Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / Pulp Blotter #28 - Jon Sable, Freelance - pt. ii

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Pulp Blotter #28 - Jon Sable, Freelance - pt. ii · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Pulp Blotter Book Club on 22 Panels. I am joined by…
0:10
Tad Eggleston: Mark Pracht and Sharon Harklerode of the City Lit theater Company in Chicago, and Dan Newland of, of, is it, is it, North Dakota?
0:22
Dan Newland: Dakota State University.
0:23
Tad Eggleston: North Dakota State University.
0:26
Mark Pracht: The North Dakota Newlands. There you go.
0:29
Tad Eggleston: Ew.
0:33
Tad Eggleston: So, and Dan, when is your next season of your podcast going live? Is it time for you to be plugging it and having people watch for it?
0:43
Dan Newland: Yeah, we actually, in fact, just got the first one rolled out a couple of weeks ago, and the other one, I think, either is coming live.
0:51
Dan Newland: soon, or may have even gone live. I, I do the production, and then my buddy Dwayne, my co-host, does the actual postings and all that sort of stuff, so…
1:00
Tad Eggleston: Yes, so…
1:01
Dan Newland: it's been a lot of fun.
1:03
Tad Eggleston: So you should name it so people can find it.
1:06
Dan Newland: comics over time, and the first episode on, sort of, the birth of the DC Silver Age went live, and I think the second one with the beginnings of the DC Multiverse is also out, so…
1:19
Tad Eggleston: Cool.
1:19
Dan Newland: time.
1:21
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
1:22
Mark Pracht: Deep dive into the flash of two worlds, then.
1:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah,
1:27
Dan Newland: Absolutely. Flash two worlds, and then we went into the Justice League, Justice Society, and the, you know, the, Crisis on Earth 1, Crisis on Earth 2, and Crisis on Earth 3 storylines from those couple of years, so that was fun stuff.
1:42
Mark Pracht: I was just revisiting some of that stuff for a project that will be named later.
1:47
Dan Newland: Really?
1:47
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:48
Dan Newland: Excellent.
1:51
Tad Eggleston: So,
1:53
Tad Eggleston: Today, we're discussing issues 7 to 11 of John Sable Freelance, which I know I'm rating them for the first time, Dan is definitely not, Mark…
2:06
Tad Eggleston: I know you've got Sable experience, have you read it all, or are you…
2:09
Mark Pracht: I have not read it all. I am, I…
2:17
Mark Pracht: I was a late arrival to John Sable, and so… I mean, I've read the first…
2:25
Mark Pracht: collection that we read last time, several times. And I think this may be the first time that I've really gotten through all of these issues. Okay. So, yeah, this is new.
2:35
Tad Eggleston: And Sean?
2:36
Sean Harklerode: This is my first time.
2:38
Tad Eggleston: This is your first time. Okay, so, so that means Dan talks last. Who wants to, to, to, to share their,
2:49
Tad Eggleston: They're…
2:52
Mark Pracht: As always, I have… I have a hot take.
2:54
Mark Pracht: Yeah, let's go.
2:56
Mark Pracht: This group of issues, I think, is peak
3:01
Mark Pracht: Mike Grell showing us exactly what John Sable as a series is gonna be.
3:07
Mark Pracht: We have the first issue, which is basically, like, a 1970s cop movie, with, you know, he's protecting the, the, the, the, the…
3:20
Mark Pracht: the, witness for a trial.
3:24
Mark Pracht: Then we go into, basically, what is a Dashiell Hammett, Detective story.
3:30
Mark Pracht: that morphs into a James Bond movie.
3:33
Mark Pracht: And then there's, like, there's, like, the pause where we have, like, a character-based issue, where he's meeting, Mike Blackman's,
3:43
Mark Pracht: roommate and all of that stuff that sort of wraps up the Bond storyline in, like, the first two pages, which really cracked me up. And then, we meet Maggie the Cat in basically what is, like, it reminded me a lot of Charade, you know, sort of a, you know, the gentleman burglar kind of story.
4:02
Mark Pracht: So, I think this is, like, Mike Grell being like, okay, this is… this is what… this is what feeds John Sable right now. The… the main things. And I loved it. I loved these issues.
4:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I…
4:19
Mark Pracht: Have a good week, guys.
4:21
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I concur. I don't, I don't have the, the deep dives in terms of…
4:28
Tad Eggleston: of, comparisons
4:32
Tad Eggleston: off the top of my head, because I hadn't thought of it that way yet, but I did love the further establishment of the character, introducing a…
4:42
Tad Eggleston: a,
4:46
Mark Pracht: Sunny?
4:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, introducing Sonny, introducing… I have a… I mean, we got to know…
4:53
Tad Eggleston: a couple of women a little bit more. I have a feel… we got to know the detective a little bit more.
5:00
Tad Eggleston: You know, we're starting to have… a… a,
5:13
Tad Eggleston: What's the word I'm looking for? an ensemble?
5:17
Tad Eggleston: Yes, that's the word I'm looking for. We're starting to have an ensemble fill out, and I really…
5:24
Tad Eggleston: really like that.
5:28
Sean Harklerode: Don't forget, Jason.
5:30
Sean Harklerode: Jason Pratt.
5:33
Mark Pracht: Sonny?
5:34
Sean Harklerode: Oh, Sonny? Is that…
5:36
Mark Pracht: Right, and he… they… I think he says.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
5:38
Mark Pracht: honey.
5:39
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
5:40
Sean Harklerode: Who reminds me… oh, and my camera conveniently pans out, reminds me of Vitamin Flint Heart.
5:49
Mark Pracht: Yep.
5:49
Sean Harklerode: From, Dick Tracy.
5:51
Tad Eggleston: Right.
5:55
Dan Newland: I do not know Vitamin Flint Heart from Dick Tracy. That's… I…
5:59
Dan Newland: I'm gonna have to look that up.
6:02
Sean Harklerode: He's a kind of bumbling actor, like a very highfalutin actor, who sometimes helps… sometimes helps…
6:11
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
6:12
Sean Harklerode: crazy, and sometimes, well, I mean, I would.
6:15
Mark Pracht: I wouldn't… I wouldn't call Sonny bumbling, but… Right. He's definitely, of that…
6:23
Mark Pracht: I just… I… what kind of struck me is I thought that probably Mike had seen my favorite year at some point.
6:31
Mark Pracht: And decided that he wanted to have a character that was somewhat reminiscent of that.
6:35
Mark Pracht: Love… you know, I love all these characters, I love, you know, I just… I love them, and…
6:44
Mark Pracht: the other thing that I… what amused me is that there's a little bit more of the superhero thing kind of coming in there. There's, like, one point, I can't remember, I think it's during the,
6:57
Mark Pracht: it's when they're… it's… I think it's in the second issue, where they're hiding in the woods.
7:05
Mark Pracht: From the guys coming to find them, and…
7:09
Mark Pracht: The battle mask just kind of…
7:12
Mark Pracht: instantly appears on his face, and I was like, well, that's about as superhero as it gets. And then the other thing is when… when B.B. Phlegm shows up at the police detective's birthday party, which I'm like, that's totally, like, a Bruce Wayne move, you know?
7:26
Sean Harklerode: Right.
7:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
7:32
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
7:34
Tad Eggleston: Now Dan can jump in.
7:36
Tad Eggleston: Now that everybody else has had their… their…
7:39
Dan Newland: I… I mean, yeah, I love the.
7:41
Tad Eggleston: Initial thoughts.
7:42
Dan Newland: I absolutely love these books, but one of the things about them to me that's amazing, too, is just…
7:48
Dan Newland: There is a…
7:50
Dan Newland: an actual, real-person vibe. Like, the… the thing about John Sable is he is like an actual guy who is so confident of the fact that he can do anything. He's not…
8:02
Dan Newland: You know, he doesn't have problems with the gay guy or anything like that, his manliness is not threatened. He is well past the point where anything can threaten his manliness at this point.
8:13
Mark Pracht: Although…
8:13
Dan Newland: It seems real in a lot of ways.
8:16
Mark Pracht: Although, I do…
8:16
Sean Harklerode: uncomfortable with that.
8:18
Dan Newland: about it a little bit and stuff like that, in an 80s kind of way, but… but he doesn't, like, you know, refuse to hang out with him and whatever, and this sort of stuff.
8:26
Sean Harklerode: Which I think in the 80s was probably a pretty big deal.
8:30
Dan Newland: Probably be.
8:30
Sean Harklerode: You have a gay supporting character in a comic book.
8:34
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, it touches on the gay panic thing, and then immediately is like, fuck that.
8:40
Mark Pracht: And I loved, I always forget her roommate's name,
8:46
Mark Pracht: Where he's like, do you wanna, do you wanna sleep with every woman that you meet?
8:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
8:52
Tad Eggleston: That, that, that was a fantastic line.
8:54
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
8:56
Dan Newland: And I mean, other than that, I love the women in these books.
8:59
Dan Newland: I think that, you know, they don't pass the Bechtel test particularly, because they're always talking about John Sable, but they are nonetheless extremely well-rounded characters, and you kind of… the fact that both of them have slept with him, and yet they're just kind of hanging out as, you know, it doesn't ever cause any trouble,
9:18
Mark Pracht: Wait, has Mike slept with him yet?
9:21
Dan Newland: No!
9:22
Dan Newland: With the two women.
9:25
Dan Newland: The two women, his publisher?
9:27
Dan Newland: And the artists, both.
9:29
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I don't think she's an artist.
9:30
Mark Pracht: I don't think he slept with Michael yet.
9:33
Mark Pracht: You may be flashing forward to a book. God damn it!
9:38
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, she's… she's clearly inviting him over.
9:42
Tad Eggleston: She's… this…
9:44
Sean Harklerode: Eventually.
9:44
Tad Eggleston: She's interested, but she's still…
9:46
Dan Newland: I didn't know there was a…
9:47
Sean Harklerode: It's like his…
9:48
Dan Newland: Give him that money.
9:49
Sean Harklerode: penny right now.
9:49
Mark Pracht: I didn't know it.
9:51
Dan Newland: We're gonna just go back and re… we're gonna take that out. See, this… I'm…
9:55
Tad Eggleston: Nope, it stayed.
9:57
Dan Newland: screwed.
9:58
Tad Eggleston: Dan's inability to…
9:59
Sean Harklerode: Spoiler!
10:01
Dan Newland: I should not be trusted by Marvel with the details to any movie whatsoever that is coming out, so…
10:08
Mark Pracht: I like how Tad is like, we can just take that out, and Tad's like, nope, nope, we can't. Nope, stays! Because we never edit anything on YouTube.
10:14
Dan Newland: There's no… there is no edit button. We're just moving on.
10:18
Tad Eggleston: There is, but I don't like using it.
10:20
Sean Harklerode: Hey, you could title this podcast, like, to cash in, you could call this, You Can Hear Everything.
10:27
Dan Newland: Yeah.
10:27
Tad Eggleston: There you go.
10:29
Sean Harklerode: Biggest podcast.
10:31
Sean Harklerode: in, in…
10:35
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
10:36
Dan Newland: Alright, I'm gonna be quiet for a while, so I don't give anything else away. You guys, you guys proceed with the next thing.
10:42
Mark Pracht: We're gonna call this…
10:42
Sean Harklerode: I will tell you, while I was reading this, I just kept imagining Tad.
10:51
Sean Harklerode: Because it was so wordy.
10:53
Sean Harklerode: And I was like, oh, Tad, loving everything.
