Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / 22 Panels Episode #215 - Joyride

Transcript

22 Panels Episode #215 - Joyride · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the 22 Panels Podcast.
• 0:06
  Tad Eggleston: I am Tad, across the interwebs.
• 0:11
  Phil: Wait, wait, wait.
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: is Phil.
• 0:13
  Phil: Hey!
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: And, we are back with episode number 215.
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: Where later this episode, when we hit our Great Responsibility section, we will discuss the wonderful book from Jackson Lancey.
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: Colin Kelly and Marcus Tote Joyride, but first, let's look at some news from this week. The first piece of big news, from my perspective, anyway.
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: Is that… Two of my, my favorite…
• 0:52
  Tad Eggleston: Publishers of… of foreign material are… are now…
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: one, because Ablaze Publishing has acquired MBM Publishing.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know what this is gonna wind up looking like. I hope that it means that it's just more robust. I imagine that as so much of the stuff going on right now, it comes out of
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: the diamond bankruptcy, and probably too much of MBM stock being… sitting in diamond warehouses and essentially stolen from them.
• 1:27
  Tad Eggleston: And I, I mean…
• 1:28
  Phil: going around.
• 1:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, stock as in, like, they're physical items, not stock as in…
• 1:32
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even know if they're publicly traded, you know what I mean?
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: But for… for the listeners out there, that's… that's what I mean. But, like…
• 1:45
  Tad Eggleston: I'm hoping that it means… just a more robust presence. Sometimes… Sometimes when they're… are too many… specialty publishers…
• 2:04
  Tad Eggleston: in one area.
• 2:06
  Tad Eggleston: It means that they all kind of get overlooked.
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
• 2:13
  Phil: Yeah, and I mean, I'm…
• 2:14
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than 10 books coming from one publisher.
• 2:18
  Phil: In a month, there's…
• 2:20
  Tad Eggleston: 2 books apiece from 3 publishers, and, like, it's just easy to skim by it when you're buying.
• 2:31
  Phil: And I mean, I'm hoping that, you know, if… it's good that… I think it's… I think it's a good sign when a publisher buys another publisher, so it's not like a… another business that has no idea what's going on, and if they were both putting out good books, then hopefully good publisher, because… plus good publisher equals better publisher, you know? Right.
• 2:50
  Tad Eggleston: That's… that's… that's… that's my hope.
• 2:52
  Phil: I mean, I prefer less consolidation.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: Period.
• 2:57
  Phil: Yeah. But the… like you said, if it's happening to survive after the diamond shakeup, then…
• 3:04
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, if it's happening, I like it better when it feels like… A real merger, rather than…
• 3:16
  Tad Eggleston: a swallowing.
• 3:18
  Phil: Right? Oh, goodness.
• 3:20
  Phil: Once, once it starts feeling like, you know…
• 3:23
  Phil: the… the various sized fishes in cartoon form.
• 3:28
  Tad Eggleston: This doesn't feel like… somebody getting rid of their competition. This feels like somebody who is…
• 3:41
  Tad Eggleston: Possibly needing an influx to remain stable themselves, seeing somebody else who is gonna die without And going, hey.
• 3:54
  Tad Eggleston: We may both be on shaky ground, but we're not on shaky ground if we're together.
• 4:00
  Tad Eggleston: It's my hope. It's my hope, because I love them both. Similarly, this one kind of came out of nowhere.
• 4:07
  Tad Eggleston: to me, anyway, because I,
• 4:11
  Tad Eggleston: It seems like it might be for similar reasons, but I never imagined that Archie would be in a position
• 4:18
  Tad Eggleston: Where they were gonna need to…
• 4:20
  Tad Eggleston: team with another publishing house, but Archie and Oni.
• 4:24
  Tad Eggleston: are… are teaming up. Again, I don't see…
• 4:30
  Tad Eggleston: Though, though there is an update since I, I read… the… the… The issue to begin with.
• 4:40
  Tad Eggleston: But,
• 4:50
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, now, update is, clarify, Archie Comics will continue to publish classic Archie versions of the characters, including the just-announced new quarterly magazine, Archie Jumbo Comics Magazine, which will feature more than 100 pages of comics. The classic Archie line will include new material.
• 5:07
  Tad Eggleston: Oni will publish their new Archie No. 1, so what it actually looks…
• 5:12
  Phil: This is action.
• 5:13
  Tad Eggleston: This makes it cooler.
• 5:14
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:16
  Tad Eggleston: like, and Archie has done some good stuff with newer…
• 5:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, whether it's Mark Waid's run, or Chip Zdarsky's Jughead, or Afterlife with Archie, they've done some cool stuff, but, like, Oni also is in a position where they have the talent, they have the editorial structure
• 5:34
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, this seems like kind of a merging of…
• 5:39
  Tad Eggleston: hopefully giving people at both Oni and Archie a little more… more work and… and…
• 5:46
  Tad Eggleston: Combining what they're good at while still also
• 5:51
  Tad Eggleston: doing what they're good at in other places. So yes, this… this could be cool.
• 5:59
  Phil: it says.
• 5:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm certain that it will be cool on a number of levels, just because, like.
• 6:06
  Tad Eggleston: what's been announced already is Sierra Hahn, who has been,
• 6:12
  Tad Eggleston: doing… or has been the editor in charge of the EC Comics brand will be overseeing
• 6:20
  Tad Eggleston: Oni's Archie Comics. Creators that have been named so far for upcoming
• 6:26
  Tad Eggleston: Archie series, we've got Patrick Horvath.
• 6:29
  Tad Eggleston: We've got Karina Bechco, Fabio Moon.
• 6:33
  Phil: Yeah, I'd read the heck out of that.
• 6:35
  Tad Eggleston: A Fabio Moon Archie book.
• 6:37
  Tad Eggleston: Maxwell Prince writing for Fabio Moon?
• 6:40
  Phil: Wow!
• 6:42
  Tad Eggleston: Pactor Korvath is writing for Tyler Crook.
• 6:45
  Phil: with a series called Archie in Hell.
• 6:47
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:51
  Phil: Wow, yeah, that, that sounds, that sounds fascinating.
• 6:55
  Phil: Oh yeah, I'm hoping that… that…
• 6:57
  Tad Eggleston: I also hope that this is a sign that, like, the Archie thing that was announced that, like, keeps getting kicked down the road was they were finally collecting Kelly Thompson and
• 7:11
  Tad Eggleston: Veronica Fish's whole run on Suprina Teenage Witch.
• 7:17
  Tad Eggleston: And… it's in, like, publication limbo. It's gone from…
• 7:22
  Tad Eggleston: From, like, September to October to 2 Be Announced. So I hope that, like, the To Be Announced is gonna be one of the first, because there's also word that there will be various collections
• 7:37
  Tad Eggleston: coming out through the Oni…
• 7:41
  Phil: What I'm thinking is that…
• 7:42
  Tad Eggleston: ownership as well.
• 7:44
  Phil: Archie's probably hanging on to their digest-sized stuff, and then…
• 7:49
  Phil: That's just a guess. That's a total guess.
• 7:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but also, it seems like…
• 7:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, when they were doing a lot of the… the… and I don't know all of the names, but when they were doing a lot of the stuff that we were just talking about is cool, and, you know, they had Alex Agura editing there, you know, they had a couple other, like, people who…
• 8:15
  Tad Eggleston: are not people that you would normally immediately associate with Archie,
• 8:24
  Tad Eggleston: doing editorial work that I think did a lot to drive that experience. But a lot of those people have moved on to other things, so what it looks like is, rather than trying to poach from somewhere else.
• 8:39
  Tad Eggleston: they went, what publisher out there? And I'm certain there's financial stuff, too. I don't wanna…
• 8:45
  Tad Eggleston: I don't want to downplay that there's dollars and cents. But both Oni and Archie have…
• 8:53
  Tad Eggleston: much more of a long-term reputation as… I mean, Oni almost died…
• 8:58
  Tad Eggleston: And rose from the ashes, not by, oh, we finally managed to sell something, but by, like, finding the right people to really reinvest in being a comic company.
• 9:14
  Phil: Yeah, I remember when that news broke, it was, it was, it was nerve-wracking, but I think Ony's bounced back in a really strong way. Right! You know, Goran…
• 9:24
  Tad Eggleston: I just saw his name here, because it's obviously involved in this.
• 9:27
  Tad Eggleston: Hunter Goranson has done some great, great work there.
• 9:34
  Tad Eggleston: So, I wonder if this is a case of, okay, rather than trying to poach the right editors, or find
• 9:40
  Tad Eggleston: the right editors. We're gonna go somewhere where they already have the editorial structure that we think
• 9:48
  Tad Eggleston: Would be good for this?
• 9:52
  Tad Eggleston: Which on one side probably means that there are less jobs being filled than might be.
• 9:58
  Tad Eggleston: But I also imagine that they're gonna need to hire some people anyway.
• 10:03
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I can't imagine that they're gonna… I mean, unless the EC line is being scaled back, I can't imagine that they would have people overseeing
• 10:13
  Tad Eggleston: both without… Bringing in assistance, but again, they already have the structure of that vision, you know, that is…
• 10:22
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I feel like this could be a mission statement, you know, an aligned mission statement more than…
• 10:29
  Tad Eggleston: You know, this is… this is the type of business partnership that… that, like.
• 10:33
  Tad Eggleston: you see in movies or whatnot that people imagine of… or it could be. I can see ways where it could be. Also, the Ablaze NPM, where it could be two companies saying.
• 10:45
  Tad Eggleston: We're in a position to help each other out.
• 10:48
  Tad Eggleston: How can we do that without violating antitrust?
• 10:53
  Phil: Not that… I mean…
• 10:54
  Phil: I laugh because, well, I have to imagine someone out there is worried about not violating the trust.
• 11:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no. You know what I mean.
• 11:06
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:07
  Phil: Of them… of them saying, hey, how can… how can we do business without… without killing each other?
• 11:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, like, I think there's things to be excited for as both
• 11:21
  Tad Eggleston: short-term consumers, and in terms of long-term… I mean, just like, I think there's a lot to be excited about the fact that Marvel and DC have finally started doing crossovers again.
• 11:32
  Phil: Oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's a…
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there's something to be said for… for… An industry that treats Their competition as…
• 11:44
  Tad Eggleston: Friendly competition, rather than… Cutthroat competition, that understands that as much as they are kind of the competition, the…
• 11:55
  Tad Eggleston: The strength of the medium, the strength of the industry.
• 12:00
  Tad Eggleston: outweighs the strength of any given company. And if you're driving… if you're driving different… voices and visions
• 12:10
  Tad Eggleston: away from the industry, you're hurting it on a whole, and that will hurt… I mean, I always laugh that, like.
