Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / 22 Panels Episode #251 - More Humanoids

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22 Panels Episode #251 - More Humanoids · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels. We're…
• 0:06
  Tad Eggleston: kind of later than normal, because it's just been one of those weeks. I am joined across the interwebs.
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: By Phil?
• 0:16
  Tad Eggleston: Tyler had to go see, like… I would say s…
• 0:21
  Phil: What I would say about…
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: animals in Omaha, or something?
• 0:24
  Phil: Despite all his rage, he's still just a Tyler in a cage.
• 0:28
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 0:30
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. You're… you're not even really old enough for that reference, but cool. Cool, cool.
• 0:34
  Phil: I mean, I heard that song on the radio, you know?
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. I didn't like the album. When you were, like, 2?
• 0:41
  Phil: Was that how old it is? I mean, it was used in pop culture for at least a decade.
• 0:45
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair, but I want to say the album, I'm pretty certain, came out in 94.
• 0:52
  Phil: I mean, to be fair, I don't… I don't know what album it's.
• 0:55
  Tad Eggleston: I do know…
• 0:56
  Phil: pumpkins.
• 0:57
  Tad Eggleston: Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness, it came out in 1995.
• 1:01
  Phil: Okay, I was 5, I did not have musical taste at that.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:04
  Phil: But when I did, I appreciated the song.
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I, I, I am a fan. I am a fan. That was the last great, great pumpkins album?
• 1:14
  Phil: Nice.
• 1:15
  Tad Eggleston: They've had some interesting stuff through the… you know, I'm not somebody who thinks the pumpkins ended there.
• 1:23
  Tad Eggleston: But… And for that matter, even some of their more recent stuff has been of interest.
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: I watched, I think a show on YouTube recently.
• 1:33
  Tad Eggleston: With the mostly reunited band.
• 1:36
  Phil: Oh, see, I didn't even know they were united, so that's… that's the thing, is, you know, I'm not…
• 1:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:41
  Phil: It's a really good song, though.
• 1:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, but it's not even my favorite song on the album.
• 1:46
  Phil: That's fair.
• 1:47
  Tad Eggleston: It's, like, my third or fourth favorite song on the album.
• 1:50
  Phil: That might make me, go listen to that album.
• 1:52
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's… it's one of very few double albums that I think couldn't be…
• 1:59
  Tad Eggleston: A single album that was better.
• 2:02
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know that it completely fills out a double album. It might be closer to something that would be ideally 3 record sides, rather than…
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. Four, but, but, like… It's… It's stacked.
• 2:17
  Tad Eggleston: And it plays really well together.
• 2:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 2:22
  Phil: Yeah, okay, I recognize this one. I've definitely listened to a fair amount of songs off of this.
• 2:28
  Phil: Yeah. Yeah, never, never the whole thing, never the whole thing back-to-back, so that…
• 2:32
  Tad Eggleston: We'll change that. We'll do it. You owe that to yourself.
• 2:35
  Phil: I do, yeah. I mean, I lived in Chicago for a time, Smashing Pumpkins, one of the top Chicago bands to have existing.
• 2:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, like, whether… with or without that, just this… that album, that's one you owe yourself. There are a handful of albums from my lifetime that I think, if you're a music person, listening to the album as an album is a worthwhile endeavor, and this is…
• 3:00
  Phil: That's how… that is what makes or breaks a band for me, is whether the.
• 3:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it is, absolutely, but particularly in your lifetime.
• 3:07
  Phil: It's got.
• 3:08
  Tad Eggleston: Album… albums have not been the primary unit of music.
• 3:12
  Phil: Oh, abs… yeah, you're absolutely right there. iTunes definitely, changed the game quite a bit. Right. I mean.
• 3:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 3:20
  Tad Eggleston: The ability to buy track by track, I mean, like, you always had to market more through singles than through albums, because radio was your marketing, that sort of thing. So, like, there's always been the war between
• 3:37
  Tad Eggleston: a good, cohesive album and a collection of singles, right?
• 3:42
  Tad Eggleston: But… Over the last 20 years that, from a financial standpoint.
• 3:50
  Phil: Yeah.
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: If you're singles, matters… infinitely more.
• 3:57
  Phil: Yeah.
• 3:59
  Phil: And entire careers can be made off of singles, even more so than they were in the past. You know, One Hit Wonder has gone from, you know…
• 4:08
  Phil: a fringe thing to…
• 4:10
  Tad Eggleston: But also, on the flip side, like, a 3-hit wonder?
• 4:14
  Tad Eggleston: And have more shelf time.
• 4:16
  Phil: Dear?
• 4:16
  Tad Eggleston: Because their three hits won't all wind up on one album, because they won't have albums.
• 4:22
  Phil: Oh, they might, I don't know. It's… it's always hard to… it's hard to…
• 4:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because that's always part of the problem, is when you have to flesh out 9 more songs after your hit.
• 4:33
  Phil: Well, and…
• 4:35
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, now.
• 4:35
  Phil: Actually.
• 4:35
  Tad Eggleston: drive people away. You can make them not interested in your next single, because your album wasn't good.
• 4:41
  Phil: Right, but what iTunes also did is by being, you know, a dollar for one song, or $10 for an album, meant almost everybody kept their albums to about 10 songs, you know?
• 4:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but that was true already.
• 4:56
  Phil: Not really… not… not fully.
• 4:59
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 5:00
  Phil: Dude!
• 5:00
  Tad Eggleston: Fully, but… but… but it…
• 5:02
  Phil: See.
• 5:03
  Tad Eggleston: It had been in the relative standard since the Beatles.
• 5:09
  Phil: maybe I am not familiar enough with the Beaters' discography to know how long they've been doing 10 songs per album, but.
• 5:15
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not even saying that all of the Beatles albums were 10 songs per album, but, like, I sold a shit ton of records, and I will tell you, absolutely.
• 5:27
  Tad Eggleston: that the mode for number of songs on an album is 10, and was long before iTunes.
• 5:36
  Phil: I'll believe that. I'll believe that. But I'm just thinking of, like, punk rock, where you get, like, 20-minute long songs, you know? Or, prog rock, where you get, like, maybe 5 12-minute long songs. So…
• 5:48
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but, like…
• 5:50
  Phil: But yes, but you're absolutely right that the mode is still 10 across the board. I'm just thinking of the opposite fringe cases there.
• 5:57
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but I think that you're actually, like, at least on the punk side, giving more credit than is maybe due.
• 6:07
  Phil: Well, I mean, I'm thinking of, like…
• 6:09
  Tad Eggleston: Because I think there are more punk albums than you think that are 10 20-minute… or 10 2-minute songs, rather than 22-minute songs.
• 6:23
  Phil: Yeah. It's hard to…
• 6:26
  Tad Eggleston: I am literally going to pull up the Ramones discography, just to work from something specific really quick.
• 6:32
  Phil: You know, I'm willing… I'm willing to give you this one for the sake of… of…
• 6:39
  Phil: You know, not becoming a music podcast,
• 6:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, we're only looking at the first one right now. But, okay.
• 6:48
  Tad Eggleston: we split the difference. The first Ramones album.
• 6:52
  Tad Eggleston: was 14 tracks.
• 6:54
  Phil: Aha!
• 6:55
  Phil: a tie.
• 6:58
  Tad Eggleston: Higher than 10, significantly lower than 20.
• 7:00
  Phil: Yeah? Yeah.
• 7:04
  Tad Eggleston: You know… second Ramone's album was 14 tracks, both of which, by the way, weighed in at less than half an hour.
• 7:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You get up to 1…
• 7:13
  Phil: 14.
• 7:14
  Tad Eggleston: Team tracks at less than half an hour.
• 7:16
  Phil: Yup.
• 7:18
  Phil: Two minutes is valid for the punk days.
• 7:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 7:23
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, it looks like the Ramones were doing…
• 7:28
  Tad Eggleston: 7… 7 songs per side for their first 3 albums.
• 7:37
  Phil: For me, I was also thinking specifically of, Rancid. Rancid 2000 has 22 songs for 38 minutes, you know?
• 7:48
  Tad Eggleston: But by 2000, you already had iTunes.
• 7:52
  Phil: 2000? I don't think so. Maybe.
• 7:55
  Tad Eggleston: started to roll out right in there.
• 7:57
  Phil: Yeah, and then, before.
• 7:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, because I actually remember some of the punk bands specifically saying that they were going longer to encourage people to buy their albums rather than their tracks.
• 8:10
  Phil: Okay. Well, I was gonna say, they did a similar thing with, Life Won't Wait in 1998, 22 songs, hour 4 minutes, so… you know, they've…
• 8:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 8:21
  Phil: Is it true?
• 8:22
  Tad Eggleston: Clash's… Clash's first album was also 14.
• 8:25
  Phil: Yep.
• 8:28
  Phil: But I believe, I believe you when, by the time… by the time you got to iTunes, it had hit.
• 8:34
  Tad Eggleston: At least, the US version of The Clash's first album.
• 8:39
  Phil: Yeah, I don't even know how…
• 8:41
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the, the Give Em An Up Rope, which was The Clash's second album, is 10 tracks.
• 8:48
  Phil: Okay.
• 8:49
  Phil: They settled down.
• 8:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 8:55
  Tad Eggleston: And I know that the US version of The Clash's first album had at least one extra track versus the…
• 9:02
  Phil: Okay.
• 9:03
  Tad Eggleston: You know… So, yeah, no, I mean…
• 9:07
  Tad Eggleston: Really, what it comes down to is, like…
• 9:11
  Tad Eggleston: the people who pay for music, and I don't mean the consumers, I mean the record companies or whatnot. No, the producers aren't even the people that… I mean, like, the record execs and whatnot.
• 9:25
  Tad Eggleston: This goes back to the whole, like, having money and being smart aren't always the same thing.
• 9:31
  Phil: Whaaat?
• 9:32
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, they chose a nice round number.
• 9:36
  Tad Eggleston: That they felt like nobody will feel robbed if they get less than 10 tracks, and do we really need to do more than 10 tracks?
• 9:44
  Phil: Yep.
• 9:46
  Tad Eggleston: And 10 tracks became… I mean, you really want to see things that have… like, look at country music.