10:55
Tad Eggleston: But you know what? No, this wordy I can handle, because it wasn't…
11:03
Tad Eggleston: It wasn't wordiness for wordiness's sake, and it wasn't telling me what I was seeing.
11:09
Sean Harklerode: Right, right. I mean, it was…
11:13
Sean Harklerode: it was really doing a lot of exposition, entertainingly so. Right. Yes, but it was not just saying what was on the page.
11:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's my big thing, is, like, your words need to be added value.
11:29
Tad Eggleston: Like, Frank Miller can get really wordy.
11:33
Tad Eggleston: And I love him.
11:34
Tad Eggleston: I love it better when he writes than when he just does the art, right?
11:40
Tad Eggleston: But you always get added value.
11:43
Tad Eggleston: He doesn't just tell you what you're looking at.
11:46
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's my biggest problem with some of the older, wordy comics, is that I just… I don't see the specific added value that I'm getting from…
11:58
Dan Newland: The exposition a lot of them would have had, and…
12:01
Tad Eggleston: Right.
12:02
Dan Newland: the thought bubble saying that.
12:03
Tad Eggleston: First still, they're literally describing the action.
12:07
Mark Pracht: you know, I won't… I won't… I won't bring up why I'm saying this right now, but when you're dealing with a very,
12:15
Mark Pracht: new playwrights, There's a tendency to just…
12:22
Mark Pracht: Really, really get descriptive in, like, stage directions.
12:26
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
12:27
Mark Pracht: No one cares.
12:29
Mark Pracht: Right? Any actor worth their salt is just gonna cross that out and not worry about it, and figure out their own way through it, you know? Like, stop, stop that.
12:37
Sean Harklerode: Playwrights hate to hear that.
12:41
Mark Pracht: I don't.
12:42
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, but no, every actor I've ever met, we just totally ignore stage directions, and it's whatever the director says, I feel like.
12:52
Mark Pracht: Well, you know, and the thing is, is, like, it's the…
12:55
Mark Pracht: This is getting into a whole different conversation, but it's… it's part of the… it's part of the, the problem with most published scripts are based on the stage manager's prompt script.
13:09
Mark Pracht: for,
13:11
Mark Pracht: For the first production, right? So they are noting, okay, this actor is doing this line in such a way, right?
13:19
Mark Pracht: Because it's part of how they… Track the scene, right?
13:23
Mark Pracht: And…
13:24
Mark Pracht: you know, so I would hazard a guess, like, if you looked at… I don't know, there's… there's other, you know…
13:32
Mark Pracht: Whatever. But I mean, like, yeah, it's like…
13:34
Mark Pracht: there's no reason for it. And I think, you know, I tease Tad a lot about that, but I understand what you're saying, but it's also…
13:45
Mark Pracht: You know, by this point, You know, this book is very much a post…
13:51
Mark Pracht: post-Neal Adams, post-Frank Miller series, right? Like… I… I think that this…
14:02
Mark Pracht: this series owes a lot to Miller's Daredevil. I think it owes a lot to the O'Neil, Adams Batman stuff.
14:12
Mark Pracht: And, you know, as well as Mike, you know, with Mike Grell's own obsessions with, you know, like, clearly, the bond thing is coming out even more and more as we get into it, you know?
14:24
Mark Pracht: And that's what makes it cool, so…
14:26
Mark Pracht: It's a… it's a distillation. You really get the sense that you kind of know who Mike Grell is reading this book, right?
14:39
Sean Harklerode: That's…
14:40
Mark Pracht: Everyone is nodding to anyone listening to the podcast. We're really good at.
14:44
Tad Eggleston: get that sometimes.
14:45
Sean Harklerode: That's… That's what makes this feel kind of special. It feels…
14:53
Sean Harklerode: It feels very, unique and very, personal.
15:03
Sean Harklerode: you know, it's one man's vision. It seems like one man's vision. I know he has, you know, Mike Gold editing, etc, but it really does feel like this is Mike Grell's idea, it's his baby, and he's…
15:15
Sean Harklerode: Writing and drawing it.
15:17
Sean Harklerode: And with minimal you know, intrusion from editorial.
15:25
Mark Pracht: Right.
15:25
Sean Harklerode: And…
15:26
Mark Pracht: Well, it might.
15:26
Sean Harklerode: That just makes it separate. What?
15:29
Mark Pracht: Mike Grel kind of said that in his… Back matter, yeah.
15:36
Dan Newland: Yeah, I find it interesting, also, we talked a little about Sunny.
15:39
Dan Newland: Sunny, to me, is a cool character, because he almost seems like somebody who's been…
15:44
Dan Newland: been playing at being the guy John Sable is his whole life, as like a, you know, an actor, and a stuntman, and all this sort of stuff. He does all the same stuff, but kind of with wires that John Sable's doing without wires, so they… they get along really well, and they have a sort of a similar…
16:02
Dan Newland: viewpoint?
16:03
Dan Newland: It's just that one of them is in a completely different league as far as what he's actually doing.
16:09
Mark Pracht: Although, Sonny is the one that keeps telling Johnny doesn't have a killer instinct, or didn't have a killer instinct, which I think… I think is…
16:17
Mark Pracht: interesting, because you have… it's sort of Sunny speaking to who… John was.
16:25
Mark Pracht: Before everything we saw in the last book, right?
16:28
Sean Harklerode: Right.
16:29
Mark Pracht: And I think that…
16:30
Mark Pracht: you know, in that book, you know, that first… that first book was, you know, I think it was very much about how
16:37
Mark Pracht: John… became a killer, right?
16:45
Mark Pracht: you know, but he also has the, you know, it's like, I… you… I'm not a paid killer, but yet he fucking kills somebody in every episode, every issue, episode. But, quite often…
16:56
Sean Harklerode: He does that for free?
16:57
Mark Pracht: That's right.
17:00
Tad Eggleston: Doesn't have to be.
17:01
Dan Newland: While getting paid. While getting paid, but it's not, it's not the intention.
17:04
Mark Pracht: That… that's… that's just the bonus.
17:07
Dan Newland: Nope.
17:08
Mark Pracht: But I will say, I think…
17:10
Mark Pracht: as much as I loved every issue of this run, like, that issue 10… is really interesting.
17:18
Mark Pracht: I think in… just in the psychological impact of it, and, like, we're talking about it, building the ensemble and everything, but, like.
17:27
Mark Pracht: Not… not a lot actually happens in that book.
17:32
Mark Pracht: As far as action, right? But everybody gets a little bit…
17:37
Mark Pracht: you know, we find out that Sonny has kind of got this lonely life, you know?
17:42
Mark Pracht: John invites him for Thanksgiving, he's like, no, no, I got family, and then the… the… the landlord lady comes in and invites him for Thanksgiving, you know.
17:52
Mark Pracht: we find out that Eden is, you know, hiding her Irishness.
18:00
Mark Pracht: Wow, that's an 80s thing.
18:05
Mark Pracht: maybe, maybe 1880s thing, I don't know, but I mean, and then…
18:13
Mark Pracht: part of what I… okay, we have… we have… he meets, he meets.
18:16
Sean Harklerode: hiding her Irishness.
18:19
Mark Pracht: Right.
18:19
Sean Harklerode: That name's Kowalski.
18:25
Mark Pracht: It's Red Zeruba.
18:30
Tad Eggleston: Maybe it's Polishness.
18:31
Sean Harklerode: Pretending to be Irish.
18:33
Mark Pracht: Have a nice… Trip, Irish.
18:38
Mark Pracht: Maybe Mike's a little confused.
18:43
Tad Eggleston: Or he's messing with her.
18:45
Mark Pracht: Maybe, I don't know. Yeah.
18:48
Mark Pracht: But anyway, and then we, you know, we have the, we have the, the interaction with,
18:54
Mark Pracht: you know, Mike, and god, I always… Forget her.
19:04
Sean Harklerode: a roommate?
19:06
Dan Newland: Grave?
19:07
Mark Pracht: Gray. Gray, that's right.
19:09
Mark Pracht: And I love that they bond over the fencing, which is awesome, you know.
19:14
Mark Pracht: And then… He's fencing like dancing, that's awesome. But…
19:19
Mark Pracht: You know, and then he's supposed to go and do the Today Show, right?
19:23
Mark Pracht: And he's so…
19:25
Mark Pracht: like, the whole B.B. Flem thing is driving him nuts, right? So he has to go out and pick a fight with a bunch of fucking gangsters, right?
19:34
Mark Pracht: And… and… Beat the shit out of them, And then…
19:43
Mark Pracht: You know, he has the interaction with the police… the police detective, or the captain.
19:48
Mark Pracht: And then he shows up at the kid's birthday party as B.B. Flem. And I'm like, okay, so…
19:55
Mark Pracht: What a lovely distillation of how he grapples with Cause, you know, for… for…
20:03
Mark Pracht: issue upon issue, when people have asked him about the B.B. Flem thing, he's like, there's just so much money, right?
20:10
Mark Pracht: And now we sort of see that
20:12
Mark Pracht: There's something a little more to it, right?
20:16
Mark Pracht: that there's some meaning that he does find in it, right? Because when he's doing the interview, he's fallen asleep, right? And then…
20:23
Mark Pracht: But he comes into this party, and he's… and the kids are all happy and excited, and… and he's actually enjoying it.
20:31
Mark Pracht: And I think that… I think there… I think that's really cool. I think that as a character bit, that is super cool.
20:41
Sean Harklerode: Well, I mean, you think of where those stories came from, right?
20:45
Sean Harklerode: You know, they came from playing with his… his kids.
20:50
Mark Pracht: Yep.
20:50
Sean Harklerode: And, yeah.
20:55
Mark Pracht: Although, I am going to question the… the,
21:00
Mark Pracht: Competency of, of, our detective… that…
21:06
Mark Pracht: John Sable in a wig and a fake mustache.
21:11
Mark Pracht: two feet in front of him, he doesn't realize that these are the same guy.
21:16
Tad Eggleston: Is that clear?
21:18
Tad Eggleston: Because I actually… I actually found myself looking at those panels and going, does he know what's happening? I think he might.
21:27
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean…
21:28
Tad Eggleston: I think I need to wait until we have more interactions between Sable and him before I really…
21:36
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
21:37
Sean Harklerode: He's got hypnoglasses.
21:50
Mark Pracht: Okay, Mort.
21:54
Mark Pracht: Sean… Sean, quote-unquote, Mort Weisinger, Harklerode, coming in with the… There's no prize.
22:04
Mark Pracht: Is that enough power?
22:06
Dan Newland: Looking forward to this.
22:07
Dan Newland: you're talking about. I'm also… Weisinger era right now, so, I'm… I'm completely… Completely there.
22:15
Mark Pracht: Yeah,
22:17
Dan Newland: So I have a question for you guys. All of you are reading this in the compendiums, right?
22:22
Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
22:24
Dan Newland: Does it include the… the origin of independent comics and the other, the other sort of, like, things that are written in the first comic?
22:32
Sean Harklerode: Oh.
22:33
Dan Newland: open.
22:34
Mark Pracht: No.
22:34
Dan Newland: Because they had a guy named Charles Meyerson who actually did all of these things. He did, like, one of them's a 5- or 6 part Origins of Independent Comics. One of them talks about, like, censorship in comics and stuff like this. But they're basically, like, a researched essay.
22:49
Dan Newland: that they put into all the first comics. It was like, this one was in all the comics for one month, and then part two would be all in all the comics for the next month, or whatever. Kind of like Marvel did with some stuff, DCs did some stuff back in the day. But they are really good.
