Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / Heroes of Bronze Book Club #1 - Kree/Skrull War pt. 1

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Heroes of Bronze Book Club #1 - Kree/Skrull War pt. 1 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels and, the formerly Fourth World Book Club
• 0:09
  Tad Eggleston: now the book club to be named later, with Mark Pratt and Sharon Hockel Road, and we're gonna go adjacent to the Cree Scroll War, er, well, no, not adjacent to the Cree Scroll War. We're going to the Cree Scroll War, which was adjacent to Fourth World. They were… they were coming out semi-simultaneously in the 70s, and taking
• 0:30
  Tad Eggleston: both… both universes in a… in a cosmic direction. So, what did we think of the first three, three issues?
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: Of the Kree-Skroll War.
• 0:43
  Tad Eggleston: With… was Sal Bushema on pencils? Wright Thomas writing?
• 0:48
  Tad Eggleston: Does that sound right?
• 0:49
  Mark Pracht: great… the great Sal Bushema.
• 0:51
  Sean Harklerode: I would say the great Sal Bushima.
• 0:54
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 0:55
  Mark Pracht: I will tell you, it… after 15 months of reading the Fourth World.
• 1:05
  Mark Pracht: I felt like, okay, so, you know, there's 9 issues in this collected edition, and I think there was ancillary books that sort of tied into it, but that's not included in what we're reading, which is fine.
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, everything I've… Red?
• 1:21
  Tad Eggleston: Because I was looking to see if we were supposed to read more, and I haven't found anything. I think it might have just been these 9.
• 1:29
  Mark Pracht: I like… I… I was very happy that it felt like
• 1:40
  Mark Pracht: Somebody knew… like, it feels like everybody knows where they're heading.
• 1:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:46
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 1:47
  Mark Pracht: like, there's a plan that doesn't… that… that… and granted, like, what Kirby was doing… and look, we started talking about the Fourth World, so… and the whole reason that I suggested this was because it was sort of happening at the same time, is that, you know, Kirby's sort of, like, shotgun approach to ideas…
• 2:08
  Mark Pracht: You know, this is so tied in to what the concurrent Marvel continuity, you know, Captain Mar-Vell.
• 2:20
  Mark Pracht: I, I, I always loved the…
• 2:22
  Tad Eggleston: Before he dies of cancer.
• 2:24
  Mark Pracht: the hyphen.
• 2:26
  Mark Pracht: Is, you know, clearly this is wrapping up stuff from his canceled series, right?
• 2:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 2:32
  Mark Pracht: And,
• 2:34
  Mark Pracht: And I… I dug that. I… I dug that these first three issues did not involve, like, what we would consider the
• 2:43
  Mark Pracht: the core Avengers lineup.
• 2:47
  Mark Pracht: Nope. I liked having the… the sort of ancillary Avengers characters there. I liked that… the… the…
• 2:56
  Mark Pracht: Ronan the Accuser's… Like, you know.
• 3:02
  Mark Pracht: I think Sean, right before we said it, started saying they called this the Kree-Skull War, Skrull War, and I'm like, but clearly that's what we're heading towards, you know, because, like, in that last issue.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: The Skrulls get mentioned in the third issue here.
• 3:15
  Mark Pracht: Right. Right. And then,
• 3:18
  Mark Pracht: But I, you know, like, I can see somebody going, like, okay, and then we'll do this, and then we'll do this, and then we'll do this, and
• 3:26
  Mark Pracht: I dug it.
• 3:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, at the end of Issue 1, it feels like we're setting up the Kree…
• 3:32
  Mark Pracht: North War.
• 3:33
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 3:35
  Mark Pracht: Well, and I thought the Kree plan was… I mean, it was… it was comic book Hokum, but it was also…
• 3:43
  Mark Pracht: Pretty clear.
• 3:45
  Mark Pracht: What they were doing, you know?
• 3:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I don't know, I… I…
• 3:54
  Mark Pracht: I guess what I'm saying is that after 15 months of sort of, like, bouncing off the walls and being totally…
• 4:03
  Mark Pracht: In love with the artwork and the ideas, but not feeling like it was really… controlled.
• 4:12
  Mark Pracht: This feels like a nice, solid, streamlined Marvel Bronze Age story.
• 4:18
  Mark Pracht: And the other thing is, after reading that much Kirby, you can totally see how the Kirby…
• 4:26
  Mark Pracht: Kirby style was… folded into everyone, like, especially.
• 4:32
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 4:32
  Mark Pracht: Amos. Yeah.
• 4:34
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, that's my thoughts right off the bat.
• 4:37
  Tad Eggleston: But also, you can tell how, even when something's overwritten, which this is still overwritten, as is the era.
• 4:45
  Tad Eggleston: Thomas is more polished than Kirby as a writer.
• 4:49
  Mark Pracht: percent.
• 4:50
  Mark Pracht: Well, and Thomas also kind of has a handle on the, the kids, slang that…
• 5:00
  Mark Pracht: Jack doesn't really have, you know?
• 5:04
  Mark Pracht: And I had totally…
• 5:05
  Sean Harklerode: It could be a little much still, though.
• 5:07
  Mark Pracht: Oh, sure.
• 5:07
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, I mean, it's not. It's completely indicative of almost all of the…
• 5:14
  Tad Eggleston: He does not transcend the comic writing style of the era.
• 5:19
  Sean Harklerode: It is hoasty.
• 5:20
  Tad Eggleston: On the good end.
• 5:22
  Sean Harklerode: The rig welding style.
• 5:23
  Tad Eggleston: the era.
• 5:24
  Sean Harklerode: And I particularly… I… I hate the portrayal of Goliath in this.
• 5:31
  Sean Harklerode: I… it's like, he's Hawkeye. When did he talk? Why…
• 5:36
  Sean Harklerode: Did he get dumber as he gets bigger?
• 5:39
  Sean Harklerode: I, I don't.
• 5:40
  Tad Eggleston: Totally. Same size brain.
• 5:43
  Sean Harklerode: But…
• 5:45
  Mark Pracht: Well, I had totally… I had totally forgotten…
• 5:48
  Mark Pracht: Because when… when I started reading it, I'm like, oh, this is when Clint Barton became Goliath, and… and I… but I, like, somehow I totally, like, blanked that that had ever happened.
• 5:58
  Tad Eggleston: I had two.
• 6:00
  Mark Pracht: It was like, oh… but you know what? The thing was, is it was clear.
• 6:05
  Mark Pracht: like, immediately.
• 6:07
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 6:08
  Sean Harklerode: Wow.
• 6:09
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, there is a… there is… there is something to say for that Stan Lee attitude of every comic is somebody's first, so you have to make things clear when you first pick it up, you know? Yeah.
• 6:20
  Tad Eggleston: And you know what? I will also say that. These three issues…
• 6:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well, they're tying together a nice introduction To what's coming.
• 6:32
  Tad Eggleston: I think they stand alone, each one of them.
• 6:36
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 6:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, this… this is, like, the… the everycomic is someone's first… At its height.
• 6:45
  Tad Eggleston: You know, this is, this is the, yeah, we're doing storylines, but… But…
• 6:53
  Tad Eggleston: At that point, they weren't really collected.
• 6:56
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, you know, it's all about, let's make this work as is.
• 7:04
  Mark Pracht: Well, and I also liked how, you know, essentially we're watching… we're reading the first act of this overall storyline, and I felt like it came to a really good conclusion.