• 9:54
  Tad Eggleston: And forever.
• 9:57
  Tad Eggleston: It's been 10 Trek stuff. Look at easy listening music, and forever…
• 10:04
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, Tony Bennett broke the mold in a lot of ways when he came back after his years of not recording. You know, first, because his albums had more of a theme to them.
• 10:14
  Tad Eggleston: And second, because they were… they filled up a CD.
• 10:18
  Phil: If you had to choose an artist to draw a Tony Bennett, biographic novel, who would that be?
• 10:29
  Tad Eggleston: Let me think of that. Answer at the end of the podcast, because we could also use a Dolly graphic novel at this point.
• 10:37
  Phil: You could, holy crap.
• 10:38
  Tad Eggleston: Our, our news a note.
• 10:41
  Tad Eggleston: The world lost a giant this week.
• 10:44
  Phil: Several giants.
• 10:46
  Tad Eggleston: Too many.
• 10:47
  Tad Eggleston: I would say the, the, the, the world lost…
• 10:52
  Tad Eggleston: two of whatever is the size… well, no, okay, let's just call Dahlia a god, so it lost a god…
• 10:58
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 10:59
  Tad Eggleston: two giants and two really impressive people. How about that?
• 11:03
  Phil: I could, I could, I think so.
• 11:05
  Tad Eggleston: Because I don't feel like Cullen and Murray go into the curry, or… Kusama.
• 11:11
  Phil: I, I actually, I found.
• 11:12
  Tad Eggleston: category.
• 11:13
  Phil: I found out about Murray, while looking for more news, so…
• 11:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I don't… I don't feel like they, they, they fit the same…
• 11:22
  Tad Eggleston: And as wonderful as both Tim Curry and Yayoi Kusama, who my wife taught me about a lot this week, and will.
• 11:31
  Phil: Yeah.
• 11:32
  Tad Eggleston: Champion for neurodiversity and for.
• 11:34
  Phil: I don't.
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: and…
• 11:35
  Phil: Okay. Right.
• 11:36
  Tad Eggleston: She essentially lived in… in, like…
• 11:41
  Tad Eggleston: A mental health facility by choice for, like, the last 50 years.
• 11:45
  Phil: Wow.
• 11:45
  Tad Eggleston: So that she could make her art and be safe at the same time.
• 11:49
  Phil: Okay, see, I'd watched a documentary on her that was on HBO, maybe a year ago,
• 11:55
  Phil: But yeah, but she's really… she's an incredible artist, for sure.
• 11:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right, so, so, like, nothing, nothing negative to say about…
• 12:03
  Phil: You're absolutely right, Dolly Parton is head and shoulders.
• 12:06
  Tad Eggleston: Literally.
• 12:07
  Phil: and…
• 12:08
  Tad Eggleston: There are so few people, period.
• 12:13
  Tad Eggleston: of the quiet stature of Dolly Parton.
• 12:15
  Phil: Yeah.
• 12:16
  Tad Eggleston: And the quiet is part of that.
• 12:18
  Phil: Yeah.
• 12:20
  Phil: which I gotta say, I forget if it was on-air or off-air, but definitely within the past couple weeks, I used to… I said the phrase, ain't nothing to be proud of in Tennessee, and in that moment, I had forgotten about Dolly Parton, so I apologize. I apologize, and we have unfortunately lost the best thing that Tennessee ever produced.
• 12:36
  Phil: You know…
• 12:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not gonna argue with that statement, but I'm certain that you can also find other good things that Tennessee has produced.
• 12:43
  Phil: Yeah.
• 12:45
  Phil: I think… I think it's hard… hard to top Dolly there.
• 12:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, whether… whether it's the literacy, or… or the…
• 12:54
  Tad Eggleston: The sending her employees to college, or just…
• 12:58
  Tad Eggleston: Or just the absolute casual but emphatic human rights.
• 13:04
  Phil: Yep.
• 13:05
  Phil: Yep.
• 13:06
  Tad Eggleston: She didn't… she didn't make a big deal out of…
• 13:12
  Phil: It was…
• 13:13
  Tad Eggleston: supporting Black rights or LGBTQ rights, because…
• 13:18
  Tad Eggleston: Her strong position was, why the fuck is this a big deal?
• 13:23
  Phil: Exactly.
• 13:26
  Phil: She made it a big deal by how casually supportive she was. Right.
• 13:30
  Tad Eggleston: The way she made it a big deal is she made it so casual and so.
• 13:34
  Phil: True.
• 13:35
  Tad Eggleston: That if you even began to try to argue with her that those rights weren't deserved.
• 13:44
  Tad Eggleston: Just opening your mouth was gonna mean that you lost.
• 13:48
  Phil: Yep.
• 13:52
  Tad Eggleston: She took it to the ultimate moral level. She took it to…
• 13:57
  Tad Eggleston: The way I understand it is only God can judge, and we're all God's children, so they're God's children, so why shouldn't they be able to be who they are?
• 14:04
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 14:05
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know!
• 14:09
  Phil: Oh, God.
• 14:10
  Tad Eggleston: Whoa?
• 14:10
  Phil: Which is also hilarious, seeing the headlines in the news this week, saying, like, oh, Dolly Parton was neutral in the culture wars, and people are like, neutral? She was… absolutely not.
• 14:23
  Phil: Crossover, yeah.
• 14:24
  Tad Eggleston: She was… she was neutral politically, the way… the way…
• 14:33
  Tad Eggleston: the way the Dalai Lama is neutral politically, or the Pope is neutral.
• 14:39
  Phil: That's true.
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: politically. From one of my…
• 14:41
  Phil: figure, one dolly to another.
• 14:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. She didn't specifically say, vote for this party and not that party, vote for… but she had some very clear moral…
• 14:54
  Phil: Stance?
• 14:56
  Phil: Oh yeah, repeatedly.
• 14:57
  Tad Eggleston: That it wasn't hard to know which side…
• 15:01
  Tad Eggleston: Supported those moral stances.
• 15:03
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 15:04
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 15:06
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 15:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, and again, particularly for where she came from, you know, for growing up, the conservative, poor upbringing, for being a country music artist.
• 15:18
  Phil: No.
• 15:18
  Tad Eggleston: It makes it that much more amazing that she could be just so casual about, why are we having this argument?
• 15:25
  Phil: Yep.
• 15:27
  Tad Eggleston: They're people.
• 15:28
  Phil: Yes. I loved how people pointed out she… she could have been a billionaire, but she chose not to. She chose to help people instead.
• 15:36
  Phil: You know.
• 15:37
  Tad Eggleston: I actually, I rewatched for the first time in years, probably the first time since I was old enough to appreciate it as the feminist masterpiece that it is, rather than just wanting to watch it because of the title. I rewatched the, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas yesterday.
• 15:51
  Phil: Okay.
• 15:52
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, the way she so brilliantly plays a moral feminist sex worker is insane.
• 16:02
  Phil: Wow.
• 16:03
  Phil: Alright, I have… I've heard of that, but I haven't seen the one.
• 16:06
  Tad Eggleston: I truly think of it as an underrated masterpiece now. I'm gonna need to watch it again. You know, it's the first time I've ever had a massive appreciation for Bert Reynolds as an actor.
• 16:18
  Phil: Okay.
• 16:18
  Tad Eggleston: I have…
• 16:19
  Phil: I have an appreciation.
• 16:20
  Tad Eggleston: plays really…
• 16:21
  Phil: a mustache?
• 16:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he plays really well off of her in this. Nice.
• 16:27
  Tad Eggleston: But it's also clear that she's his moral comp… you know, he's actually a more moral character than you generally expect a sheriff in one of these things to be.
• 16:36
  Phil: Okay.
• 16:37
  Tad Eggleston: But she's still his moral compass.
• 16:40
  Phil: Yeah.
• 16:41
  Tad Eggleston: It,
• 16:42
  Phil: Oh, what's it?
• 16:44
  Phil: Oh, he's no… I forget the guy's first name, but there was… there was, like, a 70s or 80s action, like, B-movie star, Bronson, who always cast.
• 16:53
  Tad Eggleston: Charles Bronson.
• 16:54
  Phil: Charles Bronson cast his wife as the leading lady all the time. You know, Burrell's no Charles Bronson, that's for sure.
• 17:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But, but yeah, we lost some great ones this week, none less than Dolly.
• 17:10
  Tad Eggleston: Or none more than Dali, rather.
• 17:12
  Phil: Yep.
• 17:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm honestly… part of my week has been…
• 17:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, weirdly, like, the relaxation part of my week has been…
• 17:23
  Tad Eggleston: geez, I spent way too much time not getting to know
• 17:27
  Tad Eggleston: Dolly as a person, Dolly as a musician.
• 17:31
  Phil: Yeah.
• 17:32
  Tad Eggleston: I should fix that.
• 17:36
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 17:37
  Tad Eggleston: actually, not long after it was announced, we were on with Steph and Frank talking Palomino, and Palomino is set in…
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: the honky-tonk scene in LA in the late 70s, early 80s. The story goes through the 90s, but the Palomino was the club to play in the 60s through 80s, and…
• 17:58
  Tad Eggleston: So Dolly came up that night.
• 18:00
  Phil: Wow.
• 18:02
  Tad Eggleston: That was a… it was a good episode, I recommend listening to it.
• 18:05
  Tad Eggleston: So tell us about Read Comics in Public Day, which I didn't know was a thing, but I wish I had, I would have made a bigger point. Pretty certain I did it anyway, but I would have made a bigger point out of it.
• 18:14
  Phil: I mean, I think the bigger holiday that people have stuck with is, August 28th was Jack Kirby's birthday, you know? Happy birthday to the king. But yeah, at least when I was in college, I remember hearing, people trying to make it, read comics in public day, you know, so…
• 18:29
  Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
• 18:30
  Phil: sit with a graphic novel in a public place. I did not on this, because I have even less of an excuse than usual to leave the house, working from home now, so…
• 18:39
  Tad Eggleston: Your front porch is public.
• 18:41
  Phil: I live in an apartment, so I don't think my… my balcony might count as public?
• 18:46
  Tad Eggleston: There you go.
• 18:46
  Phil: viewable, so I guess.
