Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / 22 Panels Episode #203 - Traveling to Mars

Transcript

22 Panels Episode #203 - Traveling to Mars · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels. This is episode 203.
• 0:10
  Tad Eggleston: For September 28th, 2025, across the interwebs from me, is Phil.
• 0:20
  Phil: Good morning! And, good morning.
• 0:23
  Tad Eggleston: How's it going?
• 0:24
  Phil: It's going pretty good, you know? Am I… am I coming out of your… your computer speakers again?
• 0:30
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think so.
• 0:31
  Phil: You don't think so? Okay, I, I heard some weird, heard some weird, weird sounds there. It's, you know, we're, we're running on, on not enough caffeine and, too much sleep deprivation this morning, but aside from that, doing alright, doing pretty good, you know,
• 0:48
  Phil: Yeah.
• 0:51
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you want to kick us off with some news? With some news? You stole a top item from me, and I came to you.
• 0:57
  Phil: stole. I, I mean, it's… oh, okay, excellent.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: I like to parenthetical something completely different.
• 1:03
  Phil: Well.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: But I decided between the two, and decided, no, that one's better.
• 1:07
  Phil: Okay, alright. Well, the first news of note is that Image announced a 27-day comic shop exclusivity window. Due to some supply chain issues that was causing trades to land in bookstores later than comic shops, they said, okay, rather than delay comic.
• 1:27
  Tad Eggleston: Earlier.
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: comic shops.
• 1:31
  Phil: No, no, no, it's the…
• 1:33
  Phil: I don't… I… reading the article, I thought it was… I thought it was the other way around. I thought it was that bookstores were getting trades later than comic shops, so rather than delay how long…
• 1:43
  Tad Eggleston: Now they're officially getting trades later than comic shops, specifically Amazon.
• 1:51
  Phil: Right, right. The digital…
• 1:52
  Tad Eggleston: I think…
• 1:53
  Phil: mutual vendors.
• 1:54
  Tad Eggleston: I think the issue was that trades were…
• 2:01
  Tad Eggleston: Showing up on the… in the bookstore market ahead of comics.
• 2:07
  Phil: shock.
• 2:07
  Tad Eggleston: So the comic shops were having to… to…
• 2:12
  Tad Eggleston: Like, this is… the way I read it anyway, and I don't have the article in front of me, was this was like a gift to comic shop owners, a, hey.
• 2:22
  Tad Eggleston: We… we don't want…
• 2:24
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the various industry supply issues making it so you're the last one to get things.
• 2:30
  Phil: Yeah, so I do have the article here, and just the first paragraph said that they, instituted a 27-day window for their products to be exclusively available in comic shops, move as a response to supply chain issues that have affected sales to bookstores, resulting in
• 2:46
  Phil: having a longer lay-in than for comic shops. Image decided to make a virtue of this by making their comics and graphic novels exclusive for this window, a move which is certain to make comic store owners smile broadly.
• 3:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, longer lay-in generally means that they got there first.
• 3:05
  Phil: Oh, okay, interesting.
• 3:06
  Tad Eggleston: Playing at the store.
• 3:08
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 3:10
  Phil: Huh.
• 3:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:11
  Phil: Okay. I, I, that was clearly me, never having been a bookseller, only a book lender in my library.
• 3:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:19
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, that makes.
• 3:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Phil: sense.
• 3:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's that some things were showing up a week, sometimes two weeks, or it was officially a week, and then it became
• 3:30
  Tad Eggleston: 2 or 3 weeks, the diamond issues, you know.
• 3:34
  Phil: Right.
• 3:35
  Tad Eggleston: There were regularly being issues of, like.
• 3:39
  Tad Eggleston: Barnes & Noble and Amazon having things significantly before your local comic shop did.
• 3:46
  Phil: Yeah, and that pretty much kills any ability for the shop to find new readers.
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: Certainly makes it harder.
• 3:52
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:55
  Phil: That was the gist I pulled out of the article, was that, hey, this window is gonna give comic shops the chance to be the forerunners of, you know, the comic industry is already people who are, you know.
• 4:08
  Phil: I… I view the industry as, like, kind of the collective R&D of media, and, you know, kind of the forerunners ahead of their time fans, the people looking for… for the.
• 4:22
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of, but I mean, I mean, to be fair…
• 4:30
  Tad Eggleston: And I emphasize fair, not necessarily kind.
• 4:37
  Tad Eggleston: They view themselves as more of that than they actually are.
• 4:43
  Phil: Yeah, I can see that.
• 4:45
  Tad Eggleston: They don't take enough chances.
• 4:47
  Tad Eggleston: on… new things.
• 4:51
  Phil: Yeah, I…
• 4:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are a handful of shops that do, but as an industry…
• 4:59
  Tad Eggleston: They rely on the big two, they complain about every change.
• 5:03
  Phil: Yep.
• 5:04
  Tad Eggleston: They… they… they haven't gotten… they… they'd rather… they'd rather go deep into collectible… covers than… than…
• 5:12
  Phil: Graphic.
• 5:13
  Tad Eggleston: novels that… That are outside of… What they already know.
• 5:20
  Tad Eggleston: And that's okay, but, like, it creates a scenario where comic shops represent a smaller and smaller slice of the industry every year, and I don't think it's something that's being done to them.
• 5:33
  Tad Eggleston: Many of them complain that it's being done to them.
• 5:39
  Tad Eggleston: But I feel like a lot of it is, like, the stores that don't adapt.
• 5:46
  Phil: Yeah, I could see that.
• 5:48
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I mean, we talked with Tyler. My first thing is, like, if you want to be a successful comic shop, you need to focus on what you know. So, like, I'm not saying that they have to adapt, adapt. You know, there's clearly ways to consider,
• 6:04
  Tad Eggleston: Still doing well on what you know, but, like, then turning around and complaining that Publishers are… are…
• 6:15
  Tad Eggleston: Doing things that sell, but not to your market, when you haven't
• 6:19
  Tad Eggleston: Done anything to broaden your market?
• 6:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is where you get all the, the, the, why do we need a black Captain America bullshit?
• 6:29
  Phil: See, those… and those are the… those are the sort of comic shop…
• 6:35
  Phil: mentalities I tend to… I tend to ignore.
• 6:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but, but, but, I mean, they're not necessarily a majority.
• 6:46
  Phil: But they are…
• 6:47
  Tad Eggleston: Majority is…
• 6:48
  Phil: Yeah.
• 6:48
  Tad Eggleston: But also, the majority is probably, like… Either…
• 6:54
  Tad Eggleston: Thinking it without saying it, or…
• 7:00
  Tad Eggleston: Thinking that their customers think it, and being frustrated, but not enough to get new customers or educate their customers.
• 7:08
  Phil: Because they're afraid of hurting their bottom line.
• 7:11
  Phil: Hmm… I mean, I definitely… I definitely won't try to put a limit on…
• 7:17
  Phil: What people might be thinking, but not saying.
• 7:20
  Phil: But…
• 7:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, I think there's a lot of censorship in advance in the comic industries.
• 7:29
  Phil: Well, yes.
• 7:29
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I'm saying.
• 7:31
  Phil: We have a long history of that.
• 7:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, part of that is…
• 7:36
  Tad Eggleston: not wanting to take a risk on something that you don't know you can sell already, but another part of that is, I don't want to take a risk on this, because my having it will piss off
• 7:46
  Tad Eggleston: My existing customers, whether or not they know that it will piss off their existing customers.
• 7:52
  Phil: Hmm. Like… Interesting.
• 7:58
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to me, like, when you're looking at a market where manga sells as much as it sells, where YA sells as much as it sells in bookstores and whatnot, if you don't have it in your comic shop, you should be hiring somebody who knows it.
• 8:13
  Phil: Agreed, yeah. And it's… it's especially funny, because coming from the library world, that's… that's where they stuff the majority of the.
• 8:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 8:21
  Phil: Anyways, right into that YA section.
• 8:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right, like…
• 8:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I bring this up because it's Image, and I love that Image is doing this, but, like.
• 8:36
  Tad Eggleston: Image isn't a guaranteed purchase for lots of comic shops.
• 8:41
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can imagine a lot of comic shops will order number one issues, and then volume ones, because it's probably easy to sell $10 trades.
• 8:52
  Phil: But… Sometimes. Yeah.
• 8:56
  Tad Eggleston: They still require hand selling, so unless they've got somebody who's reading them and can actually, like, talk about them…
• 9:03
  Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean… And I don't want to sound like I'm… I'm…
• 9:11
  Tad Eggleston: trying to bash comic shops, because I love comic shops.
• 9:16
  Tad Eggleston: And I do think that it's worthwhile, but I also think that, like, probably Image isn't gonna get enough credit for this.
• 9:26
  Phil: Among comic shop owners.
• 9:28
  Tad Eggleston: Who don't realize that it is actually a big deal. That they have not lost their market share, or that their sales are not down because comic sales are down.
• 9:38
  Tad Eggleston: Their sales are down because they're not selling the stuff that people want.
• 9:43
  Tad Eggleston: Because they haven't brought the primary… I mean, there were new numbers that came out this week that indicate that 54% of comic readers are women.
• 9:53
  Phil: Yeah?
• 9:54
  Phil: Okay, yeah, that, that…
• 9:55
  Tad Eggleston: Based on Facebook algorithm data, and, like, mentions and whatnot.
• 10:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 10:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So…
• 10:04
  Phil: So it could… it could be even higher, for all we know.
• 10:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Do you know any brick and mortar shops?
• 10:09
  Tad Eggleston: Where you would say 54% of the clientele is women?
• 10:13
  Phil: Not in this state.
• 10:16
  Phil: Like…
• 10:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know of a couple…
• 10:19
  Phil: Right.
• 10:21
  Phil: I am sure they exist. I'm sure there are… there are stores that exist somewhere. I… I don't know, I don't know where they are. I might have been…
• 10:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'm pretty certain that it's definitely possible for, like, Katie Pride's, Words with Pictures in Portland, but, like, she has specifically targeted that audience.
• 10:41
  Phil: Right, right, it's, you know, it's kind of funny how.
• 10:43
  Tad Eggleston: Vault of Midnight is another female… it's a female-owned, like, 3-store chain in Michigan. I wouldn't be surprised if they come close to that, but again, they're female-owned. They've targeted that audience.
• 10:56
  Phil: Right.
• 10:57
  Tad Eggleston: I would be willing to bet that Challengers has at least 35-40% of his customers is women, but, like, Dal and Patrick have taken YA stuff and graphic novels very seriously for more than a decade.
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: Like, they carry the weekly comics because they have to, and they don't do back issues.
• 11:21
  Phil: Okay, yeah, yeah, they probably have… have a smaller space, because, yeah, that's tough to… Back issues.
• 11:27
  Tad Eggleston: Part of it's they have a smaller space, and part of it is that they decided that they wanted more graphic novels.
• 11:33
  Phil: Okay.
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: I've seen plenty of stores their size that just, like, have 2 or 3 bookshelves worth of graphic novels so that they have room for all their back issue bins.
• 11:43
  Phil: And…
• 11:44
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, at Challengers, they have, like, a dozen short boxes of back issues. By back issues, it's, like, we marked them down to half off, which is our cost, because we needed to get them off the new shelves.
• 12:00
  Phil: Wow.
• 12:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Yeah.
• 12:02
  Phil: That's…
• 12:03
  Tad Eggleston: And they have… Like, 3 times the graphic novel selection of… Most stores their size.
• 12:19
  Phil: Yeah, I…
• 12:20
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 12:20
  Phil: That's… that's really funny to me that there is.
• 12:23
  Tad Eggleston: And that's not even counting their entire room.
• 12:27
  Phil: Huh.
• 12:28
  Tad Eggleston: Of children's and young adults.
• 12:32
  Phil: Right, right. Where I was going was, it's… it's interesting to me how…
• 12:38
  Phil: Inventory is such a difficult challenge for comic shops.
• 12:42
  Tad Eggleston: It is. I mean, it is, and that's why I… that's why I totally emphasized that, like.
• 12:50
  Tad Eggleston: Don't waste space with stuff you don't know how to hand-sell.
• 12:54
  Phil: Right, but it's… it's funny because… so, like, my ideal dream for the comic industry
• 13:01
  Phil: is that I would… I would love for series to still be available long after their original print run, which I know is something that's not really doable.
• 13:12
  Tad Eggleston: As single issues, or as trades?
• 13:16
  Phil: As single issues, actually. Like, that's the thing that.
• 13:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's…
• 13:20
  Phil: I know, I know. Trades… trades would probably.
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you set up a print-on-demand, maybe…
• 13:27
  Phil: Yes, that's where my brain has been going with it, but it's…
• 13:30
  Tad Eggleston: But even so, like, that's not a realistic thing for most stores to carry.
• 13:38
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they might be able to special order it for you, or you might be able to order it online.
• 13:43
  Phil: Yes, and that's… that's exactly it, because what I… the… the… the problem I encounter that, you know, my… my dream of a… of an industry is solving is that…
• 13:54
  Tad Eggleston: And you and I are in the very, very, very small minority of people.