• 7:14
  Mark Pracht: the first… whatever, you know, the Cree element of it, we resolve that.
• 7:21
  Mark Pracht: And now we're gonna go on to the next thing. So…
• 7:25
  Tad Eggleston: Or at least they've gone, oh, wait, we can't destroy the Earth right now because we have a common foe.
• 7:38
  Tad Eggleston: And I kind of liked that. There was a certain realism to, oh, wait,
• 7:47
  Tad Eggleston: you're not really winning this war, we're giving up because there's this more important thing. I know we were just trying to kill you, would you help us out?
• 7:59
  Tad Eggleston: Cause, like…
• 8:05
  Tad Eggleston: When you're talking about big, huge things, so often that's, like.
• 8:10
  Tad Eggleston: how things work. The common enemy is… is… is so much more than…
• 8:17
  Mark Pracht: I… you may have read further than I did, because when I got to the end of the third one, I didn't think that… like, it was still… like, they were… they needed to… the Kree needed to go back because of the Skrulls.
• 8:28
  Tad Eggleston: I guess they haven't said, will you help us out? But I think that… to me, I felt like there was an implication that, that, like, because we have the Skrulls involved, because,
• 8:40
  Tad Eggleston: because our only reference to the Skrulls before this was, was them being involved with, with,
• 8:46
  Tad Eggleston: Mr. Fantastic. And I did read this long, long ago, but I don't remember for certain. Maybe I wind up being wrong, and we don't get involved on either side. I honestly don't remember.
• 8:58
  Tad Eggleston: But I did feel like it was more than, more than a, we beat back the Kree. The Kree went, oh, we have this other, more important thing to do.
• 9:10
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 9:11
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean… I got the sense that, well, this storyline's over for now.
• 9:17
  Sean Harklerode: But the threat still exists. That's kind of where I… Yeah.
• 9:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but that's also the case anytime, like, we kind of viewed the Russians as a threat before World War II, and then they were our allies for…
• 9:33
  Tad Eggleston: 10 years, and then they were the threat again.
• 9:38
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 9:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, when you're talking about global, or in this case, intergalactic politics, things are very, very rarely as simple as…
• 9:51
  Tad Eggleston: As… you all bad, you all good.
• 9:56
  Mark Pracht: Unless you're an Avenger.
• 9:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 10:00
  Sean Harklerode: you're an Avenger all the way.
• 10:01
  Tad Eggleston: Have you read either of the Civil Wars?
• 10:07
  Mark Pracht: The Civil War… Civil Wars do not exist in this dojo.
• 10:13
  Sean Harklerode: I read the first one.
• 10:15
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: First one's pretty fantastic. The second one's actually, I think, better than it gives… gets credit for.
• 10:21
  Tad Eggleston: But has the problem of having to be compared to the first one?
• 10:26
  Sean Harklerode: I think, for me, I love this lineup. This is the lineup that I would,
• 10:35
  Sean Harklerode: when I was a kid, you know…
• 10:38
  Sean Harklerode: Quicksilver, Wanda, The Vision, Hank and, Janet.
• 10:45
  Sean Harklerode: And, Goliath. I used to play with… you guys remember that big, tall, doll, Quasar?
• 10:51
  Mark Pracht: Yep.
• 10:53
  Sean Harklerode: So, I played with Quasar as Goliath.
• 10:57
  Sean Harklerode: When I was playing with my Migos.
• 11:00
  Sean Harklerode: But, anyway, so yeah, for me, this, this reminds me of, of that the great George Perez.
• 11:11
  Sean Harklerode: Avengers of a few years later, so it was really nice to kind of read something earlier.
• 11:18
  Sean Harklerode: in that run, before things get too weird with… with Wanda and Pietro.
• 11:29
  Sean Harklerode: So I… I really love that. Honestly, I… this is… this is not at all what I was expecting.
• 11:37
  Sean Harklerode: when… when you say, we're gonna read the Kree-Skrull War,
• 11:43
  Sean Harklerode: you know, it's all earthbound, and I'm like, what's… What is this?
• 11:48
  Sean Harklerode: and Mar-Vell, and Rick, and Annihilus, I'm like, well, this is…
• 11:55
  Sean Harklerode: But it's certainly… the first issue, you know.
• 12:00
  Sean Harklerode: Roy did his homework in putting this storyline together.
• 12:04
  Sean Harklerode: Right? Like, they reference, you know, this was in Fantastic Four, and I think in this…
• 12:10
  Sean Harklerode: We have… it doesn't really have the issue references, in it, does it? There are a couple of times when I couldn't find the issues that it was referencing. Maybe that was…
• 12:23
  Tad Eggleston: I read it on Marvel Unlimited, so I had lots of issue references.
• 12:27
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, they're…
• 12:29
  Mark Pracht: I think they were in there.
• 12:30
  Sean Harklerode: There was one… there was one that was missing, or maybe just the way it got, Clipped.
• 12:39
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 12:40
  Sean Harklerode: But anyway…
• 12:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, life…
• 12:43
  Sean Harklerode: Obviously, that history was all just pieced together.
• 12:46
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 12:47
  Sean Harklerode: Which I really liked.
• 12:50
  Mark Pracht: It's sort of the best of that idea of, you know, it's like the Marvel Bronze Age, where there was all that stuff that Stan injected, and that was building up, and they were… and letting somebody come in and be like, how do I start knitting this stuff together?
• 13:06
  Mark Pracht: And I always like that. I mean, just because it's… it's fun, and it helps build that… that unified universe thing. And… and, you know, like, I think…
• 13:18
  Mark Pracht: and forgive me, because I don't… I don't want to continually be like, well, you know, comparing it to the Fourth World, but, you know, like, the characterizations
• 13:27
  Mark Pracht: are so sharp, actually. Like, I feel like every single one of these characters, I'm like, yeah, that's who that is. Yeah, that's who that is. You can say Clint got a little dumber when he became, Goliath, but, I mean, like, at the same time…
• 13:42
  Tad Eggleston: Part of that was also in story, because they were in that place that was making everybody dumber.
• 13:47
  Mark Pracht: Sure, 100%.
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: He's breathing in more of the air, because he's Goliath now.
• 13:56
  Sean Harklerode: Wow, sad.
• 13:57
  Sean Harklerode: What's Roy paying you for this?
• 14:00
  Mark Pracht: You're known.
• 14:00
  Sean Harklerode: Sorry, Joy, it's not paying you anything.
• 14:02
  Mark Pracht: Your, your no prize is in the mail.
• 14:08
  Tad Eggleston: Why did I… was even mentioned.
• 14:11
  Tad Eggleston: I felt like that was in the text somewhere.
• 14:14
  Mark Pracht: It might have been. I don't know. Like, but here's… here's the three things.
• 14:18
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, he is changing, but it's kind of at the very beginning of it.
• 14:24
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know, it just… It's that whole, let's make someone talk like this.
• 14:31
  Sean Harklerode: Because we have to have… it's the fake tension that they always try to build up in the Marvel books.
• 14:37
  Sean Harklerode: Where the heroes are always about to fight.
• 14:40
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 14:40
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 14:41
  Sean Harklerode: That frankly gets a little old for me. Particularly, it's like how they always have been ready to…
• 14:50
  Sean Harklerode: To find, read…
• 14:53
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:54
  Sean Harklerode: I'm like, come on.
• 14:57
  Mark Pracht: Well, that's… that's… that's a… that's a… that's a… that's a… that's an element of his insecurity about himself, you see? And Clint has the same thing. Right.