• 18:48
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 18:49
  Tad Eggleston: Comics on the balcony.
• 18:50
  Phil: Yeah, about next year, you know.
• 18:52
  Tad Eggleston: What kind of week has it been?
• 18:55
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like we need to learn the names, the words to owe Canada.
• 19:00
  Tad Eggleston: At one point in seventh grade.
• 19:02
  Phil: Great.
• 19:02
  Tad Eggleston: But,
• 19:03
  Phil: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Phil: 7th grade, we sang the Canadian National Anthem, so…
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: Because I think… I think my favorite meme that has gone around with all the… all the renaming going this week, and this is… this is no offense to the major props to… to Pritzker for renaming Trump Tower the Natalie Tower. I thought that was…
• 19:28
  Tad Eggleston: Chef's Kiss.
• 19:30
  Phil: True.
• 19:30
  Tad Eggleston: I saw a map with the United States labeled as South Canada, and I just went.
• 19:35
  Phil: locally.
• 19:35
  Tad Eggleston: Please! United States labeled as Canada's 14th province.
• 19:43
  Phil: Oh, that's so funny. That's pretty… Taste of our own medicine? What is this? How did my petard get me up here?
• 19:49
  Tad Eggleston: No, I did also… I think there was… there were a couple of maps that played with the lakes, my favorite being the one that was a close-up on Lake Ontario with the line that separates it between the countries, and it had the bottom half
• 20:06
  Tad Eggleston: labeled Lake America, and the top half labeled Lake Obama.
• 20:11
  Phil: Oh, wow! That's amazing. I think one of the funnier ones I saw was, Lake, are we really doing this again?
• 20:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yes. Yes.
• 20:20
  Tad Eggleston: I do think that overall, the fact that pretty much the only response from anybody has been sheer mockery is the proper way to handle this.
• 20:30
  Phil: Stepford Google, who have bent the knee like a bunch of.
• 20:34
  Tad Eggleston: Have they?
• 20:35
  Phil: Yep, apparently. I mean, I… let's… I'll check Google Maps right now, but I saw at least one, person.
• 20:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, cause they… cause they got sued over…
• 20:46
  Phil: Over the Gulf of Mexico?
• 20:48
  Tad Eggleston: Gulf of Mexico, yeah.
• 20:49
  Phil: Ho ho ho! Threaten me with a good time. Let's see here… no! Unfortunately, my eyes do not deceive me. It says Lake America is the lake that borders the cities of Toronto and Hamilton.
• 21:04
  Tad Eggleston: It does also emphasize smallest… Five Great Lakes!
• 21:09
  Phil: Right? I mean, this is… this is just…
• 21:12
  Phil: Man, I really need to stop using Google.
• 21:14
  Tad Eggleston: This is… this is actually hilarious, though. It says, Lake Superior, largest fresh body
• 21:22
  Tad Eggleston: water body… body in the world. Great… Lake Huron, great lake with the longest shoreline. Lake Erie, famous lake with many attractions. Lake America, smallest of the five Great Lakes.
• 21:37
  Phil: I hate even saying that, it's just so dumb.
• 21:40
  Phil: like…
• 21:40
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 21:41
  Phil: Oh, this is worse than Freedom Fries.
• 21:44
  Tad Eggleston: I, I also wonder… let me, let me see…
• 21:49
  Phil: I mean, hey, if Google wants to get sued again, by all means.
• 21:53
  Phil: Please, step up to the bat.
• 21:56
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, now this is surprising.
• 21:58
  Phil: What's up?
• 21:59
  Tad Eggleston: I just went to google.ca.
• 22:04
  Tad Eggleston: And it still comes up Lake America.
• 22:07
  Phil: Wow!
• 22:10
  Tad Eggleston: I was expecting…
• 22:12
  Tad Eggleston: switching it to CA… To… to bring up… Like…
• 22:18
  Phil: Once again.
• 22:19
  Tad Eggleston: Ontario.
• 22:20
  Phil: MapQuest has remained relevant by saying they're sticking with Lake Ontario, so, you know…
• 22:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 22:27
  Phil: Gotta start using MapQuest again.
• 22:31
  Tad Eggleston: Just… dumb.
• 22:34
  Phil: Yep.
• 22:35
  Tad Eggleston: dumb.
• 22:36
  Phil: Yup.
• 22:37
  Tad Eggleston: dumb.
• 22:40
  Tad Eggleston: And… more dumb.
• 22:42
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, like, does he not realize that we're not America?
• 22:47
  Phil: No.
• 22:49
  Tad Eggleston: We're the United States of America.
• 22:52
  Phil: Yeah, there's a whole lot…
• 22:53
  Tad Eggleston: Canada is part of North America. Cuba is part of North America. Honduras is part of North America.
• 23:00
  Phil: Yep.
• 23:00
  Tad Eggleston: Venezuela is part of South America. There is no America!
• 23:07
  Phil: Yeah. Well, there's Americans…
• 23:08
  Tad Eggleston: Americas?
• 23:10
  Phil: Yes.
• 23:11
  Phil: There we go.
• 23:12
  Tad Eggleston: that includes way more than us, and there is the United States OF!
• 23:18
  Tad Eggleston: America.
• 23:20
  Phil: Yep.
• 23:27
  Phil: Can we talk some comics, though? Can we talk.
• 23:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 23:29
  Phil: Just a little bit? Okay.
• 23:30
  Tad Eggleston: S.
• 23:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 23:33
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't gotten to look at this. We got new to order, for September… I forgot to look up the date. When are our September orders still due? I can find that out really quickly.
• 23:46
  Phil: 1st? Second? Maybe?
• 23:49
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's always late in the month. Oh, okay.
• 23:58
  Phil: Don't make me jump ahead of you. Don't make me skip you.
• 24:01
  Tad Eggleston: The initial order dates are September 24th.
• 24:06
  Phil: Hmm. Okay.
• 24:08
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 24:10
  Tad Eggleston: My first one, and I'm hoping to be able to read this before we… I talk to Noah Van Skyver coming up.
• 24:16
  Tad Eggleston: As well as his upcoming graphic novel, which I have read. In November, he has a comic coming out called Animal Comics and Stories No. 1 from Noah Van Skyver. Funny Animal Comics fans will rejoice!
• 24:30
  Tad Eggleston: Over this all-new one-shot comic from the mighty pen of Noah Van Skyver. Meet Hefty Duck, a hyperbolic paranoid narcissist. Will he find a job in this economy? Also introducing the criminal rap brothers, Dinky Dormouse, Duncan the Rabbit, in the grand tradition of Fritz the Cat, Disney Ducks, Pogo, and more, Van Skiver makes the comic bookstore safe.
• 24:53
  Tad Eggleston: Once again, for anthropomorphic hijinks.
• 24:57
  Tad Eggleston: This is a final order cutoff of October 19th in stores on November 25th.
• 25:02
  Phil: Right, next up is Rampant Swine, number one, from Simon Spurrier, Christopher Mitten, and Brennan Wagner over at Ignition Press. This never happened, yet it's all true.
• 25:13
  Phil: In a Britain forged in blood, mud, magic, and monsters, the legendary King Arthur is a brutal warlord, surrounded by his knights, who are every bit as savage, strange, and legendary as the world they inhabit. When the young knight Kulwich arrives at Arthur's fortress, pleading for help and completing 39 impossible tasks assigned him by the giant Isbadodin to win the hand of his beautiful daughter Owen.
• 25:37
  Phil: He and Arthur's warriors embark on an incredible quest of giant slaying, monstrous boar hunting, and magical treasure theft as they battle their way through the dying age of myth.
• 25:46
  Phil: But beneath bloodshed and barbarism, something isn't right.
• 25:49
  Phil: Because every great legend has a story beneath a story, and King Arthur's never meant to be this kind of hero. Once again, from Sisbury, Christopher Mitten, and Brennan Wagner comes a savage and subversive reimagining of an Arthurian legend, a brutal five-issue fantasy epic in the tradition of Conan the Barbarian, where the heroes are dangerous, the monsters are real, and the age of wonder is coming to an end.
• 26:11
  Phil: It's gonna have a final cutoff of October 19th in stores November 25th.
• 26:17
  Tad Eggleston: Retirement plan number one for Matt Kent and Juan Jose Ripp at Bad Idea.
• 26:22
  Tad Eggleston: Chris Tracy is a highly trained Soviet sleeper agent embedded deep within the Midwestern United States. It's been 40 years since his deployment, and with the collapse of the USSR, he's given up on ever receiving activation orders. Just as well, he's focused on other things, like getting his poetry anthology published.
• 26:40
  Tad Eggleston: But when Russia loses their last undercover agent in the field, 65-year-old Chris Tracy is all they have left. With a deadly mission waiting for him in Austin, it's time for Chris to finally awaken. Waking up is the easy part. The hard part is remembering what comes next. He's a little rusty.
• 26:58
  Tad Eggleston: Final order cutoff of October 5th in stores on November… Fourth.
• 27:05
  Phil: From the twisted mind of Eisner award-winning writer Garth Enos and longtime artist collaborator John McCrae comes this disturbing, psychedelic tale of lust, greed, power, and possession.
• 27:17
  Phil: When you are offered your heart's desire, what and who are you willing to sacrifice to achieve it? And should you really be making that deal with a…
• 27:27
  Phil: Talking snail?
• 27:29
  Phil: It's gonna be the one-shot The Snail from Garth Enos and John McCrae at Image Comics, with a final order cutoff of October 19th in stores November 11th.
• 27:39
  Tad Eggleston: Some graphic novels! Bedford Street from Ross Murray at Phantographics, an alcoholic beneficiary, is tasked with looking after his teenage son for a weekend. A nurse is faced with a violent altercation after her late night shift. A single mother struggles with the sudden onset of crippling back pain while trying to keep her drug-addicted former partner at bay. A homeless man tries to readjust to life on the outside after a period of incarceration.
• 28:04
  Tad Eggleston: A young father succumbs to boredom and lust. These are some of the lives of the inhabitants of Bedford Street, an all-too-familiar place where those at the less fortunate end of the ever-widening spectrum of inequality reside. People leading modest lives in challenging circumstances where disenfranchisement is high and the sense of community is low.