• 14:00
  Tad Eggleston: Who like floppies, but don't care about their value.
• 14:05
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, that's the other tricky thing, because.
• 14:07
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, like… I'm just pointing out that we're talking, like, you're in serious streamland here.
• 14:15
  Phil: I know.
• 14:15
  Tad Eggleston: No business model to support it.
• 14:18
  Phil: I'm work… I'm working on the business model, but… but yes, this…
• 14:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, business model first… the business model first requires, you know.
• 14:29
  Phil: Business.
• 14:30
  Tad Eggleston: demand.
• 14:32
  Phil: That too! Well, and that's… that's just it, is that I… I've had…
• 14:36
  Tad Eggleston: There is not… there is not demand for…
• 14:44
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the most you could expect a man is you need to, like, look at the sales of facsimile editions.
• 14:52
  Tad Eggleston: That's the most you could expect in sales, except that those are all key issues.
• 14:58
  Phil: Right, those are issues that they're, you know, marketing as theoretically tie-ins to other things, you know, or ways to try to get people excited about.
• 15:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and they're ones that can represent the reader copy for the guy who put theirs in plastic.
• 15:15
  Phil: Yes, that too. That too.
• 15:16
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, hard plastic.
• 15:19
  Phil: But…
• 15:19
  Tad Eggleston: Which is bright.
• 15:20
  Phil: Yeah, slabbing it, instead of…
• 15:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 15:22
  Phil: instead of bagging it. But, I guess where I'm going is that I… so I love the single issues as physical objects. It's my favorite way to read comics. I will choose. If I had the choice.
• 15:33
  Phil: it, you know, number one, single issues. Number two, hardcover that could crush a turtle. Those are, those are the best ways to read comics, in my opinion.
• 15:43
  Phil: What were you gonna do? See, I would say that, like, if you took the print-on-demand, and some people have started playing it, and, like, limited yourself.
• 15:54
  Tad Eggleston: Chew.
• 15:56
  Tad Eggleston: Indie comics.
• 15:58
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:00
  Tad Eggleston: Things that haven't necessarily been collected, or there's not a reason to.
• 16:07
  Tad Eggleston: That would be a whole different ballgame.
• 16:10
  Tad Eggleston: But I think, like, reprinting Saga number one is anything other than an image-first dollar intro issue.
• 16:20
  Tad Eggleston: And certainly reprinting, like, Saga number 5, or Saga number 50, which is, I mean…
• 16:27
  Phil: And that's… it's… that's where I think… admittedly, that's where… that's where my dream is going, is the ability to plug in those… those holes in the collection of something like that.
• 16:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 16:38
  Phil: But I see now how that gets in the way of the people who view slabbing comics as an investment, and that's just silly to me.
• 16:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But, like…
• 16:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, managing to keep everything in print, on demand, in collected editions, that would be a huge boom.
• 17:03
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:04
  Tad Eggleston: Just, like, having everything readily available digitally would be a phone.
• 17:10
  Phil: That's another thing I've noticed on global.
• 17:12
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, my God.
• 17:12
  Phil: there's… there's something saying a lot of boom titles are going away October 1st, and I'm kind of like…
• 17:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. What's with all this?
• 17:20
  Phil: I, I remember.
• 17:21
  Tad Eggleston: if they're moving to Neon Ichiban, or what's going on with them right now.
• 17:26
  Phil: I remembered about other platforms showing up and figured that.
• 17:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we'll figure it out as we go.
• 17:31
  Phil: Yeah. I'm sure the…
• 17:32
  Tad Eggleston: It's a shame, because there were some boom titles that I had wanted to read on…
• 17:38
  Tad Eggleston: global comics that I'm not gonna have time to read. Right. But a lot of the… well, actually, I think that might be coming off of Hoopla, too, I don't remember.
• 17:45
  Phil: And that's… that's what I'll be curious about.
• 17:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Phil: my thought was, oh, I'll just read them on Hoopla, but that's the other thing, is I'm wondering, because they did mention the digital vendors, which, once you said it, I'm realizing, okay, Amazon's the big one for the exclusivity window, but I was wondering how it would affect things like Global and Hoopla.
• 18:03
  Tad Eggleston: For… for… Boomer for…
• 18:08
  Phil: For, for images, the, the, the news point, the, the.
• 18:11
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 18:11
  Phil: window that we… that…
• 18:13
  Tad Eggleston: the source of the tangent spiral. Yeah, no, but are they delaying digital, too?
• 18:19
  Phil: They said.
• 18:20
  Tad Eggleston: I thought they were only… I thought they were only delaying…
• 18:25
  Phil: It's…
• 18:27
  Tad Eggleston: Trade paperbacks to bookstores.
• 18:32
  Phil: I was under the impression they said
• 18:35
  Phil: Yeah, comics, collect editions, and original graphic novels before the same titles go on sale at bookmarket retailers and digital vendors.
• 18:43
  Phil: So they set digital vendors, and that's what made me wonder about…
• 18:47
  Tad Eggleston: Digital vendors sounds more like Amazon.
• 18:50
  Phil: Right, and once you said that, that's where I, you know, that's where I realized, okay, that's probably… and that's the bigger one to, you know, close the window.
• 18:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 18:59
  Tad Eggleston: Because I know some people reported it, like, almost exclusively as Amazon will get it 27 days later.
• 19:07
  Phil: Interesting, interesting.
• 19:11
  Phil: Yeah.
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: So, in that digital space, Crunchyroll is bringing back their digital manga,
• 19:20
  Tad Eggleston: And this is really kind of brilliant marketing, because
• 19:23
  Tad Eggleston: And they're actually doing it to try to…
• 19:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they're even upfront about the fact that, that,
• 19:33
  Tad Eggleston: It's to try to bring manga fans into their… Animation.
• 19:43
  Tad Eggleston: stream, you know, it's a bonus for the anime people, but it's like a marketing to bring
• 19:50
  Tad Eggleston: Cause the thing is, at least right now, it looks like, it's an add-on.
• 20:01
  Tad Eggleston: 2… their existing subscriptions.
• 20:09
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, god.
• 20:12
  Phil: Hmm.
• 20:12
  Tad Eggleston: So, so they have, like, it looks like 3 levels of… Crunchyroll.
• 20:18
  Tad Eggleston: membership.
• 20:20
  Tad Eggleston: And it's, like, $4 extra to each of them.
• 20:24
  Phil: For the…
• 20:24
  Tad Eggleston: We'll get you.
• 20:27
  Tad Eggleston: We'll get you, ad-free reading across mobile, tablet, and web.
• 20:31
  Tad Eggleston: ability to download chapters for offline reading, enjoy light or dark mode, view full two-page spreads, build a personalized reading list. But the big deal, and where it gets interesting, where I will definitely be debating it, even though the least expensive option is $11.99,
• 20:49
  Tad Eggleston: Is that… They have multiple publishers.
• 20:57
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 20:58
  Phil: But it's… yeah, that's nice.
• 20:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right. That they're… they're…
• 21:02
  Tad Eggleston: Feature a number of titles from leading publishers, such as Alpha Polis, Compass, Square Enix, Viz, Yen Press,
• 21:13
  Tad Eggleston: Shayyusha, Jay Novel Club, Third Line Next, High Stone. So, like…
• 21:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yen Press, I know I can buy through Amazon, and Viz, I have their apps.
• 21:28
  Tad Eggleston: So one of the questions is whether there will wind up being enough from Viz that I decide to drop the Viz apps, and or if it's not enough better, or whatever.
• 21:41
  Tad Eggleston: But like the other publishers, there aren't consistent places to find the translated manga.
• 21:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right. …and whatnot, and I don't mind those sometimes, but, like, more importantly, there's just so much manga that, like, falls into categories that, like.
• 22:03
  Tad Eggleston: Americans who think of manga as a genre, the way of… of superheroes as…
• 22:09
  Phil: comic.
• 22:10
  Tad Eggleston: I think of comics as a genre, like, don't realize that, like, there are slice-of-life manga, and there are history manga, and there are, you know, manga is, if anything, a broader
• 22:24
  Tad Eggleston: Selection of different types of… types of stuff.
• 22:27
  Tad Eggleston: then… American or European comics are.
• 22:31
  Phil: Oh, absolutely.
• 22:32
  Tad Eggleston: So, like…
• 22:34
  Tad Eggleston: I am for anything that could mean that more gets translated, that I get to see more different stuff. So, this is…
• 22:42
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 22:42
  Tad Eggleston: I am.
• 22:43
  Tad Eggleston: Excited. Exciting for me.
• 22:45
  Phil: Definitely. It's something to look at as well.
• 22:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, what kind of week has it been?
• 22:56
  Tad Eggleston: What did I tell ya? How long did it take Jimmy Kimmel to come back to the air?
• 23:00
  Phil: No, not… well, yeah, I…
• 23:02
  Tad Eggleston: I think I said it last time.
• 23:03
  Phil: Yeah, sweet.
• 23:04
  Tad Eggleston: Everything Disney was doing indicated that they were preparing the Fuck You return.
• 23:09
  Phil: Which, I mean, I guess I'm still concerned because I, I heard another headline that the, the, the…
• 23:20
  Phil: licensing the Nexstar, like, they're still… they're still blocking him on their…
• 23:25
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
• 23:25
  Phil: channels? No, they're.
• 23:26
  Tad Eggleston: Next… well, they were for, like, the first two days, and A, his ratings were so high, B, the amount of advertising they were able to sell on the stuff that they were running in the slot was so low, and C, public opinion was so against them, but that both Nextstar and Sinclair brought him back last night.
• 23:49
  Tad Eggleston: Alright. So, so this is a resounding…
• 23:52
  Phil: loss for the White House.
• 23:54
  Tad Eggleston: Though, of course, they're talking about suing.
• 23:58
  Tad Eggleston: Which is, like…
• 23:59
  Phil: Beyond ridiculous, but yeah.
• 24:03
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, Kimball didn't pull any punches on his return.
• 24:08
  Tad Eggleston: like… And, despite the fact that he wasn't available in… 25% of all markets.
• 24:16
  Tad Eggleston: pulled in 6 million viewers, or, like, 3 times what he normally does. And…
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: had, like, 20 million downloads of his monologue, or 20 million views of his monologue on YouTube in the first 12 hours.
• 24:34
  Phil: Wow.
• 24:35
  Phil: So… That's… you said, so it was 6 million watching them live, and then 20 million within success?
• 24:40
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, some of them were… I don't know if they played it live. I know that, like, when I logged on after the Bendis
• 24:49
  Tad Eggleston: book club. It had already been up for 41 minutes, and I don't feel like it was 41 minutes after he would have done it live, so I'm not certain that they didn't stream it live, and then have.
• 25:01
  Phil: Oh, interesting.
• 25:02
  Tad Eggleston: available.
• 25:03
  Phil: I see, I see, I see, yeah.
• 25:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 25:07
  Phil: That's… that's an interesting thing, is that, I mean, that… that could… create…
• 25:12
  Phil: I don't know. I was about to speculate wildly about, ways to avoid,
• 25:19
  Phil: how do you say, the draconian crudgel that, that is, that is coming from, from DC?
• 25:25
  Tad Eggleston: Bye. But… Oh, from Washington, D.C, I thought you meant DC Comics for a second.
• 25:33
  Phil: No!
• 25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, no.
• 25:34
  Phil: No, no, no, we weren't on comics at that moment.
• 25:37
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just…
• 25:39
  Tad Eggleston: they did have the highest profile comics one that you and I are kind of on opposite sides of, but, like, that's also where I sit back and, like.
• 25:50
  Tad Eggleston: look at what she said, and look at what Jimmy Kimmel said, and if you can't see the difference, then, like, I need to take you back to school.
• 25:59
  Phil: No, I…
• 25:59
  Tad Eggleston: And that's just it.
• 26:01
  Phil: is I can… there is a difference, I just fall on that, in the face of fascism, I hope something that is slightly… I wouldn't say that, and I don't want to hear that, but I'll defend it from fascism, you know?
• 26:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I will def… Bend it from fascism, she shouldn't go to jail for it.
• 26:20
  Phil: Oh, yeah, yeah. Nobody should…
• 26:22
  Tad Eggleston: No government entity should pressure her.
• 26:28
  Tad Eggleston: publisher. Like, it would have been totally different to me if the people calling for her firing…
• 26:34
  Tad Eggleston: Had been government employees, not…
• 26:37
  Tad Eggleston: fucking Comicscape people. That's an intra- that's a good distinction, it's definitely a good distinction, and I'm not… Because Comicscape people, as much as I don't like them.
• 26:46
  Phil: also have First Amendment privileges.
• 26:49
  Phil: They…
• 26:50
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas… Thank you. Whereas the government
• 26:54
  Tad Eggleston: when they're calling for silencing is… is violating the First Amendment.
• 27:00
  Phil: Well, and this is where I… I… I go back and forth on this.
• 27:05
  Phil: And, you know, in that I… I… I feel like hate speech shouldn't be protected.
