Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / Milestone Book Club #42 - Static Shock ep. 11-13

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Milestone Book Club #42 - Static Shock ep. 11-13 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels and the Milestone Book Club. We're at the end of our Between Compendiums
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: hiatus, where we watched the first season of the Static Shock
• 0:21
  Tad Eggleston: cartoon from, what, 2000? 2001? I forget.
• 0:24
  Ted: That's true.
• 0:25
  Marcus Anderson: 2000.
• 0:25
  Tad Eggleston: time.
• 0:26
  Ted: Oh, 2000, okay. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, we can date it pretty carefully, because there's a bit in one of the episodes where the very fancy jewelry store clerk is like, oh yes, this is our latest watch, it comes with a pager and a built-in wireless internet connection.
• 0:40
  Ted: Yeah. Which I thought was… yeah, oh, that's… that was fun. But yeah.
• 0:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, let me lead really quick, because I do want to say…
• 0:50
  Tad Eggleston: that.
• 0:52
  Tad Eggleston: These are probably my 3 favorite episodes of the season, with the possible exception of the second one with the stretchy guy when he was also the boyfriend of…
• 1:00
  Ted: Rubber band. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. And certainly, the first time that I felt like there was a multiple episode stretch with a really…
• 1:13
  Tad Eggleston: Felt like it was 3… 3…
• 1:15
  Tad Eggleston: Three episodes with kind of the thesis of, how do…
• 1:21
  Tad Eggleston: How do your parental figures affect your growing up, and how does dealing with a teenager affect your adulthood when you're responsible for them?
• 1:34
  Marcus Anderson: Hmm.
• 1:35
  Tad Eggleston: Because this was a lot about…
• 1:37
  Tad Eggleston: parents and kids, fathers and sons in particular, but not exclusively. Yeah.
• 1:43
  Tad Eggleston: And I really… I enjoyed the three episodes together, and the way… the way they, you know… two ways that could go badly?
• 1:54
  Tad Eggleston: One, probably, to a lesser extent, both, without even really completely intending to go badly.
• 2:01
  Ted: Yeah.
• 2:01
  Tad Eggleston: Versus the one where overall it went well, and therefore there's even more friction.
• 2:09
  Ted: Yeah, it was an interesting… I don't think… I mean, I'm sure they weren't made with that idea in mind, but it is interesting how all three of them kind of dovetailed nicely. Although, to be fair, a lot of the static episodes in this first season in particular have been about, sort of.
• 2:21
  Ted: responsibility, and about parents, and kids, so… it's not surprising, but yeah, no, these three episodes, I thought were some of my favorites, too. I was actually just looking over the list, and like…
• 2:30
  Ted: of this season, I did really like the one about Richie's father. Like, I kind of, you know, I maybe kind of poked at it a bit for being ham-fisted about racism, but, like.
• 2:39
  Ted: Genuinely, it was a good episode about racism, and also, like, it was… I thought, you know, the pairing of Richie's dad and Virgil's dad was a really clever thing. So yeah, no, I mean, these were good. It's been a solid season, so…
• 2:52
  Ted: Yeah.
• 2:52
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I really like this season overall, and like, yeah, no, these are very strong episodes. I think one thing that, for me, is…
• 3:02
  Marcus Anderson: you have to… you have to make allowances… not… I mean, nobody has to do anything, but the way I… the way I look at this season, like, I feel like it's important to remember that they really were striking a balance of bringing static and…
• 3:17
  Marcus Anderson: a lot of Dakota, not all of it, with two Saturday morning television, you know what I mean? Inspecting the balance. With that, there's one thing I don't think I brought it up last time, but it's been on my mind.
• 3:32
  Marcus Anderson: I… so, obviously, there's a lot of tropes in… Television, entertainment. One thing…
• 3:41
  Marcus Anderson: Which, it had… it had occurred to me when Daisy first showed up. But,
• 3:46
  Marcus Anderson: like, you know, I'd been away from the show for a bit, and then I came back, to watch these episodes, and I was like, oh yeah, like, they… they did the classic thing that happens with adaptations,
• 4:01
  Marcus Anderson: Where they're like, oh, let's…
• 4:03
  Marcus Anderson: we… let's lighten up this character a bit, like, hue-wise, you know what I mean? And, to the point, it's very noticeable. It's almost like… I almost would have just rather they just made her a new character, like, a new love interest.
• 4:17
  Marcus Anderson: Because I'm not even, like, get rid of the character, but it is a sort of erasure, because… I don't know if you guys know this, but there is absolutely…
• 4:25
  Marcus Anderson: weird…
• 4:27
  Marcus Anderson: casting, you know, identity math that they… that they, like, consciously do, you know? And I'm sure a lot of people in casting have, like.