• 15:09
  Mark Pracht: There was 3 things that I noticed. One, this very much sets up the Hank Pym is more than happy to smack the shit out of Jan at any moment.
• 15:23
  Mark Pracht: when he smacks her off that… that… that dragonfly, I was like, whoa!
• 15:31
  Mark Pracht: To what Tad said about overwritten, I to- you know, you can totally tell that this is a Marvel Method book, because there's so many times when the word balloons, like, have to go outside the panel.
• 15:46
  Mark Pracht: Right. And sometimes they cross over with the one above, and I found myself at times going like, okay, am I supposed to read…
• 15:52
  Mark Pracht: do I follow the word balloon into this panel, or to this panel? So, that was cute. But then on a more…
• 16:02
  Mark Pracht: Interesting note, what I loved about these three issues was that this lineup of the Avengers was so outmatched by Ronan and the Sentry. Like, they…
• 16:16
  Mark Pracht: We're on their… they were on their heels, like, the entire story, you know?
• 16:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 16:21
  Mark Pracht: And I love that. I actually love that. And when I flipped through to the next issue that we're getting to with the cover with Cap and Iron Man and Thor come, and they're like, yeah, no, you're out. And I'm like, okay, they kind of set that up, and I kind of loved it, so…
• 16:42
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I, I love, I don't know if we want to… I'm kind of skipping forward.
• 16:48
  Sean Harklerode: To, you know, later in this run, when Ronan…
• 16:54
  Sean Harklerode: you know, they're setting up, you know, the love interest between Vision and Wanda, and there's that.
• 16:59
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 16:59
  Sean Harklerode: Scene where they almost kiss, and it's.
• 17:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 17:02
  Sean Harklerode: It's amazing, really.
• 17:04
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 17:06
  Sean Harklerode: And then Ronan is like, ho ho-ho!
• 17:10
  Sean Harklerode: I just was… Kind of taken aback by that scene.
• 17:16
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 17:16
  Sean Harklerode: How well done it was. Yeah, it's.
• 17:21
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 17:21
  Sean Harklerode: Issue 91.
• 17:23
  Sean Harklerode: Of just the lips getting closer.
• 17:26
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 17:26
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I thought that was… was really well done. That's also.
• 17:33
  Mark Pracht: Sounds great.
• 17:34
  Sean Harklerode: issue where, Ronan turns green on the cover, but I don't…
• 17:39
  Sean Harklerode: Not sure. The cover of 91.
• 17:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 17:43
  Mark Pracht: Oh, but Sal's on fire here. Like, the page right before that one with the kiss, like, the image of the century and the flames at the top?
• 17:53
  Mark Pracht: It's just, like.
• 17:54
  Sean Harklerode: Yes.
• 17:56
  Mark Pracht: Just awesome.
• 17:59
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, there's… yeah, and there's another… and this is a coloring issue. I know Rick… Rick Jones is kind of lit by flames in my memory. It's like, wow, it's really…
• 18:12
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. Really well done.
• 18:15
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 18:16
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, you know, and like, look, like, there's things in here, you know, I'm not…
• 18:24
  Mark Pracht: like, I think Mar-Vell…
• 18:26
  Mark Pracht: is kind of an interesting character in the overall… like, he's sort of the forgotten character. Like, the only thing he's really known for is dying.
• 18:37
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 18:38
  Mark Pracht: And then they immediately replaced him with, you know, Carol.
• 18:42
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Mark Pracht: And, well, you know, and they had different Captain Marvels around the time, and, but,
• 18:50
  Mark Pracht: Like, I was sort of taken aback, like, I…
• 18:53
  Mark Pracht: I… I never… like, again, this… this whole series was sort of a blind spot for me, you know? This was… I would have been, you know, this was when I was, like, 1, 2 years old, you know?
• 19:06
  Mark Pracht: So… you know, I wouldn't be reading comics, you know, like, I think it's that…
• 19:12
  Mark Pracht: that, Perez run that Sean's talking about that really is where I remember the Avengers. But,
• 19:23
  Mark Pracht: I… I… like, the… the… the contentiousness between him and Rick about their shared…
• 19:31
  Mark Pracht: existence, you know? I was just digging all of that. I thought that was really interesting.
• 19:36
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I… you know, it's interesting, I… I was never a big Captain Marvel fan, but…
• 19:45
  Sean Harklerode: It never really hit me, they're exchanging places, to go back into, you know, negative zone.
• 19:55
  Mark Pracht: The negative zone?
• 19:56
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. It never really struck me how very similar that actually is to another Captain Marvel.
• 20:04
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 20:05
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 20:07
  Sean Harklerode: you know, I was like, wow, that's a little on the nose.
• 20:12
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 20:13
  Mark Pracht: I… I felt that… I felt that as well. I thought that was… I mean, you know, like…
• 20:18
  Sean Harklerode: And Rick is wearing yellow and red.
• 20:21
  Sean Harklerode: Yep.
• 20:24
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I, you know, I think… I think there's… there's just… like, I… I really, like.
• 20:33
  Mark Pracht: it makes me want to go back and read, like, the original Captain Marvel, you know, Mar-Vell.
• 20:39
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, I think I was expecting some Jim Starlin-esque.
• 20:43
  Sean Harklerode: Adventure in this, and…
• 20:46
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 20:47
  Sean Harklerode: not… not disappointed, just… Because I, like I say, I enjoyed this,
• 20:55
  Sean Harklerode: But it was not at all what I… what I had expected when… you know, I expected to, you know, see us…
• 21:03
  Sean Harklerode: Spanning the stars, and…
• 21:05
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 21:05
  Sean Harklerode: And maybe that's coming.
• 21:07
  Mark Pracht: I… it certainly seems like that's what…
• 21:10
  Mark Pracht: like, the cover of the collected edition, like, suggests that. And, I mean, I think, again, I… I… like, I read that article in Back Issue where they go through the whole plot, but…
• 21:23
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 21:25
  Mark Pracht: Back issue articles are always… I love them to death, but they are all so dense that a lot of times I'm like.
• 21:32
  Mark Pracht: right through my head, you know? Right. So I'm…
• 21:36
  Tad Eggleston: So, as you bring up Back Issue, did you know that Roy Thomas is the current editor of Alter Ego?
• 21:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. He's been the editor of Alter Ego for… since its inception, I believe.
• 21:46
  Tad Eggleston: I figured that, I just, like…
• 21:50
  Tad Eggleston: Didn't know that he was still working.
• 21:53
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think that's all he really does.
• 21:55
  Tad Eggleston: I think it is.
• 21:57
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like.
• 21:57
  Sean Harklerode: gonna be at HeroesCon.
• 22:00
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, well, he's got that… he, Tomorrow has published the first volume of his, you know, autobiography.
• 22:08
  Mark Pracht: That's come out. I think it's out now.
• 22:14
  Mark Pracht: But I think that's why he's going to HeroesCon, is to… to promote that.
• 22:21
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, and that's, you know, that Marvel Method Facebook group, they've erupted into, you know, Roy Thomas is a liar, and Roy.
• 22:29
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 22:29
  Mark Pracht: Doesn't know what he's talking about, and right, you know, it's like…
• 22:32
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, were you there? I…
• 22:38
  Sean Harklerode: I did… That whole group is…
• 22:41
  Mark Pracht: Crazy? Yeah.