23:03
Dan Newland: they're actually really entertaining, and are kind of a cool introduction to sort of where in the early 80s all of these guys who were working in the business kind of look back at where things had been up to that point, so…
23:18
Dan Newland: Kind of interesting, that's some of the stuff that I miss when I end up just reading them in the big volumes, is being able to go in and see the ads, or see the, you know, the Warp Special Lord Cumulus issue coming up that's on the back cover, and stuff like this.
23:36
Dan Newland: these…
23:36
Mark Pracht: No, yeah, I mean, I think… I think that that is one of the big losses. I mean, like.
23:41
Mark Pracht: When we talk about these, you know, the,
23:48
Mark Pracht: Replica additions that everybody's putting out now.
23:52
Mark Pracht: I get really nervous about that, because I think the better they do, you kind of wonder when that's just gonna become all the big two do, you know?
24:03
Mark Pracht: But at the same time, man, it is cool to see, like.
24:07
Dan Newland: The ads and the stuff.
24:08
Mark Pracht: the ads, and the, you know… I mean, and…
24:12
Mark Pracht: like, every time… like, every… speaking of DC Silver Age stuff, like, every time I… I'm reading…
24:19
Mark Pracht: one of those compendiums, and I come to one of those pages where they had the half ad, yeah, there you go. Where we would have a half ad, you know, and they just end up putting, like, the logo or something down there, and you're like, God, what was that ad? I need to know what that ad is.
24:34
Sean Harklerode: I need to know what's going on with the sugar and spike that month.
24:38
Mark Pracht: I think that's.
24:40
Dan Newland: That's what put it in, is when you're talking about the hypnoglasses. You don't get all of those crazy-ass ads from the olden days. So kids that are rereading that do not know just how many different armies you could have purchased for, like, $2.99 out of the comic books over the years, you know?
24:58
Sean Harklerode: the sea monkey.
24:59
Mark Pracht: Life-size, life-size working submarine.
25:01
Mark Pracht: $1.99.
25:06
Dan Newland: So much good stuff.
25:08
Sean Harklerode: X-ray specs.
25:10
Mark Pracht: X-ray specs.
25:12
Dan Newland: Did anybody ever order anything out of the comics? Did any of you guys…
25:15
Mark Pracht: I ordered, I ordered one of those, the, the, the Army, the 100 Army Men thing.
25:22
Mark Pracht: Just as disappointing as anyone has ever told you.
25:28
Mark Pracht: You know, because I expected, like, Green Army men, right? Right. And… they were…
25:36
Dan Newland: Terrible.
25:36
Mark Pracht: They were, like, that big.
25:38
Mark Pracht: And they were flat.
25:41
Dan Newland: I also made the mistake of buying one of the armies.
25:45
Mark Pracht: Yeah. Wow.
25:46
Dan Newland: like it.
25:48
Mark Pracht: Crazy.
25:48
Dan Newland: Leo.
25:49
Mark Pracht: Crazy.
25:49
Dan Newland: That point.
25:52
Mark Pracht: John Sable could have taken all those guys out.
25:56
Mark Pracht: Anyway…
25:58
Dan Newland: Anyway…
25:58
Mark Pracht: No, yeah, I… I do… I… look, I know what you mean. Like, I think that… I think…
26:03
Mark Pracht: I… I will always… I will always love the fact that we're… we get
26:08
Mark Pracht: You know, compilation books, and reprinting books, and things like that, and high-quality stuff.
26:15
Mark Pracht: like…
26:16
Mark Pracht: Well, Tad note, we started this podcast talking about Ms. Tree, and how much I love those books, and they're so hard to find, and to get all of them printed in really nice quality…
26:32
Mark Pracht: Yup. Was super exciting, right? And,
26:36
Mark Pracht: But at the same time, you know.
26:39
Mark Pracht: I… I'll say Tad and I talked about this when we were reading him, like, that…
26:45
Mark Pracht: Max Allen Collins refused to put them out in chronological order.
26:49
Mark Pracht: he wanted to do the best ones first, and so it was, like, the DC series.
26:56
Mark Pracht: from the 90s was the first book, and I'm like, I…
27:01
Dan Newland: Weird, yep.
27:02
Mark Pracht: It would, like, so you can't really just read them straight through and get the whole story.
27:07
Mark Pracht: You're picking up things piece by piece, you know, and it's a little frustrating.
27:13
Dan Newland: Well, and even with these, I mean, when you read the Sable stories.
27:17
Dan Newland: they are so locked into the 80s. Like, these are a historical document of their times, you know?
27:23
Sean Harklerode: Scrappy.
27:24
Dan Newland: Carson.
27:24
Sean Harklerode: in poly.
27:25
Dan Newland: shallot, you know? He, he absolutely is.
27:29
Mark Pracht: Donnie Carson.
27:30
Dan Newland: these… yeah. And, and so…
27:34
Dan Newland: I would… I do like going back and just reading them, and then you're seeing the, you know, people write in with their letters and whatever from the time. There is something really missing.
27:44
Dan Newland: where…
27:46
Dan Newland: I know they don't have permission to redo the letters or whatever is a reprint, so a lot of times they have to take them out, and there's reasons.
27:53
Dan Newland: But in terms of getting people to be able to really, kind of, Enjoy the full…
27:58
Dan Newland: the full scale of what's cool about a comic. For me, a lot of times, it's listening to people bitch about what they didn't like 2 or 3 issues previous in the letter columns. And…
28:09
Dan Newland: You know, that… again, you don't get that real feel of exactly what these books were.
28:14
Mark Pracht: Well, and that's something I don't think you'd see today. I can't imagine a comic book company printing some letter that was, like, super critical.
28:24
Mark Pracht: of… you know.
28:28
Dan Newland: I think there's…
28:29
Mark Pracht: I remember… The, the independent company.
28:31
Dan Newland: companies do.
28:33
Sean Harklerode: Walking Dead, I mean, that's been over for a few years now, but they printed some negative letters.
28:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think most of.
28:43
Mark Pracht: I'm not familiar with The Walking Dead. Is that some sort of…
28:47
Tad Eggleston: I think, I think most…
28:48
Mark Pracht: A lot of comics?
28:50
Sean Harklerode: This is a great comment.
28:51
Tad Eggleston: I think mo… Most of the comics that have… Their letters, pages… Curated by the… creative team.
29:04
Tad Eggleston: that I've read.
29:06
Tad Eggleston: Print.
29:07
Tad Eggleston: Negative letters, and sometimes have more fun with them.
29:12
Dan Newland: I remember Powers, actually, I, at a certain point, got tired of it, because vendors would have, like.
29:19
Dan Newland: 4 or 5 pages of letter columns. It felt like you had.
29:22
Sean Harklerode: I don'.
29:23
Dan Newland: Comic book than letter pages sometimes.
29:26
Dan Newland: Well.
29:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but if you go back and look at it…
29:29
Mark Pracht: Loves to talk.
29:30
Tad Eggleston: They were always extra pages.
29:33
Dan Newland: They were extra pages, but I mean, it was… it was substantial.
29:36
Tad Eggleston: He didn't rob you.
29:39
Tad Eggleston: He didn't rock.
29:39
Dan Newland: I mean… The monkey sex issue robbed me. I'm still angry about that one, but…
29:47
Dan Newland: I don't know if any of you remember that one.
29:50
Mark Pracht: Hands down, my favorite comic book of all time, Dan. Sorry.
29:57
Sean Harklerode: I've never read Powers, so that's…
29:58
Mark Pracht: I… Powers… Powers is…
30:02
Mark Pracht: You know, look, I… kinda… Powers would be a good series for this… for this, too.
30:09
Dan Newland: It would actually mean?
30:10
Dan Newland: Especially those first issues, I really, I really loved the first, the first run of…
30:14
Mark Pracht: the… You know, I… when I…
30:20
Mark Pracht: Let's see, when I left… College.
30:25
Mark Pracht: when I left Kearney, Nebraska, and moved to Omaha,
30:29
Mark Pracht: That's when I kind of stopped with comics.
30:35
Mark Pracht: And I didn't really get back into them, and I definitely stopped once I moved to Chicago, just because money.
30:46
Mark Pracht: And it wasn't until… I remember, it was… Bendis is what brought me back, because it was Powers and Ultimate Spider-Man.
30:56
Mark Pracht: And I was like, holy shit, this is great.
30:59
Mark Pracht: And, I couldn't stop reading either one of those, so…
31:04
Mark Pracht: And I'm actually… I am a little salty with Bendis right now, because I'm just not clear…
31:10
Mark Pracht: what… what is going on with powers. It seems like it's still going, but I can't… I can't figure it out.
31:17
Dan Newland: I even gave up eventually and just bought the trades.
31:20
Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, I have…
31:21
Dan Newland: keep up with the comics. It was impossible.
31:23
Mark Pracht: I have all of them up until the first time the series stopped. Yeah.
31:31
Mark Pracht: And then… but then he restart… they restarted it, and I… but I'm… and I got confused, and I was just like.
31:37
Dan Newland: Yeah, it's a mess.
31:38
Mark Pracht: Cause I'm like, I just… I want… I want,
31:43
Mark Pracht: I want those two characters, those two main characters.
31:47
Tad Eggleston: So what you're.
31:48
Mark Pracht: I remember.
31:48
Tad Eggleston: Dang.
31:49
Tad Eggleston: is that Powers needs to be on our list to read for those.
31:53
Mark Pracht: I think so.
31:54
Mark Pracht: Especially if Sean.
31:55
Dan Newland: I think you'd enjoy it. It's kind of like a noir detective series with superheroes.
32:01
Tad Eggleston: I love Powerish.
32:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you like Bendis at all, ALL.
32:07
Tad Eggleston: Powers is his masterpiece.
32:10
Tad Eggleston: Might be Oming's masterpiece, too, but honestly, I think Oming's more consistent than Ben is.
32:19
Tad Eggleston: and I say that with the utmost love for Bendis. I think sometimes it's easier for an artist to be consistent.
32:27
Tad Eggleston: But yeah.
32:30
Mark Pracht: Well, I, I, you know, like, and I'm not, I'm not really a…
32:34
Mark Pracht: I'm not a, I actually… I reached out to Bendis at one point in the early 2000s.
32:42
Mark Pracht: about trying to do a stage adaptation of Powers.
32:46
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
32:47
Mark Pracht: And,
32:49
Mark Pracht: And he… he was very kind. I just got his email off the internet someplace. He was very kind, and he was like, I'm sorry, dude.
32:56
Mark Pracht: the film rights are gone, so…
32:59
Dan Newland: options.
32:59
Tad Eggleston: Right.
33:00
Mark Pracht: Yeah, so, and I'm like, okay, well, that sucks.
33:03
Mark Pracht: because, yeah, that was around the time when they were… Talk about…
33:09
Tad Eggleston: Film… the film rights would include stage?
33:13
Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
33:13
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess it depends on the contract.
33:15
Mark Pracht: when somebody buys the film and TV rights, they basically will lock up everything so that there's no.
33:19
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
33:20
Mark Pracht: Gotcha. Unless you're somebody like Stephen King, or somebody who can literally break that stuff up, right?
33:27
Tad Eggleston: I wonder how it is now.
33:29
Mark Pracht: I don't know. I mean, that would be something I would…
33:32
Mark Pracht: like, I know we… we haven't… the… the, Word Balloon hasn't had the Bendis Roundtable for a while that I know of.
33:42
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
33:42
Mark Pracht: Yeah. Nope, it's.