• 4:39
  Marcus Anderson: you know, subconscious bias that they bring to the table. But, you know, the great Dwayne McDuffie himself said, which is why I think this is probably more like a, TV exec decision, or even just the designers, and not a Dwayne McDuffie thing, but Dwayne McDuffie was speaking about how
• 4:57
  Marcus Anderson: when he was working on the Justice League comic, and he was introducing, you know, more than one, Black character about the…
• 5:06
  Marcus Anderson: the way that in entertainment, in media, it is interpreted as a Black comic, or a Black show, or whatever, if you have more than one. And I want to be fair, because I know probably a lot of people are like, what are you talking about, Marcus?
• 5:18
  Marcus Anderson: Virgil's whole black family's on the show, and there's other Black characters. That is true, but there is a way, when you look at, like, the central cast, and I can… I can see in that weird casting math, where they're probably like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, Virgil's whole darker-skinned family is…
• 5:36
  Marcus Anderson: is taking up 3 spots, so, like, you know, we need to… we need to lighten it up with Daisy or Strike a Balance. So, obviously, I love my Black people, all Black people are beautiful, I'm not… I'm not separating us based on hue, but the world does, and oftentimes,
• 5:54
  Marcus Anderson: people in C-suites do as well.
• 5:57
  Marcus Anderson: So I just wanna point… I just wanna… I wanna point to that as… as a…
• 6:01
  Marcus Anderson: a criticism that doesn't ruin the show, but it's just… it's something that is worth, I think talking about and thinking about, because, you know, one could look at it like, oh, you know, say this is a one-off, or this is…
• 6:16
  Marcus Anderson: just some decision they made in this case, but there's a long history of it, and it happens with shocking regularity. And also, I challenge everybody to think about it when you're watching,
• 6:27
  Marcus Anderson: shows or adaptations. You know, a lot of people have talked about how Sunspot from New Mutants, like, when there's different iterations of New Mutants, they're all over the map with his… with his color, you know what I mean? Like, he went from…
• 6:40
  Ted: Yeah.
• 6:41
  Marcus Anderson: being a very dark-skinned, South American dude, Brazilian, I believe, and, to… just in light of the other iterations, they just… they're always, like, lighting him up, changing his hair textures, so these are things that happen, and they do matter, because I think…
• 6:57
  Marcus Anderson: it is good to represent all different types of Black people, but sometimes when these decisions are being made by people who aren't Black and don't understand all of the nuances, that's where, kind of like, you start seeing erasure of,
• 7:12
  Marcus Anderson: Of the full range of Black people, sometimes. Anyway, I just want to point out that they lighten Daisy.
• 7:18
  Ted: That's… no, man, that… I get it, that's something that did not cross my mind on the slide. Unsurprisingly, the white dude didn't think about colorism. I mean, it's just, like, it's something that I didn't realize, but you're absolutely… I mean, yeah, that's… that's…
• 7:32
  Ted: I kind of didn't think about that, and I didn't realize that that was…
• 7:36
  Ted: Yeah, that's… it's also, I mean, they are making Daisy a bigger member of the cast, whereas Frida was more…
• 7:45
  Ted: more. I don't know, I mean… I'm trying to remember how many issues they both appeared in, but Frida certainly hasn't shown up very much at all, at least not since the first…
• 7:51
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, and that's probably a Dwayne… maybe that's a Dwayne McDuffie thing, because, like, you know, by this point, like, you know, Daisy really moved into the love interest role. Although, I guess, canonically, in…
• 8:04
  Marcus Anderson: Milestone Forever? Yeah, like, like they did, when they flashed forward,
• 8:12
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, Virgil and Daisy, and not Daisy, and Frida had gotten married, so…
• 8:18
  Ted: Yeah, it's one of those things where, I mean, I'll be entirely honest, I cannot entirely remember Shtt
• 8:25
  Ted: God, this is gonna sound bad. I'm really sorry about this. I can't always remember, like.
• 8:29
  Ted: Daisy and Frida's sort of different deals, like who's doing what, what they're sort of… who knows about his identity, who doesn't. Like, they… the things I remember more about Static are, like, you know, his villains, or his personal conflict, or stuff like that. Right. And Frida and Daisy as characters…
• 8:44
  Ted: don't stand out to me. I'm speaking specifically about the comics. Well, I mean, the show, too, to an extent.
• 8:50
  Ted: Except here, Daisy takes the, you know, the lion's share of all this appearance, so… But yeah, I… I struggle sometimes to remember, like, wait, was this Daisy, or was this Frida who had.
• 8:59
  Marcus Anderson: Well, I think…
• 9:00
  Ted: did this, so…
• 9:01
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah…
• 9:02
  Ted: I feel bad about… I feel bad about that.
• 9:03
  Marcus Anderson: I guess… I guess to that… to that point, I do…
• 9:07
  Marcus Anderson: I actually think they do good work with both of them. It's interesting, because when we enter the series, like, you know.