• 12:18
  Tad Eggleston: what I took away when I really dug into the Wertham era, like, from Tencent Plague, anybody who hasn't read Tencent Plague should go read Tencent Plague. It is a really great
• 12:31
  Tad Eggleston: Nonfiction dive into… like, the EC Comics era, the Wortham hearings.
• 12:41
  Tad Eggleston: you know, how we got there, the aftermath, whatnot, and what I saw was…
• 12:49
  Tad Eggleston: the other companies pushed games out of the way, created this comics code that was almost entirely designed to kill EC Comics, because EC Comics was doing so much better than any of them.
• 13:03
  Tad Eggleston: But… Managed to destroy the industry instead.
• 13:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it went from there being, like, Millions of comics published a year.
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: to… Tens of thousands of comics published a year in a span of, like, 3 years.
• 13:32
  Phil: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 13:35
  Phil: It's staggering.
• 13:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it went from there being, like, 125 publishers that were putting out comics to, like.
• 13:44
  Tad Eggleston: 5 in a span of less than a decade. I mean, and again, I'm just, I'm just tossing out numbers, so, like, this is more of a vibes thing than a strictly, like, please go fact-check me, send me an email, I will correct myself.
• 13:59
  Tad Eggleston: There are real numbers, but they are roughly in this…
• 14:05
  Phil: Yeah, at least the proportions.
• 14:07
  Tad Eggleston: And ironically, the company that didn't die?
• 14:12
  Tad Eggleston: Where one of the companies that didn't die was Gaines.
• 14:19
  Tad Eggleston: Because he took Mad Magazine and pivoted and made it a magazine.
• 14:27
  Tad Eggleston: To… to pull it out from under…
• 14:30
  Phil: the comics.
• 14:30
  Tad Eggleston: codes.
• 14:31
  Phil: There you go. Wow. Just… just realizing that on air, you know, that it's like, well, if you're gonna restrict comics, I'm not gonna make comics.
• 14:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he did, he did for a while as well, but, like, it was, it was, it was…
• 14:47
  Tad Eggleston: changing the format of MAD to make it unequivocally a magazine, and therefore not
• 14:55
  Tad Eggleston: And again, the Comics Code was never, like, legally binding.
• 14:59
  Phil: But when you have your distributors.
• 15:02
  Tad Eggleston: In agreement, and enough other publishers in agreement, it might as well be.
• 15:07
  Phil: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Tad Eggleston: But, he found a way to make the distributors happy.
• 15:11
  Phil: While still delivering something that…
• 15:15
  Tad Eggleston: The public wanted.
• 15:19
  Tad Eggleston: And that was okay, because really, even when he was EC, he… his competitors were more… Playboy, G… GQ…
• 15:33
  Tad Eggleston: New Yorker…
• 15:34
  Phil: listed back then?
• 15:35
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe not GQ, maybe Vanity Fair.
• 15:38
  Phil: Yeah.
• 15:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, GQ, I think, is older than you think it is.
• 15:42
  Phil: Probably, but, you know, hopefully.
• 15:44
  Tad Eggleston: But he was more in competition, I mean, even before the pivot, he was really more in competition with
• 15:51
  Tad Eggleston: Newsstand periodicals That might contain comics, but contain other stuff, then he was in competition with the other
• 16:04
  Tad Eggleston: comic companies.
• 16:06
  Phil: So, so quick, quick, quick dates here.
• 16:10
  Phil: You're right, GQ is older than I… than I expected. Its first issue was in 1967.
• 16:18
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, so he was… well, he might have been competing with it, with Mad Magazine.
• 16:22
  Phil: Well, and then, and then…
• 16:23
  Tad Eggleston: He was just the established one.
• 16:25
  Phil: Right, and in 1957, it was Gentleman's Quarterly, so it's even…
• 16:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 16:30
  Phil: And then… and then in 1931, it was apparel Arts. So yeah, he was probably, you know… Right. You're right, you're right.
• 16:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 16:37
  Phil: By a different name. AA, not GQ.
• 16:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and specifically, he was definitely competing with Generals Quarterly.
• 16:46
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 16:47
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and I didn't think of that as actually a change, because I've always known that that was what GQ stands for.
• 16:54
  Phil: And again, just, just… Real obvious stuff, just, just…
• 16:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 16:58
  Phil: Blowing my mind, right on air. But, yeah.
• 17:01
  Tad Eggleston: And again, like, I can't emphasize enough, particularly, like, in this era of everybody wants to use their AI, and their AI just wants to tell them what they… like, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot in terms of, like, the way we restrict
• 17:17
  Tad Eggleston: Electronic use in the classroom, is how many conversations
• 17:23
  Tad Eggleston: That our heated debates would be made more intelligence debates if, like, we were…
• 17:31
  Tad Eggleston: both willing to and good at, okay, rather than arguing over this fact, let's go find this fact, and argue over what that means.
• 17:44
  Phil: Exactly, and I… I think that's… that's…
• 17:47
  Tad Eggleston: And we all have these, like…
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: powerful computers in our pocket, with access to a massive amount of information. And yes, some of it is bad, but just because there's crap on the internet doesn't mean that you can't find the real information on the internet, too. So, like, learning how is a valuable tool.
• 18:09
  Phil: P.
• 18:10
  Tad Eggleston: willing to, like, so…
• 18:12
  Tad Eggleston: If we were in person, rather than creating a podcast that would, like, have massive amounts of dead space, I would probably be looking up the specifics to give you. Right.
• 18:24
  Phil: But everybody…
• 18:24
  Tad Eggleston: I kinda tried to…
• 18:26
  Tad Eggleston: to train myself to not automatically go down that rabbit hole on air, particularly if it doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter, we've already gone on way too long about this. So, what kind of week has it been? It's been another crappy week, but at least Susie Wiles, like…
• 18:43
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't seem to know what on the record means?
• 18:46
  Phil: Who… who is… I, I, I seem to have missed this one. Who's Susie Wiles?
• 18:50
  Tad Eggleston: Susie Wiles is Donald Trump's chief of staff, who, over the… over the span of 11, 11 on-the-record interviews with a reporter from Vanity Fair, dropped some really amazing truth that…
• 19:11
  Tad Eggleston: thinks she… like…
• 19:13
  Phil: Meant to drop.
• 19:16
  Tad Eggleston: No, cause, like, the way it reads, like…
• 19:21
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think she real… like, I think she's so much in the bubble.
• 19:26
  Tad Eggleston: That she was incapable of…
• 19:31
  Tad Eggleston: Perceiving how somebody not in her bubble would hear the things that she was saying.
• 19:40
  Tad Eggleston: And go, oh, like, that's a problem.
• 19:47
  Tad Eggleston: Not a good thing.
• 19:49
  Phil: Yep. Yep. What… I mean, I don't know the specifics, because again…
• 19:53
  Tad Eggleston: It's stuff like talking about, Trump has an alcoholic's personality.
• 19:58
  Phil: Oh, goodness.
• 19:59
  Tad Eggleston: He…
• 19:59
  Phil: Oh, goodness.
• 20:00
  Tad Eggleston: There's nothing that he can't do.
• 20:02
  Tad Eggleston: Jd's been a conspiracy theorist for at least a decade now, and, like, his conversion to Trump was… was really strictly political.
• 20:15
  Phil: Yeah, that's, that's.
• 20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Russell Vogt is a right-wing nutjob.
• 20:26
  Phil: As one does.
• 20:27
  Tad Eggleston: Elon Musk is a avowed ketamine… Boop.
• 20:39
  Phil: Ketamine Cultist? Interesting.
• 20:40
  Tad Eggleston: R-right, who, who, oh, what was it?
• 20:45
  Tad Eggleston: Like many geniuses, is, is, a very…
• 20:50
  Tad Eggleston: Odd man, apparently slept in a…
• 20:55
  Tad Eggleston: sleeping bag at the OEAB in… during the day.
• 21:03
  Phil: Alright.
• 21:03
  Tad Eggleston: Disagrees with… you know, has had some disagreements with various things, like with the…
• 21:14
  Tad Eggleston: the Venezuela, whatnot, but… but… but she voiced them and lost, and she's been assured by
• 21:23
  Tad Eggleston: Whoa, and Venezuela is about regime change.
• 21:28
  Phil: Oh…
• 21:28
  Tad Eggleston: The idea is to palm enough boats that they… that they back down.
• 21:33
  Phil: Oh, God.
• 21:34
  Tad Eggleston: Which she's been assured by much smarter people will work.
• 21:40
  Phil: Oh, boy.
• 21:41
  Phil: Yikes. Holy shit.
• 21:44
  Tad Eggleston: Pam Bondi blew the Epstein rollout.
• 21:48
  Phil: K, yeah, and…
• 21:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, the thing is, like, everything she's say… almost nothing she's saying is, like, a surprise.
• 21:59
  Phil: Right.
• 22:01
  Phil: It's just…
• 22:02
  Tad Eggleston: What's weird is, like…
• 22:05
  Tad Eggleston: it's A Trump's chief of staff saying it, and B, everybody's… everybody out there is circling the wagons to protect her, trying to make it out as a hit piece.
• 22:16
  Phil: Come on.
• 22:17
  Tad Eggleston: Actually denying anything?
• 22:20
  Tad Eggleston: One thing that they did deny was the ketamine thing, and then the Vanity Fair provided the tapes to the New York Times.
• 22:27
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, oh! Oh, you were recording! That tape recorder was on!
• 22:33
  Phil: I didn't realize!
• 22:34
  Tad Eggleston: Why's that!
• 22:35
  Phil: Oh, God.
• 22:35
  Tad Eggleston: I am only a professional political operative who's.
• 22:39
  Phil: It's.
• 22:39
  Tad Eggleston: around media all my life, because my dad was a sportscaster.
• 22:45
  Phil: Wow. Wow. Just… Just astounding. Astounding.
• 22:50
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. I mean, there's been horrible stuff this week, too.
• 22:54
  Phil: I'm.
• 22:54
  Tad Eggleston: But that was among the things, one of J. Kuo's headlines.
• 23:00
  Tad Eggleston: for a newsletter this week was essentially, the real… the world has become an onion headline. It's like, there's so many things where, like, I see it, and I have to dig it. Is this true? I have to make certain…
• 23:16
  Phil: field! He's like, I can't even imagine what the onion's doing right now, because…
• 23:20
  Tad Eggleston: How? How!
• 23:23
  Phil: Yeah, it's I mean, and yet… and they… they can… they find it, they find the humor.
• 23:28
  Tad Eggleston: I do.
• 23:28
  Phil: I don't know how, I don't know how, but…
• 23:29
  Tad Eggleston: You know, their gallows humor that hit me where I live.
• 23:34
  Phil: Yep. This week was.