33:43
Tad Eggleston: It's been a little bit…
33:45
Mark Pracht: I would,
33:48
Mark Pracht: I'd love to ask Brian about that. Although, Brian was the one, he wanted to trade… he was like, oh, can we do a swap? I'd love to read your plays. And then I was, like, reaching out to him and to Centris, and…
34:00
Mark Pracht: whatever. Nothing. So…
34:03
Tad Eggleston: Didn't make it.
34:04
Mark Pracht: I'm like, Brian, I got your books, anytime you want them.
34:08
Tad Eggleston: He's a busy guy.
34:09
Dan Newland: We'll see.
34:09
Tad Eggleston: I can do.
34:11
Dan Newland: It's.
34:12
Mark Pracht: But,
34:14
Mark Pracht: What else? Oh, yeah, because I remember that, because right after I reached out to him, that's when they sort of announced that they were working on it, and that the big rumor was that Kyle Chandler was going to play Christian Walker, and I was like.
34:27
Mark Pracht: Like, that's the great mist.
34:29
Mark Pracht: opportunity of, if you're going to do a TV show, or you're going to do a movie.
34:35
Mark Pracht: Like, that to me is… Perfect.
34:39
Mark Pracht: Kyle Chandler in the early 2000s. Anyway… Usual?
34:46
Dan Newland: He was really good in Lanterns.
34:49
Mark Pracht: He was really good on lanterns. I… Look, I really.
34:52
Dan Newland: We don't have to talk a boat lanterns.
34:53
Mark Pracht: I know.
34:54
Dan Newland: But he is so…
34:54
Mark Pracht: He was really good in life.
34:55
Dan Newland: entrance.
34:56
Mark Pracht: I really, really, really, really liked lanterns. At the same time, I felt like they did…
35:02
Mark Pracht: they did Hal a bit dirty in that show.
35:05
Mark Pracht: I… that's… like, I understand that that's the story they were telling, and that I'm not… I'm not angry about it, I'm not going on the internet and bitching about it, but as… as a fan of those characters…
35:16
Sean Harklerode: That's new for you.
35:19
Dan Newland: You may be the only DC fan not on the internet bitching about it, actually.
35:24
Mark Pracht: But, the, but no, I just was sort of like, you know…
35:31
Mark Pracht: Come on, it's fuckin' Hal Jordan, you know?
35:36
Mark Pracht: Plus, he was so good as Al Jordan that I was like, I want more of this, please, you know?
35:44
Mark Pracht: And it was the sort of character that I think they need, that… that right now, Gunn's DC universe could use. Like, he was…
35:54
Mark Pracht: Actually, what was funny, as… now we're way off topic, but…
35:59
Mark Pracht: as I was watching it, I was like, you know, what Kyle Chandler is doing right here, right now, with Hal Jordan, is sort of how I imagine Metamorpho when I'm reading those 70s
36:12
Mark Pracht: Brave and Bold and the original, you know, Bob Haney Metamorpho issues. Like, he's sort of like… it's like Indiana Jones with superpowers. And I'm like.
36:25
Mark Pracht: And that's one… that was another thing, like, I thought that the Metamorpho that was in Superman was not the Metamorpho that I read, you know? And I'm like.
36:34
Mark Pracht: Wow. Like, Kyle Chandler as a real Bob Haney-style metamorpho could be awesome.
36:42
Dan Newland: What was weird is what he reminded me of was the… the Darwin Cook New Frontier Hal Jordan, actually.
36:49
Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's true.
36:50
Dan Newland: It was one of… one of my favorite incarnations.
36:52
Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
36:52
Dan Newland: as a shorter.
36:53
Sean Harklerode: Right.
36:54
Mark Pracht: 100%, 100%, and anybody who, like, anybody who bitches about that show, and it's not sci-fi enough, and I'm like, go read Hard Traveling Heroes, man. Like…
37:03
Mark Pracht: Fuck off, right?
37:07
Sean Harklerode: to reread Emerald Dawn.
37:09
Sean Harklerode: I remember really loving that.
37:11
Sean Harklerode: That ministry.
37:12
Sean Harklerode: When I… that was when I.
37:13
Mark Pracht: I mean, like.
37:14
Sean Harklerode: into Chicago.
37:16
Mark Pracht: Like, and the thing…
37:17
Sean Harklerode: They were old, but I was… that was what I thought.
37:21
Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like, and I don't… I… God, I… oh, I do not want to get into this, but, you know, like, I don't… I don't mind…
37:28
Mark Pracht: putting Hal into a darker light.
37:32
Mark Pracht: I also think that people who tried to claim that he was one of the villains of the show are, like, nuts, but that's a different thing altogether.
37:40
Mark Pracht: But the other thing is, is like.
37:43
Mark Pracht: when you read Emerald Twilight or Emerald Dawn or whatever, like, Hal loses it because…
37:51
Mark Pracht: His home city, and everyone he knows, is killed.
37:56
Mark Pracht: Right? It's not because, oh, the lanterns want you to train somebody to be your replacement.
38:03
Mark Pracht: which I felt was… weak sauce.
38:07
Mark Pracht: you know.
38:10
Mark Pracht: That's… that's where I felt like they did Hal Drew.
38:13
Sean Harklerode: You know, the Owens, you know, their total, you know, middle management. Like, no, no, we're not… we just want you to show us everything you do as… we're not replacing you, Hal. I just need.
38:27
Mark Pracht: What exactly…
38:28
Sean Harklerode: beyond everything you do, just… just in case you… you should… anything should happen someday.
38:34
Mark Pracht: What… what exactly is it?
38:36
Mark Pracht: Bet you do here.
38:39
Sean Harklerode: Hey, rest in peace!
38:40
Sean Harklerode: Is it real.
38:41
Dan Newland: Yep.
38:44
Sean Harklerode: I have people skills!
38:49
Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, you know, again, I can go off on other things, like, I think that… I think that the… the Justice League cartoon sort of…
39:02
Mark Pracht: changed the Jon Stewart character dramatically.
39:06
Mark Pracht: From what it was.
39:08
Mark Pracht: into this whole military thing, right? There was always the military thing, but it wasn't the overriding element of the character until that cartoon. And… which is fine. Like, there's nothing wrong with any of this, but it is… it is interesting, like.
39:24
Mark Pracht: I would like to see more of the…
39:27
Mark Pracht: the architect, right? That… I felt like in the 70s, whenever we saw Jon Stewart, it was… he was this sort of fairly erudite, architect. You know, he was a builder.
39:40
Mark Pracht: And there's elements of that, but so much of it is…
39:47
Mark Pracht: I mean, and I can go into that show. I can go into that show for hours. Like, I think… I think one of the more interesting things, there was… there was the great episode where Hal buried his father, right?
39:59
Mark Pracht: And I was like, oh, here's an interesting thing. John learned how to kill people, and Hal learned how to bury people.
40:09
Mark Pracht: You know? And I'm like… Interesting.
40:13
Mark Pracht: Interesting.
40:15
Mark Pracht: Anyway.
40:16
Dan Newland: There you go.
40:18
Mark Pracht: Tables.
40:19
Sean Harklerode: Excellent.
40:19
Dan Newland: Judge.
40:24
Dan Newland: Part of the problem discussing all of these like this is there's so many different stories and so many different plots, it's really hard to even find what the through line I'd want to talk about is, you know?
40:35
Tad Eggleston: I was about to…
40:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to toss out another idea. One of the things that I appreciated beyond the ensemble building out is in these five issues.
40:46
Tad Eggleston: We really had…
40:48
Tad Eggleston: 4 separate stories, with only a little bit of tying them together, tying them together, and you could almost read them as 5 separate stories.
40:59
Tad Eggleston: And I appreciate that, because I think that the… Mark, you're making faces.
41:07
Mark Pracht: Oh, no, I'm not making faces, I was licking some coffee off the corner of my mouth.
41:10
Tad Eggleston: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
41:14
Tad Eggleston: I really appreciate that, because I'm a big believer in trying to write comics, particularly extended series, in such a way that any issue is a launching point.
41:27
Tad Eggleston: And I think that Grel is accomplishing that so far, for the most part. I mean, the origin story being, like, the only exception, where you kind of needed to read it all together.
41:39
Tad Eggleston: Everything else pretty much works on its own, even that two-issue…
41:46
Tad Eggleston: story was really two different stories. You know, the first was solving the…
41:52
Tad Eggleston: the… the money thing, and then it was like, oh, what's this? And you had an.
41:58
Mark Pracht: Oh, it's a… oh, this guy's a Bond villain! Yay!
42:02
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:03
Mark Pracht: Complete with the… complete with the costumes and the underground lair. I mean, like…
42:08
Mark Pracht: Like, yeah, like, it's… the one thing I can say about… I think you're 100% right, and it's no wonder that Hollywood looked at this and immediately said, TV series?
42:20
Mark Pracht: Right?
42:21
Mark Pracht: Because once you get past that origin, like, the way this book is set up, it is basically, like…
42:27
Mark Pracht: episodic, episodic, episodic, episodic, and the nature of his… the nature of what he does is so…
42:37
Mark Pracht: Okay, here's the next person to hire me.
42:42
Mark Pracht: But yeah, I… like, look, I have never been more joyous Then, that… moment.
42:52
Mark Pracht: when we went from Issue 8 to issue 9, And when the… the colonel…
42:59
Mark Pracht: Walked in and said he was the general now, and he was wearing his fucking…
43:04
Mark Pracht: Bond villain outfit, and I was like, This is… Incredible.
43:11
Mark Pracht: This is the most joyous thing that I have ever had happen reading a comic book in a long time.
43:19
Mark Pracht: Because, like, it really was…
43:22
Mark Pracht: I give a fuck. I don't give a… rules? Fuck that. There's no rules. This is John Sable. John Sable can do anything that I say he wants to do. It's… it's like John D.F. Black, talking about Star Trek.
43:37
Mark Pracht: my… is one of my favorite quotes, where they were taught… somebody was talking to him about something being out of character for Captain Kirk, and he was like, we never talked about that.
43:45
Mark Pracht: Captain Kirk would do anything that got us a story.
43:48
Mark Pracht: Right?
43:49
Mark Pracht: So… Right, like, you can look at Obsession, the Star Trek episode, and Kirk's pretty much unhinged during that.
43:58
Mark Pracht: And it's like, there's a lot of people who'd be like, well, that's not… that's not in character for Captain Kirk. It's like, absolutely it's in character, because it got us a story, right? And…
44:07
Mark Pracht: And this isn't quite like that, because John is pretty, pretty… pretty st… Set.
44:15
Mark Pracht: But it's just like, okay, I can do anything I want.
44:18
Mark Pracht: Ed, yeah, anyway.
44:20
Mark Pracht: But yeah, you're right. Like, even… even the character epist… issue, issue 10,
44:27
Mark Pracht: Like, it starts out, like, everything is explained, and explained very concisely.
44:33
Dan Newland: What I loved about these, I think, you know, looking at the fact, I would have been, what, 14, 15 years old when these came out? And they really are essentially a scaffolding
44:45
Dan Newland: around which Grel puts
44:47
Dan Newland: Gunfights and beautiful women in various states of undress. And that's… that's… it is the bond formula, basically, right? But I mean, there's, like, the,
44:57
Dan Newland: the sort of splash page to issue number 9, where he's got sort of, you know, he comes through the window and surprises the one agent in.
45:06
Sean Harklerode: Yeah, yeah.
45:08
Dan Newland: He's absolutely doing cheesecake, but then also doing real story around it. And it was…
45:15
Dan Newland: Yeah, when you were reading these as a kid, they were… they're absolutely fantastic for that sort of adolescent age group, because they write up for it, but it's still…
45:27
Dan Newland: Exactly what you're looking for when you're a kid, you know?