• 28:26
  Tad Eggleston: All packed together and teeming with a chaotic energy, some submitting to their worst impulses, others trying their best despite it all. Bedford Street forms a mosaic image of lives lived in the maelstrom of a cost-of-living crisis.
• 28:40
  Tad Eggleston: Increasing rates of unemployment and an age of individualism where isolation and alienation is rife.
• 28:47
  Tad Eggleston: Marisk's skillful storytelling and combination of pathos and dark humor explore how we navigate life and care for one another in a disconnected society. Final order cutoff is September 28th in stores on November 4th.
• 29:03
  Phil: Next up is Death Save from Rune Ryberg at, Black Panel.
• 29:08
  Phil: It's the 90s in a nowhere suburb, where two teen misfits spend their days in a grungy pinball arcade, dodging adulthood, petty crimes, bad ideas, and endless noise. But one is pulling the other down, and something has to give. Danish artist Roon Ryberg delivers a high-voltage coming-of-age story, bursting with raw energy, dark humor, absurdity, and nostalgia for pinball and video games.
• 29:32
  Phil: plus a surprising amount of heart beneath it all. It's gonna have a final cutoff of September 28th in stores November 4th.
• 29:44
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry, I switched screens and… did it for too long. I only chose one graphic novel, and you only chose one graphic novel, so that's fine, we're going to collections. Yeah, that's fine.
• 29:56
  Tad Eggleston: Collections! Archie the Married Life Omnibus.
• 30:01
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me which one of these names doesn't sound like the others.
• 30:05
  Tad Eggleston: From Michael E. Uslan, Paul Kupperberg, Stan Goldberg, Norm Brafogel, and Fernando Ruiz.
• 30:12
  Phil: I mean, Uslan does sound a little different, but so does Ruiz.
• 30:17
  Tad Eggleston: Now, one of these names is very, very well known for comics that are not Archie.
• 30:25
  Phil: Is that, is that Norm Brightfogel?
• 30:31
  Tad Eggleston: is much better known for Batman.
• 30:34
  Phil: Okay.
• 30:35
  Tad Eggleston: Now collected for the first time in a new series of oversized hardcover omnibuses, experience the complete, decade-spanning chronicle of Archie Andrews' parallel lives and divergent futures in the groundbreaking saga that Comics Alliance calls the most fascinating Archie comic of all time.
• 30:52
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I go quite that far, but I really love this series.
• 30:56
  Tad Eggleston: I still think the most fascinating to me is… is Archie vs. the Predator, which shouldn't work, but it really does.
• 31:06
  Tad Eggleston: When Archie goes for an afternoon stroll down Riverdale's most magical side street, memory lane, only to find himself turned around and facing the future, America's favorite teenager will be given the ultimate chance to examine two diverging roads yet to be traveled, and with them, a tantalizing glimpse of his own possible fates.
• 31:24
  Tad Eggleston: Down the first fork, life as the husband of sultry socialite Veronica Lodge. Down the second, marriage to the good girl next door, Betty Cooper.
• 31:33
  Tad Eggleston: How could the most personal and painful choice of Archie's entire existence impact not just Riverdale, but the world and the future of everyone in it? The future is coming, Archie Andrews, and it's not what you think.
• 31:46
  Tad Eggleston: Final order cutoff is October 26th, and in stores December 1st. I think what I like the most about the Oni
• 31:57
  Tad Eggleston: reboot of Archie going on versus the reboot that… that…
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: They did when they did, like, the… the…
• 32:06
  Tad Eggleston: Mark Waite, Fiona Staples, and, and Chip Zdarsky, Erica Henderson.
• 32:12
  Tad Eggleston: reboot, what, 10 years ago?
• 32:16
  Tad Eggleston: is that they are putting together collections of some of the best of the past. They're letting you know, we're not rebooting nothing. There is stuff out there that is inspiring these people.
• 32:31
  Phil: Hell yeah.
• 32:32
  Tad Eggleston: Let's cut through all of the chaff to get to… the heart of…
• 32:39
  Tad Eggleston: The good stuff from this comic that's been around for, what, almost 80 years now?
• 32:44
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 32:45
  Phil: Things like that.
• 32:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So, yeah.
• 32:48
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway.
• 32:50
  Phil: It's the final order cut off October 26th? Okay, you said that, okay.
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: I said that, I said that.
• 32:55
  Phil: Next up, did you hear about Mimi Green from Connor Goldsmith, Josh Cornelian over at Dark Horse? Tastemaker Mimi Green is a popular essayist with a perfectly co…
• 33:07
  Phil: curated social media presence, until a blog post she wrote a decade ago, cruelly mocking fat people, resurfaces and sparks of viral fur.
• 33:16
  Phil: Mimi checks into an isolated mental health facility in Topanga to ride out the scandal, but as sound baths and crystal healings by day give way to restless nights, she's pulled into another version of the building.
• 33:27
  Phil: There, the halls are old and gluttonous and gilded, and vainglorious, like Mimi and her fellow patients are punished again and again. Only local bartender Natalie, the lesbian lover Mimi hid from the public, stands a chance, tracking her down before it's too late.
• 33:45
  Phil: It's gonna have a final cutoff of October 12th in stores February 2nd.
• 33:50
  Phil: Next up, some flannel order cut off.
• 33:54
  Tad Eggleston: You wanna take them?
• 33:55
  Phil: Sure, I'll take it. Finally, we're cut off for Monday, September 7th, is 100 Things You Love to Draw from John Hendricks at Abrams, in stores October 21st. Comic Club from Yi Yang at Phantographics, gonna be in stores October 14th. The Complete Quarto Maltese Hardcover Volume 1, The Ballad of the Salt Sea from Hugo Pratt at Phantographics, in stores December 2nd.
• 34:19
  Phil: Forming from Jesse Moynihan in Phantographics in stores October 7th, Howard Chaikin's American Flag Omnibus, by Howard Chaikin at Image Comics, in stores January 6th, 2027.
• 34:32
  Phil: Human Clock from Tokunami Seiichiro, and translator Ryan Holmberg from Uncivilized in stores October 7th. Is Tad OK? from Dave Chisholm and Mad Cave in stores September 30th.
• 34:46
  Phil: Nirvana is here, from Mikhail Ross at Phante Graphics, in stores October 21st.
• 34:51
  Phil: Calamar, The Heartbreak Soup Stories from Gilbert Hernandez, and Phantographics, in stores October 7th. Requiem for Gaza, Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, Infantagraphics, in stores October 7th. Sunder No. 1 from Pierre Alexandre Comtois at Mad Cave, in stores September 30th. The Toxic Avenger vs. The Noxious Offender, number 1 of 5, from Matt
• 35:15
  Phil: and Felipe Sobriro at Ahoy Comics in stores October 7th, and You'll Never Leave This Place Alive, number one. Colin Kelly, Jackson Lansing, and Heather Vaughn over at IDW.
• 35:26
  Phil: And, not sure when that one's gonna be in stores, but sometime soon.
• 35:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I totally forgot to put that in, I'm sorry. That's my fault. You look it up at PRH if you feel like it.
• 35:38
  Tad Eggleston: You can do that while I'm doing crowdfunding, if you feel like it. Crowdfunding! I love apocalyptic zombie misfits from Doug Wagner and Daniel Hilliard at Clover Press is on Kickstarter through September 4th. Joe Unknown, number 1, from Christopher Irving on Kickstarter through September 6th.
• 35:55
  Tad Eggleston: Liam Sharpe's Conan portfolio and Calendar is on Kickstarter through September 10th. Fairytale Wars number 1, Ever After vs. Mature Sapphic Crossover from Cat Kalamia, and Lifeline Comics is on Kickstarter through September 10th. And still in the Launching Soon category, we have both Jason Cohn's Tezuka, God of Manga.
• 36:15
  Tad Eggleston: documentary, and Jack Quaintance's Death of Comics Book Case to the reign of the Comics Book Cases.
• 36:25
  Tad Eggleston: keep your eyes out for lunch, or sign up to be notified. Humble Bundles, Phil!
• 36:31
  Phil: First up, there's the Disney Masters Collection and Originals from Phantographics, $25 for 48 items to support the first book charity, which is available through September 9th. Then there's the One Shots and Fast Reads from Image, $25 for 59 items, for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which is available till, sometime during the day, September 1st. Get that while you can if you're listening to this
• 36:56
  Phil: for then, as well as the Godzilla Kaiju.
• 36:58
  Tad Eggleston: Generally, it's noon that it cuts off, so…
• 37:02
  Phil: Which, yeah, that's also for the Godzilla Kaiju Rampage, $18 for 30 items, and supporting Make-A-Wish, also expiring September 1st. The Humanoids Mega Bundle, Universes Unbound Part 2, $20 for 40 items, which is 132 volumes. Supporting Reading is essential, available till September 3rd. The EC Comics Artist Library from Phantographics, $25 for
• 37:26
  Phil: supporting items, supporting Freedom to Breed Foundation, available through September 4th.
• 37:31
  Phil: Image in the 20s Mega Bundle, $25 for 70 items to support the book industry.
• 37:36
  Tad Eggleston: It's weird.
• 37:37
  Phil: Foundation.
• 37:38
  Tad Eggleston: ridiculous.
• 37:38
  Phil: Absolutely ridiculous, available till September 14th. Check that one out. There's so much of recent fantastic image series going on there from the past half a decade, as well as the Valiant Mega Bundle that's $20 for 105 items, also supporting the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, available through September 18th.
• 37:57
  Tad Eggleston: a mixture of the Valiant reboot from the 20 aughts that involves a lot of the people working at Bad Idea now, and some of the original, original Valiant stuff, which is also fantastic.
• 38:13
  Tad Eggleston: Going back to You'll Never Leave This Place Alive, the release date is October 14th.
• 38:20
  Tad Eggleston: I knew I'd find it.
• 38:22
  Phil: I play it.
• 38:23
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you put it in there, you just didn't say it.
• 38:25
  Phil: I didn't. You know, we were moving on. We were keeping it tight until this point.
• 38:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, keeping it tight and making certain all the stuff goes in are different things, man!
• 38:34
  Phil: That's fair, that's fair.