• 23:37
  Tad Eggleston: Survivor of third mass shooting wonders, is it me?
• 23:48
  Phil: Oh, that is good. That is good. Oh, man.
• 23:53
  Phil: Oh, goodness. Oh.
• 23:55
  Phil: Man.
• 23:56
  Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
• 23:57
  Phil: Oh.
• 24:00
  Phil: Alright, I mean, is it… is it time… is… should we talk about new comics?
• 24:03
  Phil: I think so. I think so. Okay.
• 24:05
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's time to talk about new comics.
• 24:12
  Tad Eggleston: You picked this one out, yeah.
• 24:13
  Phil: It is! Well, I had… I had to call out something that wasn't a number 1. This is Crickets No. 9 by Sammy Harcombe at, Fanagraphics, the first new issue in 2 years! New full-color serial begins with the San Fernando Kid, a frolicking romp through the buttercups of robbery, racism, prison, and the power
• 24:34
  Phil: and the proper way to tie a noose. The issue is rounded out with stories about Frederick the Great and bumping into old friends, plus more, comics for everyone. Final order cutoff is gonna be January 5th, in stores, February 4th, again, fan of graphics. Yeah, it looks delightful.
• 24:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yep, yep.
• 24:52
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if delightful is the right word for this one, but it is. It is from a delightful guest of ours that I need to invite back on, Dennis Hopeless. Just brutal.
• 25:07
  Tad Eggleston: From Dennis Hopeless and Bram Revel at Ignition Press. Every family has problems, but the Savage family has actual monsters.
• 25:21
  Tad Eggleston: Jordan Savage is a normal 16-year-old kid, barely holding it together after his parents' recent divorce. His twin sister, Winter, is his opposite in every way, including how she is coping with the changes in the Savage family's lives.
• 25:34
  Tad Eggleston: And those changes are bigger than they could ever even imagine. They are about to find out that the boring, bickering parents they've lived with this whole time are frequently ancient, death-dealing, barbarian warriors. They've been living quietly for 3,000 years, having defeated their nemesis, the evil sorcerer
• 25:52
  Tad Eggleston: Warlord Farklar the Fleshless, leaving the world full… world safe for humanity. Only now Farclar has returned, and his army of hideous Mordoks
• 26:04
  Tad Eggleston: more dorks.
• 26:05
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry. Are about to devour Des Moines. Now, the savages are piled in Mom's minivan, headed to Iowa to wage war against black magic Armageddon. Jordan is freaking out, Winter thinks it's all pretty cool, and no one is sure if Mom and Dad can get along long enough to save civilization from destruction.
• 26:26
  Phil: That does sound fun.
• 26:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, in stores, February 11th, with a final order cutoff of January 5th.
• 26:37
  Phil: Alrighty.
• 26:39
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, I must have skipped one, because…
• 26:42
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because… yeah, no, I skipped one.
• 26:47
  Phil: Yes.
• 26:48
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately, it's a… it's…
• 26:50
  Phil: It is. You gotta talk about it.
• 26:52
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but it's also one from Lunar.
• 26:56
  Phil: Oh no!
• 26:58
  Phil: Lunar has had some loading troubles.
• 27:00
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, so, we'll see if we can, quickly… Find…
• 27:09
  Phil: I mean…
• 27:10
  Tad Eggleston: It's… it's… it's, .
• 27:15
  Phil: The announcement, you know, something like that.
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:17
  Phil: Well, we could get some details.
• 27:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, see if we… see if we can find… find details from… from somewhere that we like…
• 27:27
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wait, yeah, no, no, it hasn't even… Gads into the…
• 27:38
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, good, good. We'll just read from League of Comic Geeks. Professional hitman Eddie Stallion has messed up.
• 27:46
  Tad Eggleston: He accidentally robbed the Raven, a high-ranking boss of the international cabal of assassins, the menagerie, of which Eddie is a member. Or he was.
• 27:57
  Tad Eggleston: Now, with a price on his head, Eddie chooses to hide in the one place everyone knows he'd never go, the small Midwestern town of Pluto, home of his estranged father and known hard-ass, George Stallion.
• 28:09
  Tad Eggleston: Looking for safe harbor, Eddie instead finds his father dying… his resentful father dying of cancer. Old friends looking to collect that bounty.
• 28:19
  Tad Eggleston: Menagerie assassins who have wandered into town, and a canceled newspaper comic strip creator turned local crime lord, and oh yeah, his childhood first love, too.
• 28:30
  Tad Eggleston: Kyle Starks and Steve Pugh, the team behind Peacemaker Tries Hard, present a story of a man-child assassin with some very grown-up problems. As Eddie grows more attached to the people of Pluto, he'll have to step in to solve those problems the only way a hitman knows how.
• 28:49
  Tad Eggleston: And the final order cutoff on this is January 26th. In stores, April 2026. I don't know if I have…
• 28:59
  Phil: Wait, no. February 2nd.
• 29:01
  Tad Eggleston: It's got a cover date of April 26th. In stores February 18th, 2026, from Vertigo Comics.
• 29:10
  Tad Eggleston: The resurrected Virgo Comics.
• 29:13
  Phil: And the series is End of Life.
• 29:15
  Tad Eggleston: I thought I'd said that, but just in case, yes, end of life.
• 29:19
  Tad Eggleston: From Kyle Starks and Steve Pugh.
• 29:24
  Phil: Alright, next up we've got White Sky by William Harms, Lee Lewridge, and Jean-Paul Movinga.
• 29:33
  Phil: 5 years ago, the sky turned white, and the world
• 29:38
  Phil: The world did something, oh boy. Alright, we're… we're, oh, I'm sorry, that was…
• 29:44
  Tad Eggleston: That was my fault.
• 29:45
  Phil: That's okay. Five years ago, the sky turned white, and the world ended. Violet and her father, David, are forced out of hiding and flee towards the ruins of San Francisco, where they believe they'll be safe. But in this haunted world, ruled by ghosts, no place is safe.
• 29:59
  Phil: It's gonna be in stores February 18th, final order cutoff, January 26th, from ImageConics.
• 30:09
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I just realized that I…
• 30:11
  Tad Eggleston: I might not have… have pulled up all of our…
• 30:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:20
  Phil: To be fair, it was, it was quite, it was a morning full of, full of news, so we, we started out distracted.
• 30:29
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, of course it's lunar.
• 30:31
  Phil: Oh, no!
• 30:34
  Phil: Oh… technical difficulties on Lunar's end,
• 30:40
  Phil: Might need to… we can go out… can we go out of order? I was going to say we can go out of order, but I… can we go.
• 30:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, we'll see. We'll see. Okay.
• 30:49
  Phil: That one, that you're just pulling up, I know, I'm pretty sure is a re-release, so there should be at least some info, but again, the date stored or something else, so…
• 31:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, let's see… So this time, thank you, dear listeners. Well, yeah, okay, so we do, we do have our, our next… our first graphic novel is Animan from Anook Ricard at Drawn and Quarterly, Pet Therapist by Day.
• 31:18
  Tad Eggleston: Animal Morphing pet detective by Night. Fear not, Animans on the case.
• 31:24
  Tad Eggleston: A radioactive mosquito bite as a baby gives Francis the power of morphing into any animal at will. Learning to keep his powers secret from an early age, Francis takes up pet therapy as his day job. Perfect cover for his secret identity as Animan.
• 31:40
  Tad Eggleston: Francis uses his fantastical gift to treat his animal patients, go undercover to solve murders, and battle it out with his nemesis, Objecto, a man capable of transforming into any and every possible object. And to top it all off.
• 31:55
  Tad Eggleston: In his free time, Francis is an avid watercolorist who enjoys drawing landscapes and risque portraits of his frog girlfriend, Fabienne.
• 32:02
  Tad Eggleston: Veteran cartoonist Anouk Ricard delivers a fresh take on the superhero genre, imbued with her signature slapstick sensibility, preposterous scenarios.
• 32:12
  Tad Eggleston: And Off the Wall Punchlines, translated by Montana Kane at Drawn and Quarterly. Final order cutoff is January 26th, in stores on May 8th, er…
• 32:24
  Tad Eggleston: March. March, that other M month.
• 32:29
  Phil: That sounds… Fantastic. That sounds…
• 32:32
  Tad Eggleston: It does, doesn't it?
• 32:33
  Phil: Oh my goodness, yeah, that is… that is a… a rip-roaring ride. The cover was a close-up of a simple set of cartoon eyes, nose, mustache, and a snake tongue. It was adorable. I would love to read that.
• 32:55
  Phil: Alright, and now we are pulling up…
• 32:59
  Phil: Ninja Kaiju from Franco and Scoot.
• 33:03
  Phil: Ninjas and kaijus! What more… what more… What can be more fun than that? How about a ninja kaiju? What happens when you hire a ninja to steal a secret formula, and he accidentally gets splashed with that formula and transforms into a giant kaiju monster? We're about to find out!
• 33:19
  Phil: Well, all those questions are probably related, and the answer to the question
• 33:27
  Phil: Where did that giant kaiju monster suddenly come from? The life of a ninja isn't easy, with all the stealth sneaking high kicks and other ninjury techniques that need to be done. Now throw in a secret formula that turns you into a big city-destroying monster, and suddenly you're not so stealthy anymore.
• 33:43
  Phil: The job gets even more difficult when you have not one, but two super smart mad scientists after you because they think you stole their formula and send hordes of robots to the Air Force and other never-before-seen science experiments after you. It may no longer just be a job for a ninja, but it definitely is for a ninja kaiju.
• 34:01
  Phil: Coming out from Paper Cuts, that's gonna be a final order cutoff of January 26th, and in stores February 17th.
• 34:11
  Tad Eggleston: from a Franco… well, Franco just goes by Franco, but…
• 34:16
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes Scoot McMahon.
• 34:18
  Phil: Yeah.
• 34:22
  Tad Eggleston: And it finally said that Lunar couldn't be reached.
• 34:27
  Phil: You don't say…
• 34:27
  Tad Eggleston: General's Family Vacation.
• 34:30
  Tad Eggleston: From Brandon T. Snyder and Sarah Luber. Pack up the Supermobile, Argo awaits. Cora… Kara Zor-El is an excellent superhero who will… who is not…
• 34:41
  Tad Eggleston: is just not appreciated by the people of Metropolis. Summer's coming, and she… she's ready to visit Argo, a floating city in space, where the last survivors of Krypton live. These are her people.
• 34:53
  Tad Eggleston: And since Clark grew up on Earth, she can teach him a thing or two for once. It's a perfect plan, and it gets even better when Lois invites along Kara's best friend, Natasha. But when their road trip through space is interrupted by an old friend of Clark's, the family gets diverted to a strange and beautiful planet with a dark secret that only Superman can save them from.