• 22:42
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 22:43
  Mark Pracht: Thanks, Arlen.
• 22:48
  Mark Pracht: No, it was funny. Actually, this is a total tangent, but it made me really happy, was that somebody, had…
• 22:55
  Mark Pracht: posted excerpts from Kirby's interview with,
• 23:04
  Mark Pracht: Gary Groff, you know, his famously, like.
• 23:08
  Mark Pracht: Stan did nothing interview, and somebody was posting excerpts of that, and…
• 23:13
  Mark Pracht: and they were pointing out that, like, a lot of Kirby's points don't make chronological sense with what, you know, history and the time period, and I… I put something up, and I said, you know, like, it's very clear that both of these men don't really remember what happened very well, and they see it in their own, you know, basically, like.
• 23:33
  Mark Pracht: Talking about the Roddenberry effect, and Jerry Beck liked my… my comments.
• 23:39
  Mark Pracht: Jerry Beck is the one person that liked that comment, and I was just like, I'm so tired of this argument, and I was like.
• 23:46
  Mark Pracht: If you know Jerry Beck, famous cart, you know, animation, historian.
• 23:53
  Mark Pracht: does the, does the commentaries on all the Looney Tunes cartoons, so… I… I felt very,
• 24:02
  Mark Pracht: very, justified, in my opinion.
• 24:07
  Mark Pracht: that Jerry Beck liked it.
• 24:10
  Mark Pracht: He doesn't remember me at all, or know me.
• 24:12
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 24:15
  Mark Pracht: Buddy, damn it, he liked what I wrote. Anyway… My child.
• 24:19
  Tad Eggleston: tangent and tying to the Kirby is, did you notice that the first credit is for the editor?
• 24:24
  Tad Eggleston: In all of these places.
• 24:25
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 24:26
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, Stan Lee, editor?
• 24:29
  Mark Pracht: Well, you know, like, look, that… that was the period, though. I mean, because Stan was still there, he hadn't left to go to… he hadn't left to go to Los Angeles yet, and…
• 24:39
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, he was… he was just overseeing the line, and they, you know, they found…
• 24:46
  Mark Pracht: He was the face of the company.
• 24:49
  Mark Pracht: everything said Stan Lee presents, so…
• 24:52
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 24:53
  Mark Pracht: you know, in… By his own admission, you know, he really wasn't… Overseeing everything, you know?
• 25:05
  Mark Pracht: Especially, I think especially where Roy was concerned.
• 25:08
  Mark Pracht: I think he trusted Roy implicitly.
• 25:10
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 25:14
  Mark Pracht: But I do, you know, that is… it is funny, because, I… I've been… Doing some reading.
• 25:23
  Mark Pracht: Lately, about, jim Shooter, and I find it interesting that both Jim Shooter and Roy Thomas
• 25:31
  Mark Pracht: worked for Mort Weisinger, at DC, And then…
• 25:39
  Mark Pracht: got fed up, as most people did with Mort.
• 25:43
  Mark Pracht: And then went over to Marvel, where Stan sort of, like.
• 25:49
  Mark Pracht: loved both of them, and eventually they both became the EAICs. So, you know… Well.
• 25:55
  Sean Harklerode: Joy kind of ran screaming from…
• 25:58
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 25:59
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, and let's be.
• 26:00
  Sean Harklerode: Jim had a longer relationship.
• 26:04
  Mark Pracht: Jim was there…
• 26:05
  Mark Pracht: Jim was also 14 years old, so, I mean, but, you know, I just… yeah, Roy worked for Mort for, like, a week, and ran screaming, so, I mean…
• 26:17
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 26:18
  Mark Pracht: That's… that's a little different thing, but I do… it almost makes you think that Stan's sitting over there going like, oh, can't deal with Marty?
• 26:27
  Mark Pracht: I'll put you to work just to thumb my nose at that guy, or whatever, you know? The distinguished competition, you know? But, that's all sort of ancillary. I think,
• 26:41
  Mark Pracht: You know, we're talking about this, and this, in a lot of ways.
• 26:47
  Mark Pracht: you know, when you talk about Roy Thomas as a writer.
• 26:51
  Mark Pracht: Or as a creator, or as a collaborator.
• 26:55
  Mark Pracht: you know, kind of the two big things, or the big thing, of course, is Conan.
• 27:00
  Mark Pracht: Right? I think that's what he's most known for.
• 27:03
  Sean Harklerode: Yep.
• 27:04
  Mark Pracht: but…
• 27:07
  Sean Harklerode: That's great stuff. I mean, as I remember, I haven't read it in 20 years, but I read all the way through all of it, I think.
• 27:14
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, like, it's, you know, it's, it's Roy, you know, he wrote it, he, he did well enough that, that at one point he was supposed to write the movie, you know?
• 27:27
  Mark Pracht: But I mean, I also feel like this storyline is sort of his big…
• 27:32
  Sean Harklerode: Okay.
• 27:35
  Mark Pracht: What?
• 27:36
  Sean Harklerode: I'm just thinking of him turning in a novel with highlighted passages.
• 27:42
  Mark Pracht: I wasn't gonna bring it up, but yeah.
• 27:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah… Well, you know, I don't know. But…
• 27:53
  Mark Pracht: I do think that, you know, Cree Skull War, Skrull War is… sort of his… kind of big…
• 28:03
  Mark Pracht: storyline as far as the Marvel characters are concerned.
• 28:07
  Mark Pracht: You know, cause, like, I think that… obviously, it's Conan.
• 28:13
  Mark Pracht: bringing Star Wars to Marvel.
• 28:16
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 28:19
  Mark Pracht: And, like, this storyline. And I will say, I think that he has… like, it is sort of… it's overwrought.
• 28:27
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, you totally see why…
• 28:30
  Mark Pracht: Stan trusted him, because he mastered the… the Stan Lee-isms of it, you know?
• 28:37
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 28:39
  Mark Pracht: And… I think he also understood the… the consistency of… of…
• 28:46
  Mark Pracht: Consistency of character, consistency of storyline, keeping everything clear.
• 28:54
  Mark Pracht: and… and not meandering, you know? Which…
• 29:00
  Mark Pracht: I won't bring it up again, but I think it is interesting to think that this is on the same… these are… this is on the rack.
• 29:08
  Mark Pracht: right next to… You know, new gods, or forever people or whatever, you know?
• 29:14
  Mark Pracht: I think that that's interesting.
• 29:17
  Sean Harklerode: Damn.
• 29:17
  Sean Harklerode: to… to Tad's point about overwritten, again, it's so overwritten, there's even dialogue on the covers.
• 29:25
  Sean Harklerode: Which you just don't see anymore, remember?
• 29:28
  Tad Eggleston: No, but it was… it was definitely part of the era.
• 29:33
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, now you gotta go to Archie to get dialogue on your cover.
• 29:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, occasionally they'll pop up randomly, but, but, like…
• 29:42
  Tad Eggleston: when it pops up now, it's almost an homage to the era where it was regular. Yeah. Not…
• 29:50
  Tad Eggleston: Not something that's… that's just automatic.
• 29:54
  Tad Eggleston: Aww.
• 29:55
  Mark Pracht: I always love those stories where… You know…
• 29:59
  Mark Pracht: Stan would put all this dialogue on the cover, right?
• 30:03
  Mark Pracht: And then they would hear that DC was, like.
• 30:06
  Mark Pracht: those books are selling, because they have dialogue on the cover. We should put dialogue all over our covers, and then Stan would be like, nope, taking it off, you know?