45:31
Sean Harklerode: Yeah. Look.
45:32
Mark Pracht: Even that.
45:32
Sean Harklerode: The Milton Kniff. It was the tear in the Formula 2, right? Absolutely.
45:37
Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
45:38
Mark Pracht: Well, and if… I mean, if I remember correctly, it's been a long time since I read the Bond novels, but it seemed to me that there… at the beginning of each Bond novel, there was something that sort of tied back to the last one.
45:51
Mark Pracht: But didn't really, you know? In many, I always… Yeah. Give you some context.
45:57
Sean Harklerode: Tiffany Case is still living with
45:59
Sean Harklerode: James Bond at the beginning of Goldfinger, I think.
46:03
Mark Pracht: Right.
46:03
Sean Harklerode: Right?
46:05
Mark Pracht: Yeah, and well, I mean, I… the one that I always remember is at the beginning of Dr. No, which actually comes after,
46:11
Mark Pracht: from Rush With Love, he's recuperating.
46:15
Mark Pracht: from… The attack at the end that almost kills him.
46:21
Mark Pracht: Like, at the end of From Russian With Love, it seems like he's dead, and then he comes in from, you know, Dr. No, and M is like, have you recuperated? Bomb?
46:31
Mark Pracht: And he's like, of course I have.
46:36
Mark Pracht: And they give him the new gun. They give him the Walter PPK at the beginning of Dr. No. Anyway…
46:45
Mark Pracht: But yeah, no, I think that, I think that you're absolutely right. I mean, like, it… it is… it is… it is 100%, like, boy's own adventure, right? It is…
46:58
Mark Pracht: You know… How many pretty girls can we put in it? How many…
47:05
Mark Pracht: How many, you know, fistfights, how many… how many cool guns, how many… you know, and…
47:11
Mark Pracht: it's exactly what we were all into in the 80s, man. You know, there's a reason that
47:19
Mark Pracht: You know, Rambo was popular, right?
47:23
Mark Pracht: Even if we take the whole political aspect out of it, it was like it was this guy with a certain set of skills that had a really fucking cool knife and could kick everybody's ass, right?
47:33
Mark Pracht: And…
47:35
Mark Pracht: And especially when you talk about, like, First Blood, you know, it's like, they push him. They push him, they push him, they push him, until…
47:43
Mark Pracht: something snaps, right? And, you know, I think that movie's a masterpiece. So,
47:56
Dan Newland: I read something about that that, essentially they went through and removed most of the dialogue, and the movie kept getting better and better the more dialogue they took out, and eventually you're left with what's left, and it's pretty fantastic.
48:09
Mark Pracht: Well, and Stallone… Stallone, of course, claims credit for that, whether that's true or not, but, you know, he also…
48:16
Mark Pracht: And I do believe that he wrote the monologue at the end, because he is a good writer.
48:23
Mark Pracht: but that… to leave it all to that sort of vomiting of emotion.
48:30
Mark Pracht: And…
48:33
Mark Pracht: And you know what? Like, we can apply that to John Sable. You know, we talk about that issue 10.
48:40
Mark Pracht: That idea that he's… he's troubled, he's troubled by this B.B. Flem thing, he's troubled that he has to go and do this interview.
48:48
Mark Pracht: And what does he do? He goes out into the night, jogging.
48:52
Mark Pracht: Just to get into a fight.
48:55
Mark Pracht: And he finds the exact people that he knows, are, deserving of a beatdown.
49:04
Mark Pracht: And he just fucking does it, right?
49:07
Mark Pracht: And it's… I… that kind of… it's… it's… It's a masochistic thing.
49:16
Mark Pracht: there is a masochism that runs through John Sable in
49:21
Mark Pracht: But he seems like… I think he wants to be…
49:25
Mark Pracht: Wow, okay, alright, alright, sorry, sorry, actor, actor brain kicking in. So,
49:32
Mark Pracht: There is this masochism. He wants to be punished.
49:35
Mark Pracht: Because he failed his family. Like, that's part of it, right?
49:40
Mark Pracht: And then…
49:42
Dan Newland: I think he has a death wish, when… at the beginning.
49:45
Dan Newland: At the beginning of the story, at least. Beginning of the first, the first few books.
49:48
Mark Pracht: I think… I think there's… there's a death wish, and there's a masochism about it.
49:53
Mark Pracht: But I think that that issue 10 is about him starting to find a light.
50:02
Mark Pracht: And that, maybe, B.B. Flem is part of that life.
50:08
Mark Pracht: Or that light, you know?
50:10
Mark Pracht: That… that the connections that he can build with people are… are worth… fostering.
50:22
Mark Pracht: And, and I do think… I think… I think, Tad, you're right. Maybe… maybe I… I…
50:29
Mark Pracht: I'm terrible with character names. The detective, whatever his name is. Maybe he does know.
50:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
50:36
Mark Pracht: I mean, does it.
50:37
Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
50:37
Mark Pracht: seem incompetent.
50:38
Mark Pracht: It's sort of the Batman, Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon.
50:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, and… and, like, also, like…
50:47
Tad Eggleston: It's got kind of that early Jim Gordon Batman feel, where he doesn't entirely like John Sable, but he hasn't really decided that he entirely dislikes him either.
51:06
Mark Pracht: Right.
51:07
Tad Eggleston: You know, he… he… what he… what he seems to like least is the fact that there's any need whatsoever for a John Sable.
51:18
Mark Pracht: Well, and then John Lee's bodies.
51:20
Mark Pracht: John, we've stead bodies all over the city.
51:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, but I think… I honestly think that he's kinda, like, that bothers him less than the fact that there's a part of him that… that…
51:38
Tad Eggleston: doesn't… Doesn't like that he approves of the… outcome.
51:47
Tad Eggleston: You know, that he's actually willing to trade the dead body for whatever was gained.
51:53
Tad Eggleston: That there's a part of him that feels like he and his other officers are… are shackled.
52:00
Tad Eggleston: You know… You know, he had a line about you wouldn't make it One day with our rules.
52:09
Mark Pracht: Right.
52:10
Tad Eggleston: And, like, to me, that red is half… like…
52:18
Tad Eggleston: I'm frust… you know, I'm hoping, hoping that if this character is fleshed out, it's fleshed out much more in a Matt Murdock way, where he DOES believe in the rules, even though he…
52:33
Tad Eggleston: struggles against breaking them or allowing Sable to break them.
52:38
Tad Eggleston: Rather than, like, going in some, oh, well.
52:43
Tad Eggleston: let's say the bad days of Punisher, where… or the way that too many people who've never read Punisher think of Punisher, you know, as, hey, the cops can't get it done, let's just shoot people.
52:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, he wants to live in a world where he doesn't feel like a John Sable is necessary, but he's not certain that he does.
53:09
Mark Pracht: I mean… Like, I think that…
53:15
Mark Pracht: you are dealing with a serialized storytelling medium, right? When we're talking about comics, right? Which means that there is sort of a,
53:25
Mark Pracht: lack of… forward momentum in characters, right? That things gotta come back, sort of, to…
53:34
Mark Pracht: That most of the time, things are gonna come back to a status quo, And, I mean, I…
53:44
Mark Pracht: I don't know. I mean, like, I think that… I think that…
53:49
Mark Pracht: the Punisher… like, the Punisher's an interesting alo… interesting comparison to make, because, like, it's the same thing when we talk about Mac Bolin, which the Punisher is 100% a rip-off of Mac Molin. 100%.
54:07
Tad Eggleston: Right.
54:07
Mark Pracht: With, you know, it's Mac Bolin with a superhero suit, right?
54:13
Mark Pracht: I also think that the Punisher is 100% more interesting when he's a villain.
54:19
Mark Pracht: And I think that,
54:25
Mark Pracht: The moral implications of that character are really difficult for me.
54:32
Dan Newland: It's weird, though, when you talk about that, because John Sable is…
54:37
Dan Newland: he's got the Punisher's origin story.
54:39
Dan Newland: But what he decides to do is he learns a certain set of skills so he can take targeted vengeance on the people
54:46
Dan Newland: killed his family, and then goes, well, now I've got these skills, and I need to make a living, right?
54:52
Dan Newland: he doesn't go just full-on, I'm gonna kill everybody who's ever done something wrong.
54:57
Dan Newland: Which I think makes him a lot more palatable to me, because I don't really…
55:00
Mark Pracht: Sure.
55:01
Dan Newland: dig the Punisher.
55:02
Mark Pracht: Right. No, no, I think that that's absolutely true. Like, that… I think that there is a reason that Grel has that scene… has that scene in the last book where somebody tries to hire him to kill somebody, and he's like, that is not what I do.
55:19
Mark Pracht: It is what I do in pretty much every issue, but it's not… you can't hire me to do it. You can hire me to
55:26
Mark Pracht: It should be…
55:26
Tad Eggleston: To be fair.
55:27
Mark Pracht: item.
55:29
Tad Eggleston: Both iterations of the Punisher wouldn't do that either.
55:33
Sean Harklerode: Well, yeah.
55:33
Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, but…
55:35
Sean Harklerode: in the world.
55:35
Mark Pracht: Furnishers.
55:36
Sean Harklerode: Jim Rockford.
55:38
Sean Harklerode: Is there anything you won't do for money, Mr. Rock?
55:42
Sean Harklerode: Well… I won't kill for it.
55:45
Sean Harklerode: And I won't marry for it.
55:47
Sean Harklerode: But otherwise, I'm pretty much open.
55:52
Mark Pracht: I do… it's funny, because what Dan just said about… about Sable having a death wish…
55:59
Mark Pracht: I happen to have…
56:04
Mark Pracht: this page, it's… it's Issue 10.
56:09
Mark Pracht: And it's right after he leaves Mike and Gray.
56:14
Mark Pracht: And he goes back to his house.
56:17
Mark Pracht: And it's right before he goes out for his run, Right?
56:21
Mark Pracht: And the panel is… it's him in his apartment, his house, whatever it is. And, you know, it's… Today.
56:30
Mark Pracht: Today, 7 AM, it's the calendar, Tim looking out the window.
56:35
Mark Pracht: And then it says, live, live, live.
56:40
Mark Pracht: Because it's a live show, right? But it's also…
56:44
Mark Pracht: You can also read it as live, live, live.
56:48
Mark Pracht: And he's sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating, right? And then he vomits.
56:54
Mark Pracht: Right?
56:56
Mark Pracht: like, I… and then he looks in the mirror, and it's B.B. Flynn looking back at him, right? And…
57:07
Mark Pracht: Like, what a great page, because exactly what Dan was talking about, is, like, he does have a death wish.
57:13
Mark Pracht: Right?
57:13
Mark Pracht: Like, I think that that's pretty clear, that he would rather, like…
57:17
Dan Newland: I would agree.
57:18
Mark Pracht: Part of this is that he… he has this particular set of skills, and he needs to make money, because he needs to, you know, whatever. But,
57:25
Mark Pracht: But he's also completely comfortable with the idea that he could get killed doing this.
57:30
Mark Pracht: And it…
57:32
Mark Pracht: Really, it would probably be better for him if he could just be with his family again, right?
57:38
Mark Pracht: But, I mean, this whole thing of, like, He's like.
57:42
Mark Pracht: I've done pre-recorded interviews, but not live.
57:47
Mark Pracht: But it's that live, live, live. Live, live, live. I think that that's really fucking cool.