• 35:12
  Tad Eggleston: Kara's plans get pushed aside again.
• 35:15
  Tad Eggleston: What's a cranky preteen to do? Hang out at the pool, meet a cute boy, and save the day, of course. This is Final Order Cutoff of February 2nd, and in stores May 5th. And this time, it is actually May 5th. It's not March 5th. I got my M month.
• 35:34
  Tad Eggleston: Correct.
• 35:42
  Phil: Now we're… we're… Lunar has finally admitted defeat. We are pulling up alternatives.
• 35:48
  Tad Eggleston: We can do that, we can do that.
• 35:51
  Phil: Yep, this one is.
• 35:52
  Tad Eggleston: We're nimble.
• 35:53
  Phil: Wanton Soup Deluxe Edition Hardcover from Oni Press.
• 36:00
  Phil: Space! Clones! Aliens! Noodles! Join Johnny Boyo, a former culinary student, as he seeks out extraordinary adventure and intergalactic entities as a cosmic truck driver, along with his troublesome pal, Deacon.
• 36:13
  Phil: For fans of Tam Popo and Cowboy Bebop, revisit the mania that is wonton Soup in a new, large, hardcover edition featuring a brand new cover from madcap artist and writer James Stoko. Prepare…
• 36:27
  Phil: Prepared with unhinged love and care from the lunatics at Oney Press. Get it while it's hot. It's gonna be File Lord Cut Off June 1st, in stores June 23rd, 2026.
• 36:41
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, couple of collections, we… oh, look at that.
• 36:46
  Phil: And now, when we… when we name its failure, it comes out. This is gonna be Red Vector from David, D.B. Andri, him Daniel, and Chris Evanuis.
• 36:57
  Phil: Cora Martinez has seen her fair share of conflict. As a Sonoran Desert Park Ranger, she straddles the line between sheltering desperate immigrants and seeking others… and steering others away from…
• 37:12
  Phil: Steering others away from an uncertain fate. She longs for a place where conflicts such as these no longer exist, but a clash far bigger than any on Earth is about to rip the heavens apart and crash land upon her doorstep in the guise of two adversarial combatants, an earthbound space opera from the creators of Morningstar and Crush Depth.
• 37:31
  Phil: This is going to be a final order cutoff of January 12th, in stores February 4th, from Mad Cave.
• 37:39
  Tad Eggleston: the…
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I do have this as a collection. Is this actually a collection? It says it's a graphic novel. I think I might have put this in the wrong spot. But we'll talk about it anyway, because it looks good. Wake Now in the Fire from Jarrett Dapier and A.J. Dungo.
• 37:57
  Tad Eggleston: In this empowering graphic novel based on a true story, a group of high schoolers in Chicago work to overturn the system-wide ban of Marjane's The Trapeze Persepolis.
• 38:09
  Tad Eggleston: It starts as an update at one Chicago high school. Copies of a certain book are no longer allowed in the classrooms or the library. But it's just not… it's not just one high school, it's all Chicago public high schools. Not that the principals know why this is happening.
• 38:23
  Tad Eggleston: They just know they must comply with the order. One thing is clear. The book, which tells the story of oppression, survival, and resistance against authoritarian power, is seen as a threat. Dangerous enough to ban. One other thing is clear. Some of the students aren't going to let this go down without resistance of their own.
• 38:42
  Tad Eggleston: As the extent of the band becomes known, the students rise up. They organize a school-wide walkout and library sit-in. They publicize the banning in every form they can, social media, the press, classes, clubs, the school paper. And most of all, they get everyone they know to read the book, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.
• 38:59
  Tad Eggleston: Told from multiple perspectives, based on extensive interviews with real-life students and teachers who were affected, and written by the librarian who exposed key information from the Chicago Public School censorship decision, Wake Now in the Fire is a fictionalized account of a true event that galvanized a community.
• 39:16
  Tad Eggleston: With illustrations from Alex Award winner A.J. Dungo that perfectly capture the everyday joys, heartbreak, and stresses of high school, this graphic novel is an inspiring portrayal of student activism taking
• 39:30
  Tad Eggleston: On one of the most urgent issues of our time, and a passionate reminder of why protecting the books we love matters.
• 39:39
  Phil: Also sounds fantastic.
• 39:40
  Tad Eggleston: Final order cutoff of February 3rd.
• 39:43
  Tad Eggleston: er, I'm sorry, final alert cutoff of January 5th in stores February 3rd.
• 39:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this, this, this is definitely…
• 39:54
  Tad Eggleston: Very much, very, very much on…
• 39:59
  Tad Eggleston: On my list of must-read items soon.
• 40:04
  Tad Eggleston: Now that we're done with the technical difficulty part of the show, we'll run through some Final Order Cutoff. We have Archie X, The Army of Darkness number 1, from Erica Burnham and Bill Galvin out from Dynamite on February 4th. These are all final order cutoff of January 5th, by the way, as,
• 40:24
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they decided not to have a final order cut off.
• 40:29
  Tad Eggleston: In the week between Christmas and New Year's.
• 40:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's probably wise. So we might actually go through this whole list again next week. And there's one last thing that I have to do this week. Of course, the week where I don't have to work and have time to do stuff.
• 40:45
  Tad Eggleston: You know. Anyway, Astro Quantum No. 1 from Andrea Moody Arturo Fabra at Mad Cave, out on January 28th. I'm, like, really psyched for this book, both because I like Andrea Moody, and because it's, like.
• 41:01
  Tad Eggleston: adapting, I think, Moby… I think it was Moby Dick, right, to space?
• 41:06
  Phil: Oh, we did. I remember us reading… reading that one out. Let me look that up real quick.
• 41:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Butch No. 1 from Peter Bagg at Fanographics, one shot in the Hate universe. Crazy for you, from…
• 41:18
  Tad Eggleston: Paul… oh, that's in stores February 4th. Crazy For You, from Paul Theroux and Steve Lafler at Panagraphics, in stores March 18th.
• 41:25
  Tad Eggleston: Five Gears in Reverse, a criminal book from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Image in stores on May 20th, The Girl Who Raised the Dead from Kawashimi Norakazu at Uncivilized in stores on January 28th, Malevolent No. 1 from Justin Jordan, John Bivens, and Felipe Sobrero.
• 41:45
  Tad Eggleston: in stores from Image on January 28th. Punk Taco Adventures from New friends from
• 41:53
  Tad Eggleston: Adam Lundlenta and his kids McKenna and Keola in stores from Paper Cuts on January 28th. Queen of Cosmos Comics Trilogy from Barbara Willie Mendez at Panographics in stores February 11th, and Wolfsbane from Ryan, Katie, and Morgan Beam from Rebellion Comics in stores February 4th.
• 42:13
  Tad Eggleston: Still crowdfunding? We have Freak Squeal, the complete chaos Curriculum from Florent Madu, label 6119, Magnetic Press.
• 42:24
  Tad Eggleston: on Kickstarter through January 2nd, check out my, my discussion with,
• 42:33
  Tad Eggleston: Mike Kennedy, the founder and publisher of Magnetic Press, is the most recent interview on 22 Panels. A slice of life, an anime character brought to life from Cat Calamia, Phil Falco, Valeria, Perry, and Lifeline Comics on Kickstarter through January 8th, from Chile.
• 42:53
  Tad Eggleston: To the edge of imagination, Jodorowski and Rodriguez. A humanoids Kickstarter on January 14th. This is a dual Kickstarter for Cosmopirates from Alejandro Jodorowski and Pete Woods, and The Chasm of Resurrection from Gabriel Rodriguez.
• 43:11
  Tad Eggleston: and Haraji, with a bonus if you get to the higher tiers of a autobiographical comic written by Joe Dorowski and illustrated by Rodriguez. We're gonna start talking some humble bundles, because that's a great way to get just…
• 43:31
  Tad Eggleston: massive numbers of older comics, sometimes newer comics, at really fantastic prices, and give money to charity. There are 3 bundles, worth checking out right now. There's the Image Comics of the 10s, $18 will get you 175 items.
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: Most of them… If not all of them are… are, like.
• 43:56
  Tad Eggleston: of the trade paperback or hardcover length? I mean, it's all digital, but, like.
• 44:02
  Tad Eggleston: The 175 items were probably talking… Close to 100,000 pages?
• 44:11
  Phil: Oh, wow, yeah.
• 44:13
  Tad Eggleston: Comics?
• 44:14
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like, most of these series are done…
• 44:21
  Tad Eggleston: like, it's got all the black science, it's got…
• 44:25
  Phil: Wow.
• 44:25
  Tad Eggleston: I think all of Saga up to now, like…
• 44:28
  Phil: Wow.
• 44:29
  Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing.
• 44:30
  Phil: Like…
• 44:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's just a massive…
• 44:34
  Phil: 175 items times roughly 5 issues per volume times roughly 20 pages per issue.
• 44:42
  Phil: Those are low estimates.
• 44:43
  Tad Eggleston: Unless it's 15 issues per volume.
• 44:45
  Phil: I know, yeah, that's what I'm saying. With low estimations, that is still.
• 44:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 44:49
  Phil: 17,000 pages, so yes, it is well over that.
• 44:54
  Tad Eggleston: For $18, that you can give up… I mean, Humble finally started putting a minimum on what you can give to them to pay their hosting, and with an $18 purchase, that minimum is $5.40.
• 45:12
  Phil: And, and that…
• 45:13
  Tad Eggleston: But… but that means… but that means that you could give up to…
• 45:19
  Tad Eggleston: $12.60 to… to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. I generally… I generally…
• 45:26
  Tad Eggleston: give the publisher what I give humble. So, generally, the way I split it is 540, 540, and 720.
• 45:36
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because I know that the creators get…
• 45:40
  Tad Eggleston: their payouts. I mean, particularly when it's, like, an Image Comics thing where it's creator-owned or whatnot, like…
• 45:47
  Tad Eggleston: I know that the creators do actually get Paid based on what gets…
• 45:54
  Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing, but, like, for those of you who have, this is like the dollar bin find of, oh, I've always been wanting to read this.
• 46:05
  Tad Eggleston: Same with the Monstrous Magnolaverse. Now, this… one of the things that I love about this, this is, I think, the… yeah, this is the fifth…
• 46:16
  Tad Eggleston: Major… Mignolaverse bundle they've done on Humble Bundle.
• 46:22
  Phil: Wow.
• 46:23
  Tad Eggleston: And for every one of those bundles that they do, The previous bundles are items.
• 46:34
  Phil: Oh…
• 46:35
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, if you've gotten the 4 previous bundles.
• 46:39
  Tad Eggleston: As I have. You pay the $18, and you get 41 new items that weren't in the 4 previous bundles.
