:25:13
Sean Harklerode: I, you know, I barely… I kind of knew the cyborg, I'd seen him from Teen Titans, you know, but I didn't really know any of the other characters.
1:25:23
Sean Harklerode: But I was totally invested, and I went back, and I read those, you know, that last… the trial of Barry Allen, which was just amazing, and it's one of my favorite, storylines I read in high school.
1:25:37
Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, like… Part, you know, like… I'm a Flash fan, right?
1:25:44
Mark Pracht: I am a Flash fan.
1:25:45
Tad Eggleston: Mark just showed off his tattoo.
1:25:48
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
1:25:49
Mark Pracht: I am a Flash fan, and and I am a Flash fan because of Wally West.
1:25:56
Mark Pracht: But the thing is, is, like, I also… I love Barry, I love the entire pantheon of those characters.
1:26:02
Mark Pracht: I do think there's probably, at this point, you know, like, at this point, there's probably 35 too many speedsters in the Flash family, but, you know, that's why… it's the same reason that there's…
1:26:14
Mark Pracht: 15 too many people in the Bat family now, you know, it's like…
1:26:18
Mark Pracht: It it you're starting, it's diminishing returns, and that's probably why.
1:26:24
Mark Pracht: You know.
1:26:25
Mark Pracht: In recent…
1:26:27
Mark Pracht: recent Batman issues, I've been like, you know, maybe it's time for another crisis. Maybe it's time to really come in and have somebody tear this thing down and build it back up, right?
1:26:38
Mark Pracht: Because, like.
1:26:40
Dan Newland: I think DC knows that. That's why they're doing Absolute. That's why Marvel is now coming in with their…
1:26:47
Dan Newland: You know, that's where they're coming in with their, whatever it's called, the Mysterium universe.
1:26:52
Mark Pracht: what.
1:26:52
Dan Newland: What is it called, mate?
1:26:53
Tad Eggleston: I think they go the other way now. Rather than tearing down.
1:26:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the last time DC tore down the whole universe was New 52, and it really went over poorly with a lot of people, even though there were a lot of great stories then. So I think… I think more of what we're seeing now is we're seeing…
1:27:16
Tad Eggleston: the absolute universe. We're seeing the ultimate universe. And if things work there. then they get…
1:27:25
Tad Eggleston: Pulled into the main chaotic.
1:27:30
Dan Newland: The Miles Morales way of doing things.
1:27:32
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:27:33
Dan Newland: You bring a character in and see what happens and then incorporate them into the 616 if they decide they want to.
1:27:40
Mark Pracht: Pat and I have talked about probably ad nauseum. Miles Morales was a much stronger character.
1:27:46
Mark Pracht: In his own universe, you know?
1:27:48
Tad Eggleston: agree.
1:27:49
Mark Pracht: So…
1:27:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I still love him in the 616, but but You know. But at, like…
1:27:57
Mark Pracht: But that's another one where now there's, like, 7,500 spider characters that are.
1:28:02
Tad Eggleston: Right, and the other thing is, like, Miles has had some great writers, and I don't want to take anything away from any of them.
1:28:13
Tad Eggleston: And… and there have been great runs since he went into the 616, but the…
1:28:20
Tad Eggleston: His run in the Ultimate Universe was Bendis at his peak.
1:28:25
Tad Eggleston: And that's… Bendis at his peak, getting to play with a new toy. In an environment that he didn't have to.
1:28:35
Tad Eggleston: Create.
1:28:37
Tad Eggleston: So, like, it's as close as to…
1:28:39
Dan Newland: Perfect distillation.
1:28:40
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, you know, so, like.
1:28:44
Mark Pracht: Well, and the thing is, is that Benda's also, ended the Peter… the ultimate Peter Parker in a completely satisfying way.
1:28:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:28:53
Mark Pracht: didn't make it feel like… like, you know, like, I think so much now, sorry, gonna bring up lanterns, that it feels like you have to tear down one character in order to build up another character, you know?
1:29:07
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:29:07
Mark Pracht: And I think that I'm not like I really like that show. I was not angry about that show, but.
1:29:13
Tad Eggleston: I still need to watch it.
1:29:15
Mark Pracht: I still feel like it did Hal a bit dirty, and I think that…
1:29:18
Brian Pastor (they/them): They have a whole separate series now.
1:29:23
Brian Pastor (they/them): It's great.
1:29:24
Mark Pracht: Yeah, alright, but… but…
1:29:27
Dan Newland: Is he gonna have a separate series?
1:29:28
Brian Pastor (they/them): That's what I heard, yeah.
1:29:30
Dan Newland: Interesting.
1:29:32
Mark Pracht: Well.
1:29:33
Tad Eggleston: His own series, or is it season 2 of Lanterns?
1:29:36
Brian Pastor (they/them): I don't know.
1:29:38
Mark Pracht: They did say.
1:29:39
Dan Newland: Season two of Lanterns is going to be kind.