57:53
Mark Pracht: Kudos, Mr. Grell.
57:59
Mark Pracht: Anyway.
58:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
58:01
Mark Pracht: That's all I have to say. I'm done.
58:03
Mark Pracht: I've spent.
58:04
Sean Harklerode: I, I also like the fact that,
58:08
Sean Harklerode: As we go through this, we're going…
58:11
Sean Harklerode: It's kind of taking place month to month.
58:14
Sean Harklerode: So we go from Thanksgiving to the final issue, issue 11 in this
58:20
Sean Harklerode: cycle is at Christmas. Yep. That…
58:25
Sean Harklerode: It just feels like a great cadence.
58:30
Sean Harklerode: For a comic to, you know, really reflect that.
58:35
Sean Harklerode: That this is how time passes. It's passing the same for him as it is for us.
58:42
Sean Harklerode: Which I… I really like that. I mean, obviously, I read it, you know, 15 minutes after I finished the other one, but…
58:50
Sean Harklerode: When they were originally published. And I, I just, that, that to me is a nice touch, and…
58:57
Sean Harklerode: I think that 11th issue is… is really good, and…
59:01
Sean Harklerode: Seems to be the start of a whole other storyline.
59:05
Sean Harklerode: introducing his basic Catwoman, I would say.
59:13
Sean Harklerode: And I see Dan nodding.
59:16
Sean Harklerode: Well.
59:17
Mark Pracht: I mean, Maggie the Cat became a recurring character, and she had her own series for a while.
59:21
Dan Newland: There's…
59:22
Dan Newland: Stuff that I, by the way, am just now tracking down, because I had left John Sable behind and thought he was done. And then there's actually books…
59:31
Dan Newland: in the 90s and 2000s, I think, even, that I did not even know existed, so…
59:36
Mark Pracht: Yeah, they… I know they rebranded,
59:40
Mark Pracht: they rebranded the series after the TV show started.
59:44
Mark Pracht: So instead of John Sable Freelance, it was just Sable, which was the name of the show.
59:48
Mark Pracht: And they… the… the… the logo was the same as the show.
59:55
Mark Pracht: And…
59:57
Mark Pracht: I think that that was… that was considered a new series, I think it had stopped for a while. And then…
1:00:03
Mark Pracht: I know after… Comics Mix started doing the reprints.
1:00:12
Mark Pracht: he did another series, because I have that series someplace.
1:00:18
Mark Pracht: it was, like, Blood Hunt or something like that, and
1:00:24
Mark Pracht: Because, yeah, because the… the… the 90s series, it does the… the face…
1:00:30
Mark Pracht: the face mask is the one from the TV show, which is sort of like a tiger stripe thing.
1:00:36
Mark Pracht: That's… that's sort of where I started.
1:00:42
Mark Pracht: Because I… I actually… I dug the show a little bit, and then I read the book, and I was like, this is so much better than a stupid show.
1:00:50
Mark Pracht: even the show had Renee Russo, so,
1:00:56
Tad Eggleston: I still need to watch the show. I found it on YouTube. It is on YouTube.
1:01:00
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:01:01
Tad Eggleston: They haven't watched it yet.
1:01:03
Mark Pracht: just… just think of how much worse it would… if you watch that show, just think of how much worse it would have been if Gene Simmons had played John Sable.
1:01:14
Mark Pracht: I mean, like, the real sin of that show is it tries to turn him into a superhero.
1:01:19
Mark Pracht: Right? Into… into a full-on superhero.
1:01:23
Mark Pracht: But, yeah, I think, no, I… I really… I think…
1:01:36
Mark Pracht: Yeah, the 11th issue is really great, too. Like, we haven't really even talked about Maggie the Cat.
1:01:43
Mark Pracht: just, like…
1:01:47
Mark Pracht: it's… it's… it's like a classic heist story, in that it really does, you know, it, like, goes through, this is how we're gonna do it. And John is almost… John almost becomes like a,
1:02:01
Mark Pracht: A witness to what's going on, rather than actually being involved with it, you know?
1:02:06
Mark Pracht: And,
1:02:09
Mark Pracht: But yeah, it… like I said, it feels… that… that story feels to me like Charade, or one of those Cary Grant kind of things.
1:02:18
Mark Pracht: I mean, and that's what…
1:02:22
Mark Pracht: like, that's really what you're gonna… like, what I love about this group of five issues, is it really… like, it's just like what I said at the beginning, like, it is sort of like everything…
1:02:34
Mark Pracht: bed.
1:02:36
Mark Pracht: Mike Grell loves is right there.
1:02:39
Mark Pracht: And to what Sean said about it being sort of real-time.
1:02:44
Mark Pracht: That makes me think of Grel's Green Arrow.
1:02:48
Mark Pracht: Which also was real-time.
1:02:51
Mark Pracht: Because I remember, like, when he started that series, when they did Longbow Hunters.
1:02:57
Mark Pracht: I remember it was this big fucking deal, because he was like, I want Oliver Queen to be 44.
1:03:04
Mark Pracht: And everybody was like, no, no, no, no, this… the characters are always in their mid-30s.
1:03:09
Mark Pracht: And he's like, that makes no fucking sense.
1:03:12
Mark Pracht: And then… but then, every year of that series.
1:03:17
Mark Pracht: He would have a birthday, and they would do the birthday, and he would be 45, and he'd be 46, and they'd be 47.
1:03:24
Mark Pracht: And I'm…
1:03:24
Sean Harklerode: That was a great series.
1:03:26
Mark Pracht: Oh, that's a great series.
1:03:28
Sean Harklerode: I need to read Longbow Hunters again.
1:03:31
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:03:31
Tad Eggleston: It is.
1:03:34
Mark Pracht: You know, and the thing, I… you know, one of the other things is, like,
1:03:38
Mark Pracht: Dan said it earlier.
1:03:40
Mark Pracht: No, this series does not pass the Bechtel test by any stretch of the imagination, but I also think that even what
1:03:48
Mark Pracht: you know, even Ms. Bechtel has said that. It's like…
1:03:53
Mark Pracht: This is a way to look at stories in a feminist perspective. That does not mean it's good or bad.
1:03:59
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:04:00
Mark Pracht: Right. It's just whether or not it…
1:04:04
Mark Pracht: serves female characters, and there are stories that don't particularly serve female characters, and that's…
1:04:11
Mark Pracht: There's nothing wrong with that.
1:04:14
Mark Pracht: As long as there are characters, there are stories that serve female characters. And, I think…
1:04:22
Mark Pracht: I don't think that…
1:04:25
Mark Pracht: I don't think that Grell is dismissive of his female characters, and certainly Maggie the Cat is a very proactive character.
1:04:32
Mark Pracht: that,
1:04:36
Dan Newland: I would not have known.
1:04:36
Mark Pracht: I have a rear.
1:04:37
Mark Pracht: I never realized that… that part of her origin was that she was… she was done wrong by her husband, which was… I was a little disappointed in that, but I… you know…
1:04:50
Dan Newland: I was not saying that…
1:04:52
Dan Newland: by the whole Bechtel test so much that he didn't write good women characters as that the women characters didn't have good roles. It is simply a matter of that, especially in the first few issues.
1:05:02
Dan Newland: everything they do is talking about John Sable, which I guess makes some sense. She's the editor, he's the artist, but they're constantly… it's almost like another way that… because they both read his book.
1:05:15
Dan Newland: It's a way he can almost do the… that exploration of, sort of, what would be just a bunch of exposition, if… if, you know, essentially Sable himself did it. But it's like you've got these other two characters who've read the exposition, and now they're having a conversation about it instead. You know, we talk about.
1:05:33
Mark Pracht: Well, and they can…
1:05:34
Dan Newland: That's really the thing. This is all conversation. The whole book, all of them.
1:05:38
Mark Pracht: They can have the conversation that the audience wants to have about what they've read.
1:05:42
Dan Newland: Nope.
1:05:43
Mark Pracht: it's sort of like… it's sort of like the Dr. Watson thing, right?
1:05:47
Mark Pracht: That they're there to ask the questions, or to say the things that the audience wants to say.
1:05:52
Mark Pracht: And to have that conversation, and John doesn't have to talk about his feelings.
1:05:58
Mark Pracht: Because John doesn't talk about his feelings.
1:06:02
Mark Pracht: You know.
1:06:03
Mark Pracht: Which is… Awesome.
1:06:06
Mark Pracht: But I… and… and look, I'm not… I'm not saying that you're saying… like, and I want to be clear, it's just when you brought that up, I was… it made me think that. It's… I didn't think you were saying that the book was bad because it doesn't pass the Bechtel test. It's… it's just that…
1:06:20
Dan Newland: But, yeah.
1:06:21
Mark Pracht: It… it doesn't.
1:06:23
Mark Pracht: But I think that… I actually do think that the character… the female characters are pretty well written.
1:06:29
Dan Newland: Fantastically. Really, all the characters are pretty well written. Even some of the villains have better reasons for what they're doing, at least, for the most part. Not all, you do have some of just the Bond supervillain stuff going on, but a lot of his bad guys have significant reasons why they're a bad guy, which I do like.
1:06:50
Mark Pracht: I mean, and I think… I think that sometimes, you know, he does get bogged down in sort of minutiae of shit. It's like, okay, this is why the nuclear bomb won't go off. I'm like, okay, alright.
1:07:03
Mark Pracht: Alright, okay.
1:07:06
Mark Pracht: do we care? Like, knowing… like, if it was a Bond movie, you wouldn't spend 10 minutes going, like, well, this is why the bomb won't go off when we blow it up. You know, it's like…
1:07:16
Mark Pracht: just say it's not armed yet. I mean, like, whatever, but anyway.
1:07:20
Mark Pracht: I don't know, Ed, I… I, I, that's, that's one of my… Yeah.
1:07:30
Dan Newland: Oakland.
1:07:31
Mark Pracht: Go ahead.
1:07:32
Dan Newland: I was gonna say, Tad had talked about the,
1:07:35
Dan Newland: Tad had talked about the detective?
1:07:38
Dan Newland: And one of the things that it reminded me of is in the late 70s, Spider-Man had a, a Captain DeWolf.
1:07:46
Dan Newland: Who was sort of this person who was… she didn't really trust him, but on the other hand, he was useful a lot of times, and there was always that suspicion that she sort of knew more about what was going on with the superheroes of New York than she let on.
1:07:59
Dan Newland: And I think that the police detective, or the captain, or whatever in this kind of has a little bit of that DNA.
1:08:08
Dan Newland: But it is not a joke character, and I do like that. Most of his characters, he doesn't suffer fools in this. Most people seem to have decent motivations and be…
1:08:19
Dan Newland: professionals at what they do, you know? And…
1:08:23
Dan Newland: Sable will have problems with some of them or not, but… but they operate in the realm of people who are… are not cardboard cut-ups, who are just morons, who somehow got into a job they shouldn't have been able to get into.
1:08:35
Mark Pracht: Well, you know, and like, I do think that he makes an effort… I mean, like, he definitely makes an effort at diversity at a time when that wasn't necessarily a catchphrase. Like, we have a… we have a dwarf, or a dwar… a little person, sorry.
1:08:50
Mark Pracht: We have, you know, there's the, gray,
1:08:56
Mark Pracht: both. You know, I think… I think it's an interesting choice to have both the artist and the editor be women.
1:09:05
Mark Pracht: For nothing else, it creates sort of a… there's a tension of…
1:09:13
Mark Pracht: I mean, like, it is sort of the, you know, it's the male fantasy of, like, I'm surrounded by beautiful women, and they all want me.