• 30:15
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and it's like, I, I think, I think… That kind of…
• 30:20
  Mark Pracht: that kind of rivalry is so much fun to think about now, you know? Yeah. I mean…
• 30:26
  Sean Harklerode: What we really need is a checkerboard border.
• 30:32
  Tad Eggleston: When did… Fourth World Start.
• 30:36
  Mark Pracht: 7 o'clock.
• 30:37
  Sean Harklerode: one.
• 30:37
  Mark Pracht: 71, I think.
• 30:39
  Tad Eggleston: But what month…
• 30:41
  Mark Pracht: I don't remember.
• 30:42
  Mark Pracht: It was.
• 30:43
  Tad Eggleston: It was earlier than June, wasn't it?
• 30:45
  Mark Pracht: I think so.
• 30:47
  Tad Eggleston: So I wonder if there was a certain element of… of…
• 30:52
  Tad Eggleston: Stan going, Jack's going over there, and he's doing this thing. Roy, I need something with space.
• 31:02
  Tad Eggleston: Other planets. Go.
• 31:04
  Mark Pracht: I… it's… I think that that's altogether possible, but I also think that…
• 31:13
  Mark Pracht: If… if he… if he'd really wanted to fuck with.
• 31:17
  Sean Harklerode: August 25th, 1970.
• 31:21
  Mark Pracht: 1970, that's right.
• 31:22
  Tad Eggleston: The jack? Okay, yeah.
• 31:24
  Mark Pracht: is… yeah. I mean, like, I think…
• 31:26
  Sean Harklerode: That's Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen, number 133.
• 31:30
  Mark Pracht: I, I would… you know, my, my guess would be…
• 31:36
  Mark Pracht: That might have happened, but I also think that this is so… Jacked in to, like.
• 31:45
  Mark Pracht: 10 different storylines that were already… Running.
• 31:49
  Tad Eggleston: You know? Right.
• 31:50
  Mark Pracht: I think… I think if Stan really wanted to do that.
• 31:54
  Mark Pracht: And I think it would have been supremely crappy for him to do, and I think that the fact that he didn't do it is probably, you know, is something to be commented upon.
• 32:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 32:06
  Mark Pracht: Stan could have easily been like, alright, Jack left, let's go ahead and do that Ragnarok idea that he wanted to do.
• 32:13
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 32:14
  Mark Pracht: Because he could have done it.
• 32:16
  Tad Eggleston: He could have.
• 32:17
  Mark Pracht: And, and, and just… you know, blown up Asgard and started… Started anew, you know?
• 32:27
  Mark Pracht: And I think that that might have been…
• 32:30
  Mark Pracht: I think if he really wanted to do something like that, he could have done it, but I, you know, I think that…
• 32:36
  Mark Pracht: I think… The thing about the Bronze Age, you know, as we're… the Marvel Bronze Age, right?
• 32:44
  Mark Pracht: Which is this… Sort of era of… of… big egos.
• 32:52
  Mark Pracht: as big… as big an ego as you get in sort of a marginalized medium like comic books. But I mean, like, you have all these…
• 33:00
  Mark Pracht: You know, writer-artists, or writer-editors who are working kind of independently, and they're all… they're all former fanboys that wanted to write comics, right?
• 33:13
  Mark Pracht: And I think that…
• 33:16
  Mark Pracht: I think that that's really what we're seeing here, is that you have Roy Thomas, who grew up
• 33:22
  Mark Pracht: reading the early Stan and Jack stuff.
• 33:26
  Mark Pracht: And, like, like, like I said, he was… like, Alter Ego started as a fanzine back in the 60s, right?
• 33:32
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 33:35
  Mark Pracht: he's been writing about these storylines, and, like, obviously, he is sort of the preeminent Golden Age guy, bringing back the Golden Age characters.
• 33:44
  Mark Pracht: I think he just had this list of stuff. He was like, well, maybe I take this and that and that. I think that it… it…
• 33:51
  Mark Pracht: in a way, the Bronze Age is when Marvel becomes kind of incestuous in that it's just sort of feeding upon itself, right? Which, in a way, is healthy, because, you know, it's feeding upon its own mythology, rather than trying to…
• 34:04
  Mark Pracht: develop new stuff, right? There's nothing in these books that isn't established
• 34:10
  Mark Pracht: somewhere else in the Marvel Universe, and I think that it's trying to use those elements that are already there in a way that's interesting.
• 34:19
  Mark Pracht: So… And that leads into the…
• 34:24
  Tad Eggleston: also makes sense.
• 34:25
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 34:26
  Mark Pracht: Because, yeah, I mean, that's… that's… that's, like, to me, that's the real difference here between looking at, like, new gods and… and…
• 34:38
  Mark Pracht: And, this, right? Cause it…
• 34:42
  Mark Pracht: Bear with me. I'm gonna bring up Star Wars. It's sort of like watching George Lucas do Star Wars, where he's interested in saying something.
• 34:51
  Mark Pracht: about… Life…
• 34:54
  Mark Pracht: or what he sees as people, and what he sees as politics. And then there's the people at Disney who are making Star Wars who are just saying, look at what I love about Star Wars.
• 35:05
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 35:06
  Mark Pracht: Because, like… and there's… there's nothing wrong with either one of those things, because I think this is a very… I think Kree-Skrull war is a really good story, well told.
• 35:18
  Mark Pracht: that is just, like, this is the stuff that I loved from when Stan and Jack were doing this book, and let's run with it, you know? Or what…
• 35:27
  Mark Pracht: We were doing, you know, Whereas Jack's trying to create something whole-claw.
• 35:37
  Mark Pracht: Thank you for attending my TED Talk, have a nice.
• 35:42
  Sean Harklerode: My Tad Talk.
• 35:45
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just… I'm just flipping through… through the Marvel Fandom Wiki, To, to, to see… If it has any…
• 35:55
  Tad Eggleston: any more… information on spin-offs, because the regular Wikipedia only lists more recent things?
• 36:06
  Tad Eggleston: There's stuff in New Avengers Illuminati, there's stuff in… There's tie-ins.
• 36:18
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah.
• 36:18
  Tad Eggleston: Avengers Forever and Captain America Reborn.
• 36:21
  Sean Harklerode: It was very difficult.
• 36:24
  Tad Eggleston: The only contemporary tie-in was Marvel Team-Up number 5.
• 36:29
  Tad Eggleston: Spider-Man and Vision.
• 36:31
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but, like.
• 36:32
  Tad Eggleston: Human Torch, but Vision was in it.
• 36:35
  Mark Pracht: That's also… Go ahead, Sean.
• 36:37
  Sean Harklerode: So, I know from the Avengers-Defenders war.
• 36:43
  Sean Harklerode: That it was very tricky
• 36:47
  Sean Harklerode: To get books out in a certain order.
• 36:50
  Sean Harklerode: At that point, so they may not have You know, bothered.
• 36:56
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 36:57
  Mark Pracht: Well, and…
• 36:58
  Sean Harklerode: Because…
• 36:58
  Mark Pracht: You know, the other thing is, is… the other thing is, is, like, at this time, like, you're talking almost 100% news sandstales, right? So, like, this idea of having some plotline that tied into every single issue
• 37:14
  Mark Pracht: Probably wasn't the sales bonanza that, like.
• 37:17
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no.