• 27:12
  Phil: You know?
• 27:14
  Tad Eggleston: Then you have to manage to define hate speech.
• 27:17
  Phil: Yeah, and I think that is definable, but yeah, unfortunately, it's a definition that.
• 27:22
  Tad Eggleston: Is calling somebody a Nazi hate speech?
• 27:25
  Phil: No.
• 27:27
  Phil: Because…
• 27:28
  Tad Eggleston: Do you think people on the right would agree with you?
• 27:31
  Phil: No, and that's part of the problem.
• 27:34
  Phil: So, yeah, I get why it's difficult.
• 27:38
  Phil: You know, again, me, me with the dreams.
• 27:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but, like, I mean…
• 27:46
  Tad Eggleston: in some ways, and I don't want to fall too far down this rabbit hole, in some ways, that dream is dreaming of your own private
• 27:58
  Tad Eggleston: Nice authoritarianism.
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: Where everybody thinks like you do, and talks like you do.
• 28:07
  Tad Eggleston: Not necessarily to an extreme, but, like…
• 28:12
  Tad Eggleston: There are certain things that you just can't really have both ways.
• 28:17
  Tad Eggleston: If you want to be able to say the things that they view as hate speech, then they get to say the things that…
• 28:25
  Tad Eggleston: that you view as hate speech. Now…
• 28:28
  Phil: I think that's a false equivalency.
• 28:30
  Tad Eggleston: Now, let me finish.
• 28:37
  Tad Eggleston: What you listen to, what you…
• 28:41
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, this is where Facebook is different from a government?
• 28:47
  Tad Eggleston: Facebook has no obligations to free speech.
• 28:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Just like, you have no obligations to be on Facebook.
• 28:54
  Phil: Right.
• 28:56
  Tad Eggleston: So, if Facebook is deciding, Well, but if there becomes an obligation, then it becomes a different thing.
• 29:04
  Phil: Yeah.
• 29:04
  Tad Eggleston: Like… Is it a false equivalency?
• 29:19
  Tad Eggleston: Only if you start getting into actual calls for violence. Actual calls for violence are actually illegal.
• 29:28
  Phil: Yeah.
• 29:29
  Phil: Yeah.
• 29:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, if I'm saying you're a Nazi, but not saying kill all Nazis…
• 29:36
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't broken any laws. Whereas, if you're saying,
• 29:44
  Tad Eggleston: all liberals are dogs, and we need to kill them. Calling all liberals dogs…
• 29:51
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:51
  Tad Eggleston: not illegal. Sure. We need to kill them.
• 29:54
  Tad Eggleston: Starts to get really close to the line, depending on what happens next.
• 30:00
  Phil: And that's where I… I think that… I think that that's, you know.
• 30:05
  Phil: Yeah, I, I, I, I mean, like… I'm not, I'm not an expert in free speech, but… but yeah, I don't have that.
• 30:12
  Tad Eggleston: The thing that I am most upset about, in terms of all of the crimes that Donald Trump didn't get tried for.
• 30:19
  Tad Eggleston: is he incited violence on January 6th. Oh, yeah. There's no doubt in my mind.
• 30:24
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 30:25
  Tad Eggleston: that if he doesn't say the words, let's march to the Capitol.
• 30:30
  Phil: Yeah.
• 30:32
  Tad Eggleston: That doesn't happen.
• 30:35
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, that's a bad one. And that's where…
• 30:39
  Tad Eggleston: The legality is the not calling Mike Pence a coward.
• 30:45
  Tad Eggleston: But saying, let's march to the Capitol and fight like hell.
• 30:50
  Phil: And also, when there are people calling for Mike Pence to be hung, he says.
• 30:56
  Phil: oh well, you know? And that's…
• 30:58
  Tad Eggleston: Also, not…
• 31:00
  Phil: Yeah.
• 31:00
  Tad Eggleston: Not actually illegal.
• 31:02
  Tad Eggleston: I know it's a… because he didn't say, do it.
• 31:06
  Phil: Yeah, but I feel like we… and this… and this is one of the things that makes this so difficult for me, is that it gets to the postmodern entheimme of the things that you are not saying are meant to be taken more…
• 31:16
  Tad Eggleston: with more meaning than the things that you are saying, and that's what makes all of you know… I get that, but that's when you also wind up with an…
• 31:25
  Tad Eggleston: an even more unbalanced legal system. Like, I want to hold… I want to hold power accountable. I think it's important that we hold power accountable, but I also think that it's… if you're ever gonna hold power accountable, it's a dangerous slope to go down to hold them more accountable.
• 31:45
  Tad Eggleston: Like, you couldn't be put in prison for not immediately responding on Twitter, no, don't hang Mike Pence.
• 31:54
  Phil: Right, right, right, right.
• 31:56
  Phil: Because I don't have the… the authority in either direction.
• 32:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 32:01
  Phil: Yeah. And that's, I guess, that's the part of it that is… I guess I feel like there should be…
• 32:07
  Phil: more, limitations and stricter consequences for people in power who say those things that can be taken dangerously.
• 32:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, that's a different thing, but those need to be specific laws, not just…
• 32:23
  Phil: Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:24
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, writing laws about our legislatures, I think, is a worthwhile thing. For that matter, arguing that they're, like…
• 32:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's not a free speech violation for your employer to say that you're not allowed to participate in this, that, or the other thing.
• 32:44
  Tad Eggleston: For that matter, you know, government employees have restrictions on what What political activity they can… be involved in.
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: So I think an argument can be made that it's not even a free speech violation, to limit
• 33:02
  Tad Eggleston: The speech of elected officials, because…
• 33:07
  Tad Eggleston: They can choose not to be elected officials.
• 33:12
  Tad Eggleston: But that's… That's a much bigger conversation for another time, and…
• 33:18
  Phil: Yeah.
• 33:19
  Phil: One worth having! Branching out, branching out another direction.
• 33:22
  Phil: Yeah.
• 33:23
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, like… one of the things that I do think about a lot is, like, We,
• 33:31
  Tad Eggleston: I desperately…
• 33:36
  Tad Eggleston: anytime… I find myself thinking something that I'm like, oh, I could see them thinking this about me.
• 33:46
  Tad Eggleston: I try to realize that, like, maybe it's… the problem is thinking of that as a solution, not…
• 33:57
  Tad Eggleston: Whose side you're on.
• 34:01
  Phil: Wait, one more time? I feel like I lost that.
• 34:03
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. Anytime I start thinking about a solution, that I then go, oh, I could see them wanting to do that to liberals.
• 34:13
  Phil: Hmm.
• 34:13
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, okay, maybe the problem is with the solution.
• 34:19
  Phil: Well, no, and okay, so, so, no, so this is, this is where…
• 34:23
  Phil: this is where, to sort of pull back, is that, no, I think that part of the problem here is that
• 34:31
  Phil: you know, Republicans have been… Both acting and arguing in bad faith for so.
• 34:38
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 34:40
  Phil: That… that's what any… like, one… when you… when you…
• 34:45
  Phil: have that year, oh, I think of the solution. Oh, but if they did it to us, then that would be bad. So is the problem with… no, I think the problem is with the people who want to do the bad things, and who… who…
• 34:56
  Phil: actively say the bad things, you know? It's at a certain point, I don't think you can keep looking at the fascist death cult and saying, mmm…
• 35:09
  Phil: But they have… they're… they have a right to believe it, you know?
• 35:13
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't say they had a right to believe it.
• 35:15
  Phil: Oop.
• 35:16
  Phil: Well, then… but by… by positing…
• 35:20
  Tad Eggleston: He said it's not illegal.
• 35:22
  Phil: Okay, okay.
• 35:24
  Tad Eggleston: I can't.
• 35:25
  Phil: And this is… and this is where my… my struggles with the law are that, it… it rarely…
• 35:32
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have a right to believe it, I would never employ one of them.
• 35:35
  Tad Eggleston: Sure. I would never… I would never…
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you've got a MAGA sticker anywhere in your business… I mean, one of my favorite barbecue places around…
• 35:47
  Phil: Oh, that's…
• 35:48
  Tad Eggleston: I'd be a regular, regular customer.
• 35:51
  Phil: Yeah.
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: They put a Blue Lives Matter Punisher on the wall.
• 35:56
  Phil: Yeah, it's fucked.
• 35:57
  Tad Eggleston: Never stepped foot in again.
• 35:59
  Phil: Yeah, that… I'd do that. I'd do the same. Yeah, it's pretty,
• 36:03
  Phil: That's honestly… that's what got me to stop watching Fortune Fire, was realizing… well, first, eventually realizing that… for anyone who doesn't know, Fortune Fire is a TV show where people forge knives and swords and play with them. But, yeah, it's basically… first of all, I mean, I think I've seen
• 36:23
  Phil: less than 5 non-white, participants on the show, competitors, and then when they get clips of people's home forges, the number of Blue Lives Matter flags I've seen is quite frankly disturbing. So, yeah, it's, right.
• 36:39
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, so, like, When… and this is part of the difference between when
• 36:47
  Tad Eggleston: Republicans talk about free speech, and when most Democrats talk about free speech, when Republicans talk about free speech, they want speech free from consequences.
• 36:56
  Phil: Right, as well…
• 36:58
  Tad Eggleston: When I talk about… when I talk about free speech.
• 37:01
  Phil: Huh.
• 37:01
  Tad Eggleston: I want free speech, free from government interference.
• 37:06
  Phil: Right.
• 37:07
  Tad Eggleston: There's a huge difference.
• 37:09
  Phil: Great!
• 37:10
  Phil: There is.
• 37:13
  Phil: And…
• 37:14
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be honest, and this is one of my unpopular opinions…
• 37:22
  Tad Eggleston: I am… on the fence about, like, the Denver cake case.
• 37:31
  Phil: I'm not familiar with that one.
• 37:33
  Tad Eggleston: The Supreme Court essentially said that a cake baker could, in fact, refuse to make cakes for a cake.
• 37:41
  Phil: Oh.
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: a couple having a wedding. And then there was a similar case where a website designer could refuse to do websites. I'm on the fence.
• 37:50
  Phil: Yeah.
• 37:51
  Tad Eggleston: I feel the slippery slope, but I honestly think, in a lot of ways, that the response should be, okay.
• 37:59
  Tad Eggleston: I just discovered you're a MAGA supporter.
• 38:02
  Tad Eggleston: Our business is done.
• 38:05
  Phil: Yeah.
• 38:06
  Phil: Yeah, no, I… I can see that. I can absolutely see that, and I… I agree that… that you should… you have the right to refuse business, or refuse service.
• 38:17
  Phil: You know, it's just… it's tough when…
• 38:20
  Phil: it's tough when it's something that's like, wow, I, I, you know…
• 38:24
  Phil: I wish I had more people to believe that way, but… But again, this is…
• 38:29
  Tad Eggleston: This is where, like, overall, I disagree. I think that, in general, if you choose to have a service that's open to the public, you need to have it open to the public. That's where I actually stand.
• 38:41
  Phil: Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
• 38:43
  Tad Eggleston: But it's difficult for me when I think about…
• 38:47
  Tad Eggleston: having a business, and the customers that I would rather not take their money.
• 38:52
  Phil: Yeah…
• 38:54
  Tad Eggleston: Whether they want to give it to me or not.
• 38:56
  Phil: You know, that… this… this little tangent has, certainly opened my eyes as to why businessmen abandoned their scruples long ago.
• 39:05
  Phil: Because it's… it's hard… it's hard to get rich doing that.
• 39:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, you know, I mean…
• 39:12
  Tad Eggleston: it got taken to the extreme, because he kind of abandoned half of his essay and started taking it to this group. But when Milton Friedman wrote initially about the only moral
• 39:27
  Tad Eggleston: responsibility that a corporation has is to its shareholders. That isn't actually false, but also, when he wrote originally that, he said to work within the law to maximize profits for the shareholders, and also qualified, that there should be laws to protect people
• 39:47
  Tad Eggleston: When?
• 39:48
  Phil: Right.
• 39:49
  Tad Eggleston: Shareholder profit went against public good.
• 39:52
  Phil: Right, and…
• 39:53
  Tad Eggleston: that it was.
• 39:54
  Phil: So.
• 39:54
  Tad Eggleston: But it was the government's job, not the corporation's job.
• 39:58
  Phil: And so, so to… to bridge… to bridge the gap of what's going on in my mind, because this is a Lazarus week, is that, I… I think that the world is already being…
• 40:09
  Phil: You know, effectively controlled by businesses, and so we as a public need to reframe our thinking of what they should be allowed to do and not do.
• 40:19
  Phil: And we should.
• 40:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 40:20
  Phil: Looking at them.
• 40:21
  Phil: And expecting more of them… from them along the lines of what we expect from government, because that's what.
• 40:26
  Tad Eggleston: They are.
• 40:27
  Phil: Weather… No, hold on, I'm saying…
• 40:28
  Tad Eggleston: They start expecting more from government, because they're the only people who can force businesses to change.