• 46:47
  Tad Eggleston: But if you haven't gotten those 4 previous bundles, or maybe you got the 3 and you missed the one…
• 46:53
  Tad Eggleston: the… I mean, unfortunately, like, you have to go in order. You can't go, I need the first bundle, and…
• 47:01
  Tad Eggleston: you know, quite possibly, because they just don't have the software set up that way. But… but, like…
• 47:08
  Tad Eggleston: $90 will get you 160 books, essentially the entire Hellboy universe up until now.
• 47:15
  Phil: Wow.
• 47:16
  Phil: There's a lot of good stuff in there.
• 47:18
  Tad Eggleston: form.
• 47:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right? But if you keep up on it at a humble bundle, it's like $18 once or twice a year, and you'll get…
• 47:28
  Tad Eggleston: 30 to 40 new books that hadn't been in the previous bundles.
• 47:34
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, if you've wanted to jump into Hellboy and have been overwhelmed, this is a way.
• 47:43
  Tad Eggleston: This is the, the, the, the Image Comics in the 10s is through December 25th, the Monsters McNeoliverse is through December 27th, and just updated… oh, and Monsters McNule-verse, benefits World Central Kitchen.
• 47:58
  Tad Eggleston: just thrown on, and, like, I didn't know I was interested, but I was going through
• 48:03
  Tad Eggleston: some of the… I didn't know Ryan North had written Adventure Time either.
• 48:07
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 48:08
  Tad Eggleston: I'm interested, particularly because $18 will get you 25 items. I think at least 10 of them are…
• 48:18
  Tad Eggleston: trade paperbacks rather than single issues. I know that it's got some single issues.
• 48:23
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 48:24
  Phil: Yeah, I want you.
• 48:25
  Tad Eggleston: Let's face it, even if it's $18 for 25 single issues, that's less than a dollar an issue.
• 48:31
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 48:32
  Tad Eggleston: And you can give some to charity.
• 48:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So, $18, it gets you 25 items. This one, goes both to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation and the Hero Initiative. So, like, you comic readers out there who are willing to read digital comics, who, like.
• 48:51
  Tad Eggleston: have…
• 48:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know, yes, you can go find digital comics for free on the web, and, like, I don't actually poo-poo that as much as I… as a lot of people do, because, like, I understand what it's like to be broke, and I think keeping comics readers is more important, but it's also great to support
• 49:10
  Tad Eggleston: comics writers, and sometimes even supporting charities that comics… not just comics writers, comics creators, I'm sorry.
• 49:19
  Tad Eggleston: They use writers as a catch-all for makers sometimes.
• 49:23
  Tad Eggleston: Which shows my own prejudices.
• 49:26
  Phil: I was gonna say, they're, they're writing the human form.
• 49:29
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 49:31
  Tad Eggleston: This is a way that you can get massive amounts of… Material to catch up on.
• 49:41
  Tad Eggleston: Give the creators some money.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: give… Charities that they believe in some money.
• 49:49
  Tad Eggleston: And it's pay what you want, so, like, if you can afford more, you can give more.
• 49:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I sometimes don't pay the minimum. I'm not so rich that it's very often that I don't just pay the minimum. Right. But… but, like…
• 50:02
  Tad Eggleston: That's also because I spread money in a lot of places, as we've talked about before. Oh, yeah. But yeah, no, no, we're gonna… I don't know why we haven't followed Humble Bundle more seriously much earlier, but we're gonna rectify that.
• 50:16
  Tad Eggleston: But we've also got, like, half an hour left, so we need to move on.
• 50:20
  Phil: I was gonna say, is this… does this mean that we are now sponsored by Humble Bundle? That's a joke, that's a joke.
• 50:28
  Tad Eggleston: If anybody's listening, we will accept sponsorship.
• 50:32
  Phil: Sponsorships available now!
• 50:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right. 3 amazing books last week.
• 50:39
  Tad Eggleston: my man, Chris Turker Cantwell, with Daniel Noah and Valerio Burzo. High Strangeness number 3.
• 50:49
  Tad Eggleston: Has baseball.
• 50:51
  Tad Eggleston: It has weirdness.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: It has…
• 50:55
  Tad Eggleston: for those of you who love Mr. Cantwell as much as I do, while he gave the character a different name and a somewhat different look.
• 51:09
  Tad Eggleston: The Cindy character in this book reminds me so much of…
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: Cameron from Halt and Catch Fire, who I love.
• 51:23
  Tad Eggleston: So, so much chicago?
• 51:31
  Tad Eggleston: And for an added bonus, there's a cat.
• 51:34
  Phil: Nice.
• 51:34
  Tad Eggleston: Like, this is just… This, this comic was just…
• 51:40
  Tad Eggleston: all sorts of wonderful, even… even as, like, like the High Strangeness, it, it, like, also had some…
• 51:47
  Tad Eggleston: Like, all of the High Strangeness books so far, it had some… Weird and uncomfortable, and… Scary.
• 51:57
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah.
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway, in a similar note, Mark Russell's two books this week…
• 52:09
  Tad Eggleston: Like, depending on your viewpoint, are, like…
• 52:15
  Tad Eggleston: Incredibly similar, or couldn't be more different?
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: Because in Aggie, he actually… Aggie is the latest of AWA's Protopias,
• 52:28
  Tad Eggleston: And he… he proposes a way… in which…
• 52:37
  Tad Eggleston: after the world is nearly destroyed by AI, AI Comes through and, and actually… creates a… a,
• 52:49
  Tad Eggleston: how do I put this? A… the purpose of the protopias is not to create utopias, but, like, to, to show,
• 53:01
  Tad Eggleston: reasonably possible.
• 53:04
  Tad Eggleston: better societies. So he did manage to, to, to… Impressively, create a… a…
• 53:17
  Tad Eggleston: Protopia, where AI led to a… better society.
• 53:24
  Tad Eggleston: And then in his other book, a man,
• 53:29
  Tad Eggleston: Found himself in an automated prison, and…
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: Couldn't even find out what he was accused of, and… Wow. And there's… there's… it's like…
• 53:40
  Tad Eggleston: Taking the private prison industrial complex to the nth degree, where, like, you have to pay for your time there, and there's limited ways to make money, so if you can't make the money to pay for, like, your services and whatnot, time gets added to your sentence.
• 53:58
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 54:03
  Phil: That is…
• 54:04
  Phil: Yeah.
• 54:05
  Tad Eggleston: And it's set up in such a way, like, the dystopic aspect is it's set up in such a way, and whatnot, that no guards are even necessary, because everybody else is willing to sell you out to reduce their sentences, even though they'll just work backwards again.
• 54:25
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway… Damn. It was… yeah.
• 54:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, another, another all-too-real and possible book. Yeah.
• 54:36
  Tad Eggleston: But going in the exact opposite direction from Aggie. That one was from Mad Cave with Alberto Ponticelli doing the art.
• 54:49
  Tad Eggleston: Just a, a phenomenal book. So, so, so Mark, Mark gets…
• 54:55
  Tad Eggleston: two spots in the middle, and then I'm throwing in a curveball here. This had been on my radar, but not one that I think I had talked about at all.
• 55:05
  Tad Eggleston: is… is the,
• 55:11
  Tad Eggleston: The New Space Age from Kenny Porter and Mike Becker at Mad Cave, which kind of,
• 55:18
  Tad Eggleston: Mixes, space and science, and… and has some…
• 55:25
  Phil: Whoa, whoa, whoa, we can't have science in space.
• 55:28
  Tad Eggleston: Or, no, I'm sorry, space and magic. Science and magic. Science mixes… mixes science and magic.
• 55:36
  Tad Eggleston: And, and
• 55:41
  Tad Eggleston: has some societal Easter eggs thrown in, etc. Yeah, it was just a really good book, and a really good week of books.
• 55:49
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, Phil, what'd you love? Take a walk.
• 55:53
  Phil: Oh my gosh. Yeah, right? This is, this is my, my big, my big double feature of the month.
• 56:00
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why, even though I loved them both, I didn't put either of them on my list.
• 56:03
  Phil: I understand. I understand, we, we, you know, it's, it's, there's too many good comics to talk about, but I absolutely loved, The Power of Fantasy XIV by Kieran Gillen, Casper Wingard, Clayton Cowles.
• 56:16
  Tad Eggleston: Rules.
• 56:17
  Phil: Kohl's! Damn it, I… damn it!
• 56:19
  Phil: some… I practiced this! I practiced this in my head as, like, Clayton Coles and Ryan Hughes from Image Comics, and Die Loaded No. 2 from Kieran Gill and Stephanie Hans. Clayton Coles.
• 56:31
  Phil: Ryan Hughes, Image Comics. They… I mean, I… first of all, I love that both of these books came out on the same day. It's just… it's fun for me when my two favorite books come out on the same day. It's easy, it makes it quite delightful. I especially love the
• 56:46
  Phil: how, DAI is adding new rules in the back of every issue. Or I don't know about every issue, but at least for now, expanding the gods, which I'm gonna try to keep up with as much as I can.
• 56:56
  Phil: For our own campaign in 22 Panels No More, if you, are aware of that. And then the power fantasy is… it is hurling towards violence, and I am on the edge of my seat, and
• 57:10
  Phil: Wingard's art continues to evolve in gorgeously compelling and fascinating ways. He's really pushing himself to his limits. It's so… it's so beautiful, it's impressive. I love… I love both of these books so much.
• 57:27
  Phil: And, yeah, yeah, that's… that's my walk. How, how's, oh, I… did… did you, did you read some One Piece? I did!
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And, like, I wanna move… A, I didn't get quite as far as I want to get.
• 57:41
  Phil: Neither…
• 57:42
  Tad Eggleston: to get, and, and…
• 57:44
  Tad Eggleston: B, I wanted to talk about it more right now, but I'm not gonna get deep into it, except to say that, like.
• 57:51
  Tad Eggleston: Real-world parallels.
• 57:58
  Tad Eggleston: became…
• 58:01
  Phil: Did, did Luffy, airdrop onto an oil tanker for, to, to steal it, steal some oil?
• 58:09
  Tad Eggleston: No, but you're along the right…
• 58:12
  Phil: Piracy did occur.
• 58:16
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I was, I was, I was talking more, like, we learned more about the world government, and what it replaced, and, and the racism against fishmen, and… Okay, okay. It became, like…
• 58:31
  Phil: Shick out.
• 58:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Shit got real. Shit got real.
• 58:34
  Phil: That's awesome.
• 58:35
  Tad Eggleston: As I reach the 622 chapter mark.
• 58:40
  Tad Eggleston: Looks like you, you read…
• 58:44
  Phil: It's the… Whoa.