• 37:18
  Mark Pracht: became frustrating for everybody. So, I mean, I think that it's interesting as you talk about Yudi, you're looking at the things that are tied in. They're all, like.
• 37:28
  Mark Pracht: Years after the fact, right?
• 37:31
  Tad Eggleston: Decades later.
• 37:32
  Mark Pracht: And, like, Honestly, that makes me less interested in it.
• 37:38
  Mark Pracht: Unless…
• 37:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, overall, I'm mildly interested because of some of the creative teams.
• 37:46
  Mark Pracht: Well, and I know, like, Avengers… Avengers Forever, I've heard, is really great. I haven't read it myself, but I've heard it's… it's…
• 37:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:52
  Mark Pracht: storyline.
• 37:54
  Tad Eggleston: I had never heard of this Avengers-Defenders War, but it's a Steve Englehart thing, so I might have to, like, go look at it.
• 38:01
  Mark Pracht: That's… that's pure Bronze Age Hokum, too, if I remember correctly, right?
• 38:07
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 38:10
  Sean Harklerode: I mean…
• 38:11
  Sean Harklerode: Look, as… well, I… you know, I need to check. I used to have every issue of the Defenders, but…
• 38:17
  Tad Eggleston: The synopsis is the Avengers battle the defenders for possession of the evil eye. Eventually, the two teams realize they are pawns of Loki and Dormammu, and work together to stop Earth from being absorbed into the Dark Dimension.
• 38:33
  Mark Pracht: Dorado.
• 38:34
  Mark Pracht: Dormammu.
• 38:36
  Sean Harklerode: This is Gormammu.
• 38:37
  Mark Pracht: That, that feels pretty…
• 38:39
  Tad Eggleston: Pretty Bronze Age.
• 38:43
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, all you needed is,
• 38:45
  Mark Pracht: just needed to put Mephisto in there, and you could have had the trifecta of…
• 38:51
  Tad Eggleston: But I've always loved the Defenders, so as soon as you said that, I like…
• 38:56
  Mark Pracht: The world's greatest non-team.
• 38:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Sean Harklerode: Right?
• 39:01
  Tad Eggleston: But they… they had some, like… Cool issues, some great covers.
• 39:07
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I mean, like, look, look, you know, whenever you read something from the… every time I read stuff from the Bronze Age, I'm always like, this is the greatest.
• 39:19
  Mark Pracht: like, the… My… my gateway drug, to comic books.
• 39:27
  Mark Pracht: Was, without a doubt, Brave and bold.
• 39:31
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 39:32
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, it's Jim Aparo artwork in the main.
• 39:39
  Mark Pracht: you know, the Haney,
• 39:45
  Mark Pracht: God, I can't remember his first name now, Haney, the Haneyverse, where nothing made sense with anything outside that book.
• 39:51
  Tad Eggleston: Bob Haney?
• 39:52
  Mark Pracht: Bob Haney, that's right, yeah.
• 39:55
  Mark Pracht: you know, they refer… you know, because, like, he would just do whatever he wanted, whether it made sense with anything else or not, and… and I love those books. I love those books, I… they introduced me to all of those other characters.
• 40:09
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, I… I love Metamorpho because of Brave and Bold. I love, you know, like.
• 40:19
  Mark Pracht: everything. And… and, like, It's also because…
• 40:26
  Mark Pracht: You know, not that comics… comics were… they were a big business, but they weren't this massive, like… corporate…
• 40:35
  Mark Pracht: you know, everything's gotta be synergized. We got a million, you know, marketing things.
• 40:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think you've just… you've just, given me an idea for where I'd love this… this book club to go. Let's… what… what do you think is staying in the Bronze Age, but… but… but… but mostly being, like…
• 40:58
  Tad Eggleston: B-list type stuff, like the hidden gems of the Bronze Age.
• 41:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 41:04
  Mark Pracht: That'd be awesome.
• 41:07
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 41:07
  Sean Harklerode: Men of Bronze.
• 41:11
  Tad Eggleston: I like that.
• 41:12
  Mark Pracht: Well, that means that after we finish the Kree-Skrull War.
• 41:16
  Mark Pracht: we have to do Metal Man.
• 41:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm down with that. I haven't read a lot of original Metal Men, but, like, the Metal Men that I've read in the…
• 41:29
  Tad Eggleston: In the more recent… Yeah, there was a metal man in… in,
• 41:37
  Tad Eggleston: Wednesday comics that I really enjoyed.
• 41:41
  Sean Harklerode: Wednesday comics is great.
• 41:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, Wednesday comics is amazing.
• 41:45
  Mark Pracht: Dan DiDio.
• 41:46
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, no. Mark Chiarello.
• 41:52
  Tad Eggleston: It was Mark Chiarello.
• 41:53
  Sean Harklerode: Baby.
• 41:57
  Mark Pracht: But anyway, I… I think… not to… not to get off, but that's a great idea. I think… I… the Bronze Age just makes me so happy, I can't even tell you. But.
• 42:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and here's a little, tidbit…
• 42:17
  Tad Eggleston: the artistic creator of Metal Men and the artistic creator of The Defenders is the same, they're both Ross Andrew.
• 42:27
  Tad Eggleston: Robert Kaniger and Ross Andrew for Mettleman, and Roy Thomas and Ross Andrew for the Defenders.
• 42:38
  Mark Pracht: But anyway, I don't know.
• 42:44
  Mark Pracht: I think,
• 42:47
  Mark Pracht: Oh, the other thing that I loved in this book, which is pure Bronze Age, like, we have to explain shit.
• 42:54
  Mark Pracht: That we don't need to explain, is how they kept talking about how their costumes had thermal underwear.
• 43:01
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 43:02
  Mark Pracht: And I'm like, Goliath is basically half-naked. I don't know if that's gonna help him at all.
• 43:10
  Tad Eggleston: No, I, well, and, like, towards finding more of this stuff, you guys are just enough older than me to have read more of this stuff as it came out. I had…
• 43:25
  Tad Eggleston: a collection that involved a lot of this stuff, but it was kind of specific. It was a lot of Spectacular Spider-Man, it was a lot of Daredevil, it was a lot of…
• 43:35
  Tad Eggleston: drawn a blank on the other titles that my uncle seemed most into.
• 43:45
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I've definitely wanted to mine more of this era, because it's so clear how many of my…
• 43:54
  Tad Eggleston: favorite… writers and artists from modern era are very much influenced by this, but I… but I truly believe…
• 44:03
  Tad Eggleston: that every generation The low bar in comics goes up.
• 44:10
  Tad Eggleston: The best of the best comics from one generation can be compared across generations, but, like, the worst comics…
• 44:18
  Tad Eggleston: Of the 90s are nowhere near as bad as the worst comics of the 70s.
• 44:24
  Tad Eggleston: At least when you're talking about, like, the… the… the big two.
• 44:31
  Mark Pracht: John and I are both doing the same face.
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: No, I get that, and like, I get that they're fighting words and whatever, but I've always found it hard to penetrate without having a guide some of those errors, because again, the best
• 44:49
  Tad Eggleston: are every bit as good. And the mid-level are every bit as good as… or better, but I… I'll… like, if I go in randomly, and I find the book that I just can't stand.
• 44:59
  Mark Pracht: You know, here's what's funny, right? And I'll speak for this, and I hope Sean can probably back me up, is that, like, as a kid in the 1970s.
• 45:09
  Mark Pracht: like… you would go into, like, I would go into the… the drugstore.