• 40:33
  Phil: I half agree with that. What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to be descriptive of what corporations are doing. I'm saying that we have to look at them like governments because that's what they're doing, not because that's what we want them to be. I agree that I wish the government could step in and say, no, businesses, get back in line, we're gonna start regulating.
• 40:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I'm just saying that that's the only…
• 40:55
  Tad Eggleston: Only instrument of the people that has enough power to step in.
• 41:00
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I still insist that anybody who thinks that, like, them dropping
• 41:05
  Tad Eggleston: Disney Plus had anything to do with the decision that Disney made to bring Kimmel back is dreaming.
• 41:12
  Phil: Only if they informed Disney that that was explicitly why they were canceling Disney+.
• 41:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't even…
• 41:19
  Phil: The only way… it's the only way… I don't think…
• 41:22
  Tad Eggleston: I played in the decision.
• 41:23
  Phil: I don't know, I don't know, but I'm saying that's the only way that it might play into decision, and it might affect things and change.
• 41:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm just saying that I… I mean, like I said.
• 41:33
  Phil: Excuse me.
• 41:33
  Tad Eggleston: I fully think that they'd gamed it out, they knew how many.
• 41:37
  Tad Eggleston: as they were…
• 41:39
  Tad Eggleston: They knew what the backlash was gonna be, and they also knew that it wasn't gonna be for long, because they were working on playing the administration.
• 41:49
  Tad Eggleston: And they were taking the risk that it was going to be cheaper to play the administration this way, even losing what… because here's the thing, have you re-upped your Disney Plus?
• 41:57
  Phil: No, I didn't cancel it because of this, I canceled it well before this.
• 42:02
  Tad Eggleston: But that's my point exactly, is, like…
• 42:08
  Tad Eggleston: The second they made the decision, they were losing X number of dollars, period.
• 42:12
  Phil: Right.
• 42:13
  Tad Eggleston: So, it's how do we make it back? And part of how they made it back is they, like, blew his ratings through the roof.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: They made him much… must watch. You know, how much are they charging for ads now?
• 42:32
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they even… they even won the battle against their two biggest distributors.
• 42:40
  Tad Eggleston: We're the only ones actually in danger to begin with.
• 42:45
  Phil: Oh, interesting, yeah.
• 42:49
  Tad Eggleston: There, there's… there's no…
• 42:52
  Tad Eggleston: Disney doesn't own transponder licenses, and, like, there's no law that allows the FCC to go after…
• 43:01
  Tad Eggleston: Cable or internet.
• 43:07
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it would have been a massive, massive… I mean, it was an overreach already, but it would have been a ridiculously massive overreach to actually go after Disney.
• 43:18
  Tad Eggleston: You know… Yeah.
• 43:23
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why, rather than going after Disney, they, indicted Jim Comey.
• 43:31
  Phil: Jim Comey, it's that.
• 43:34
  Tad Eggleston: FBI director, the one he said.
• 43:35
  Phil: I was getting there. It took me a second to get there. Okay, yeah, that… that's… that's…
• 43:40
  Tad Eggleston: Mind you, they… mind you, the Trump-appointed District Attorney…
• 43:46
  Tad Eggleston: or U.S. Attorney in the Virginia District.
• 43:51
  Tad Eggleston: Refuse to indict.
• 43:54
  Tad Eggleston: And therefore was forced to resign.
• 43:58
  Tad Eggleston: Which made it so everybody else in the office wrote a letter saying that there wasn't enough
• 44:04
  Tad Eggleston: evidence to indict, to hand to the new interim
• 44:09
  Tad Eggleston: District Attorney, one of Trump's real estate lawyers, who has no experience as a prosecutor whatsoever, to say, hey.
• 44:18
  Tad Eggleston: There is not a case here.
• 44:22
  Tad Eggleston: She indicted anyway.
• 44:23
  Phil: Hmm.
• 44:25
  Tad Eggleston: Grand jury actually turned down one, so she only got two of the 3 that she asked for.
• 44:30
  Phil: Wow.
• 44:32
  Tad Eggleston: And, like…
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly the fact that her entire staff, the people who, like, actually investigated this, said that there's no there there.
• 44:42
  Tad Eggleston: Means that not only are they likely to lose in court, but, like, sanctions are entirely possible to the people who are involved.
• 44:52
  Tad Eggleston: And go figure, she's the only one with a name on… who signed the indictment.
• 44:57
  Tad Eggleston: a two-page indictment. You know, indictments for this sort of thing are generally many pages, and actually explain, like, the evidence and, like, they're what we call walking indictments. You can go look at the walking indictment of, of, the, the, the…
• 45:13
  Tad Eggleston: Retention of… of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, or the walking indictment of of,
• 45:27
  Tad Eggleston: I forget all of the charges for January 6th, but there are very detailed, walking indictments of our president for crimes committed,
• 45:40
  Tad Eggleston: This seems to be their saying that… Comey.
• 45:44
  Tad Eggleston: Lied to Congress.
• 45:47
  Tad Eggleston: But, like… Unless there's some huge amount of evidence that, like.
• 45:56
  Tad Eggleston: Clearly there isn't, because if there had been, the previous prosecutor would have prosecuted.
• 46:03
  Tad Eggleston: it seems that, like, he didn't lie to Congress, he told them what he knew, and there's strong reason to believe that what he knew was slightly wrong, but when he knew otherwise, he corrected himself.
• 46:15
  Phil: Yeah.
• 46:16
  Tad Eggleston: Which is, like, Exactly the way it's supposed to work.
• 46:20
  Phil: Right, right.
• 46:22
  Phil: Well, when you're the dream?
• 46:22
  Tad Eggleston: figure the lawyer and qualified FBI director knows more about the law
• 46:30
  Tad Eggleston: Then, well, really anybody in this regime.
• 46:35
  Phil: Bump, bump, bum… yeah.
• 46:38
  Phil: So… Oof, big surprise about the, aggressive incompetency coming out of the… coming out of the way.
• 46:44
  Tad Eggleston: There was one other, pretty big news story this week. I mean, there were lots of big news stories this week, that's the problem.
• 46:52
  Phil: Yeah.
• 46:53
  Tad Eggleston: Keeping track of all of the big news stories is very, very hard.
• 46:57
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, it's gonna be interesting to see what this…
• 47:02
  Tad Eggleston: actually is. We're starting to get reporting.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: Pete Hegseth has, has called ALL of the generals.
• 47:12
  Phil: To an in-person meeting.
• 47:15
  Tad Eggleston: in Quantico next week.
• 47:18
  Tad Eggleston: This is, like, essentially, like…
• 47:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't like… All but unheard of?
• 47:28
  Tad Eggleston: All but unheard of, to, to, like…
• 47:31
  Phil: Oh, no.
• 47:32
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the cost of just creating the transportation, rather than doing secure video calls, whatnot.
• 47:38
  Phil: Putting them all at one place, taking them away.
• 47:40
  Tad Eggleston: from their duties, blah blah blah. It's, like, not something that gets done. No, you know, of course, this administration's going, what's the big deal? I mean, this happens all the time, and people are, like.
• 47:54
  Tad Eggleston: People who know are going, no, no, no, it doesn't. Like, World War II was, like, the last time?
• 48:02
  Phil: Right? I was gonna say, this.
• 48:03
  Tad Eggleston: Quote.
• 48:04
  Phil: It happens all the time when you only know about the military through fucking Hollywood movies like Platoon and PAC.
• 48:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. So,
• 48:15
  Tad Eggleston: It's further… further come out that apparently it's just to instill a greater warrior ethos?
• 48:23
  Tad Eggleston: Which, I mean, I guess that would be…
• 48:26
  Phil: It's the worst use of the…
• 48:28
  Phil: word ethos, I've heard in a minute.
• 48:31
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, but I suppose that would be, like, better than firing them all?
• 48:37
  Phil: What I'm worried about is that he's getting them together to play risk.
• 48:41
  Phil: to look at a map of the world with a bunch of toys on it and say, alright, what can we go blow up? What can we.
• 48:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's that possibility, too. I mean, the other big story this week was the…
• 48:53
  Tad Eggleston: the… the stalled escalator at the UN that, like.
• 49:00
  Tad Eggleston: put the President and First Lady in danger, because they could have fallen over, or… and because they had to walk upstairs.
• 49:09
  Tad Eggleston: That's a… such a brave escalator.
• 49:13
  Tad Eggleston: that the UN is saying was actually the kill switch was hit by his own cameraman?
• 49:19
  Phil: Love it.
• 49:21
  Tad Eggleston: But, but the press secretary went, went.
• 49:25
  Tad Eggleston: on Fox News to say that she was, like, personally going to hold everybody accountable, you know, and it's like, you understand that you're a press secretary, not a…
• 49:35
  Tad Eggleston: Not a law enforcement official.
• 49:37
  Phil: Under whose authority?
• 49:40
  Phil: Right. The President of the United States, they'd be like, that's not how that works.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: Waters also… Jesse Waters also suggested that we bomb the UN.
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: So, like… so, among things that Fox News has managed to say, without anybody being taken off the air, you have Jesse Waters saying, bomb the UN, and you had, what's-his-name, the idiot on the morning show, like.
• 50:03
  Tad Eggleston: The same day that Kimmel got Suspended. Suggested,
• 50:11
  Tad Eggleston: Involuntary lethal injection for homeless people.
• 50:15
  Phil: So this is… this is where… this is where, ultimately, it comes back to my struggles against the law, are that it rarely has… has anything to do with what is actually good and right, and especially so when it's being used by people like this. So, it's…
• 50:34
  Phil: what I'm saying… I guess what I'm getting back to is that when you say, oh, you know, you imagine a solution, but then you imagine it being misused by the right, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, like, I don't think there's any set of laws…
• 50:46
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not talking about misuse by the right, I'm talking about use properly by the right.
• 50:51
  Phil: use prob… okay, okay. But… but even then.
• 50:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, because that's the thing, is how do you write a law They can't be involved.
• 51:00
  Phil: More selectively?
• 51:02
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 51:04
  Phil: I said that can't be enforced selectively? You, you can't.
• 51:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right. That's my point.
• 51:08
  Phil: Okay. That's my point.
• 51:09
  Tad Eggleston: point.
• 51:10
  Phil: Okay.
• 51:11
  Tad Eggleston: Which means that you…
• 51:13
  Phil: point, then.
• 51:14
  Tad Eggleston: Which means that you need to write laws about things where, even when selectively enforced, they're not gonna be… I mean, like, a murder law?
• 51:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know, sure, it can be selectively enforced. They can choose not to charge somebody with murder because they're a friend, but they're not likely to convict somebody of murder who didn't convict… who didn't commit murder.
• 51:37
  Phil: And yet it's happened.
• 51:40
  Tad Eggleston: As, but it's generally not because of selective prosecution.
• 51:43
  Phil: No. Well, I mean, selective prosecution, no, but…
• 51:48
  Phil: Sorry, sorry, we're getting way off topic.
• 51:50
  Tad Eggleston: No, and I get where you're coming from, I get where you're coming from, I get it, I get it, but A, like, even as bad as it is.
• 51:58
  Tad Eggleston: It's pretty rare. Our system is set up to make it hard to send Innocent people to jail.
• 52:08
  Tad Eggleston: There are all sorts of problems with our system, and I'm all for trying to fix them.
• 52:14
  Tad Eggleston: But I think when you start broadening the things that you can call criminal.
• 52:20
  Phil: Yeah.
• 52:21
  Tad Eggleston: You're making it harder to fix them.
• 52:24
  Phil: Agreed, agreed. I, I, I… one of my things is I think that
• 52:27
  Phil: There are probably a lot of laws we should remove, and, like.
• 52:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:32
  Phil: you know.
• 52:33
  Phil: There's… there's a lot.
• 52:34
  Tad Eggleston: And definitely a lot that we should… that we should reword, or clarify, or…
• 52:39
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 52:42
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:44
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I am for a dramatically simplified legal code.
• 52:49
  Phil: Yes, yeah.
• 52:50
  Phil: That'd be nice.
• 52:52
  Tad Eggleston: Which doesn't actually mean that, like, less laws, just clearer laws.
• 52:58
  Phil: Right, yeah, that's another huge thing of the clarity of language to be understood by laypeople as opposed to legal experts, and, you know, language that is
• 53:08
  Phil: easily understood, and not open to interpretation.
• 53:11
  Tad Eggleston: That's also a difficult thing to do, but it's an even more difficult thing to do if you're adding to it. I want to somehow be able to stop this, so to speak.
• 53:21
  Phil: Not that sort of speech. Yes, no, I understand. I understand.
• 53:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean?
• 53:26
  Phil: This is where… I was a picture guy.
• 53:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and this is where I put out… And that's really what I meant, is when I look at it, and I'm like, this causes more big picture problems than it could possibly solve on a micro level.
• 53:39
  Phil: I see that.
• 53:40
  Tad Eggleston: It sounds great on a micro level, and causes massive issues on a macro level.
• 53:45
  Phil: Yeah, and I'm just the weird guy who's like.