• 38:36
  Tad Eggleston: Three amazing books this week. There were a lot of good books this week, but I was able to… to… to…
• 38:42
  Tad Eggleston: to hit 3 pretty easily.
• 38:45
  Tad Eggleston: First, the Santos Sisters Fun Special No. 1 from Greg and Fake and Bob Burden, featuring Flaming Carrot.
• 38:53
  Tad Eggleston: And the, the newest iteration of the 22 Panels ad, now with more cats.
• 38:59
  Phil: Oh, nice!
• 38:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Mind Management No. 3 from Matt Kent, and Concrete Over San… or Concrete Stars Over Sand number 3 from Paul Chadwick at Dark Horse. These were all fun in different, hard-to-describe ways.
• 39:13
  Tad Eggleston: Just go read the series. Just go read them. That's my… that's what I have to say right now. Go read them. They are worth reading.
• 39:22
  Tad Eggleston: And, Phil, take a walk.
• 39:24
  Phil: I, you know, I, I think,
• 39:27
  Phil: I haven't… I haven't read any concrete, so I might not start with Stars Over Sand, but I'll certainly check that one out.
• 39:34
  Tad Eggleston: I would kind of recommend starting elsewhere.
• 39:36
  Phil: I imagine.
• 39:37
  Tad Eggleston: Not necessarily at the beginning.
• 39:39
  Phil: Okay.
• 39:39
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, you know, if you wanted to.
• 39:41
  Phil: Yeah, that is always.
• 39:42
  Tad Eggleston: I, I could, I could… I can help you. Tyler and I went through it.
• 39:47
  Tad Eggleston: Tyler and I went through it on the… on the podcast.
• 39:50
  Phil: Okay.
• 39:51
  Phil: I'd probably just start with whatever's on Hoopla and, you know, branch out from there.
• 39:55
  Tad Eggleston: I think most of the… I think most of it's on Hoopla.
• 39:59
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's where we read it from.
• 40:01
  Phil: Awesome. But yeah, this week, I'm thinking about how, physical books just feel different, you know, and, like, the different.
• 40:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no shit. Plastic and paper feel different, Phil.
• 40:13
  Phil: Well, what I…
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: This is not rocket science.
• 40:16
  Phil: I'm also talking about the different ways that, like, a book of manga will feel different from an American comic. Like, just the texture of the paper and, you know, the size. I don't know. It's just something I'm thinking about.
• 40:30
  Phil: You know, one of those things. I recognize that it is way, way, way, way, way more likely for me to get into something with a physical book.
• 40:37
  Phil: Than just reading digitally, but yeah,
• 40:42
  Phil: And, that's it. That's kind of all. That's all I'm thinking about.
• 40:47
  Phil: a short little… short little stumble today. For One Piece, did you read… did you read,
• 40:53
  Tad Eggleston: I read no one piece this time.
• 40:54
  Phil: No One Piece. I read two whole volumes of Smoking By in the Supermarket with You.
• 41:00
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 41:01
  Phil: was an interesting way to tally up, because they don't quite do chapters, they call their chapters smokes, but then they also had a lot of interludes, so I had to do some creative bookkeeping for that one.
• 41:12
  Phil: But I still think that's one that you'd enjoy. It's, it's a…
• 41:15
  Tad Eggleston: It looks like one.
• 41:16
  Phil: Yeah, it's a nice slice of life. You know, socially awkward romance.
• 41:22
  Phil: I always appreciate those.
• 41:24
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, socially awkward anything is up my alley.
• 41:27
  Phil: I had a feeling.
• 41:28
  Tad Eggleston: I know socially awkward well.
• 41:33
  Phil: Oh.
• 41:35
  Phil: I was gonna say, it takes one to know one.
• 41:38
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, no, I'm down with the socially awkward.
• 41:42
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 41:47
  Phil: But our great responsibility this week.
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: Some more humanoids. I didn't read as much of this as I'd like, either. I started reading it, like.
• 41:56
  Tad Eggleston: earlier today, as I was getting ready, and then I had more stuff pop in, so…
• 42:03
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, I don't…
• 42:11
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have a ton to say about it, except that it looks like it's somewhat journalism.
• 42:16
  Tad Eggleston: And an interesting take, because essentially, like.
• 42:20
  Tad Eggleston: what I got through was… the book is called Cabo Disco, Disco, and…
• 42:27
  Tad Eggleston: Of course, I didn't put the… the…
• 42:30
  Tad Eggleston: artist's name next to it, because that would be, like, smart or some shit. Nicholas Wilde.
• 42:36
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. And essentially, he was, like, in France, and struggling to find his next book, etc, and got an email inviting him to…
• 42:46
  Tad Eggleston: Come illustrate a graphic novel.
• 42:48
  Tad Eggleston: To explain the new…
• 42:55
  Tad Eggleston: the… the new… what's the word I'm looking for?
• 43:02
  Phil: Discount.
• 43:02
  Tad Eggleston: Afghan… the Afghan Constitution.
• 43:05
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 43:07
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, it's 2005, so he's, like, out of it enough… well, not out of it, but, like, he's not wired into all things geopolitics.
• 43:18
  Phil: Huh.
• 43:18
  Tad Eggleston: to realize that Kabul is still, you know, essentially a war zone. So what I've gone through so far is, like, him accepting the job because he was about, A, he needed work, B, he was about to need to find a new place anyway, you know, just confluence of events. Oh, yes, I've always wanted to go to Afghanistan.
• 43:37
  Phil: Wait.
• 43:38
  Phil: That actually does sound really interesting.
• 43:40
  Tad Eggleston: Him… him getting waylaid in… I think Azerbaijan on the way, because flights aren't going in or out, and…
• 43:52
  Tad Eggleston: And winding up hooking up with a… a number of, like, REAL war journalists.
• 44:00
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, the last part I read, and the part where I went, damn, I'm definitely gonna have to keep reading this, even though I don't have quite time to read this, he's… he's like.
• 44:12
  Tad Eggleston: well, the last part I read is, like, when he's finally arrived there, but the page right before that, or, you know, the page right before him finally getting to Kabul, you know, he's around…
• 44:25
  Tad Eggleston: Dinner…
• 44:27
  Tad Eggleston: with, like, all of these war journalists, and, you know, you start with, and you, Nicholas, what war-torn countries have you visited? And he's like, oh, none of them. War-torn countries aren't really my thing. And all three of his dinner mates look at him like.
• 44:44
  Tad Eggleston: So why live in Afghanistan, then?
• 44:48
  Phil: So…
• 44:48
  Tad Eggleston: the war's over in Afghanistan, isn't it?
• 44:51
  Tad Eggleston: And one of them's like, not exactly. Wow. And then another. In my organization, we don't hire anyone under 30.
• 45:00
  Tad Eggleston: Just think about it. For our own safety, we never leave the house or the guest house. Young people are like caged lions. They go crazy. They're guaranteed to lose it in 3 months. And Nicholas is like, well, I'm only going there for a 2-month job anyway. Another one's like, that's what they all say. But they're still there, 2 years later, hanging out in the same expat restaurants.
• 45:22
  Tad Eggleston: going to the same expat parties with the same expats. Are you an alcoholic, Mr. Wild? If not, you soon will be.
• 45:31
  Phil: Wow. Is… so is this… is this,
• 45:34
  Phil: Comic of a true story, or…
• 45:37
  Tad Eggleston: I believe it is, I believe it's actual non-fiction comics.
• 45:41
  Phil: That's awesome.
• 45:41
  Tad Eggleston: So, like…
• 45:44
  Tad Eggleston: And then the first few pages with him in Kabul is noticing how much it's, like, rampant cell phone culture, and…
• 45:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 45:56
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I'm interested.
• 45:58
  Phil: Nice. No, that little snippet, that's all it took to interest me, you know.
• 46:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right, it's like, wow! And this is, this is, like, the way it's described at…
• 46:09
  Tad Eggleston: The Humanoids website is a satirical autobiography
• 46:15
  Tad Eggleston: about a young Frenchman and his hilarious yet poignant adventures in the heart of Afghanistan.
• 46:21
  Phil: Wow.
• 46:21
  Tad Eggleston: In 2005, Nicholas Wilde is a French cartoonist. He's broke and about to be homeless. He's a man without a plan. That is, until destiny shows up in his inbox, a paid job, in Afghanistan.
• 46:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. In this graphic travelogue series, Nicholas Weil brilliantly explores the differences between the Afghan cultures around him and his own, as he and his fellow expats, friends, crash Azura celebrations, avoid the afterlife, and muse on the differences between Christian Easter egg hunts, and Islamic penance.
• 46:54
  Phil: Hmm.
• 46:55
  Tad Eggleston: And there are… there are two volumes to this.
• 47:00
  Phil: Alright.
• 47:01
  Tad Eggleston: So… so yeah, that… that was what I read from the Humanoids Bundle Part 2.
• 47:06
  Tad Eggleston: This time, it's part of their Life Drawn series.
• 47:09
  Tad Eggleston: And, as we just said, it was… how many dollars for how many items for the humanoids bundle?
• 47:15
  Phil: $25 for… let's your humanoids. Yeah, $20 for 40 items, which is 132 volumes, because that's.
• 47:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right, because it counts the title as the… As the item.
• 47:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, this was two volumes, but it's only counted as one item among the titles.
• 47:37
  Phil: Yeah. Similarly, izuna, the series I read, fantasy series, had 3 volumes. The first one was only, like.
• 47:44
  Phil: 50 pages.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, 50 pages are a relatively standard volume. Like, if you look at… Distillery?
• 47:54
  Tad Eggleston: or… the… DC Black Label oversized books, those are essentially European album form.
• 48:04
  Phil: You…
• 48:05
  Tad Eggleston: That's a lot of what this stuff comes out as.
• 48:09
  Phil: I think reading that series at that page size would be a lot better than how I read it, which was on the phone.
• 48:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no. Often, oftentimes,
• 48:23
  Tad Eggleston: European comics… like, European comics only work well on phones if they have been well designed for panel to panel.
• 48:32
  Phil: Yeah, and Yeah, it was, I would definitely, I would definitely want to read this on at least a tablet, you know? Right. Because that's the thing, so, like.