• 45:17
  Mark Pracht: And go up to the magazine rack.
• 45:19
  Mark Pracht: And I would just sort of… and it was sort of the luck of the draw, what was in there, you know? Because, like, the distributor wouldn't… you, like, you wouldn't pick out that you wanted such and such a title, they would just bring you a big box of comics, right? Right. And so, like, the idea of, like… like, that's… but that's… that's sort of, like.
• 45:39
  Mark Pracht: like, a plot line that you're trying to follow, you know, then that's why, you know, when you get into the 80s, and we're old enough to be haunting comic book shops, and we're like, I read…
• 45:49
  Mark Pracht: such and such, and it was to be continued, and then I never could find that next issue. So now I have to find that next issue, because I need to know what happened, you know? And,
• 46:00
  Mark Pracht: That, that there's this randomness.
• 46:04
  Mark Pracht: to… The way comics were in the 70s.
• 46:08
  Mark Pracht: And it's sort of like…
• 46:13
  Mark Pracht: Potluck, or, or, you know,
• 46:17
  Mark Pracht: You know, you just… you know, like, you just pull out a… like, it's why… it's why the covers were so important, right?
• 46:27
  Mark Pracht: It's why, you know, they had Jack Kirby draw so many covers. It's why they had Carmine Infantino draw so many covers, is that they knew how to draw a cover that would make people go, oh, I'll read that, and then you open it up, and you know what? Look, I'm not trying to say… I'm not… I don't think that Sean or I are trying to say that every comic that came out in the 70s was some sort of piece of gold.
• 46:46
  Mark Pracht: but I think that.
• 46:48
  Tad Eggleston: And I hope you don't think I'm saying that any of them were necessarily pieces of crap.
• 46:53
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but what I'm saying is, like, I think there is a cynicism
• 46:58
  Mark Pracht: I think that the look on my face, and maybe Sean would agree with me, is that there was a cynicism to the bad comics of the 90s that made them feel… made me feel a bit insulted.
• 47:11
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, I, I see.
• 47:12
  Mark Pracht: When I read a bad comic from the 70s, I'm like, yeah, that just didn't work, you know?
• 47:19
  Tad Eggleston: I suppose I might exclude the 90s as a decade for… from… because I agree, some of the bad comics are the… I mean, I don't know what happened to comics in the 90s, but, like…
• 47:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I do, I do. They took the wrong message from… Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.
• 47:37
  Mark Pracht: Well, they also took… but they also… they also… it was also when you had the real, like.
• 47:46
  Mark Pracht: superstar artists.
• 47:48
  Mark Pracht: Right. Who didn't particularly care about the story.
• 47:54
  Mark Pracht: Right. You know.
• 47:55
  Mark Pracht: And that… like, you know…
• 48:00
  Mark Pracht: God bless those image guys, they had the right idea, but I mean, like, all of their ideas were basically, like, let me do my own version of Batman, let me do my own version of the X-Men, let me do my… and it's like, okay, great, okay, yeah, okay, that's your Wolverine. Okay.
• 48:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 48:16
  Mark Pracht: You know, and it's just like… and that's what I'm talking about. I think that… I think that… that…
• 48:22
  Mark Pracht: I think in the 70s.
• 48:23
  Sean Harklerode: They're overdrawn.
• 48:25
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's true.
• 48:26
  Sean Harklerode: But…
• 48:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, and…
• 48:30
  Mark Pracht: In the 70s, you may have Steve Gerber smoking way too much pot and coming up with something, you know, that just…
• 48:37
  Mark Pracht: is sort of, like, meandering and rambling, but then you also have Steve Gerber smoking too much pot and coming up with Howard the Duck, you know? Right. It's like… I love Howard the Duck.
• 48:47
  Tad Eggleston: Duck.
• 48:48
  Mark Pracht: Everybody loves Howard the Duck.
• 48:51
  Mark Pracht: I was listening.
• 48:52
  Mark Pracht: I was listening, apparently, Robin Williams had, like, a radio interview show.
• 48:59
  Mark Pracht: In the 90s.
• 49:00
  Mark Pracht: And I was listening to it because I got on one where he was interviewing Harlan Ellison, and it was brilliant. But he also interviewed
• 49:09
  Mark Pracht: George Lucas.
• 49:11
  Mark Pracht: And George Lucas starts going off, you know, like, I've had this idea where I wanna, I wanna redo, Howard the Duck with a CGI duck, and then I want to get a better voice for it, maybe like you.
• 49:25
  Mark Pracht: And Robin goes, oh, you wanna, you wanna, remake it? He's like, no, no, no, I just put the CGI duck into the movie that already exists.
• 49:34
  Sean Harklerode: He's like.
• 49:37
  Mark Pracht: If you hate it at once, you'll hate it again.
• 49:42
  Mark Pracht: It just made me laugh. But…
• 49:45
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, but that's… that's… that… I mean, like…
• 49:49
  Mark Pracht: everything I've read about Marvel in the 1970s, and like, this… I mean, like, we're kind of way off of the war here, but…
• 49:59
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 50:00
  Sean Harklerode: Hi.
• 50:01
  Mark Pracht: is, sean's just leaving.
• 50:04
  Sean Harklerode: Oh no, I'm just… I picked up a Bronze Age gem that I was going to share.
• 50:12
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like, when you read about it, I mean, especially when you read about it from, like, Jim Shooter's perspective, like.
• 50:19
  Mark Pracht: Marvel in the late 70s, by the late 70s, was absolute chaos.
• 50:23
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, no one… Stan had gone off to LA,
• 50:27
  Mark Pracht: And they had this rotating stream of, EICs.
• 50:34
  Mark Pracht: And everybody who was in EIC, when they left the EIC, they let them be their writer-editor. So, they were all behind schedule.
• 50:43
  Mark Pracht: everybody was stoned, and everybody was coming up with just bizarre-ass stories that made no sense to anybody but themselves. It's… and it's awesome.
• 50:57
  Mark Pracht: That's all. That's the endpoint of my story.
• 51:00
  Sean Harklerode: Speaking of awesomeness, Steve Gerber and Gene Colin.
• 51:05
  Sean Harklerode: The Phantom… Tales from the Phantom Zone.
• 51:11
  Tad Eggleston: Only it's a DC Phantom Zone.
• 51:14
  Sean Harklerode: Well, yeah, it's Superman Phantom Zone, not the negative zone.
• 51:17
  Tad Eggleston: Negative zone, okay.
• 51:19
  Mark Pracht: Negative zone. Negative zone.
• 51:20
  Sean Harklerode: So it's just called Superman Presents the Phantom Zone. It's a four-issue limited series I picked up on Free Comic Book Day.
• 51:30
  Mark Pracht: Nice.
• 51:31
  Mark Pracht: You know what?
• 51:33
  Mark Pracht: This makes me think of something else. I… Fucking loved when,
• 51:41
  Mark Pracht: Mar-Vell and Rick were switching in and out of the Phantom Zone, and Rick's like, I feel something watching me.
• 51:47
  Mark Pracht: You know, a nihilus? And I'm like, why did no one ever think of that? Like, that's an awesome idea. You know, it's like…
• 51:55
  Mark Pracht: I was just like, I mean, it built attention, and, like, I just loved it. I… ugh.
• 52:04
  Mark Pracht: it really did make me want to go back and, like, look at some of those Captain Marvel Issues.
• 52:12
  Mark Pracht: because, like, just like Sean said, it did… it made me think of the Billy Batson… Captain Marvel.