• 53:49
  Tad Eggleston: No, you're the very normal guy that I just want to care about the problem in front of me.
• 53:55
  Phil: I mean, but I…
• 53:56
  Tad Eggleston: I want to think about how the problem in front of me relates to this other problem that you have to explain to me how it relates to that other problem, because it's not a clear through line.
• 54:05
  Phil: I… I… I enjoy those sorts of things, too. That's why I'm here, Tad. That's why I'm.
• 54:09
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I didn't say you didn't enjoy them, I said you don't, like, naturally go to them in terms of how you feel, like, particularly with the bigger problems.
• 54:19
  Phil: You're like, no, we need to fix this. And it's like, yeah!
• 54:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yay!
• 54:24
  Phil: Okay, I get, I get
• 54:26
  Phil: I follow my strong sense of justice first, and recognize that it's a lot more difficult than my feelings about it, you know?
• 54:35
  Tad Eggleston: That's kind of… that's kind of it. I wasn't trying to bash you, I was just trying to let…
• 54:41
  Tad Eggleston: Because again, I think that's normal.
• 54:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Particularly the stronger a feeling of justice one has, the wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater is normal.
• 54:53
  Phil: Well, it's also one of those things that I like to think I'm someone that, when I start hearing about those complications, I at least consider them, you know?
• 55:01
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you do. You absolutely do.
• 55:03
  Phil: Yeah, as opposed.
• 55:03
  Tad Eggleston: You always push back initially. I always get.
• 55:06
  Phil: I know.
• 55:06
  Tad Eggleston: That's a good question.
• 55:07
  Phil: I'm sorry.
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not trying to debate you, Phil, I'm trying to…
• 55:13
  Phil: I'm trying to debate me. I'm trying.
• 55:14
  Tad Eggleston: You are, and you've watched too many young debaters.
• 55:18
  Phil: Because that's funny. Well, it's more like I've been a young debater for too long, and I've… I've… because that's the thing, is I actually… I don't watch a ton of, like, political debate issues, because I want to…
• 55:30
  Phil: didn't.
• 55:31
  Tad Eggleston: Because one of the things that frustrates me about the Charlie Kirks and even the Mehdi Hassans of the world sometimes, is, like.
• 55:40
  Tad Eggleston: How when they see a wedge.
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: They'll just hammer it, rather than…
• 55:48
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than trying to look at something from a macro level.
• 55:52
  Tad Eggleston: And come in. It's like, I just caught you in your mistake, so I'm gonna hammer on that and not let this conversation be about anything else, so that.
• 56:02
  Phil: Right.
• 56:03
  Phil: Right, and that's… and that's…
• 56:05
  Tad Eggleston: And that's good for, like, debate, where you're looking for a winner and loser, but I think good debate isn't looking for a winner and loser, it's looking for a better solution.
• 56:16
  Phil: Agreed. Agreed for sure. And also, you know, on the macro level, I try to come back to, one planet, one people, you know, we're all.
• 56:24
  Tad Eggleston: That's rocked.
• 56:24
  Phil: And that's why I wish that there were fewer people actively trying to make things worse for others.
• 56:32
  Tad Eggleston: But we should really…
• 56:34
  Phil: We should talk about.
• 56:35
  Tad Eggleston: Start moving forward.
• 56:37
  Phil: Yeah. I mean, at the very least, I want to hear… I want to hear, you know, I'd love to officially talk Mark Russell with you, having read Mark Russell.
• 56:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, we'll get there. I'm gonna start with, Mark Russell right here. Mark Russell and ACO are getting together for Aggie, Aggregate a Human Experience Database. This is another,
• 57:04
  Tad Eggleston: addition of… AWA and Future Fix Protopias collection, which is… have I told you about the Protopias before?
• 57:13
  Phil: They sound a little familiar.
• 57:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the idea is we're not writing a utopia, but… but we're writing a… A, like, more attainable, progressive…
• 57:27
  Tad Eggleston: state.
• 57:29
  Phil: I mean, I do… I do like the sound of that.
• 57:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, these have been fantastic. They're all on Global Comics. I recommend reading them from AWA. So this one is AGGI, or the Aggregated Human Experience Database, is an experiential technology that has come to dominate life in the near future.
• 57:47
  Tad Eggleston: The ubiquitous technology allows one to live through someone else's eyes. For most, that means a celebrity, an influencer, or an athlete. But when Aggie's AI achieves sentience, it randomly matches its users with people
• 58:01
  Tad Eggleston: that progress has left behind, showing them the world through new eyes. Will this lead to widespread rejection of popular tech?
• 58:10
  Tad Eggleston: or awaken something new in society and people leading companies who shape our lives. A double issue, on sale on December 17th.
• 58:22
  Tad Eggleston: From AWA, Mark Russell, and ACO.
• 58:27
  Phil: Alrighty, and next up, we've got something extra spectacular. Giant-sized criminal number 1, the first new criminal single issue in over 5 years.
• 58:39
  Phil: And it is, of course, from Brubaker and Phillips, who else? And, oh, and much more! So there are who elsees? Headlining the issue is a novella-length story starring fan-favorite character Ricky Lawless as he goes solo on his latest heist. What could possibly go wrong?
• 58:55
  Phil: But that's just the beginning, as you'll also get a criminal tabletop RPG module written by Kieran Gillen, illustrated by Sean Phillips, behind-the-scenes insight into the criminal TV series from showrunner Brubaker himself, and a fully illustrated guide to the world of criminal and its key characters. This giant-sized criminal one-shot is the perfect entry point for new readers, and just in time for Christmas. It's an even better stocking stuffer for the die-hard Brubaker and Phillips fan in
• 59:20
  Phil: Life.
• 59:22
  Tad Eggleston: And this is exclusively in print and only available in comic shops.
• 59:26
  Phil: Yes, thanks.
• 59:27
  Tad Eggleston: to retailers, in stores on December 3rd.
• 59:32
  Phil: Yes. Habitat screen, Ted?
• 59:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 59:36
  Phil: That's okay. I pulled that one up on my phone. That's alright.
• 59:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because you were reading, I didn't… I didn't realize I hadn't yet.
• 59:46
  Phil: That's okay.
• 59:48
  Tad Eggleston: You know, you gotta say these things earlier.
• 59:51
  Phil: That's… yeah, yeah.
• 59:53
  Tad Eggleston: Habitat.
• 59:55
  Tad Eggleston: From Joshua Dysart, David Lapham, and Bill Sankiewicz, coverage by Charlie Adlard at Bad Idea, yeah.
• 1:00:08
  Tad Eggleston: we'll just say all of them are Eisner-nominated winners, legends, whatever. For that matter, we got colorist Bill Grabjche and Matt Hollingsworth are also among the best in the business. Present a groundbreaking horror tour de force, mercurial billionaire Tuttle Barrels.
• 1:00:26
  Tad Eggleston: Barrows prepared for everything, even the end of the world. Years ago, he wielded his immense power and fortune to build a massive sealed habitat atop a once-protected ancient freshwater glacial cave. Now, as the world outside unravels, Barrows, his family, and a hand-picked inner circle retreat
• 1:00:45
  Tad Eggleston: To their final sanctuary, a place built to outlast civilization itself.
• 1:00:50
  Tad Eggleston: But something was already there. Beneath layers of ice in the ancient freshwater vault, a long, dormant danger lurks. While hallucinations twist their reality and violence spreads like a fever, they must descend deeper or risk their last refuge, becoming a tomb.
• 1:01:09
  Tad Eggleston: in stores on December That idea continues to just do amazing, amazing work, and this looks so good.
• 1:01:20
  Phil: Oh yeah, yeah. That is a… a cavalcade of legends, for sure.
• 1:01:24
  Tad Eggleston: Sick.
• 1:01:26
  Phil: Alright, next up, we've got our soot-Stained heart, number 1, from…
• 1:01:32
  Phil: Joni Haig and Stipien Morian from Mad Cave. The Coalition is a city of wonder in the Deep North, but is ruled by the cruel Governor Glass and his factory lords. Coal is the lifeline of the city, and for honest workers like young Peggy Stones, life can be hard because of the nefarious quota.
• 1:01:53
  Phil: To get extra coal at the end of the year, you must be bad every day. Peggy's life is thrown into chaos when she is imprisoned and sent into exile, which begins a harrowing journey to the ends of the world to find answers that could change the world.
• 1:02:08
  Phil: They could change the world. All right, and that is…
• 1:02:10
  Tad Eggleston: In stores. December 10th.
• 1:02:12
  Phil: Indy?
• 1:02:13
  Tad Eggleston: From Mad Cave.
• 1:02:15
  Phil: Yes.
• 1:02:17
  Tad Eggleston: some graphic novels, starting with Calamity Before Jane, from, francois Muglet's Toon Graphics,
• 1:02:30
  Tad Eggleston: Noah Van Skiver tells us about Calamity Jane, and the stories surrounding her are famous. But this graphic novel, for young readers 8 and up, is here to tell the story of Martha Jane Canary, a real-life survivor, orphan, and storyteller behind the legend.
• 1:02:48
  Tad Eggleston: 1901, the Pan American Exposition World's Fair was held in Buffalo, New York. Among spectacles like advancements in electricity and new inventions like the X-ray machine.
• 1:02:59
  Tad Eggleston: Is a woman with a story, but not the one you've heard.
• 1:03:02
  Tad Eggleston: Calamity Jane's life is shrouded in exaggerations and lies, told to sell a more marketable version of reality. But cartoonist Noah Van Skyver is here to tell the truth. Martha Jane Canary struggled throughout her life, from her childhood as a destitute orphan.
• 1:03:17
  Tad Eggleston: Orphaned to her bitter adulthood as she watched the West she loved disappear before her eyes.
• 1:03:23
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
• 1:03:25
  Tad Eggleston: I love Noah Van Skyver's work, I love Calamity Jane, so I am, go forward to this.
• 1:03:33
  Tad Eggleston: in stores on December 23rd.
• 1:03:37
  Phil: Alrighty, next up we have Mansect, a comic from Koga Shinichi. Humans grow in age. They change.
• 1:03:47
  Phil: But always, we are the same person, same creature. Not so with insects.
• 1:03:52
  Phil: powers of metamorphosis alter not only their shape and size, but also their very beings. And now, because of one young man's unhealthy obsession with bugs, humans also find themselves transformed into disgusting, decrepit, blood-sucking insect monsters. Published in 1975, Koga Shinichi's Mansect is a shounen horror classic by one of the undisputed masters of the genre.
• 1:04:16
  Phil: Swarming with mesmerizingly gnarly imagery and freakish bioevolutionary speculation, Koga here demonstrates why his name is uttered with the same quivering reverence as horror manga legends.
• 1:04:30
  Phil: Mizuki Shigeru, Umes, Kazuo, and Ito Junji. Mansect is the third volume of Smudge, a line of vintage horror, cult, and dark fantasy manga curated and translated by award-winning historian Ryan Holmberg, in stores December 10th.
• 1:04:47
  Phil: from.
• 1:04:50
  Tad Eggleston: ized book.
• 1:04:51
  Phil: Uncivilized, that's it. I was gonna say Unbound, but yes, uncivilized. This looks incredible, I'm so glad I picked that one.
• 1:04:58
  Tad Eggleston: Queen Kodiak!
• 1:05:00
  Tad Eggleston: From Christopher Greenslate and Ricardo Ficcini. Following the massive footsteps of legends like Godzilla and King Kong comes Queen Kodiak, a colossal, supercharged Kodiak grizzly bear, one who survived from the Ice Age, and who's been
• 1:05:16
  Tad Eggleston: Irreversibly enhanced by a mysterious geothermal energy pulsing in the unknown depths of an Alaskan ice cave. And although Queen Kodiak's been asleep for a thousand years, melting ice and subsequent tectonic activity has disturbed her hibernation. In her debut graphic novel, she wakes up to find her only cub missing.
• 1:05:36
  Tad Eggleston: But as much as we want to meet her, and watch her wreck the shop on the Pacific Northwest, sorry, Seattle.
• 1:05:44
  Tad Eggleston: Our story actually centers on Joey Foxx, an embattled 17-year-old girl and natural empath who befriends Queen Kodak's cub after a tectonic shift in her own life.
• 1:05:54
  Tad Eggleston: the recent passing of her mother. As a result, Joey's been sent to Alaska's Kodiak Island to live with the man who left them 10 years ago, her state trooper father. In many ways, it's a story about how families survive overwhelming odds in stores from Mad Cave Maverick on December 10th.
• 1:06:17
  Phil: Alrighty, and next up, we have UFO Mushroom Invasion from Shirakawa Marina. UFOs are one of the world's greatest mysteries, and I hope they stay that way.
• 1:06:30
  Phil: For the day that aliens reveal themselves may very well become the beginning of the end of life on Earth as we know it. A flying saucer crashes deep in the mountains of Japan.
• 1:06:40
  Phil: Wary of the hyper-intelligent beings they find inside, the government hides from the public all news of the alien craft, but it's not the strange visitors themselves that they should be afraid of.