1:29:42
Mark Pracht: I.
1:29:43
Dan Newland: Continuing the whole thing.
1:29:44
Mark Pracht: I don't want a second series seasons of Lanterns. I think that that doesn't I don't.
1:29:49
Tad Eggleston: Hey.
1:29:49
Dan Newland: Podcast on lanterns. Let's.
1:29:51
Tad Eggleston: one.
1:29:51
Dan Newland: Lock lanterns.
1:29:52
Tad Eggleston: One of my good friends is writing on the second season. He needs work. Well, I want him to continue having work.
1:30:00
Dan Newland: I think they did a nice job with the Jon Stewart character, so if they do the second season, there's a lot there they can do with. I think.
1:30:08
Mark Pracht: I think they did a great job with both of those characters. I think they… I think they, like… but I just think that there were motivations that were applied to Hal that were in the service of trying to
1:30:20
Mark Pracht: Not, like, to make a reason for John to take over. And that's not…
1:30:27
Mark Pracht: I think you could have had the same characterization of Hal without making him into an asshole at every turn, right?
1:30:35
Mark Pracht: That's my opinion.
1:30:38
Mark Pracht: Plus, But we did get that great line about…
1:30:45
Mark Pracht: when, after the funeral, when the, when the hologram, the hologram showed up. It's like…
1:30:51
Mark Pracht: Was Mogo there? Was Mogo there? Oh yeah, he was standing right next to me. Mogo's a planet!
1:30:56
Dan Newland: minute.
1:30:59
Mark Pracht: But, anyway, yeah, like, I do have to wrap this up, but
1:31:07
Mark Pracht: Great, great book. I mean, like, I think, you know, it…
1:31:12
Mark Pracht: as we go further and further into this, I just feel like, you know, there are good issues of… of Secret Wars coming up, but…
1:31:21
Mark Pracht: It almost feels like, you know, comparing a,
1:31:29
Mark Pracht: graduate history paper to War and Peace, you know what I'm saying?
1:31:34
Dan Newland: Are we gonna spend 12 episodes beating down on, on poor Secret Wars? But I was amazed we spent 40 minutes or so talking Secret Wars today. I didn't think there was that much in that issue that we'd be able to do that, but, well.
1:31:47
Mark Pracht: I think we spent 40 minutes talking about how there wasn't much in that issue.
1:31:51
Dan Newland: That's okay.
1:31:54
Mark Pracht: But I mean, you know, like, I think that these are both great series. I do. They're just very different. And it's interesting that the history of comics has sort of put them into these…
1:32:08
Mark Pracht: Against each other because they don't really hold up against each other like, I think that.
1:32:14
Mark Pracht: you know, like, Sean had talked about, like, doing Infinity War and Infinity Gauntlet up against Crisis might be a little bit better, but I just don't think that… I don't think in either case that… I don't think the Infinity books are really…
1:32:27
Dan Newland: I know.
1:32:28
Mark Pracht: as… as big, storytelling-wise. But I mean, like, I'm curious, like, I have… I have a copy of Superpowers, which, of course, was the DC book based on the story… toy line.
1:32:40
Mark Pracht: And I… I haven't read it yet, so I'm curious as to how that plays out. And Dan is shaking his head like, ugh.
1:32:50
Dan Newland: Kind of, it's kind of terrible. I was if, if.
1:32:53
Mark Pracht: Dan, how can you say something that Jack Kirby was involved with was terrible?
1:32:58
Dan Newland: Oh, good God.
1:33:00
Mark Pracht: They're gonna come for you, Dan. The Kirbyites are coming for you.
1:33:03
Dan Newland: I didn't… I did not love that series. I will also say, and this is weird, if you really wanted to see the Marvel…
1:33:12
Dan Newland: Corollary to a response to crisis.
1:33:15
Dan Newland: I think you'd want to read the New Universe books.
1:33:19
Dan Newland: Because I think that actually is…
1:33:21
Dan Newland: Marvel creating a new universe to try and get something to get them out of their…
1:33:26
Dan Newland: Chronological problems, and be able to do some stuff that doesn't need that.
1:33:30
Dan Newland: Is they… they just sort of did, you know, way before the Ultimate Universe, there was the New Universe, and it… it failed, but it went for, like, 3 years before it failed, so…
1:33:41
Mark Pracht: Yeah, but we can't read that book because at the end, Pittsburgh gets blown up and yeah.
1:33:44
Brian Pastor (they/them): project.
1:33:45
Mark Pracht: Really upset.
1:33:47
Brian Pastor (they/them): I'd be very upset.
1:33:50
Mark Pracht: All right. Anyway, guys, I gotta go.
1:33:52
Tad Eggleston: Alright! For the Heroes of Bronze Book Club on 22 Panels.
1:33:59
Tad Eggleston: We will see you.
1:34:00
Tad Eggleston: After the next page.