• 48:42
  Phil: admittedly, from what I read, it was interesting because all of the panels were pretty detail-y illustrated, and like, you know, it… it…
• 48:52
  Tad Eggleston: I'm looking at just a little bit at the Humble Bundle right now.
• 48:56
  Phil: Yeah.
• 48:57
  Tad Eggleston: This is where they cross over with manga, because…
• 49:00
  Phil: Well, the…
• 49:00
  Tad Eggleston: Bandai Disney has a huge appreciation for manga.
• 49:04
  Phil: But that's the thing, is this is… this is, a little less manga, a little closer to, Kamigawa, which is a magic set.
• 49:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 49:12
  Phil: That this reminds me of. You know, Europeans doing, Eastern-inspired stories. It was okay. You know, for something that had a tribe of talking cats, I wanted to like it more.
• 49:24
  Phil: But it… it was… it was pretty standard fantasy stuff,
• 49:30
  Tad Eggleston: Which is possible. Which is fine.
• 49:32
  Phil: You know.
• 49:32
  Tad Eggleston: The best of… the best of publishers is gonna have stuff that still only fits to… to… Oh, yeah. …to people who are the specific market for it, but will also acknowledge that you… you probably read it in… I mean, you acknowledged. You probably read it in the worst possible way.
• 49:51
  Phil: Oh, yeah. Easily.
• 49:53
  Tad Eggleston: To… to read it.
• 49:55
  Phil: Yes. And not only that, there's totally possible that new and fantastical things could happen in Volumes 2 and 3.
• 50:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 50:02
  Phil: just the first one was a little bit more quiet, you know, it was, it was,
• 50:06
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's… that's the other thing that I have definitely… I mean, I don't want to guarantee it for…
• 50:12
  Tad Eggleston: Izuna, because I haven't read Izuna, so I'm not speaking of Izuna. But one of the things that I appreciate about a lot of European
• 50:23
  Tad Eggleston: Comics is… is they seem to…
• 50:27
  Tad Eggleston: Trust the reader to stay with them.
• 50:31
  Tad Eggleston: To allow for slow burns, allow for things to play out.
• 50:36
  Tad Eggleston: Allow for the beauty of the spaces in between?
• 50:42
  Phil: And that was one thing that…
• 50:45
  Phil: I mean, where I feel bad saying this, having read it on the phone, but, like, some of the pages felt cluttered.
• 50:51
  Phil: Like.
• 50:52
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 50:53
  Phil: it was one of those things where, okay, there's a lot of panels, and also a lot of detail in these illustrations. You know, it was almost like…
• 51:02
  Phil: too much… Too much visually was happening on a page, but not enough.
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: And I get… I get that argument, and I don't completely ag…
• 51:11
  Tad Eggleston: disagree with it, but I also think that it's a uniquely… I think the… for me, the more European comics I read, the more I realize that I'm gonna get more panels with more detail that are meant to be read slower.
• 51:27
  Phil: That's fair, that's a good point.
• 51:28
  Phil: That is a really good point, actually.
• 51:31
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they're trying to both maximize their space.
• 51:36
  Tad Eggleston: And not cut things just because they don't move the action along.
• 51:42
  Phil: Right.
• 51:46
  Tad Eggleston: Did I accidentally lock Artie in here? Hold on a second. Artie is asking to, be let out. So, Phil, talk about…
• 51:54
  Tad Eggleston: Talk about, European comics for 30 seconds while I let the cat out.
• 51:58
  Phil: This is gonna be tough, I don't know how I'm gonna do this, you know? Thinking of some of the European comics I've read, I did get a, French humor, comic as a gift from my parents one year that was something, something about,
• 52:16
  Phil: Oh, something about Ella.
• 52:18
  Tad Eggleston: Being all timid.
• 52:20
  Phil: So you opened the door for her, but she didn't want to go out? Or now she's out?
• 52:23
  Tad Eggleston: No, because now she is. Kelly had to call her.
• 52:26
  Tad Eggleston: But it was like, yeah, you… you opened the door, but you're still in here.
• 52:33
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't want to come out of the bed when you're in here.
• 52:37
  Phil: She's trying to…
• 52:38
  Tad Eggleston: I sometimes let you pet me now, that is strictly on my terms. As always.
• 52:45
  Phil: As… as is their right, you know?
• 52:48
  Tad Eggleston: And only when you're sitting or lying down… not chase me.
• 52:53
  Phil: That's an interesting caveat, although I do have… I do have a little guy who only wants me to hold him when I'm sitting, if I pick him up while I'm.
• 53:00
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, no, I'm not allowed to hold her at all yet.
• 53:03
  Phil: Oh, how… is this a new cat, or…
• 53:06
  Tad Eggleston: We've had her for… we've had her and Walter, her brother, for…
• 53:10
  Tad Eggleston: Like, a year and a half now.
• 53:12
  Phil: Okay.
• 53:13
  Tad Eggleston: But we got them as closer to 1-year-olds, and they were rescues, and we kind of wound up with them because they were having trouble finding
• 53:22
  Tad Eggleston: A place for them, and initially, we didn't take them… Because Matt had… had,
• 53:29
  Tad Eggleston: Diabetes, and we just… we didn't want to take on having…
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: two young cats that we had to figure out stuff with, with two middle-aged cats and an old cat that had diabetes. But then, when they were still looking for somebody after Matt passed away, we decided to take them on. It was, like, two months before they lived outside of one room.
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: Again, almost entirely by their own choice.
• 53:54
  Phil: Wow.
• 53:55
  Tad Eggleston: you know, they staked out a room, and mostly under the bed of that room, and… That's funny.
• 54:04
  Phil: That's real funny. So you have 4 cats right now?
• 54:08
  Tad Eggleston: Four cats and a dog.
• 54:09
  Phil: Nice.
• 54:11
  Tad Eggleston: So… But yeah, I don't know what you said the rest of the way there, but I will say…
• 54:16
  Phil: I was trying to remember a title of a French comedy comic I had received for Christmas.
• 54:21
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 54:22
  Phil: Yeah, something about elephants. If I find it, I'll text you a picture of it, for sure.
• 54:26
  Tad Eggleston: But this is where I will say, like, even with the mixed reviews this week, I can't recommend to any comic book person, and particularly anybody who likes the medium of comics, but not necessarily superheroes.
• 54:42
  Phil: -
• 54:42
  Tad Eggleston: That…
• 54:44
  Phil: Also.
• 54:44
  Tad Eggleston: That exploring… exploring European comics is definitely something that you should do.
• 54:49
  Phil: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's the thing, is even though, you know, I found a series that I wish I'd like more, there's still 38 other series that we haven't looked at.
• 55:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 55:01
  Phil: talked about in there, and I'm.
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and like, just going through, I have read and loved Black Pack Cat Social Club.
• 55:07
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 55:08
  Phil: Okay.
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: I… have read Megalex and think it's good, it's part of the Johto-verse. Nick Noven and the Bloody Queen was relatively good. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. That was… that was part of the H…
• 55:23
  Phil: The H1 line, yep.
• 55:24
  Tad Eggleston: H1 line in the U.S,
• 55:27
  Tad Eggleston: Then we're back to Jodiverse with the Meta Barons, Jodorowski and Jimenez.
• 55:33
  Tad Eggleston: Like, Jodoroski has done a lot of great comics, and to me, it's a debate between the Inkle with Moibius, and the Meta Barons with Jimenez, which is the best. The Stark conspiracy is Jimenez working, I wanna say, back in the…
• 55:54
  Tad Eggleston: In the… the… Maybe not.
• 56:01
  Tad Eggleston: that might be in… in the Johtoverse, it might not, I can't tell for certain. Because it's only recently that there have been some stuff done in the Johto-verse that Johto wasn't a…
• 56:12
  Tad Eggleston: Evolved in at all.
• 56:13
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read all of the White Llama, but I've read parts of it, and it, like, if you are into Joe Doroski and his weird metaphysical stuff in either movies or comics, it's probably for you. And George Bess's…
• 56:27
  Tad Eggleston: art is phenomenal, and, like, if weird metaphysical whatnot is not for you, well, you probably don't want to do much with Jodorovsky, period, and definitely not the White Llama.
• 56:40
  Phil: Why are you listening to this podcast?
• 56:41
  Tad Eggleston: You know, even people listening to this podcast are allowed to have different…
• 56:46
  Phil: Yeah, but I'm just saying that the odds of someone who doesn't like weird stuff…
• 56:51
  Tad Eggleston: I know, but I mean, like, Jodoroski sometimes gets too weird for me.
• 56:55
  Phil: That's fair.
• 56:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is where I, like, Jota, I mean, like… and for that matter, he doesn't just get weird, he pushes boundaries in ways that I bet would make you uncomfortable.
• 57:07
  Phil: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:09
  Tad Eggleston: Like, really uncomfortable.
• 57:10
  Phil: This is where the emphasis here is that people… I imagine the listeners to this podcast enjoy weird things, which may or may not include Joe Doroscow.
• 57:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But the general fear…
• 57:22
  Phil: Like, here's the thing, I can't imagine a comic book reader who does not like something that's a little bit weird. Like, no matter.
• 57:30
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 57:30
  Phil: are, as a comic book reader, there's gonna be something weird that you enjoy.
• 57:33
  Tad Eggleston: That's true. But then we've got Through the Clouds of Smoke, the Freud's Final Days from Life Drawn. I haven't read it, but, like, all of the Life Drawn biography-type stuff that I've read has been phenomenal. It's a great line.
• 57:45
  Tad Eggleston: Vietnamese Memories is another life-drawn autobiographical thing, which I haven't read, but has been on my list for a long time. Basil and Victoria, I've read just enough of to know that it's, like.
• 57:58
  Tad Eggleston: It's got that,
• 58:03
  Tad Eggleston: Kinda… young adult?
• 58:07
  Tad Eggleston: But in the best way.
• 58:11
  Tad Eggleston: mystery-type thing going. Like, the tagline here is London 1887, when the British Empire is at its peak and influences the majority of the world, most of London still lives amid poverty, disease, and crime. Basil and Victoria are two of the thousands of street urchins who survive by hustling, selling rats, and sleeping on the docks. Helped by Cromwell, their faithful bulldog, the trio travel from the mean streets of Whitechapel to exotic, distant islands.