• 1:06:50
  Phil: The real danger is the parasitic spores smuggled aboard. Will Earth Survive the UFO Mushroom Invasion? Originally published in 1976, Shirakawa Marina's UFO Mushroom Invasion is a masterpiece of sci-fi horror. It's gonna be in stores December 10th from Uncivilized as well. Also looks awesome, looks incredible, yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Tad Eggleston: The Blood Brothers Mother, from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso?
• 1:07:24
  Tad Eggleston: New graphic novel debut… Not graphic… collection from just silly series in the Old American West. Three children set off across the wild Texas frontier to rescue their mother, kidnapped by ruthless outlaws.
• 1:07:37
  Tad Eggleston: who gunned down their preacher father. Throughout their journey, they'll face the harsh elements of an unforgiving landscape. Deadly animals hungry for blood, merciless bounty hunters, and so much more.
• 1:07:49
  Tad Eggleston: All in a relentless quest to rescue their family.
• 1:07:52
  Tad Eggleston: In the tradition of the searchers and the outlaw, Josie Wales, comes a brutal new Western series. This was so, so, so good.
• 1:08:03
  Tad Eggleston: azzarello's always great, Eduardo Rizzo was… is also always great, but in this…
• 1:08:10
  Phil: I was gonna say.
• 1:08:11
  Tad Eggleston: was, he colored himself.
• 1:08:17
  Tad Eggleston: messing with… some… some, like, watercolor-type stuff, and it's really, really particularly beautiful. I mean, just…
• 1:08:27
  Tad Eggleston: Look at the… just look at that cover.
• 1:08:29
  Phil: Yeah, that car… I love, I love Riso's artwork so much. It's incredible.
• 1:08:35
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, I, I am… I loved this book.
• 1:08:42
  Tad Eggleston: I am… will, like…
• 1:08:47
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't actually bought any of the hardcover distilleries yet, and I need to. This one, and Somna in particular, are, like, high on my list of… they finished, and I love them, and now I want, like.
• 1:09:02
  Tad Eggleston: the artifact for the re-release.
• 1:09:06
  Phil: I've unfortunately missed out on any, floppies from distillery, so I really need… because they have so many books, it sounded so good, I need to go look at collections for… Yep.
• 1:09:16
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and they… they do… they do a solid digital game, too.
• 1:09:20
  Phil: Yeah, that's what I hear.
• 1:09:21
  Tad Eggleston: So, though, you know, as with their books, pricey.
• 1:09:27
  Tad Eggleston: Huh.
• 1:09:27
  Phil: Alright, next up, we've got groupies from Helen Millane and Tulo.
• 1:09:34
  Tad Eggleston: Ellen Milan.
• 1:09:36
  Phil: Helen Mulan, I'm.
• 1:09:37
  Tad Eggleston: She's been on the show. She's been on the show.
• 1:09:40
  Phil: Come along.
• 1:09:40
  Tad Eggleston: pronounce it right.
• 1:09:41
  Phil: We do, thank you for correcting.
• 1:09:42
  Tad Eggleston: And go back and listen to that. It was a fun episode, because it's amazing.
• 1:09:45
  Phil: I should. I mean, this…
• 1:09:46
  Tad Eggleston: Man.
• 1:09:46
  Phil: book, it's already sounding good. Celebrated filmmaker Helen Milan.
• 1:09:51
  Phil: teams up with superstar artist Tula Lotte for sex, drugs, and rock and roll on the Sunset Strip. On a wild night out at the Fox Club, the coolest, hottest, and wild squirrels on or off the Strip meet the edgiest up-and-coming band in town, and sparks fly. The moon show's stardom is about to rise as they celebrate getting signed to the legendary Asmodeus Records.
• 1:10:15
  Phil: As the story unfolds, the excited groupies head on tour with the band, living the dream, but they're…
• 1:10:22
  Phil: Their tuned-in and dropped-out idol is about to unravel. Something dark is pulling the strings, and the girls are about to discover the true cost of rock and roll. In stores, December 17th, from Mad Cave.
• 1:10:38
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty, final order cut off…
• 1:10:41
  Tad Eggleston: We've got Absolute Batman Annual from Daniel Warren Johnson and James Heron, and I am so excited to find out what she does. Meredith McLaren in a Batman book.
• 1:10:53
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I can't wait to see what… what… what enticed her to do Batman, because I love everything Meredith does. Equally exciting, in part because of what it is, and in part because of the people involved, including,
• 1:11:09
  Tad Eggleston: Editor Shelly Bond, American Caper No. 1 from Dan Houser and Laszlo from… from Rockstar Games, and…
• 1:11:17
  Tad Eggleston: Superstar artist David Lapham, Comfortless from Miguel Villa at Fanographics Books, Death Dog No. 1 from Bryce Ingman and Allen Robinson at Ahoy, Echo, Seeker of Truth number 1 from Taboo, B. Earl, and friend of the podcast Jim Terry at Marvel, Galactic number 1 from Kurt Piles.
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: an amocarpena, a distillery. Lovers… lover and… I think it's actually Lovers and haters.
• 1:11:44
  Tad Eggleston: Love & Rockets book from Gilbert Hernandez at
• 1:11:50
  Tad Eggleston: Phantographics on November 12th. I love Beto's work. Can't wait to have a nice… another new, nice hardcover. I've read it all, because this is all, like, collected from Love and Rockets, but… but…
• 1:12:03
  Tad Eggleston: I like the hardcovers. Ordained number one, from Robert Venditti and Trevor Harsine at Bad Idea. The Past is a Grotesque Animal from Tommy Paris at Dana Graphics. Poem Strip from Dino Buzzotti, translated by Marina Harsh.
• 1:12:21
  Tad Eggleston: at New York Review Comics. I love it when we've got comics, and…
• 1:12:26
  Tad Eggleston: poetry put together, so I'm very much looking forward to that one. And shadows of the Sea from Kathy Malkazian, a fan of graphics. I love Kathy's work. I got to read an advanced reader of this one. It is…
• 1:12:39
  Tad Eggleston: so good, in stores November 5th. Crowdfunding right now for, by the time this goes, this will go up…
• 1:12:48
  Tad Eggleston: On the 28th, so by the time this goes up for a couple more days, Sci-Fi Worlds of Juan Jimenez Graphic Novel Box Set from Juan Jimenez and Alien Books will be on Kickstarter until October 1st. The Future Is Volume 2, Origins from Fred Van Linti, Ennio Buffy, Mario D'Alessandro, Andrea…
• 1:13:07
  Tad Eggleston: Maloney and Taylor Esposito at RECA on Kickstarter through October 3rd.
• 1:13:13
  Tad Eggleston: And, the Comic Shop anthology from Lifeline Comics on Kickstarter through October 23rd. Michelle Abinator tipped us to that one.
• 1:13:24
  Tad Eggleston: my three amazing books this week, I always feel a little bit bad when they wind up being the ones that I hoped would be spectacular, and… and they did, but they were in…
• 1:13:36
  Tad Eggleston: a slightly different order. Kid Maroon.
• 1:13:42
  Tad Eggleston: Keeps the top stock, Christopher Cantwell, Victor Santos, Vault Comics. I don't know what happened at Vault that made all of this take so long to come out and switched it from single issue to…
• 1:13:55
  Tad Eggleston: Trade paperback,
• 1:13:59
  Tad Eggleston: I imagine it had to do with getting paid by Diamond, that sort of thing, but this was…
• 1:14:04
  Tad Eggleston: fucking great. This might be Cant… right now, this could be Cantwell's masterpiece.
• 1:14:12
  Tad Eggleston: I… I love this book on so many levels, it's not even funny.
• 1:14:18
  Tad Eggleston: Like, it was an examination of childhood, it was an examination of trauma, of society, of, like, so much, but woven into, like…
• 1:14:32
  Tad Eggleston: Dick Tracy meets Dennis the Menace.
• 1:14:35
  Phil: That's still such a good mashup. Oh.
• 1:14:41
  Tad Eggleston: I don't… I don't even… I need to read this book multiple more times, and I so desperately wanted to get, like.
• 1:14:50
  Tad Eggleston: full-on hardcover treatment. I want…
• 1:14:54
  Tad Eggleston: I want, you know, it originally had many, many variant covers lined up that were beautiful. I want them to be added into a deluxe edition. People need to go buy this to convince hardcover Vault that it's worth releasing again.
• 1:15:10
  Tad Eggleston: How about that? So they can buy it again, and give their softcover copies away to some friend that needs to get into it.
• 1:15:19
  Phil: I just checked it out on Hoopla now, you know, I think I'll, I'm gonna give it a read, you've sold me.
• 1:15:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:15:26
  Tad Eggleston: Far down below, number 5, Green Arrow, number 28, and news from the Fallout, number 4, all from Chris Condon with Gege Shaw, Montos, and Jeffrey Allen Love at Mad Cave, DC and Image, respectively. It turns out that, like, having the trifecta and nailing it on all three issues was able to knock Chris up above
• 1:15:50
  Tad Eggleston: Lazarus No. 4 from Greg Rucka and Michael Lark at Image, which was very, very good, but kind of felt like a transitional…
• 1:15:59
  Tad Eggleston: issue, which is why I almost slid beneath the trees where nobody sees Rite of Spring number 3, and instead debated,
• 1:16:10
  Tad Eggleston: The Phantom No. 1 was also very good.
• 1:16:14
  Tad Eggleston: Quick Stops Volume 3, number 2 was also very good.
• 1:16:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. There were many good books this week.
• 1:16:24
  Tad Eggleston: But those, those are, those are my three.
• 1:16:27
  Tad Eggleston: So, Phil, let's take a walk.
• 1:16:30
  Phil: Yay, I'm walking here! Alright, I also picked up Lazarus Fallen number 4. I haven't sat down to read it yet. It was a bit of a whirlwind week for me.
• 1:16:39
  Tad Eggleston: What the fuck is wrong with you? I know. I… you know, we…
• 1:16:42
  Phil: If we had time to get into that, you got, you got another, you got another day and a half, Ted?
• 1:16:47
  Tad Eggleston: I know, I record Lovin' Rockets in 40 minutes.
• 1:16:50
  Phil: Oh, I know, I know.
• 1:16:52
  Phil: And same with… with The Voice Said Kill. It, honestly, it was… I… I…
• 1:16:57
  Phil: sat down to get through our upcoming great responsibility of traveling to Mars, and that, that was where my reading intention went. But yeah, but I still have them. I'm probably gonna, you know, read them while Tad does Love and Rockets, but I know they're gonna be great, because I have faith in those creators, and…
• 1:17:13
  Phil: Speaking of one of those creators, apparently this week, The Flash number 25 also came out. That's the end of Cy Spurrier's run with the character. I was, and still am, interested to read this in trade from the library. I heard good things as it was starting out, it sounded very, very cool.
• 1:17:31
  Phil: you know, The Flash is a fun character I haven't seen enough of. And then, of course, also out this week was Hello Sunshine from Keezy Young at Little Brown Inc. That is a graphic novel I'm very interested in. I would love to pick it up. I might start with the library.
• 1:17:46
  Tad Eggleston: Is that…
• 1:17:47
  Phil: Pick up as a gift.
• 1:17:48
  Phil: What's that?
• 1:17:49
  Phil: Yeah, it did, she's…
• 1:17:50
  Tad Eggleston: Is that new this week?
• 1:17:52
  Phil: I think it might have come out on, like, Tuesday, but it… she's been posting…
• 1:17:58
  Tad Eggleston: It's not a replacement. Oh, no, I guess it is a different one from…
• 1:18:03
  Tad Eggleston: I was thinking of something else. Well, I'm gonna have to throw that on my list.
• 1:18:07
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, it's…
• 1:18:08
  Tad Eggleston: I am… I've been hyped for this for, like…
• 1:18:12
  Phil: Well over a year. Yeah, she's… she's been… I love her art, it's… it's incredible, it's so moody, so… so spooky-looking. Yeah, I am… I'm very excited to dig into this one. Yeah, I think… I think part of why… I think it was on a, a book publishing
• 1:18:32
  Phil: Time frame, as opposed to the typical direct market comic timeframe, and that's why we might not have,
• 1:18:38
  Phil: seen it.
• 1:18:38
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, no, I know it got brought up a long time ago and was on a, oh, yeah. I knew that part,
• 1:18:46
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I think I… I got it…
• 1:18:50
  Tad Eggleston: Confused with… with one of her.
• 1:18:55
  Phil: Oh, yeah. Was it, oh…
• 1:19:03
  Phil: I… I have a… I have… mmm… I'm blanking on the name. I'm… feeling… downright…
• 1:19:12
  Tad Eggleston: Give me a second, it might be sunflowers?
• 1:19:14
  Phil: I think so. I was gonna say sunflowers.
• 1:19:17
  Tad Eggleston: And then I was like, no, that feels wrong, I know there's some flowers on the cover, but I don't know if it's actually sunflowers, and…
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, because I, you know, Taproot…
• 1:19:26
  Tad Eggleston: I've read… and I think Sunflowers is the other one.