• 58:45
  Phil: Almost… Two or three chapters of Mob Psycho? Almost a whole chapter? Almost a whole chapter. Oh, almost a whole chapter. While we were waiting for Lunar to load, at a certain point, I'm like, if I can't get through a whole chapter of Mob Psycho, not quite. I did, I did…
• 58:59
  Phil: see the… read the hilarious line of, what's that gross-shaped energy thing floating next to you? Which is great, because that was my complaint about the weird energy thing floating next to you to begin with. Yeah, it's… it's…
• 59:13
  Phil: Gosh, it's… it's a book, you know, I didn't realize how much I'd been missing a really strong action comedy that leans heavier on the comedy than the action, you know? Yeah, because that's…
• 59:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, this is where I will say that you should A be reading WrestleHeist.
• 59:30
  Phil: Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah.
• 59:31
  Tad Eggleston: B, you should be very, very much looking for, looking out for, for that, end of life?
• 59:41
  Phil: Yeah, end of life.
• 59:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you know, I… I mean, Starks has branched out into some, like, more pure horror-type stuff, but, like, there is almost nobody who does action comedy as well as Kyle Starks does, and he's got…
• 59:59
  Tad Eggleston: A couple of books right now, where that's what he's doing.
• 1:00:03
  Phil: Nice, and I mean.
• 1:00:03
  Tad Eggleston: Pretzel heist he's even drawing.
• 1:00:05
  Phil: I didn't even realize… I actually… I actually had read some Kyle Starks, Big Rock Candy Mountain way back in the day, you know? Yep. I did not realize that was him, so…
• 1:00:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:15
  Phil: Oh yeah, it…
• 1:00:16
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:16
  Phil: As soon as I realize that, I'm like, okay, I'll… I'm not a big wrestling person, it's never been my cup of tea, but…
• 1:00:23
  Phil: You know, I have become a wrestle… I have become a wrestling comics person. I can understand.
• 1:00:28
  Tad Eggleston: I've tried again to do the whole wrestling on TV thing, and I still can't.
• 1:00:34
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, I have a well-established… video's not my medium. Yeah. You know, I've been trying to do more TV and more movies, because there's a lot of great storytelling there, but I don't have the proper focus to do it well.
• 1:00:47
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to build it up again, because I know there was a time in my life where I was better at it, but, you know. Anyway,
• 1:00:56
  Tad Eggleston: But wrestling and comics has definitely become a thing that, like, almost any time where I see a wrestling comic, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be good.
• 1:01:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it helps that almost everybody I know
• 1:01:07
  Tad Eggleston: Almost every wrestling comic that's come out in the last few years has been
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: like, written or drawn, or both, by somebody that I either have, like, the highest respect for, or know personally, and have the highest respect for.
• 1:01:23
  Tad Eggleston: You know. Nice.
• 1:01:25
  Phil: It helps, you know? And for what it's worth, I loved Glow. Right.
• 1:01:30
  Tad Eggleston: That is one of the few shows that I've managed to watch.
• 1:01:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. In the last 10 years, and it was great.
• 1:01:36
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  Phil: Cut tragically short, but, you know.
• 1:01:41
  Tad Eggleston: So, in a lot of ways, I feel like the problem with professional wrestling is more, nobody's done the professional wrestling that is the part that I like.
• 1:01:54
  Phil: What's that?
• 1:01:56
  Phil: they do more worldbuilding than character development. Oh, okay, okay. I see, getting back to the central conflict.
• 1:02:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:02:04
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:05
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. You know, you know, it's, it's, it's like, you know, it's the same, like…
• 1:02:14
  Tad Eggleston: the two most obvious names that I use, and I say this with the utmost respect for them, because I love some of their work, and appreciate all of it, and understand why people love this stuff that doesn't do it for me, but like…
• 1:02:29
  Tad Eggleston: I don't like either Scott Snyder or Donny Cates the way so many comics fans do.
• 1:02:35
  Phil: They've got some big fans, that's for sure.
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right. And it turns out that it's just that what they're best at is one of the things that I care less about.
• 1:02:44
  Phil: Right, right. I could see that. I could see that for…
• 1:02:47
  Tad Eggleston: It has nothing to do… so I think…
• 1:02:49
  Phil: that.
• 1:02:50
  Tad Eggleston: that, like.
• 1:02:52
  Tad Eggleston: I would love… I mean, what I often love the most about wrestling comics is the, like, locker room stuff, the more intimate moments, the breaking of the kayfabe, the whatever, right?
• 1:03:06
  Tad Eggleston: And THAT isn't in Wrestling TV.
• 1:03:12
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:03:13
  Phil: Yeah. I… I… I also… I like that, because I'm… I was also thinking now of just The Wrestler. That was a movie that I loved when it came out.
• 1:03:20
  Tad Eggleston: Which I haven't seen yet, but I've heard good things about.
• 1:03:22
  Phil: It's really good. I mean, I haven't seen it in…
• 1:03:25
  Phil: probably at least 10 years, but I liked it when it came out. You know, and yeah, I love the behind the curtain. If anything, I think, first of all, I don't know why, like, I understand the concept, and the concept is important, but I really hate the word kayfabe. Like, just as a word, it doesn't sound like
• 1:03:44
  Phil: what it means. It's weird. It's a weird one. I don't like it. Which I think is part of the reason
• 1:03:50
  Phil: Probably. It's probably part of it, but…
• 1:03:53
  Tad Eggleston: The pig Latin version of…
• 1:03:57
  Tad Eggleston: you know, it's the way… I mean, I should go look into the etymology. Yeah. But it's like, you don't want to call it fake.
• 1:04:07
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:04:09
  Phil: I see.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: But… Fake is in there.
• 1:04:15
  Phil: Yeah, it is.
• 1:04:16
  Phil: There's a certain amount of pretend it's happening.
• 1:04:18
  Tad Eggleston: Babe is, like, bae fake. I don't know why… Well, and, and, and… Rather than Ekfei.
• 1:04:28
  Phil: Right, right. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta change enough so that people won't catch on. Okay. Right.
• 1:04:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:04:34
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Tad Eggleston: So, I'm kind of curious as to how they decided to do it, call it kayfabe.
• 1:04:40
  Phil: Yeah…
• 1:04:40
  Tad Eggleston: And that's a rabbit hole that I'm gonna have to probably go down sometime this week.
• 1:04:44
  Phil: Yeah. But…
• 1:04:46
  Tad Eggleston: Like, when it's the wink, you don't want to say, oh yeah, it's fake, it's all scripted.
• 1:04:52
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:04:54
  Tad Eggleston: So maintaining the kayfape is, like…
• 1:04:58
  Tad Eggleston: Gonna maintain the, you know… Right.
• 1:05:01
  Phil: It's, it's, it's when you're a mascot, you don't take off your head.
• 1:05:05
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's one of the reasons that I actually… I like,
• 1:05:11
  Tad Eggleston: I do like, like, like, Mexican lugadors and their masks.
• 1:05:14
  Phil: Yeah, oh yeah, those would be really cool.
• 1:05:16
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that, like, it's among the ultimate embarrassments if your mask gets removed.
• 1:05:22
  Phil: Yep. Yep.
• 1:05:25
  Tad Eggleston: That's for sure. I mean…
• 1:05:27
  Phil: You know.
• 1:05:28
  Phil: who… who wouldn't be embarrassed from being demasked in public, you know? Right. But anyway, we are running our…
• 1:05:35
  Tad Eggleston: I really, really want to talk some joyrides, so it's time for great responsibility.
• 1:05:41
  Tad Eggleston: Because, this was the first time that I actually sat down and read this series.
• 1:05:47
  Tad Eggleston: cover to cover. I'd read…
• 1:05:48
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:05:49
  Tad Eggleston: I'd read individual trades together, so it's not the first time that I've read a chunk of the series together, but reading all 8, or all 12 of them together.
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: I loved it even more.
• 1:06:05
  Phil: Oh yeah, yeah, it definitely grows as it goes, and that was something that I didn't expect from it, just looking at it at first, you know? So yeah, so it's definitely the kind of book that has more going on under the surface than…
• 1:06:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and it's funny, it's funny that you say it that way, because, like, reading it separately.
• 1:06:26
  Phil: Huh.
• 1:06:27
  Tad Eggleston: I felt like it fell off at the end.
• 1:06:30
  Tad Eggleston: But… but I think that's because it made enough of a pivot where it's like, okay, now we have the strong relationships established, and we're gonna deal with some bigger issues now.
• 1:06:40
  Phil: Perfect.
• 1:06:41
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 1:06:42
  Tad Eggleston: with time in between, I was expecting the strictly relationship comic, rather than, okay, now that we've sorted out our… our…
• 1:06:53
  Tad Eggleston: Teenage, young adult.
• 1:06:56
  Tad Eggleston: Awkwardness, angst, whatever. It's time to save the world.
• 1:07:06
  Phil: Hell of a pivot.
• 1:07:07
  Tad Eggleston: It is! But, I mean, they do it well.
• 1:07:10
  Tad Eggleston: They do it well. I mean, in some ways, it's like the superhero comic where… where you spend 8 issues with them becoming a superhero, rather than, like… Yeah. Rather than just glossing over the whole…
• 1:07:24
  Phil: Right, right.
• 1:07:25
  Tad Eggleston: how do I, become this meaningful…
• 1:07:31
  Tad Eggleston: But there were such great family dynamics, and there was such great… cultural… commentary.
• 1:07:41
  Tad Eggleston: you know, it's got an Earth that's walled itself off from the universe, because after first contact, it's like, oh no, fuck that.
• 1:07:51
  Phil: Oh, I really hope we're… In a universe that's like…
• 1:07:54
  Tad Eggleston: And a universe that's, like…
• 1:07:57
  Tad Eggleston: Well, as long as they keep that wall up, we don't have to destroy them, because man are they fucked up. Right.
• 1:08:06
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 1:08:09
  Tad Eggleston: But… but even… even, like, the semi-enlightened universe, in terms of that, like, when you start digging into it, you know, they still have their own kind of oppressive structure and whatnot going on, and…
• 1:08:24
  Tad Eggleston: you know, it deals with love, and friendship, and finding yourself, and, like, there's just so much crammed into this book, and AND it never feels bloated.
• 1:08:38
  Phil: Oh yeah, that's for sure.
• 1:08:39
  Tad Eggleston: and… and that… That is a real testament to… to…
• 1:08:46
  Tad Eggleston: Jackson Lansing, Colin Kelly, and Marcus Toe, in terms of Their storytelling ability to… to tell…
• 1:08:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, really, you've got a story in three parts. You've got, like… and it, it was. It was, it was, it was released as four, or three, four-issue trades. You know, that first arc is, like.
• 1:09:10
  Tad Eggleston: Escaping your small-minded community to explore the world, or in this case, the universe, only you've got the one person who doesn't quite fit in.