• 58:36
  Tad Eggleston: Meeting famous and infamous historical and literary figures along the way as they lovingly bicker and squabble the entire time.
• 58:44
  Tad Eggleston: So, like… Somewhere between comic strips and…
• 58:52
  Phil: Like a rom-com.
• 58:53
  Tad Eggleston: History adventure, right, you know, a little bit of tin-tin. It's something that, to me, feels almost uniquely European, but it's on my list.
• 59:02
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 59:03
  Phil: I can understand that.
• 59:04
  Tad Eggleston: Next one I don't know anything about. John Lorde.
• 59:08
  Tad Eggleston: if I recall correctly, was about, like… Shipping and mysteries.
• 59:15
  Tad Eggleston: Both John Lord and… The book that comes right after this among, available, titles, Luke Hale.
• 59:27
  Tad Eggleston: Deal with, like… the U.S. in the 20s, in a much… more…
• 59:38
  Tad Eggleston: clear-eyed view… version than we're used to seeing from U.S.
• 59:43
  Tad Eggleston: Writers or commentators.
• 59:46
  Tad Eggleston: put that together with… I think it's in this one, too…
• 59:59
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe it was one that was in the other one. There's a miss…
• 1:00:04
  Tad Eggleston: It's like a mystery that involves a…
• 1:00:09
  Tad Eggleston: Black business owner that has to deal with some white.
• 1:00:14
  Tad Eggleston: nonsense… But I think that that was in the other… Bundle. Mandalay is a fantastic… like… swashbuckling type…
• 1:00:27
  Tad Eggleston: but also dealing with the… I mean, that's one of the things that they're great at. I've come across a lot of books
• 1:00:33
  Tad Eggleston: from Europe that do well, is like, here's a swashbuckling thing, but we're not gonna gloss over the socio-political ramifications.
• 1:00:44
  Phil: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:45
  Tad Eggleston: they're gonna be worked into it. You're gonna see how…
• 1:00:49
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:00:51
  Tad Eggleston: It's not just swashbuckling, it's racism, and it's…
• 1:00:56
  Phil: Right, right. There's more going on here than just action.
• 1:00:59
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, this selection in general is just… it's a really interesting selection of… You know, sci-fi, fantasy, history…
• 1:01:10
  Tad Eggleston: memoir, crime, Oh, yeah. Whatnot,
• 1:01:15
  Tad Eggleston: and at least the ones that I've read, and I would expect most of them, because it's very much the humanoid's way, really represent the best of…
• 1:01:28
  Tad Eggleston: a somewhat… somewhat recognizably European.
• 1:01:34
  Tad Eggleston: storytelling standpoint. Yeah. That…
• 1:01:37
  Tad Eggleston: that I think expects more from their readers than the United States does, particularly with comics.
• 1:01:45
  Phil: I mean, it's funny, because… One of the series that I think is not with humanoids that I…
• 1:01:53
  Phil: instantly comes up when you say European comics is, Black Sad?
• 1:01:57
  Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, Black Set's amazing.
• 1:01:58
  Phil: Yeah, which is another one of those that, like, you know, looks like, oh, it's a talking cat detective, but it's like, yeah, it is a really…
• 1:02:05
  Tad Eggleston: It's not.
• 1:02:05
  Phil: Cool Talking Cat Detective.
• 1:02:07
  Tad Eggleston: And again.
• 1:02:08
  Phil: It's like…
• 1:02:09
  Tad Eggleston: U.S. racial issues in a way that you very rarely see in the United States?
• 1:02:13
  Phil: is like a hard-boiled noir story that happens to have anthropomorphic characters, you know?
• 1:02:19
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't shy away from the socio-political.
• 1:02:22
  Phil: Yes, that too.
• 1:02:24
  Tad Eggleston: aspects of…
• 1:02:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's setting. It doesn't say, we're gonna pretend this is happening in a world where nothing else happens.
• 1:02:32
  Phil: Right.
• 1:02:35
  Phil: Oh…
• 1:02:36
  Tad Eggleston: You know, which I think is sometimes something that we have trouble with, with American storytelling in general.
• 1:02:42
  Phil: Yeah, that's a good.
• 1:02:43
  Tad Eggleston: But in comics and movies in particular.
• 1:02:46
  Tad Eggleston: They're so afraid of upsetting somebody by portraying a reality that they don't like.
• 1:02:56
  Tad Eggleston: That we try to portray stories that will elicit that reality to people who are in the know, and somehow be accepted by the people who don't think that there's anything non-fictional about them whatsoever.
• 1:03:09
  Phil: also, you know, I feel like there is so much about the storytelling in American stuff these days that, like you said, they do not act like there is an outside world from their.
• 1:03:23
  Tad Eggleston: I just don'.
• 1:03:23
  Phil: You know, it is just, hey, this is the focus, you know, these 5 people are the only people that exist.
• 1:03:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just going all the way back to the beginning of the podcast, like, Dolly was apolitical, sure.
• 1:03:37
  Phil: Oh, shit.
• 1:03:38
  Tad Eggleston: He didn't say, hey, Republicans, let People get married.
• 1:03:43
  Tad Eggleston: She didn't say, hey, Republicans, Stop!
• 1:03:48
  Tad Eggleston: Beating on trans kids.
• 1:03:50
  Phil: Right.
• 1:03:51
  Tad Eggleston: She just said… gay people should be able to get married. Why shouldn't they? And, and…
• 1:03:58
  Tad Eggleston: Trans kids are… are God's children, too. Why are we… why are we abusing them?
• 1:04:02
  Phil: Yep.
• 1:04:05
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:04:06
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like the best of United States storytelling sometimes goes that route, where it's like.
• 1:04:14
  Tad Eggleston: We can't call out the people who need to be called out.
• 1:04:17
  Tad Eggleston: How far can we go before they realize?
• 1:04:20
  Tad Eggleston: That we're calling them out, particularly because they're so often able to decide that they're being called out long before they… I mean, like…
• 1:04:27
  Phil: Well, that's…
• 1:04:28
  Tad Eggleston: Look at the way the right blew up over the Odyssey.
• 1:04:31
  Phil: Well, I mean, I'm also thinking of… that's one of the kind of problems with our, you know.
• 1:04:38
  Phil: national cultural literacy ability, is that…
• 1:04:41
  Tad Eggleston: Heavenly!
• 1:04:42
  Phil: People look at things, and… Get mad about them when it's.
• 1:04:48
  Tad Eggleston: They want to look for how they're being attacked, rather than what they can learn.
• 1:04:51
  Phil: Yes, exactly. The amount at which we are depending upon outrage and controversy is just unsustainable.
• 1:05:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right. And, like, this is a place where I know I drive you up the wall sometimes, where I'm sitting there going, yeah, I just can't pile onto this, because.
• 1:05:09
  Tad Eggleston: Because, yes, there's a conversation to be had, but it's not being had by saying, this person is bad.
• 1:05:14
  Phil: Right, and I'm… I'm… about… I'm even talking about more… even more broad things, like…
• 1:05:21
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, de- I mean, the more broad it gets, the more this becomes true.
• 1:05:25
  Phil: Exactly, exactly. I was just thinking of, like…
• 1:05:27
  Tad Eggleston: I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't letting either side off the mat.
• 1:05:31
  Phil: Right, right. No, I was, I was thinking of something…
• 1:05:34
  Tad Eggleston: Because I think the left has a real problem with…
• 1:05:37
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I didn't vote for Bush, and therefore, I was never part of the problem.
• 1:05:43
  Phil: Yes, yes.
• 1:05:44
  Tad Eggleston: Even though I'm willing to say that you're so dumb that I'm not willing to talk to you.
• 1:05:50
  Phil: Yeah, there's that. That's a whole… that's a whole thing. No. I was thinking of something as simple as, like.
• 1:05:56
  Phil: when The Little Mermaid, was starring a Black actress. You know, people getting upset at that. It's like, that's… that's… this… why is this happening? I'm thinking about, like.
• 1:06:07
  Tad Eggleston: But also, the people who get upset back, rather than just saying, Really? Mermaids have a color?
• 1:06:15
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:06:17
  Phil: You know, yeah, it's completely ridiculous. This is the kind of thing that applies to…
• 1:06:21
  Tad Eggleston: an awful lot about you, and nothing about Disney right now.
• 1:06:24
  Phil: Yeah. That's… and that's one of those that's, like, to me, it's, like, one-sided stupid, but… but as well as just, like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of, like…
• 1:06:33
  Tad Eggleston: It's treated like one-sided stupid.
• 1:06:35
  Phil: It doesn't. You know, it starts with…
• 1:06:37
  Tad Eggleston: It starts with, oh my god, it's terrible that the Little Mermaid is a person of color, and then it becomes, oh my god, these terrible people who are upset with the Little Mermaid being a person of color, it's like, you're not making things better here! I'm not even saying I completely disagree with your premise, but…
• 1:06:56
  Phil: Right?
• 1:06:57
  Phil: At a certain point.
• 1:06:58
  Tad Eggleston: no productive way…
• 1:07:00
  Phil: Right.
• 1:07:01
  Tad Eggleston: To oppose. To know from!
• 1:07:04
  Phil: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's like, yeah, and that's… that's one of the other issues we're dealing with now, is… is the amount of, like, pointing out something that's bad can be as attention… can be more attention-getting and damaging than just ignoring it.
• 1:07:19
  Tad Eggleston: Well, particularly, again, if we go, that person is bad. I mean, even though, like, since people have taken the time to go through it, it's pretty clear that Tilly Walden didn't
• 1:07:32
  Tad Eggleston: Plagiarize anything.
• 1:07:34
  Phil: No, yeah, that's, that's, that's one of the…
• 1:07:36
  Tad Eggleston: What was the initial story?
• 1:07:39
  Phil: Yeah, the initial story was, was claims of plagiarism.
• 1:07:42
  Tad Eggleston: It wasn't about bad… it wasn't about bad communication, it wasn't about, you know, the problems of… of translating between mediums when there's limited source material. It was about, did Tilly Walden steal from an academic?
• 1:07:59
  Phil: Right, right, right. That was… that was the framing of it from top to bottom.