• 1:19:31
  Tad Eggleston: I will… I will say that A, I just bought the Kindle Edition, and B, it is the…
• 1:19:38
  Tad Eggleston: Number one seller in teen, young adult mystery, and detective comics and graphic novels.
• 1:19:44
  Phil: Congrats! Yeah. I mean, it's warranted. Like I said, I've been looking forward to this book for over a year. I'm definitely gonna dig into it.
• 1:19:54
  Tad Eggleston: And number 4 in teen young adult…
• 1:19:57
  Tad Eggleston: Paranormal comics, and number 10 in teen young adult fiction on Depression and mental health.
• 1:20:05
  Tad Eggleston: Interesting. So…
• 1:20:06
  Phil: It's interesting to be ranked in multiple categories like that.
• 1:20:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean… one of the things that Amazon does is it puts you in all sorts of
• 1:20:18
  Tad Eggleston: Catalog categories to help have a higher rank.
• 1:20:22
  Tad Eggleston: so, like, the… The less specific the category is, the more are selling.
• 1:20:32
  Tad Eggleston: Because it's, like, 110,417 in the Kindle store, but, like, that includes everything, not just.
• 1:20:41
  Phil: graphically.
• 1:20:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's not just… Right. And includes the 99-cent romance books that people go through on a day, you know.
• 1:20:51
  Phil: Free downloads and stuff like that.
• 1:20:53
  Tad Eggleston: There aren't as many free downloads in Kindle.
• 1:20:58
  Tad Eggleston: pretty much put a minimum. I just remember when, like, Andy Weir was doing The Martian, they were free.
• 1:21:05
  Tad Eggleston: chapters were free at his website, but enough people wanted to be able to read them in the Kindle, and he's like, they won't let me make them less than 99 cents a piece, like, you can have them free here, and they, like, people were like, we don't care, we have no problem paying you, and it's easier to read if we can download it to the Kindle.
• 1:21:26
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:21:26
  Tad Eggleston: And that's… that's how he became a Kindle bestseller.
• 1:21:32
  Phil: Just $1 at a time.
• 1:21:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So, I didn't get any One Piece Red this week.
• 1:21:40
  Phil: And, and I…
• 1:21:41
  Tad Eggleston: I wanted to. I really wanted to, and it was just… Forgot to.
• 1:21:46
  Phil: I looked at… I looked at the wide variety of… of manga I'd never heard of on the digital platforms that I read on, but I… I did not… I did not get around to reading any of them. One of us is going to need to change that at some point.
• 1:21:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, one of these days.
• 1:22:01
  Tad Eggleston: One of these days. I'm headed to Milwaukee for milk today, and I need to read.
• 1:22:09
  Phil: Milk, that, for some reason, I'm like, oh, that feels like milk and cake are an interesting pairing of.
• 1:22:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's named after him. Yeah, I don't think it's.
• 1:22:16
  Phil: Let's go together.
• 1:22:18
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:22:19
  Tad Eggleston: And I have to read… Jonah Hex for tomorrow morning.
• 1:22:26
  Phil: And…
• 1:22:27
  Tad Eggleston: the end of Tom King's Batman run for tomorrow night, and hopefully the 20 pages that…
• 1:22:35
  Tad Eggleston: Zach Quaintance sent us for tomorrow afternoon. So, like, how am I ready?
• 1:22:41
  Phil: Is that at 2 or 3?
• 1:22:46
  Tad Eggleston: It's a 3.
• 1:22:47
  Phil: 3? Okay, good. I just… I… I need… I wanted to make sure that I'm not still somehow on East Coast time, like I have been.
• 1:22:53
  Tad Eggleston: It's a 3.
• 1:22:54
  Phil: the past couple…
• 1:22:54
  Tad Eggleston: 3. I think initially we talked about two, and then I realized that Kelly had literally put
• 1:23:01
  Tad Eggleston: Onto our calendar that she wanted help with something.
• 1:23:05
  Phil: So choose…
• 1:23:05
  Tad Eggleston: 30.
• 1:23:06
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, oh, well, if she's putting it on the calendar, then I have to schedule a routing. And I shot back to Zach, hey!
• 1:23:15
  Phil: Gotta respect the calendar.
• 1:23:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right, exactly. So, traveling to Mars, I mean, speaking of.
• 1:23:21
  Phil: them around.
• 1:23:21
  Tad Eggleston: This is from… from people who I already love their work. I'm… I'm…
• 1:23:31
  Tad Eggleston: I love Mark Russell's work, and this is, like… To me, just stands…
• 1:23:43
  Tad Eggleston: stands above it.
• 1:23:44
  Tad Eggleston: It, it's… Hmm.
• 1:23:47
  Tad Eggleston: It still has his humor and…
• 1:23:56
  Tad Eggleston: Dark satire of capitalism and politics.
• 1:24:02
  Tad Eggleston: While telling an incredibly human story.
• 1:24:06
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:06
  Tad Eggleston: Even with a couple characters who aren't… Strictly human.
• 1:24:12
  Phil: I… I ended up really, really loving the two robots, yeah. And I mean, Rovers in general.
• 1:24:20
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:24:22
  Tad Eggleston: I have talked about this book before, including with Mark Russell, but this is your first read, so let me get your… It's my first read.
• 1:24:32
  Phil: And my friend.
• 1:24:33
  Tad Eggleston: searched.
• 1:24:34
  Phil: My first… my first full Mark Russell.
• 1:24:36
  Phil: Although I do still need…
• 1:24:38
  Tad Eggleston: That's a problem, dude.
• 1:24:40
  Phil: I know, I know. I've got gaps, I've got gaps. It… it happens, but it… you know, and I'll say that…
• 1:24:48
  Phil: It took me a little bit to get into it, and…
• 1:24:53
  Phil: I think part of that was this… this was the first instance, you know, you remember… you remember the… the map fractions? Oh, first three issues, or issue one. I kind of felt that with this. I felt that with this a bit, in that the first three issues, I felt like, alright, we're just… we're… we're…
• 1:25:11
  Phil: we're establishing scenes, you know, the plot's coming in kind of slow, we're setting things up, and I… I think that the reason for that
• 1:25:21
  Phil: if I had to guess, has to do with solicitations and,
• 1:25:27
  Phil: You know, pacing, that sort of thing, in that, okay, you have to write…
• 1:25:30
  Phil: solicits for the first three issues before any of them have come out. And so then, the first time… you can't introduce too many new plot elements in that span of time to where you're not overwhelming the reader, especially with this kind of story, because it…
• 1:25:50
  Phil: the back half of it started to mount on twists and complications that became really satisfying for me, and I was… I was very much enjoying. It… it was the kind of thing where…
• 1:26:03
  Phil: I… and I think part of that might have been because I'd heard little snippets, you know, mentioned before. I think, you know, when… when they mentioned the Easy Beef… Easy Beef Corporation,
• 1:26:16
  Phil: Which is, of course, fake meat, not… not even… not even some kind of… Right.
• 1:26:22
  Tad Eggleston: That's right.
• 1:26:22
  Phil: kind of cattle industry, is the one that is now attempting to claim the massive gas reserves under Mars. That, again, it's another, it's another corporate hell.
• 1:26:33
  Phil: That, that we have to look forward to, potentially.
• 1:26:37
  Phil: But, yeah, so a lot of those things were very interesting,
• 1:26:42
  Phil: I think part of my initial struggles with it were that it…
• 1:26:46
  Phil: I mean, and it's a book that's very much about determinism.
• 1:26:50
  Phil: And… I don't like determinism.
• 1:26:53
  Phil: I rail against, I struggle with it. I still have to finish the last few pages, so it's possible he… he might…
• 1:27:02
  Phil: Changed my mind about it a little bit, but…
• 1:27:06
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, how do you feel… the… Expand.
• 1:27:12
  Phil: Well…
• 1:27:13
  Tad Eggleston: Determinism is enough of a college word that.
• 1:27:15
  Phil: Right.
• 1:27:16
  Tad Eggleston: even with me kind of knowing what I think you think.
• 1:27:20
  Tad Eggleston: We're not leaving it at that.
• 1:27:23
  Phil: Just to define it really quick, determinism is, Kind of a…
• 1:27:31
  Phil: It's a philosophical point of view, in that it believes that
• 1:27:38
  Phil: Everything about the universe is quantifiable in knowledge, and that if you have enough knowledge about the universe, the way it works, and what has happened before, you can predict what will happen.
• 1:27:52
  Phil: It is… it is that idea that, you know, there is only one reality, and it is the one that exists. And…
• 1:28:01
  Phil: there are parts that I don't like. I… first of all, I question whether or not
• 1:28:05
  Phil: we actually… whether it's right or not, whether, you know, if we had all of the possible knowledge, would we be able to perfectly predict the future? I hope not. I hope that things like weather and the roll of dice are still chaotic processes that muddy up the gears. There's a certain amount of it that…
• 1:28:25
  Phil: I also dislike the idea that, you know, we don't make our own fates. Our fates are something that happened to us. And I get how, yeah, there are a lot of people where fate happens to them, but I still just… I don't like it. I…
• 1:28:41
  Tad Eggleston: part of that is because I associate…
• 1:28:44
  Tad Eggleston: And see, that's… I mean, that's where I… I thought you were… what do you find deterministic about this book?
• 1:28:51
  Phil: A lot of what he was talking about, like…
• 1:28:56
  Phil: the… that moments are decided before they happen. When he's talking about the end of the roller coaster is when you get strapped into it, the end is the beginning. That sort of thing, is that it's the moment where you couldn't go back.
• 1:29:11
  Phil: You know, so those… that… and I guess it's… it's also difficult because
• 1:29:16
  Phil: stories are generally inherently deterministic, because they have the preconstructed beginning, middle, and ends, especially when you're reading it all at one chunk, and it's not in progress and could change. So…
• 1:29:33
  Phil: it was one of those things that I felt that, and I recognized that that was me bringing a lot of my baggage to the book, and assuming that I knew what Mark meant and was trying to say before he'd actually said it, and I was wrong.
• 1:29:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I was about to say, like, when you're gonna die in a month.
• 1:29:50
  Phil: Yes.
• 1:29:51
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 1:29:54
  Tad Eggleston: and then you're given an opportunity to live for 6 months by getting on a one-way rocket ship, there isn't actually a way back.
• 1:30:02
  Phil: No, you're right, you're right. And that's… and that's the other thing, that's the other thing.
• 1:30:05
  Tad Eggleston: So it's not strictly deterministic, it's just, like, the reality of the situation that's being built here. Right, right.
• 1:30:11
  Phil: And it took time, and it took patience on my end, and putting in effort of reading, interpreting. It was…
• 1:30:21
  Phil: you know, it was, again, I was taking what was being said
• 1:30:24
  Phil: too literally, and applying it too broadly, and, you know, now I can absolutely see the poignancy in… in things like that, you know? And again, a lot of the narrative twists… I guess also I was… I was frustrated by the framing of, like, okay, so it's a guy…
• 1:30:42
  Phil: on a rocket to Mars, looking for more gas.
• 1:30:46
  Phil: I don't even see any nobility in that.
• 1:30:49
  Phil: There is. And again… and yes, again, I… I missed the point. I missed the point initially, and it took a bit for me to come around on it. So, this is…
• 1:30:57
  Tad Eggleston: The only nobility whatsoever is he feels like a failure, because he didn't, like, he doesn't think he's got any obituary whatsoever. He's a pet.
• 1:31:09
  Phil: Right.
• 1:31:09
  Tad Eggleston: manager, he…
• 1:31:10
  Phil: Right.
• 1:31:10
  Tad Eggleston: Failed marriage. A failed rock band.
• 1:31:13
  Phil: And now he's dying.
• 1:31:17
  Tad Eggleston: and somebody gets… I mean, one of the things I love is, like.
• 1:31:23
  Tad Eggleston: the number of times where it's like, oh, maybe I should have asked this question earlier, as I realized that I'm talking to…
• 1:31:32
  Tad Eggleston: Easy beef.
• 1:31:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right. The first time I realized that I was… Right, I… You know, it was just like…
• 1:31:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, when you go from, I don't want to die this slow death over a month, I'm looking for ways to kill myself, but also, like, it's clear that he's not an uncaring guy, because he thinks of things like, I don't want anybody to have to clean up the mess if I show.
• 1:31:57
  Phil: Right.
• 1:31:58
  Tad Eggleston: I don't want my landlord to have to find my body, because he's always been good to me.
• 1:32:04
  Phil: Right. Yeah, he never raised my rent, and I'm like, oh yeah, it's the best landlord, the one who doesn't raise your rent. Right. Yeah.
• 1:32:12
  Tad Eggleston: And suddenly, it's like, oh!
• 1:32:14
  Tad Eggleston: I can die by being the first on Mars?
• 1:32:19
  Tad Eggleston: He doesn't even think about the whys, it's just like, oh, okay.