• 1:09:23
  Tad Eggleston: And the secret and whatnot, but at the end, everybody winds up friends, but not quite the way you expected them to at the beginning. Like, there… there are…
• 1:09:35
  Tad Eggleston: And then Arc 2, you've got the betrayal, but also the redemption, kind of?
• 1:09:44
  Tad Eggleston: And then Arc 3 is like, oh, the universe is bigger than us, and we…
• 1:09:52
  Tad Eggleston: We have things that we can do, and maybe should.
• 1:09:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so, like, you see a very…
• 1:10:03
  Tad Eggleston: Like, it's got a through-line of a coming-of-age story, but in this, like…
• 1:10:08
  Tad Eggleston: intergalactic setting, and Marcus Toe's art is just…
• 1:10:11
  Phil: Oh, yeah, I…
• 1:10:13
  Tad Eggleston: I've loved his work since, Red Robin.
• 1:10:17
  Phil: Back in the day. Yeah, he's, he's been.
• 1:10:19
  Tad Eggleston: Well, this is actually, I think, before that.
• 1:10:22
  Phil: No, no, this? This was… What year did this come out?
• 1:10:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this was one of… this was the… the… the first… This is, like, 2014?
• 1:10:37
  Phil: Red Robin would have been, like, 2009.
• 1:10:39
  Phil: Was it? Yeah, that was back when Bruce Wayne was dead. That was when I was first getting into college.
• 1:10:45
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:10:47
  Phil: So, yeah, that one was… yeah, it ran from, August 2009 to August 2011, so for 2 years.
• 1:10:54
  Tad Eggleston: I guess, yeah, Joyride, the first… Issue is 2016.
• 1:11:00
  Phil: Oh, okay, okay, so it's… it's still… it's a little older than I… than I thought.
• 1:11:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, it was… it was one of Jackson and Collins…
• 1:11:11
  Tad Eggleston: I think it was their first creator-owned work, but it was… it was…
• 1:11:16
  Phil: Mmm, okay.
• 1:11:17
  Tad Eggleston: One of their first works, period, and…
• 1:11:28
  Tad Eggleston: I guess I just didn't realize Marcus Toe had been on it that long.
• 1:11:32
  Phil: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's been around.
• 1:11:39
  Phil: I mean, I'm absolutely delighted that he's continued to get work and stuff, and, you know, I want to read the stuff he did for Krakoa, I just kind of fell off that whole trade.
• 1:11:50
  Phil: Unfortunately, but, yeah, yeah, he's, he's definitely good. He's got solid style, and, you know, the, the sort of manga manhwa influence
• 1:12:03
  Phil: or… or look that, it's… I think it's more than an influence, honestly, at this point, but, but yeah, that, you know, expressive characters, dynamic action, yeah, he's… he's… he's solid. It's someone who, you know, I see his name on a.
• 1:12:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, I… the stuff I know from him, I… I love, I guess I just…
• 1:12:22
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:12:22
  Tad Eggleston: that he'd been… Add it for…
• 1:12:27
  Phil: I mean… Going on 2 decades now, you know?
• 1:12:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no, I'm…
• 1:12:34
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:12:35
  Tad Eggleston: I'm… I'm… he's done so much in recent years, I'm having to… to…
• 1:12:39
  Phil: Yeah, scrolling me away.
• 1:12:40
  Tad Eggleston: while to scroll back, particularly because…
• 1:12:43
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:12:44
  Tad Eggleston: I, I thought I… like, it's got this sort, and, and then it didn't actually sort it.
• 1:12:52
  Phil: Well, isn't that… isn't that just the story of technology these days?
• 1:12:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, 2005.
• 1:13:00
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:13:01
  Tad Eggleston: You did something on Fathom.
• 1:13:04
  Phil: Yeah, I just looked up… I didn't realize he had a Wikipedia page, but but yeah, I saw that little… little bit there.
• 1:13:10
  Phil: Oh.
• 1:13:10
  Tad Eggleston: some work on Heroes in 2006.
• 1:13:13
  Phil: Interesting. Interesting.
• 1:13:15
  Tad Eggleston: Black Panther? In the Civil War era?
• 1:13:20
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. Yeah, he's been around more than I realize.
• 1:13:25
  Tad Eggleston: It deserves to be. Yeah. I mean, I just… it's… it's… like, how to put this? I didn't… I didn't assume that, like.
• 1:13:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, he finally got good. I assumed he was younger.
• 1:13:39
  Phil: Right. I mean, I was… I mean, I didn't… it's so weird to think about the.
• 1:13:44
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, honestly, it makes it amazing on a boom book in that era that Jackson and Colin were able to get him.
• 1:13:52
  Phil: Yeah, 10 years ago? I mean, that… At this point? Yeah.
• 1:13:55
  Tad Eggleston: That… well, and they weren't particularly…
• 1:14:02
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean, that's the thing, is that, sure, 10 years ago, but… but we're talking, like.
• 1:14:11
  Tad Eggleston: 10 years ago, their writing credits were…
• 1:14:15
  Phil: Huh.
• 1:14:17
  Tad Eggleston: Not that much.
• 1:14:18
  Phil: Right, right. And that was the other thing, is that I didn't realize this was towards the beginning of their career, you know? I thought it was a more recent series that, you know, after they'd done a lot of the Marvel stuff, so…
• 1:14:31
  Tad Eggleston: No, this is… it got collect… you know, this is, Boom's 20th anniversary, so they've been collecting some of their…
• 1:14:39
  Phil: Mmm, okay.
• 1:14:40
  Tad Eggleston: more classic series.
• 1:14:49
  Tad Eggleston: More classic series in, in, in…
• 1:14:59
  Tad Eggleston: Collected form. Like, more omnibus form.
• 1:15:02
  Tad Eggleston: You know, stuff that had been collected as, like, this was 3 trades, and now you can get it as one. Same, I think Ghosted in LA they did it with, and that was, like.
• 1:15:12
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:15:13
  Tad Eggleston: book.
• 1:15:14
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, that was from…
• 1:15:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, Jackson and Colin had done some regular show…
• 1:15:23
  Tad Eggleston: 2013-16 era…
• 1:15:26
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:15:27
  Tad Eggleston: and a little bit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…
• 1:15:30
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:15:31
  Tad Eggleston: Hacktivist in 2014.
• 1:15:33
  Phil: It's funny, because I picked up Issue 1 pack.
• 1:15:35
  Tad Eggleston: They're the ones that… they're the ones that took over Grayson for… And Tim… And then this.
• 1:15:47
  Phil: Gotcha.
• 1:15:49
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I guess they, Batman and Robin Eternal, they did some…
• 1:15:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, there are a lot of cooks there. But, like, this… this is… their first… Big solo project.
• 1:16:05
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:16:07
  Tad Eggleston: The only, only even close…
• 1:16:10
  Tad Eggleston: before that would be… be hacktivist.
• 1:16:12
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 1:16:13
  Tad Eggleston: It's also with Marcus Toe.
• 1:16:15
  Phil: And that was probably my pick.
• 1:16:16
  Tad Eggleston: But, they got paired with Alyssa Milano, and that's, like…
• 1:16:21
  Tad Eggleston: why it wasn't theirs. So now the toe makes more sense.
• 1:16:29
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this is… this is sweet, this is playful, this is thought-provoking. Oh, yeah. This is all the things that you want in a really…
• 1:16:39
  Tad Eggleston: Good comic.
• 1:16:41
  Tad Eggleston: I remember, like, a girl in the shop, a girl, customer.
• 1:16:47
  Phil: It's the one that turned me on to it.
• 1:16:49
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:16:49
  Tad Eggleston: I turned her on to Saga, she turned me on to this.
• 1:16:52
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:16:55
  Phil: It's a fair trade.
• 1:16:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I think it was, like, 6 issues in, so I was… I was…
• 1:17:01
  Tad Eggleston: It was a single-issue reader for the second half.
• 1:17:08
  Tad Eggleston: And just, like, so good. And the trades had… I was… the one thing I was disappointed in is the collected edition. It's got a QR code for, but doesn't have the soundtrack listing.
• 1:17:19
  Tad Eggleston: the.
• 1:17:19
  Phil: Right, it's happening.
• 1:17:20
  Tad Eggleston: the soundtrack listing.
• 1:17:22
  Phil: That would be nice, yeah.
• 1:17:24
  Tad Eggleston: That weren't in the single issues. That was, like, an addition for the trade, was the soundtrack listing. Oh, very cool. Crying.
• 1:17:30
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:17:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it was… it's a good series. I was happy to revisit it, happy to introduce you to you. I hope you didn't…
• 1:17:41
  Tad Eggleston: Feel like time wasted.
• 1:17:43
  Phil: No, absolutely not, yeah. It was a good one.
• 1:17:46
  Tad Eggleston: And, next week, we will… Dive into…
• 1:17:53
  Tad Eggleston: Our, our, our year-end season…
• 1:17:57
  Phil: Yeah, I've definitely… I mean, I… I've got… I've been filling out some… .
• 1:18:04
  Tad Eggleston: I have mine mostly locked, because I decided this year, rather than… Rather than, like…
• 1:18:14
  Tad Eggleston: Going nuts, going nuts. I was gonna go through and do it as quickly as possible in terms.
• 1:18:21
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:18:21
  Tad Eggleston: Of, if this stuck with me, it probably belongs here.
• 1:18:27
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:18:29
  Tad Eggleston: because I'm aware of recency bias and whatnot, I've been trying to, like, as I remember things in between, go back and go, does this need to be punched? And I will probably spend some time between now and next week going through, like.
• 1:18:43
  Tad Eggleston: my reads for the year, and making certain I haven't left anything major off, and putting together my annual honor roll mention. Like, didn't make any of the lists, but oh my god, these 90 books are worth reading.
• 1:18:57
  Phil: I was gonna say, we've got a top 27, and a category that is effectively just honorable mentions, and more honor needs is needed after that. It's understood. That's how many good comics there are right now. It's just…
• 1:19:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, there was one year where I just decided to exclude anybody that I had a personal relationship with.
• 1:19:21
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, it's like, it's so hard that, like, no Tom King comics, no, no Chris Condon comics, no Chris Cantwell comics. It's like, we're just, they're, they're, they're honorable mentions because it's, it's not fair to everybody else if I include them.
• 1:19:37
  Phil: I won't feel guilty, kind of hitting… hitting a lot of the same notes.
• 1:19:42
  Phil: This… this first year.
• 1:19:44
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like, it's…
• 1:19:47
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I've said it before, I will say it again, we are in the platinum era of comics, and I call it the platinum era, not…
• 1:19:57
  Tad Eggleston: you know, the Golden, Silver, Bronze Age, I don't think really re…
• 1:20:02
  Tad Eggleston: anybody who thinks they refer to the quality of comics, I don't think is paying a lot of attention.