1:09:21
Mark Pracht: But,
1:09:23
Mark Pracht: But there is a sort of tension of, like, which… which one are you gonna end up with?
1:09:29
Mark Pracht: Right?
1:09:30
Mark Pracht: and…
1:09:38
Mark Pracht: I don't know, I just… I think… I think that…
1:09:45
Mark Pracht: And, you know, I haven't read the whole series, right?
1:09:48
Mark Pracht: and if we continue reading this, which I'm open to, you know, maybe there's going to be a downturn, because, like, you know, right now, we're still in this sort of, like.
1:09:59
Mark Pracht: Mad rush of the first Burst of creativity, right?
1:10:04
Mark Pracht: I mean, we haven't even gotten to the first year of this series yet, you know?
1:10:09
Tad Eggleston: Just barely.
1:10:10
Mark Pracht: bare… well, I mean, the 11, I guess.
1:10:13
Tad Eggleston: If they actually came out monthly, which I haven't checked.
1:10:16
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:10:19
Dan Newland: As a… as a voice from the future, that…
1:10:22
Dan Newland: having just re-read the whole damn thing, accidentally, because I didn't realize how bad an idea that was in terms of
1:10:29
Dan Newland: screwing this up for the rest of you.
1:10:32
Dan Newland: I was pretty impressed that the quality remained solid pretty much all the way up into at least the 40s. I don't have.
1:10:40
Tad Eggleston: That's good to know.
1:10:41
Dan Newland: I think it goes to, like, 56. I actually do not have the ones in the 50s. I top out at, like, 48 or 49.
1:10:49
Dan Newland: But…
1:10:50
Dan Newland: They've all been, and in fact, some of my favorite stories come a while later on. There's some really strong stuff into the 30s and 40s. And Grel's still doing it himself.
1:10:59
Dan Newland: which I think is another thing that you don't see a lot of times, is, you know, a lot of these books.
1:11:05
Dan Newland: the creator will start it back then, and then they'll pawn it off. And he did this on a lot of others, like, like Star Slayer. I think he did just the first few issues, and then he wandered onto something else. Even… even Warlord, I only think he… he drew…
1:11:20
Dan Newland: the first 15 or 20 or something like that, and then Juergens or somebody came in and did the drawing, and he kept writing. So the fact.
1:11:27
Mark Pracht: Yeah, and this is…
1:11:28
Dan Newland: Doing all that this long is impressive.
1:11:32
Mark Pracht: Well, I think that, you know, this is… this is post-Warlord, so…
1:11:40
Mark Pracht: You know, he's… he's had that taste of how
1:11:45
Mark Pracht: And, you know, that could be as simple as the fact that he actually owns it.
1:11:52
Mark Pracht: But it's not something that he's…
1:11:55
Mark Pracht: it's not a work for hire, it's not owned by DC. And…
1:12:05
Mark Pracht: I don't know. I mean, like, I think that…
1:12:07
Mark Pracht: because, like, the… the ones that… okay, okay, so there was Star Slayer, That was pretty early.
1:12:15
Mark Pracht: There's Warlord.
1:12:17
Mark Pracht: which… they're… I think they're pretty similar. He obviously loves sword fighting. Yes.
1:12:24
Mark Pracht: And then we had Sable, then he goes back to DC to do Green Arrow.
1:12:31
Mark Pracht: And then…
1:12:37
Mark Pracht: Then… then it's Shaman's Tears, which doesn't go very long, if I remember correctly, at Image.
1:12:45
Dan Newland: I've never read that.
1:12:47
Dan Newland: I guess I should…
1:12:47
Mark Pracht: France. I wasn't. It…
1:12:51
Mark Pracht: it… like… like everything, when Image hit, it was like, oh, this is great, and then it was like, okay, you can't maintain a regular schedule to save your life, so I don't…
1:13:03
Mark Pracht: Which is weird to me, because he's been able to do it for so long, right?
1:13:07
Dan Newland: Nope.
1:13:09
Mark Pracht: And because I think… I remember that… I think that was the second wave of image books, and by that point, I was so fed up with the whole thing that I was like, okay.
1:13:20
Mark Pracht: even though I love Grel, and…
1:13:23
Mark Pracht: And I suppose I should also say that there's also… he also does that run on… Legion of Superheroes.
1:13:31
Dan Newland: Some of my favorite Legion books back in the Love those.
1:13:35
Mark Pracht: Yeah, with…
1:13:36
Dan Newland: And the James Bond series that he does, I mean, is relevant considering all of the stuff that we're talking here.
1:13:42
Mark Pracht: Right.
1:13:43
Mark Pracht: Although, yeah, and I think that was a series… I think that was after… Green Arrow.
1:13:49
Mark Pracht: And I think that was a ser… I think that was two mini-series, if I remember correctly.
1:13:53
Dan Newland: Something like that, yeah.
1:13:54
Mark Pracht: Yeah.
1:13:56
Mark Pracht: prestige, prestige format. They were square-bound, and… and…
1:14:00
Dan Newland: Is that what it was?
1:14:01
Mark Pracht: notes book… I remember those… those books were a big fucking deal when they came out.
1:14:10
Mark Pracht: somebody.
1:14:10
Dan Newland: I loved Warlords. Loved a lot of these, actually. Those were… those were so much fun back in the day.
1:14:15
Mark Pracht: Warlord was such a great book.
1:14:18
Dan Newland: That was awesome stuff.
1:14:19
Mark Pracht: every time they bring that character back, I always have been like, oh, fun.
1:14:25
Mark Pracht: But nobody can do it like Grel did.
1:14:28
Dan Newland: They really can't.
1:14:29
Dan Newland: It's never been the same since. So, oh well.
1:14:33
Mark Pracht: Anyway.
1:14:35
Dan Newland: That's why I'm a grumpy old man, who's always angry.
1:14:37
Sean Harklerode: Haha, awesome.
1:14:38
Dan Newland: Not the way they used to be.
1:14:40
Mark Pracht: Well, as Sean says, I'm angry about stuff all the time.
1:14:45
Sean Harklerode: on the internet.
1:14:47
Mark Pracht: I'm not…
1:14:47
Dan Newland: NFTA.
1:14:48
Mark Pracht: Listen, I could be a lot angrier on the internet. Most of the time, I'm just like.
1:14:57
Mark Pracht: Mostly, I'm angry about people who are angry on the internet, come on.
1:15:03
Tad Eggleston: Alright, two last questions, because it's about time to wrap up. First, does anybody have a favorite issue from these five?
1:15:16
Mark Pracht: I… it's a real toss-up, I think.
1:15:20
Mark Pracht: the… the sheer laugh-out-loud joy at number 9, when I realized we were going into a full-on 1960s Bond movie.
1:15:30
Mark Pracht: that really made me excited. I think that's also the issue where his battle mask magically appears.
1:15:40
Mark Pracht: Right. While they're on the run, and he's jumped into a river or something. That… that was all just joyous to me. But, man, 10…
1:15:51
Mark Pracht: There's something great about that issue.
1:15:53
Mark Pracht: I, I think… I think that issue is… is really, really, really… So, I mean, like, it's…
1:16:03
Mark Pracht: I'm sort of torn between character and concept.
1:16:09
Mark Pracht: 9 is just the most joyous concept ever, and then 10 is just, like, that really…
1:16:16
Mark Pracht: Breaks the character in a lot of ways.
1:16:19
Mark Pracht: That I love.
1:16:21
Mark Pracht: That's my answer to that question.
1:16:22
Sean Harklerode: I'd say, for me, it's 10.
1:16:24
Sean Harklerode: just… Again, it's so 80s.
1:16:29
Sean Harklerode: And it's a day in the life
1:16:31
Sean Harklerode: And we get to see all the different
1:16:34
Sean Harklerode: facets of him. But I do love the… in… in issue 11, I love that one-page breakaway to Sonny.
1:16:45
Sean Harklerode: Leaving… trying to see his ex-wife.
1:16:48
Sean Harklerode: and… Not being allowed in.
1:16:51
Sean Harklerode: Because I don't know where that's leading.
1:16:55
Sean Harklerode: so, that… I did find that that was… because I felt like I'd missed something there.
1:17:02
Sean Harklerode: when I turn the page, they're like, nope, that's just a one-page…
1:17:07
Sean Harklerode: Intermission here.
1:17:09
Sean Harklerode: So…
1:17:09
Mark Pracht: Well, Sonny's… Sonny's such a great character. Like… just great.
1:17:15
Mark Pracht: Love him.
1:17:17
Dan Newland: Yeah, for me, it's 11. I love the cover to 11. It's one of my favorite covers of all the John Sable books. And the story, too, it's just…
1:17:26
Dan Newland: It is kind of one of those classic heist movie type things, and it's well executed, and…
1:17:30
Dan Newland: It was a gas. But really, all of these are…
1:17:33
Dan Newland: They're all solid stories, they're all a lot of fun, and for different reasons, so…
1:17:39
Sean Harklerode: You, Tad?
1:17:40
Tad Eggleston: I… If I have to pick one, it's 10.
1:17:45
Tad Eggleston: But it's, like, razor close between 10 and 11.
1:17:50
Tad Eggleston: Because the character that I'm hoping to get to know more is the cat.
1:17:57
Tad Eggleston: I'm hoping she becomes… a regular?
1:18:01
Tad Eggleston: I also… I love a good heist caper, so, like, it…
1:18:09
Tad Eggleston: you know, kind of like Mark and it turning into a full-on Bond movie. I've never been a huge Bond movie guy, so…
1:18:18
Tad Eggleston: that did not do things for me, but I was actually more trying to figure out if he had true political motivations, rather than…
1:18:27
Tad Eggleston: Like, are we making commentary on, like, this is the era that's the rise of the militia movement, you know, blah blah blah, then, oh, he's just a Bond villain.
1:18:39
Tad Eggleston: that's just where my head went.
1:18:42
Tad Eggleston: But I love a heist, and, like, my favorite thing about Batman is the Batman-Catwoman relationship, and, like, the duality of…
1:18:56
Tad Eggleston: They're… they like each other and respect each other, and they're not quite at odds with each other, except when they are.
1:19:08
Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
1:19:11
Mark Pracht: Damn.
1:19:12
Tad Eggleston: attention that I've always liked, but…
1:19:14
Mark Pracht: Sam Hamm, I remember when the first Batman movie came out, and he had done the script that
1:19:22
Mark Pracht: Warren Skarin, kind of, brutalized.
1:19:28
Mark Pracht: I was reading an interview with him, and he's like, there's really only 3 Batman character… there's 3 Batman villains that matter.
1:19:35
Mark Pracht: One is the Joker, because it's the opposite.
1:19:38
Mark Pracht: It's chaos as opposed to order. There's Two-Face, because it's the… it's the, it's the… destruction of…
1:19:51
Mark Pracht: who Batman is, right? It's the… it's the, destruction is not quite the… it's the…
1:19:57
Mark Pracht: twisting of it. Oh, it's the… it's the…
1:20:01
Mark Pracht: whatever. It's… it's taking a good man and making him evil, right?
1:20:06
Mark Pracht: breaking him.
1:20:08
Mark Pracht: And then there's Catwoman, who represents all of the women that Bruce Wayne should have had relationships with in a normal, healthy life.
1:20:17
Mark Pracht: Wrapped up in one person that is actually a conflict with With Batman.
1:20:24
Tad Eggleston: man.