• 1:32:25
  Phil: It, yeah, just going for it. And, and…
• 1:32:28
  Phil: The moment… the moment that I felt
• 1:32:32
  Phil: the, like, fully hooked into the story was when the scientists explained how darkness exists, because even though there's so much light in the universe, because it's constantly expanding, that light
• 1:32:44
  Phil: can't possibly get everywhere, and that's what allows darkness to exist. That was the line I was like, oh shit, that actually is pretty poignant.
• 1:32:53
  Phil: And even though the first couple of things that the scientists said, I was like, this guy's… I don't know about the… you know, pointing out that
• 1:33:02
  Phil: the, oh, it's actually kind of a… kind of a miracle that anything exists at all, you know? And it's like, I…
• 1:33:10
  Phil: Regardless of
• 1:33:12
  Phil: how true that is, I don't think that's a very interesting statement, because considering absolute non-existence, isn't it a very interesting thing.
• 1:33:21
  Phil: But again, it… it… when building upon it, getting to a scientific explanation of darkness, like, that's… I love that. It's so… so yeah, so this ultimately… this is one of those things where…
• 1:33:31
  Phil: I am so glad that you selected this to read, and I am, you know, wanting to read more of Mark Russell, and also, you know, I.
• 1:33:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I love the PTSD on the robot that goes into space.
• 1:33:45
  Phil: Yes! That was so good, too!
• 1:33:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, did you notice that…
• 1:33:57
  Tad Eggleston: because it was, I think, my second or third read that I noticed that, like.
• 1:34:00
  Phil: Huh.
• 1:34:00
  Tad Eggleston: As you move along, Earth is falling apart.
• 1:34:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yes. Like, they're going to war over who might have control over all.
• 1:34:08
  Phil: You're right.
• 1:34:09
  Tad Eggleston: Literally, they're… okay, this is… resources are dwindling, they're now… they're now fighting… Right.
• 1:34:14
  Phil: what little is left and destroying everything they possibly can to increase leverage. So, like.
• 1:34:20
  Phil: I should have trusted that… okay, no, this is… this is a master satirist who is absolutely going in with that… with that dark knife to the gut.
• 1:34:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and then the, the, the, you know, because we don't have to be non-spoilery at this point, I'm gonna, like, say, anybody who hasn't bothered to read this yet, like…
• 1:34:40
  Phil: Please do!
• 1:34:41
  Tad Eggleston: pause this episode, or jump to the next chapter and come back later, do so, because I'm getting spoilery.
• 1:34:47
  Phil: Go ahead.
• 1:34:49
  Tad Eggleston: like… when he finally found the rovers on Mars… Oh, gosh.
• 1:34:56
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:34:56
  Tad Eggleston: And they're like, oh yeah, there's… there's snow.
• 1:34:59
  Phil: Yeah, that to me…
• 1:35:01
  Tad Eggleston: We just, like, we were running out of parts, and…
• 1:35:04
  Phil: We made it up.
• 1:35:06
  Tad Eggleston: We, we, we, we, like, looked at all of our resources, and we, we thought this was the only way to get people to… to…
• 1:35:14
  Tad Eggleston: To come… It was essentially, we're lonely and running out of parts.
• 1:35:19
  Phil: Right! Well, and it's… and it was… it was… it was that they were being ignored. They're like.
• 1:35:24
  Tad Eggleston: get them to listen, is we'll say, hey!
• 1:35:27
  Phil: Well, and that's the other funny thing, is realizing that, oh, hey, even though, for him, this is the most important thing for humanity right now, but it's coming from, you point out, he's like, you existed to generate
• 1:35:39
  Phil: Banal trivia about rocks and minerals.
• 1:35:43
  Phil: That's one of the most meaningless things to people.
• 1:35:47
  Phil: Which is also funny, because… to me, finances is one of the most deeply meaningless things about human existence.
• 1:35:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… Except when it puts you on the streets.
• 1:35:59
  Phil: Yes, yes, I mean, it's both, it's both, like… That's the duality of it, for sure. It's the most important thing
• 1:36:09
  Phil: But it is also hollow.
• 1:36:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:36:12
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. Right.
• 1:36:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's part of what this really examines, is, like.
• 1:36:17
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:36:18
  Tad Eggleston: Life and what isn't.
• 1:36:20
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 1:36:24
  Tad Eggleston: what… I mean, like, when… when… when it's, like, the other companies are like, oh, oh, they got the head start because they found the…
• 1:36:34
  Tad Eggleston: the… the dying person, that's too hard. We're gonna buy some convicts.
• 1:36:39
  Phil: Jeez, that was so bleak, but so good.
• 1:36:42
  Tad Eggleston: Holy shit. And so real! Yeah! Oh, yeah! You know that it would be possible to buy convicts for that.
• 1:36:49
  Phil: Oh, yeah. Yep, and again, they point out, they're like, well, they weren't concerned with actually getting them there, they were just trying to blow.
• 1:36:57
  Tad Eggleston: Stop him!
• 1:36:57
  Phil: of space, yes! Right! To buy them time! So just the… the…
• 1:37:02
  Phil: The sheer scale of cruelty, the activists who lie to him about having found his ex-wife, Everything. Not active.
• 1:37:12
  Tad Eggleston: This is another company.
• 1:37:14
  Phil: Oh, right, right, right, yeah, it was another company. It was another company, it was…
• 1:37:17
  Tad Eggleston: And then the fact that the Easy Beef people come back and they're like, we've got them, as they're holding guns on them. They have something to tell you.
• 1:37:26
  Tad Eggleston: That's your wife.
• 1:37:27
  Phil: Yeah, oh my gosh.
• 1:37:29
  Tad Eggleston: Peace for holding onto them until you get there.
• 1:37:32
  Phil: And then it also turned out that he… that the scientists were hiding from him that they had contacted his ex-wife from the beginning, and had.
• 1:37:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right!
• 1:37:40
  Phil: from her that, again.
• 1:37:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right!
• 1:37:42
  Phil: He didn't get until the day before he was gonna die?
• 1:37:46
  Phil: Like, yeah, yeah. There's… it was funny. In the first, like, two issues, I was like.
• 1:37:52
  Tad Eggleston: And not the scientists, the corporate people.
• 1:37:55
  Phil: Right, right, right, the corporate people, not just.
• 1:37:56
  Tad Eggleston: It's worth making that, like, very distinct…
• 1:38:01
  Phil: Yes.
• 1:38:03
  Phil: And so, knowing that you've talked to Mark about this, and you've had dinner with Monsieur Russell,
• 1:38:10
  Phil: I'm curious what he believes in. You know, whether he's an atheist, or religious, or…
• 1:38:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he was… he was brought up.
• 1:38:23
  Tad Eggleston: Like, not just religious, but like… really religious.
• 1:38:28
  Phil: I can… I can feel that, I can feel that.
• 1:38:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't think that he's completely abandoned his faith. I don't know that we've gotten to do it specifically, specifically. I mean, I feel that too.
• 1:38:39
  Phil: Duke.
• 1:38:40
  Tad Eggleston: But, I mean… and these would be worthwhile reads as well. Like, if you read…
• 1:38:51
  Tad Eggleston: God is disappointed in you, which is.
• 1:38:53
  Phil: I want this chapter.
• 1:38:53
  Tad Eggleston: chapter by chapter synopsis of the Bible.
• 1:38:56
  Phil: That's great.
• 1:38:57
  Tad Eggleston: With illustrations by… by…
• 1:39:02
  Tad Eggleston: Shannon Wheeler, or Apocrypha Now, which is his chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the books that have been
• 1:39:11
  Tad Eggleston: not included in the Bible through the years.
• 1:39:14
  Phil: Right, right. With comics from Shannon Wheeler, or you read…
• 1:39:18
  Tad Eggleston: Second Coming.
• 1:39:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know… That was…
• 1:39:24
  Phil: Been interesting from a distance.
• 1:39:25
  Tad Eggleston: You can see that, like, he's definitely spent a lot of time examining like…
• 1:39:39
  Tad Eggleston: The teachings of Christ versus the teachings of the churches.
• 1:39:43
  Phil: And I… that's… that was the type of person that my dad was raising me. He… we had… Right. …never forced me to go to church, but he had 3 books next to each other. He had the Bible.
• 1:39:54
  Phil: on one end, and then on the other end, the words of Christ, and in between them.
• 1:39:58
  Phil: the dictionary. Literally the biggest dictionary I've ever seen. And he said, you know, between the words of Christ and the Bible, there's a whole lot of words.
• 1:40:07
  Tad Eggleston: a whole lot of other ones. Right.
• 1:40:09
  Phil: Right. And it's, you know, it's one of those things, he said.
• 1:40:12
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, no, I mean, those would also be interesting reads. Oh, for sure.
• 1:40:17
  Phil: Sure.
• 1:40:18
  Tad Eggleston: My audiobook versions of them, too.
• 1:40:21
  Tad Eggleston: That are pretty good.
• 1:40:24
  Phil: I would need to see all of the… because God is disappointing in you. Is that the one where it's like a hand coming out of the cloud about to flick somebody?
• 1:40:33
  Tad Eggleston: I f- I feel like it.
• 1:40:35
  Phil: I definitely… I saw… I saw that book cover and took a picture of it, way back when,
• 1:40:42
  Phil: But anyway, we are getting close to needing to wrap up for…
• 1:40:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, we are. So we should jump into books. Books, I hope, will be spectacular first. I've read Kilometers 2 No. 1. I talked to Zach Kaplan. It is spectacular.
• 1:41:00
  Tad Eggleston: Second, do admit The Mitford Sisters and Me from Mimi Pond, drawn in Quarterly, released among graphic novels, looks amazing.
• 1:41:09
  Tad Eggleston: And collections of a couple of my favorite recent books, Archaic and Ripperland, from, from Ahoy and Dark Horse, respectively, but also, The Lexicon of Comicana, from Mort Walker, with, with,
• 1:41:26
  Tad Eggleston: Introduction by Chris Ware, New York Review Comics, looks really, really cool. But my three books for the week that I hope will be spectacular are Batman No. 2!
• 1:41:37
  Tad Eggleston: From Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez. Yeah, goddammit, Matt, making me put Batman on top of my list. The, like, most obvious possible choice, but you knocked Issue 1 so far out of the park that I have to have issue 2 on top.
• 1:41:53
  Phil: Isn't this more of a issue 1.3 repeating?
• 1:41:59
  Phil: Sorry.
• 1:42:00
  Tad Eggleston: gross.
• 1:42:00
  Phil: It's a math joke.
• 1:42:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right, they're all terrible, numbers 1 and 2 from Matt Kint and Ramon Villalobos at Bad Idea, and Life Number 6, from Brian Azzarello, Stephanie Phillips, and Danielle Zelj.
• 1:42:19
  Tad Eggleston: at distillery, wraps up their… Their flipbook.
• 1:42:25
  Tad Eggleston: It's… it's been… There are pros and cons in the book, so there's, like, the professional,
• 1:42:34
  Tad Eggleston: Bounty hunter, treasure seekers, whatever, and then the convicts on the prison planet, and, like, all going after
• 1:42:45
  Tad Eggleston: we'll just call it a MacGuffin. I think it's actually Treasure, but we'll call it, you know…
• 1:42:52
  Tad Eggleston: But Brian writes, I think, the cons, and I think Stephanie's writing the pros, and Daniel does all of the art, and…
• 1:43:01
  Tad Eggleston: You can read one, flip the book over, and read the other.
• 1:43:05
  Tad Eggleston: That does sound correct.
• 1:43:06
  Phil: That sounds terrifying. Real quick.
• 1:43:09
  Tad Eggleston: And this is the final issue.
• 1:43:11
  Phil: How would you feel about, since we read Traveling to Mars for this week, how would you feel about reading, Azarella and Riso's Spaceman for next week?
• 1:43:24
  Tad Eggleston: I would rather hold off on that, just because it's been so long since I read it that I would have to fit in the reread.
• 1:43:31
  Phil: That's fair.
• 1:43:32
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know enough about how this week will look. We'll talk more briefly off the air, or tomorrow.
• 1:43:40
  Tad Eggleston: around Zach.
• 1:43:42
  Phil: Nice. Sounds good. Yeah, yeah. In that case…
• 1:43:45
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:43:45
  Phil: Huh?
• 1:43:46
  Tad Eggleston: That's actually… I agree.
• 1:43:47
  Phil: have a… instead of an all-new giant-sized trade waiter graphic novel pick, I have a…
• 1:43:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it is.
• 1:43:53
  Phil: This is a double.
• 1:43:54
  Tad Eggleston: Double-size one-shot.
• 1:43:55
  Phil: Yeah, it's…
• 1:43:56
  Tad Eggleston: Close.
• 1:43:57
  Phil: It's saying, hey, if you're usually a trade waiter, you don't get a lot of one-shots in your life. You should get this one-shot in your life. It is Good Devils, Don't Play Fair with Evil, from Nick Dragata and David Brothers, two living legends of comics right now, National Treasures both, they do… they do comics, you read them. They be good.
• 1:44:17
  Tad Eggleston: Righty, I think that's it for this week, episode 203 in the books.
• 1:44:25
  Tad Eggleston: So, we will see you after the next page.