• 52:20
  Mark Pracht: Thing, but it also was just, like.
• 52:24
  Mark Pracht: there's… just, it was just interesting. It was… I don't know, I… a character that I never really encountered other than the death graphic novel, really, so…
• 52:34
  Mark Pracht: yeah.
• 52:37
  Tad Eggleston: It looks like, right now, the… the… the…
• 52:41
  Tad Eggleston: the… it looks like Robin Williams had… was, like, the first…
• 52:47
  Tad Eggleston: podcast-ish thing. It was Robin Williams on audible.com. Looks like right now they're unavailable, because… because Audible lost the rights, and… The.
• 52:58
  Mark Pracht: there is a… I won't… I won't say anything, because I don't want to get them in trouble, but there's a YouTube channel that has all of them.
• 53:05
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 53:06
  Mark Pracht: And, I had been listening to Harlan Ellison stuff, because Harlan Ellison is… .
• 53:12
  Tad Eggleston: Fascinating guy.
• 53:14
  Sean Harklerode: Bye.
• 53:14
  Mark Pracht: Fascinating.
• 53:15
  Mark Pracht: And there's, like, this two-parter with him and Robin Williams, and it's… when I put it up, I said, you know, the trigger warning is implicit, because Harlan doesn't give a shit about your feelings.
• 53:28
  Mark Pracht: But, I don't know. It did make me think of, what was it?
• 53:34
  Mark Pracht: It was, yet another story that I'd like to really look into is when Harlan
• 53:42
  Mark Pracht: Was interviewed in,
• 53:48
  Mark Pracht: It was Gary Groth's magazine, whatever it was called, I can't remember at the top of my head.
• 53:52
  Tad Eggleston: That's scary.
• 53:53
  Mark Pracht: grow.
• 53:53
  Tad Eggleston: Comics Journal.
• 53:55
  Mark Pracht: Comics Journal, and he started talking about, I think it was Mike Friedrich?
• 53:59
  Mark Pracht: who wrote all of those Spectre stories.
• 54:02
  Mark Pracht: And he was like, yeah, he's… he's, certifiable.
• 54:07
  Mark Pracht: The guy's a madman, he's insane.
• 54:10
  Mark Pracht: And then he sued Harlan for it?
• 54:13
  Mark Pracht: for libel, And…
• 54:16
  Mark Pracht: And, like, Harlan had to raise all this money for his legal defense and all of this stuff, and he's like… and it's funny, because he's talking to Robin Williams, he's like, I was… I was complimenting him!
• 54:27
  Mark Pracht: that stuff was insane, you know, and I'm like…
• 54:31
  Mark Pracht: What an interesting story, you know?
• 54:35
  Mark Pracht: Maybe I should just do a whole series of one-act plays about.
• 54:38
  Tad Eggleston: Is that a recent.
• 54:39
  Mark Pracht: Harlan.
• 54:40
  Tad Eggleston: Interview, or an older one?
• 54:44
  Mark Pracht: It was, it was, it was, like, way back.
• 54:47
  Sean Harklerode: me.
• 54:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, well, yeah. But it was… it was… it was the guy… I want to say it's Friedrich, but it might not be.
• 54:54
  Mark Pracht: But it was the guy, he wrote… he wrote The Spectre.
• 55:00
  Mark Pracht: And he was the one… it was the Jim Aparo-dra drawn specter in the 70s, where it was just gruesome.
• 55:09
  Mark Pracht: like, every time the Spectre, like, punished somebody, it was always, like,
• 55:18
  Mark Pracht: deeply disturbing. Like, turn a guy into a block of… you know, turn a guy into wood, and then have a chainsaw come out and chop him up, and… and…
• 55:28
  Mark Pracht: You know, just crazy-ass shit, you know?
• 55:32
  Mark Pracht: And… The depths of, like, Disturbing thought process, you know?
• 55:40
  Mark Pracht: Love it.
• 55:46
  Mark Pracht: Kind of like, what was that movie?
• 55:49
  Mark Pracht: Oh, okay.
• 55:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I found it.
• 55:53
  Mark Pracht: what was that horror movie with Julian Sands, where he was, like, the… the…
• 56:00
  Mark Pracht: He was, like, some sort of supernatural figure.
• 56:03
  Mark Pracht: Do you remember these, Sean?
• 56:06
  Sean Harklerode: No.
• 56:08
  Mark Pracht: It was like he was, like, the… the… the warlock.
• 56:11
  Mark Pracht: That's what it was. But there was one… it reminded me so much of one of the end of those Spectre stories, because there was some guy who was a collector of modern art.
• 56:23
  Mark Pracht: And Julian Sands, like, turned him into a modern art sculpture.
• 56:30
  Mark Pracht: like, they had the shot of Julian Stanz, like, taking his hands and, like, doing this, and then they show the guy as, like, this really distorted modern art piece with two eyes and a mouth going…
• 56:41
  Sean Harklerode: This was a movie? Yeah. A warlock!
• 56:43
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 56:45
  Sean Harklerode: The Armageddon.
• 56:46
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, and it was…
• 56:49
  Mark Pracht: I caught it on late night television, and I was like, oh, I'm not watching that movie.
• 56:56
  Sean Harklerode: And… Warlock.
• 57:01
  Sean Harklerode: Satan also has one son.
• 57:07
  Sean Harklerode: He's come from the past to destroy the future.
• 57:11
  Mark Pracht: There you go.
• 57:14
  Mark Pracht: But I… I just remember that moment, it made me think of those… the end of those Spectre stories, where you, you know.
• 57:21
  Mark Pracht: The comeuppance.
• 57:23
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 57:25
  Sean Harklerode: The comeuppance.
• 57:27
  Mark Pracht: The comeuppance… For the bad person.
• 57:31
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 57:33
  Sean Harklerode: Those Spectre stories are great.
• 57:35
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 57:37
  Mark Pracht: Freaky as hell.
• 57:40
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 57:45
  Mark Pracht: So yeah, let's see, we got to the end of these three issues.
• 57:47
  Sean Harklerode: Interesting.
• 57:48
  Mark Pracht: the…
• 57:48
  Sean Harklerode: what happens when the Avengers get fired.
• 57:53
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 57:54
  Tad Eggleston: The new Avengers get fired by the old Avengers.
• 57:56
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 57:57
  Tad Eggleston: Is what comes next.
• 58:01
  Mark Pracht: Hank and Jan have quit.
• 58:03
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 58:05
  Mark Pracht: Because Hank has decided he can't be a superhero.
• 58:09
  Mark Pracht: He's probably gonna go smack her around again.
• 58:13
  Tad Eggleston: Ank is… Yeah…
• 58:20
  Mark Pracht: I… you know, I don't know.
• 58:27
  Sean Harklerode: Got some Neil Adams art coming up.
• 58:29
  Tad Eggleston: We do.
• 58:30
  Mark Pracht: Yep.
• 58:31
  Tad Eggleston: We do. So I'm just gonna say for the… for the…
• 58:36
  Tad Eggleston: We came up with something, the bronze what?
• 58:41
  Mark Pracht: The Men of Bronze?
• 58:42
  Sean Harklerode: And a bronze.
• 58:43
  Tad Eggleston: For the Men of Bronze, we're gonna say the People of Bronze. For the People of Bronze Book Club.
• 58:50
  Tad Eggleston: On 22 Panels, we will see you after the next page.