• 1:20:10
  Phil: Right.
• 1:20:11
  Tad Eggleston: They, they might… refer relatively well to…
• 1:20:19
  Tad Eggleston: The… the monetary value of key issues
• 1:20:25
  Tad Eggleston: But I don't give a flying fuck about that.
• 1:20:28
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:20:28
  Tad Eggleston: But I call this the Platinum Era because, like…
• 1:20:37
  Tad Eggleston: Most of the mediocre comics are actually still good.
• 1:20:41
  Phil: Yeah, oh yeah. The… the bar is pretty damn high.
• 1:20:45
  Tad Eggleston: And the number of great comics out there…
• 1:20:49
  Tad Eggleston: the number of comics out there where I don't feel like my time has been wasted at all… Yeah. …is so high that I cannot keep up with them all.
• 1:20:59
  Phil: And you are truly a voracious reader, like.
• 1:21:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:21:05
  Phil: It… it… it… even…
• 1:21:06
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I, I don't… I don't actually feel that…
• 1:21:11
  Tad Eggleston: I don't feel that out of place in saying that there is a really good chance that I…
• 1:21:17
  Tad Eggleston: I am in, like, the top 1% of… of…
• 1:21:22
  Tad Eggleston: Comic book consumption in terms of, like, actual reading in the world on a daily or weekly basis.
• 1:21:31
  Phil: Wow, I would love to be aware of those rankings. That, that…
• 1:21:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't think there's a good way to, like, I'm not necessarily up in the top 1% of consumers, there are tons of people that buy every issue and every variant, blah blah blah, but…
• 1:21:49
  Phil: The only…
• 1:21:50
  Tad Eggleston: A, if you buy 6 copies of the same issue with different covers, you're not reading them 6 times.
• 1:21:55
  Phil: Right? Oh, goodness.
• 1:21:57
  Tad Eggleston: And B, I think most of the people who are buying every issue aren't managing to read every issue.
• 1:22:01
  Phil: Oh, yeah, no, no way. No, I was thinking that I was… as soon as you said, in the world, I was like, America, certainly. But I don't know, there's… I have to imagine there… there are a handful of Hikikumori otaku out there who… who…
• 1:22:17
  Phil: Well, yes. Well, yes, but…
• 1:22:20
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, when, when we, when we…
• 1:22:24
  Tad Eggleston: get to the world level, and we're talking in percentages. If you drop me in Japan, I might be in the top 3% rather than the top 1%.
• 1:22:35
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:22:36
  Tad Eggleston: But… but, like…
• 1:22:38
  Phil: You know, that's… that's a good… it's a good…
• 1:22:40
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, among other things, do we think there are that many Russian comics… I mean, I'm certain there are Russian comics readers, but, like, there are countries that would…
• 1:22:50
  Tad Eggleston: Where I would be in the top .001%.
• 1:22:53
  Phil: Right, right, right.
• 1:22:55
  Phil: I was just, I was just…
• 1:22:56
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know how popular comics are in India. Again, I'm certain that there's an Indian comic scene that I don't know a lot about, but, like…
• 1:23:05
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like Japan and France are probably the… Only countries where… where they're…
• 1:23:13
  Tad Eggleston: might be a significant… maybe Belgium.
• 1:23:16
  Tad Eggleston: Where there might be a significant number of people who give me a run for my money in terms of the number of pages of comics
• 1:23:24
  Tad Eggleston: Red per week.
• 1:23:28
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:23:28
  Phil: Okay, so that's.
• 1:23:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm not… I'm not trying to be big-headed. If anything, like, it would probably be better if I did a little bit more with my life than read comments.
• 1:23:37
  Phil: You know, I think, I think you're on a pretty good track.
• 1:23:42
  Tad Eggleston: I enjoy my life, so I'm not really complaining, either. Exactly.
• 1:23:45
  Phil: And that's where I also… I just wanted to point out that out of 7 billion people on the planet, the top 1% is 70 million. So yeah, I think you…
• 1:23:55
  Tad Eggleston: This is what I'm saying.
• 1:23:56
  Phil: I needed to readjust my perspective on that one.
• 1:24:00
  Tad Eggleston: And we're actually closer to 9 billion at this point. I think we've crossed the 8 billion threshold.
• 1:24:06
  Phil: That seems likely, yeah.
• 1:24:07
  Tad Eggleston: We will quickly take advantage of, of, of, Google. $8.3 billion.
• 1:24:18
  Tad Eggleston: Wow. Is… is, what the Worldometer has it at right now. So…
• 1:24:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that means, I mean, heck, there's… the World Population Review has it at 8… 8,229,915… or 229,915,162. I don't know how they can have it to the 1. That seems…
• 1:24:46
  Phil: That's… that's.
• 1:24:46
  Tad Eggleston: I won't fall down the rabbit hole of figuring out how they figure that out.
• 1:24:52
  Phil: tracking all births? Yeah, that's…
• 1:24:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:24:54
  Phil: Miss somebody.
• 1:24:55
  Tad Eggleston: Well, all births, all deaths.
• 1:24:56
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:24:59
  Tad Eggleston: But, that falls pretty in line with the $8.3 billion of… World Population Clock. So, like…
• 1:25:08
  Tad Eggleston: the, the, the two that I've looked at right now… Both have it at, like, More than $8.2 billion.
• 1:25:17
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:25:18
  Tad Eggleston: So… so yeah, that means that, like.
• 1:25:22
  Tad Eggleston: if I'm among the top 80 million comic readers, in the world.
• 1:25:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'm in that top.
• 1:25:32
  Tad Eggleston: 1%.
• 1:25:34
  Phil: Yeah, it…
• 1:25:35
  Tad Eggleston: I feel… Kinda confident And saying that there aren't more than 79,999,999 people who read more comics than me.
• 1:25:49
  Phil: I wish there were, because that would… that would be a tremendously healthy industry.
• 1:25:53
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I wish that I… I wish that I was more confident that I was only top 5% rather than top 1%. Right.
• 1:26:01
  Phil: I was…
• 1:26:01
  Tad Eggleston: But again, this goes back to living life. Yes. Like, there are lots of people who… who comics mean as much to them as I do, but there are other things that…
• 1:26:13
  Tad Eggleston: Mean is that they…
• 1:26:15
  Phil: Absolutely. That they devote their…
• 1:26:16
  Tad Eggleston: Time 2.
• 1:26:17
  Phil: This is where I'm also thinking that, like.
• 1:26:19
  Tad Eggleston: I have a hyperfixation on comics on top of everything else.
• 1:26:23
  Phil: Well, I'm… so I'm thinking, I know that the American comics industry, you know, selling thousands of copies, and tens of thousands of copies, struggling to push hundreds of thousands of copies, that entire… anyone who's a regular reader fits into that
• 1:26:40
  Phil: 70 million. You know, that's just the raw numbers. If you're buying physical issues of comics, you are a top 1% comics reader, most likely.
• 1:26:48
  Tad Eggleston: Probably.
• 1:26:49
  Phil: Most likely, the, the math.
• 1:26:51
  Phil: Seems like it works out, you know?
• 1:26:55
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:26:56
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:26:57
  Tad Eggleston: But, we are running over time. It doesn't look like anybody has logged into my, Love & Rockets window yet, but just to be safe, we should definitely move into three books we hope will be spectacular. It was a hard week to call this one, which is why I'll start out by saying that American Caper No. 2
• 1:27:16
  Tad Eggleston: From Dan Houser, Laszlo, and David Lapham at Dark Horse is… Spectacular.
• 1:27:24
  Phil: I'll actually.
• 1:27:24
  Tad Eggleston: Second band. I wrote that one, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was good.
• 1:27:27
  Phil: it twisted in ways I didn't expect.
• 1:27:30
  Tad Eggleston: Huh?
• 1:27:30
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:27:31
  Phil: It was a fun one. It was one of those where I was like, okay.
• 1:27:33
  Tad Eggleston: I am so completely in for this ride.
• 1:27:36
  Phil: These guys might know what they're doing.
• 1:27:38
  Tad Eggleston: there are so many books coming out this week that, like, I wanted to put in the list. The guy in the Chair, Sleep, Temporal, Powers 25, Masterminds, Green Arrow,
• 1:27:50
  Tad Eggleston: Absolute Wonder Woman, Lincoln You'll Miss It, all great books, but we're gonna go with Absolute Martian Manhunter No. 7 from Dennis Camp and Javier Rodriguez, because, like…
• 1:28:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Absolute Manhunter and Assorted Crisis events just, like, they… they have to go on the list. They just… they just do.
• 1:28:08
  Phil: Automatically.
• 1:28:10
  Tad Eggleston: Orla, number 5, Orla's close to… just has to go on the list, but this wraps up the book, so it has to go on the list. Trinity Daughter of Wonder Woman, similar, really, really close to…
• 1:28:22
  Tad Eggleston: has to go on the list, but this wraps up the series, so it really has to go on the list. Absolute Benner. Number 7 is from Dennis Camp and Javier Rodriguez. Orla is from John Lees and Sally Cantorino, and Trinity, daughter of Wonder Woman, is from Tom King and Balin Ortega. So, Phil, what are you looking forward to?
• 1:28:41
  Phil: I am looking forward to, one, H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time, as adapted to the comics medium by Go Tanabe from, Dark Horse Comics. The cover is delightfully disturbing.
• 1:28:59
  Tad Eggleston: read his other H.P. Lovecraft.
• 1:29:01
  Phil: No, I, I… Oh, this is like…
• 1:29:03
  Tad Eggleston: 5th.
• 1:29:04
  Phil: Aware by reputation.
• 1:29:05
  Tad Eggleston: This is, like, the third or fourth…
• 1:29:08
  Tad Eggleston: He started with a two-volume Mountains of Madness.
• 1:29:12
  Tad Eggleston: Awesome. I feel like there was another one.
• 1:29:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you should check… I mean, if you're into that stuff, you should… I haven't read them yet, but they're among… I've… even as a non…
• 1:29:24
  Tad Eggleston: big Lovecraft guy, I… they've been on my list just because they are on so many people's lists.
• 1:29:29
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:29:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, definitely go check them out. And yeah, for,
• 1:29:39
  Tad Eggleston: For… you know, the… the… in the newspaper business.
• 1:29:44
  Tad Eggleston: They used to put at the bottom of the page.
• 1:29:48
  Tad Eggleston: 30 as a way to indicate that the story was over. I think we're gonna update that and, and, and say 6-7?
• 1:29:57
  Phil: 6, 7.
• 1:29:58
  Tad Eggleston: For 22 Fanels, this has been episode 215. We discussed Joyride. We will see you…
• 1:30:08
  Tad Eggleston: After the next page.