1:20:24
Mark Pracht: So, yeah. I mean, like, and I tend to agree with that. I think that those probably are the three Batman villains that
1:20:31
Mark Pracht: if I, you know, like, if I was doing a Batman trilogy, that would be the three villains, right? Yeah. Because that's… those are the important ones.
1:20:40
Sean Harklerode: Nolan beat you to it, man.
1:20:42
Mark Pracht: I know, I know.
1:20:43
Mark Pracht: I know.
1:20:44
Mark Pracht: Bastard?
1:20:47
Sean Harklerode: But he took your idea.
1:20:49
Mark Pracht: That's true.
1:20:50
Tad Eggleston: I do like the Riddler, though.
1:20:54
Tad Eggleston: I think the Riddler… I think the Riddler done well plays into his… his… greatest detective…
1:21:02
Mark Pracht: Sure.
1:21:04
Mark Pracht: But the Riddler is… I… I… somebody said the Riddler is like a… a low-rent version of the Joker.
1:21:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess my favorite jokers… Have no motivation.
1:21:21
Tad Eggleston: Like, my… the thing that makes the Heath Ledger… Joker.
1:21:30
Tad Eggleston: The only movie joker that has really resonated with me is when he lights all the money on fire.
1:21:37
Mark Pracht: Sure.
1:21:38
Tad Eggleston: You know, one of my favorite Joker turns was in No Man's Land, when he was actually running, like, the part of the city that worked well, because everybody else was becoming degenerates, and he couldn't be like everybody else, so he needed to feed people. You know?
1:21:57
Tad Eggleston: It's like, your only motivation is to be not what… anybody else's.
1:22:07
Tad Eggleston: Whereas the Riddler, to me.
1:22:14
Tad Eggleston: The Riddler, to me, when done well, is Batman's Moriarty.
1:22:25
Tad Eggleston: But he hasn't been done that well. I mean, Tom King's done them that well. I think… I think the recent movie's done them that well. He's started to be done that well.
1:22:35
Tad Eggleston: Overall, but the Joker isn't that kind of criminal.
1:22:40
Tad Eggleston: you know… And the penguin just doesn't feel that smart.
1:22:45
Tad Eggleston: The Penguin is a stand-in if you don't want to have the real-world organized crime of, like, the Falcones or whatnot. You feel like you need to personify it. That's the Penguin.
1:22:58
Mark Pracht: Right? I mean, like, the Penguin… yeah, the Penguin…
1:23:01
Mark Pracht: Has become more interesting when they actually just put him into the, organized crime milieu, right?
1:23:09
Mark Pracht: As opposed to the supervillain.
1:23:11
Mark Pracht: milieu, right?
1:23:13
Mark Pracht: Because I think,
1:23:16
Mark Pracht: that's where… the Iceberg Lounge is the best thing that they ever came up with for Penguin in a long time. I, you know, like, look, Batman has a great rogues gallery, also has a terrible rogues gallery.
1:23:27
Dan Newland: Yeah.
1:23:29
Mark Pracht: Like, there's, like, you know, there's, like, there's, like, things where they're like, well, we don't want to use the Riddlers, so let's make up the Quizmaster, and it's like, okay, alright, what the hell is that? You know, and let's not…
1:23:41
Dan Newland: Teddy and Tweedledum and stuff like this.
1:23:43
Mark Pracht: Yeah. Well, yeah, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, it's like, why didn't you just use the Mad Hatter? I don't understand, you know, like,
1:23:51
Mark Pracht: let's not even talk about Crazy Quilt.
1:23:56
Dan Newland: I think Scarecrow.
1:23:58
Sean Harklerode: And Scarecrow, yeah, Scarecrow.
1:24:00
Dan Newland: Crow, I think, is actually, probably the guy, actually, is the number 4 villain, in terms of the best Batman villains.
1:24:07
Dan Newland: Visibility developers?
1:24:09
Dan Newland: Huh?
1:24:10
Mark Pracht: Or the, or the scary one.
1:24:11
Sean Harklerode: Dan's talking about the scarecrow.
1:24:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I… I…
1:24:14
Sean Harklerode: Ventrilically.
1:24:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they're both fun villains, but I don't know… I mean, Mark was… Mark was talking about ones that I think that are, like, essential to the character, ones that.
1:24:23
Mark Pracht: Well, that's psychologically, you know.
1:24:26
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:24:26
Mark Pracht: The thing is, you can make that argument about the… you can make that argument about the scarecrow.
1:24:30
Dan Newland: Yep.
1:24:31
Mark Pracht: You can make that argument.
1:24:33
Mark Pracht: I think that… I don't think you can make that argument.
1:24:38
Mark Pracht: I think that the ventriloquist and Scarface are…
1:24:42
Mark Pracht: literally the best Batman villains that have been created in 30 years, right? Right. But…
1:24:50
Mark Pracht: Yeah, I don't think you can argue that they really… illuminate something about Batman, right?
1:24:57
Sean Harklerode: Right, but I think there… I mean, who else has been created, you know, in the past 30…
1:25:03
Sean Harklerode: Here, I mean…
1:25:04
Mark Pracht: I mean, like.
1:25:04
Sean Harklerode: Made.
1:25:05
Mark Pracht: People argue Bain… Which…
1:25:09
Mark Pracht: doesn't do much for me. There's the KG Beast, which doesn't do much for me. Right.
1:25:16
Mark Pracht: Professor Pig, which is…
1:25:19
Mark Pracht: doesn't do much for me, but I mean, I guess, like, it's, you know, okay, we want a horror movie villain. Alright, great.
1:25:27
Dan Newland: Nasty.
1:25:30
Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like, I think that… I think that…
1:25:35
Mark Pracht: our society has become so kind of obsessed with horror lately that these kind of characters work for people. Nothing wrong with that, but it…
1:25:46
Mark Pracht: This doesn't really work for me.
1:25:48
Mark Pracht: like… I think.
1:25:50
Mark Pracht: But I… I also…
1:25:53
Mark Pracht: I also like the cleverness of, like, taking Clayface and making it into a body horror movie. I think that's interesting.
1:25:59
Mark Pracht: But… I don't know.
1:26:05
Mark Pracht: just to… Talk about something that just happened days ago.
1:26:09
Mark Pracht: But, yeah.
1:26:14
Mark Pracht: Anyway… I think we're done.
1:26:17
Sean Harklerode: Did you have the ready?
1:26:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, I did have one last question for everybody but Dan, who knows.
1:26:24
Tad Eggleston: What thread, what part of John Sable, or… or… What… Ensemble character are you hoping
1:26:38
Tad Eggleston: That we'll learn more about next.
1:26:43
Tad Eggleston: Like, you'll be really happy if the next volume includes what?
1:26:50
Mark Pracht: Well, I enjoy… I enjoy the relationship with Maggie, the cat.
1:26:56
Mark Pracht: But that character also immediately strikes me as, like, I don't want her to become a supporting character on a regular basis, I want her to show up maybe once a year.
1:27:05
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:27:06
Mark Pracht: I think…
1:27:11
Mark Pracht: Sunny.
1:27:13
Mark Pracht: Sunny's the… Sonny's the obvious choice. Like, there's something interesting happening there.
1:27:17
Sean Harklerode: I mean, they're laying… to me, it's sunny, too. I mean, he's laying the… the threads out there, that's something that he's gonna develop some story.
1:27:28
Sean Harklerode: Yeah. Although, the next issue, we're going to Vietnam, 1969, so I guess it'll be a while.
1:27:35
Tad Eggleston: Well, unless that's where he met Sonny.
1:27:39
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
1:27:40
Mark Pracht: Well, I don't.
1:27:40
Sean Harklerode: It's big? I haven't read it.
1:27:42
Mark Pracht: I would.
1:27:43
Tad Eggleston: I think…
1:27:44
Mark Pracht: pink.
1:27:44
Mark Pracht: That's more of building up the backstory, because, like, we do know that he served in Vietnam, so…
1:27:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:27:51
Tad Eggleston: I think, for me, it's the detective. Not because I don't feel you with the Sunny, but because…
1:28:05
Tad Eggleston: I feel like it's more likely that the detective is an overall happy, if sometimes stressful and dramatic storyline, whereas there's something about Sonny that just makes me feel like it's gonna be a tragedy.
1:28:23
Tad Eggleston: And… and, like, I enjoy tragedies, but I don't necessarily…
1:28:29
Tad Eggleston: get excited for tragedies, if that makes sense. I'm also interested to see…
1:28:36
Tad Eggleston: both the Mike and the Maggie relationships, but I'm with Mark on the Maggie. I think she's gotta be in and out, and I think that Mike is gonna be a slower burn. I just don't expect to see…
1:28:48
Tad Eggleston: depth.
1:28:50
Tad Eggleston: Coming soon.
1:28:52
Tad Eggleston: So I'm hoping…
1:28:55
Tad Eggleston: what I'm hoping for is… is more with the detective. What I'm expecting is more with Sonny. I think… I think that one-page tease tells you it's coming and coming soon.
1:29:06
Tad Eggleston: Because, among other things, that one-page tease tells you he's been lying to Sable.
1:29:11
Mark Pracht: Sure.
1:29:14
Tad Eggleston: Which is also one of the…
1:29:19
Tad Eggleston: Which is also one of the reasons why, why, I just see tragedy there.
1:29:27
Dan Newland: I don't know how you guys do this. How the… how the hell do you have…
1:29:31
Dan Newland: comic books in front of you that you could read, and instead you have the discipline to say, I'm just gonna read the ones.
1:29:37
Mark Pracht: Wow.
1:29:38
Tad Eggleston: Well, for me, Dan…
1:29:39
Dan Newland: I can't do it.
1:29:40
Tad Eggleston: It has everything to do with… with…
1:29:43
Tad Eggleston: I have so many… like, I still have 6 issues of milestone stuff to read for tomorrow night. I read 20 new comics, including 3 graphic novels this week, for this morning.
1:29:56
Dan Newland: I just got, like, 40 new comics in the mail a couple.
1:29:58
Tad Eggleston: Yes, yes, but you don't have… you don't have the.
1:30:01
Mark Pracht: Dan has to reveal the entirety of the Silver Age of DC Comics!
1:30:05
Dan Newland: Exactly.
1:30:07
Tad Eggleston: But you don't have quite the same deadlines, certainly not when you read the John Sable, for, I have to get this done for this podcast that I'm recording at.
1:30:16
Dan Newland: I've given up sleep.
1:30:17
Mark Pracht: I…
1:30:18
Dan Newland: I've given up sleep.
1:30:19
Mark Pracht: Look, my, my, like, and, you know, my personal life is really complicated right now, so, I barely got these done yesterday, so,
1:30:32
Mark Pracht: you know, I'm trying to parse things out, because I also like to,
1:30:38
Mark Pracht: like, for our… for our, Secret Wars and Crisis thing, I like to reread those twice, since we're not doing a lot, and
1:30:48
Mark Pracht: Just to make sure that I have some real thoughts about it.
1:30:54
Mark Pracht: But, yeah, no.
1:30:56
Dan Newland: I guess, actually, I have learned my lesson, because I have read the third books of those two, but I did not go and just burn through the entire series again, because I'm like.
1:31:08
Dan Newland: I'm gonna get myself in trouble again. I have to just stop, so… I am… I am a learning animal at some point, I guess.
1:31:15
Sean Harklerode: Huh? Anyway…
1:31:16
Mark Pracht: Guys, I gotta go.
1:31:17
Tad Eggleston: Alright, for 22 Panels, this has been The Pulp Blotter and John Sable on…
1:31:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, on 22 Panels with Mark, Sean, and Dan. We will see you after the next page.