• 1:08:02
  Tad Eggleston: And even as the framing shifted, it was, is the academic a petty whatever?
• 1:08:08
  Phil: Right, right, right.
• 1:08:10
  Tad Eggleston: None of it was about the actual conversation, which is, like…
• 1:08:15
  Tad Eggleston: When you've got things that have limited source material.
• 1:08:18
  Phil: counts.
• 1:08:18
  Tad Eggleston: How do you differentiate between, like, what level of changing things, you know? How much is…
• 1:08:26
  Phil: I think it's less that, and it's more that everyone weighed in before they'd read
• 1:08:32
  Phil: Both books, much less either book.
• 1:08:35
  Tad Eggleston: No, absolutely.
• 1:08:36
  Phil: You know, and that's one of the other problems.
• 1:08:38
  Tad Eggleston: But that's, again, because they're not even trying to have the right conversation.
• 1:08:41
  Phil: Right, it's… yeah, yeah. It's just picking sides. Constantly.
• 1:08:45
  Tad Eggleston: They're not trying to have a conversation. They're trying to… to indicate… I hate…
• 1:08:51
  Tad Eggleston: Hate it when I fall into… they're trying to indicate their virtue.
• 1:08:55
  Tad Eggleston: And I just, I was looking…
• 1:08:58
  Tad Eggleston: way to say that, because, like, it's become the over, oh, virtual… 90% of the time where people are virtue signaling, no, they're not. Like, that's what you're saying, so you don't have to listen to them.
• 1:09:09
  Phil: And that's, yeah, right? And that's where instead of, instead of… like, I get what you're saying, and I think that there's something valid behind
• 1:09:16
  Phil: the idea of people arbitrarily choosing, but to me, it seems less about signaling virtue and more about, like, being correct. People… people want to be…
• 1:09:25
  Phil: correct about things. They want to be in the Yes, but I…
• 1:09:28
  Tad Eggleston: I honestly think that that's part of virtue. I mean, finding the right word is, like…
• 1:09:34
  Phil: She's a bit different than Alice.
• 1:09:36
  Tad Eggleston: It's from…
• 1:09:37
  Tad Eggleston: From a social standpoint, from an educational standpoint, one of the biggest problems we have in this nation is…
• 1:09:47
  Tad Eggleston: Both a desire to lay blame, but to specifically lay blame on someone else.
• 1:09:54
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:09:55
  Tad Eggleston: And a desire to…
• 1:10:00
  Tad Eggleston: Assume that anything that somebody does that we think is out of the ordinary, or… Or…
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: Inconvenient to us is being done specifically for that reason, not because they're expressing their own needs.
• 1:10:19
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and this… and this lack of understanding that people have different sensory, emotional… Social, mental, physical needs.
• 1:10:31
  Tad Eggleston: Like, you know, what's easy for one person is not easy for another.
• 1:10:37
  Phil: That's true.
• 1:10:37
  Phil: That's absolutely true.
• 1:10:38
  Tad Eggleston: So, but you're right, we're going all over the place, so thank you.
• 1:10:42
  Tad Eggleston: we will jump into 3 books I hope will be spectacular, and it was a little tough for next week, which is why I cheated, and I put Crowd… Crowbound in the books I know will be spectacular, even though I have a PDF of it that I haven't read yet.
• 1:10:59
  Phil: But, like, it's Chef Lemon.
• 1:11:00
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's…
• 1:11:03
  Phil: That's as safe a bed of spectacular as you can get these days.
• 1:11:07
  Tad Eggleston: Pretty much. That's the way I figured it. And I need… I needed to have room for Batman, Superman, and Weird Al.
• 1:11:14
  Phil: Yeah, that cannot be ignored.
• 1:11:16
  Tad Eggleston: Mark Waid, Weird Al Yankovic, and Tad Schoning.
• 1:11:20
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 1:11:20
  Phil: A once-in-a-lifetime crossover, if there ever was one.
• 1:11:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Save Now, number 4 from Matt Kint and Thomas Giarello is, wrapping up from Bad Idea, and Warbird, number 1 from Derek Coldstead.
• 1:11:33
  Tad Eggleston: Robert Venditti, Alex Maliv, and Asad Ribbek is starting at Bad Idea. Also, The Archie of the Decision and Other Stories to Look is edition
• 1:11:43
  Tad Eggleston: by and curated by Dan Parent and Tom King comes out this week, so that goes back to what I was saying about they're really doing some good stuff about, hey.
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Let us remind you… that we're not making Archie good? Archie has been good before.
• 1:12:04
  Tad Eggleston: Check this out.
• 1:12:06
  Tad Eggleston: So Phil, what's your, your giant-sized trade waiter pick?
• 1:12:09
  Phil: That's gonna be A Ghost Arm Made of Angry Ghosts from Oliver Mertz, Alex Diotto, and Taylor Esposito, being published, by Oni after having been crowdfunded before.
• 1:12:21
  Tad Eggleston: I need…
• 1:12:21
  Phil: But it.
• 1:12:22
  Tad Eggleston: I need to make a real point of finally reading this this week. I have had a digital copy for more than a year. I've had my physical copy for more than 6 months. I somehow haven't read it.
• 1:12:33
  Phil: We…
• 1:12:34
  Tad Eggleston: Can we make a…
• 1:12:35
  Phil: Great response.
• 1:12:35
  Tad Eggleston: Challenge me. Challenge me. No, I don't want to make a great responsibility. I don't want to make a great responsibility, because I'm still… I mean, even if we don't.
• 1:12:43
  Phil: of a responsibility to read the books.
• 1:12:45
  Tad Eggleston: But it's not the great responsibility.
• 1:12:49
  Tad Eggleston: among other things, I'm liking plugging these Humble Bundles. These are a way in a bad economy for people to explore a lot of comics at once. If we don't manage to be able to do the EC one before it ends, because we were talking off-air, and I'll tell our listeners, there is a fantastic EC Comics
• 1:13:09
  Tad Eggleston: Humble Bundle from Fanographics right now, that we've talked about, that we may talk about next week, if it gets extended, as so many things have been extended lately. If it doesn't get extended, we'll probably be looking at either image in the 20s, or…
• 1:13:25
  Tad Eggleston: the… the Valiant.
• 1:13:30
  Tad Eggleston: bundle. Either one of them are totally worth… exploring, because…
• 1:13:36
  Tad Eggleston: the… yeah, it's gotta get extended, because right now, the Disney one that started before it has 9 days left.
• 1:13:47
  Tad Eggleston: So I gotta believe it's getting extended, but if it doesn't, we'll be talking one of the other ones. For that matter, we didn't even talk… do we have the Godzilla one in our list yet? The Godzilla one looks pretty good.
• 1:13:58
  Phil: It's in our list, yeah, the Kaijuana.
• 1:14:00
  Tad Eggleston: I couldn't remember whether it was. There's a lot of good Comic-Combo bundles right now.
• 1:14:06
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, we'll either be talking EC Comics, or we'll be talking, One of the very recent
• 1:14:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's so crazy that they could put a 70 comic bundle together for half a decade.
• 1:14:21
  Tad Eggleston: A little bit more than half a decade. And have every one of them be…
• 1:14:26
  Tad Eggleston: outstanding, and I also love how new that they've got. They've already got Assorted Crisis Events Volume 2 in that bundle.
• 1:14:33
  Phil: That's pretty… yeah, that is…
• 1:14:35
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 1:14:35
  Phil: You know, both best of the decade so far, and…
• 1:14:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:14:40
  Phil: Emphasis on so far.
• 1:14:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Forged, Free Planet.
• 1:14:48
  Tad Eggleston: Exquisite Corpses, Echolands, Golden Rage, Little Monsters…
• 1:14:56
  Tad Eggleston: just so… plastic, death and dolls?
• 1:15:00
  Tad Eggleston: Is that… Wait a minute, so did it…
• 1:15:07
  Phil: What's that?
• 1:15:08
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, that's… okay, that's just the sequel.
• 1:15:12
  Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, did they put out a collection that had
• 1:15:15
  Tad Eggleston: More than one of the mineral one, or the… the… the material?
• 1:15:22
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, it's just… it's that Texas Blood.
• 1:15:25
  Tad Eggleston: Three volumes. Do a powerbomb. Escape. Napalm lullaby, sunburn.
• 1:15:34
  Tad Eggleston: We're taking you down with us, you'll do bad things. Cosmic Detective.
• 1:15:39
  Tad Eggleston: And I'll…
• 1:15:40
  Phil: I don't even remember Cosmic Detective? What is that?
• 1:15:42
  Tad Eggleston: Cosmic Detective.
• 1:15:44
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:15:46
  Tad Eggleston: During the pandemic.
• 1:15:48
  Phil: That's, that's, Dan Rubin?
• 1:15:52
  Tad Eggleston: David Rubin.
• 1:15:53
  Phil: David Rubin, that's it, okay.
• 1:15:54
  Tad Eggleston: needed money, essentially, so Jeff Lemire and Matt Kent wrote him a story, and they.
• 1:16:00
  Phil: Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, it sounded familiar. I was.
• 1:16:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  Phil: And it took me a second, took me a second, okay.
• 1:16:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. So, like… so yeah, that's why I'm not willing to go with a single graphic novel yet. I think there are too many things that I want to plug, and there have been…
• 1:16:16
  Tad Eggleston: too many great Humble Bundles, which is such a way, particularly in an era where I'm even having trouble buying all the comics I want to, a way to give our listeners an opportunity to, hey, make this money, support this charity, and explore all of these comics.
• 1:16:32
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:16:33
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like that's the best use of our great responsibility.
• 1:16:37
  Tad Eggleston: For a little bit, if that makes sense. And if any of our listeners disagree with me, I've just said this all on the air. Email me at 22panelspodcast at gmail.com and tell me I'm full of shit.
• 1:16:52
  Phil: Yasu.
• 1:16:53
  Tad Eggleston: For Phil and myself, this has been 22 Panels, and we will see you. 22 Panels, episode 251.
• 1:17:03
  Tad Eggleston: And we will see you after the next page.
• 1:17:06
  Tad Eggleston: the leader.
• 1:17:08
  Tad Eggleston: Success.