• 9:13
  Marcus Anderson: Virgil's, like, head over heels for Frida, and he's… and she's, like, you know, all into his… his buddy, and dating him, and… and, like, those feelings don't necessarily disappear, but then it's, like, there's a natural…
• 9:28
  Marcus Anderson: healthy, I'm gonna say, evolution, where it's like they still remain just as close. And actually, just for clarification, Frida does know his identity. I think she knows it from Issue 1.
• 9:41
  Marcus Anderson: at the point that we reached, Daisy did not. Yes, yeah, that's right.
• 9:47
  Ted: Okay, Frida, he crawls into Frida's room, like, when he's.
• 9:49
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 9:49
  Ted: up by… by… Hot streak in that first issue, yes.
• 9:53
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah. And so, it's interesting because it's kind of like, you know, especially if you look at, like, tropes of, like, guys, like, you know, having a crush on a woman, a lot of times.
• 10:03
  Ted: Hmm.
• 10:04
  Marcus Anderson: it's kind of like… it's like the Steve Urkel, like, it's like 7 seasons later, and he's still… I'm talking about, I'm wearing you down, you know? And…
• 10:11
  Ted: God.
• 10:12
  Marcus Anderson: But it's like, you know, Virgil kind of, like, naturally evolved, and it wasn't like he was like, well, whatever, Frida, if you don't want to be with me, I'm not gonna be around you. Like, they still remained close, and confidants, but he also just naturally kind of moved on, and, you know, it was with.
• 10:29
  Ted: Boom. Yeah.
• 10:31
  Marcus Anderson: With Daisy.
• 10:32
  Ted: And he and Frida have a… or he and Daisy have a different relationship now, too, yeah. Yeah, no, it's… it's… I… I wonder… I mean, you mentioned it maybe being a Dwayne thing, I wonder, like, whether it was, like, oh, we don't have, you know, we only have enough
• 10:46
  Ted: voice actor budget for one character for so many characters in this episode, or whatever. I… God only knows, but yeah, it's…
• 10:52
  Ted: It's interesting, I… I do… and, I mean, she also, she slots naturally into the friend trio as, like, oh, she's the one who doesn't know his identity. There's a bit in this…
• 11:03
  Ted: See, there's a bit in these episodes where, like, you know, all three of them are out at the mall, and she's the only one who doesn't know, so Virgil has to pretend to be… it's food poisoning, oh no, I gotta run, and, you know, Richie distracts her, that kind of thing.
• 11:18
  Marcus Anderson: I do hope they make her figure it out, because it's kind of like… because she's definitely presented as a smart kid. I mean, she met Virgil at the school for smart kids.
• 11:28
  Ted: I do hope they give her that, like, that would be fun.
• 11:31
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 11:31
  Ted: How can I… how could I not tell? Of course it's you.
• 11:34
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, and I think about this with all the superheroes over the years, where they're out with their friends, and then it's like, this stuff's going down. I disappeared, you know what I mean? Right before Spider-Man slash, Static slash whoever, like, showed Flash, like, you know, all of them.
• 11:53
  Marcus Anderson: And it's kind of like, you know, static…
• 11:56
  Marcus Anderson: and Virgil, he's got a costume, but I feel like if I was Static's friend, I'd probably figure it out, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's not…
• 12:03
  Ted: I hate rocket science. I do.
• 12:05
  Tad Eggleston: I do think my favorite, like…
• 12:12
  Tad Eggleston: friend figuring it out and forcing the issue is still Superman 2.
• 12:18
  Ted: Oh, where she jumps off the floor.
• 12:19
  Tad Eggleston: When Lois literally.
• 12:20
  Marcus Anderson: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:21
  Tad Eggleston: fall.
• 12:22
  Ted: Oh, damn!
• 12:23
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it's also…
• 12:25
  Ted: window.
• 12:26
  Marcus Anderson: No, I think it was a window, right? Oh, no, no, you're right. No, it's Niagara Falls.
• 12:30
  Ted: So there's… the window bit, is that from the first… oh, whatever.
• 12:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, the window… he doesn't… he shows up, and he… for the interview, and he flies her.
• 12:38
  Ted: the thing with the super breath to slow her fall, and there'.
• 12:40
  Marcus Anderson: That's right, that's right.
• 12:42
  Ted: I… I don't know.
• 12:44
  Tad Eggleston: Just testing his powers.
• 12:46
  Ted: Right.
• 12:47
  Marcus Anderson: That was…
• 12:47
  Tad Eggleston: Superman 2, that she's like, you're Superman. No, I'm not. I've never seen the two of you in the same place.
• 12:54
  Marcus Anderson: Yup, yeah, she put it together. Although, come on, that's a hell of a gamble, Lois. I… Yeah. I'm just… come on.
• 13:00
  Tad Eggleston: But that's one of the reasons that I love it, too.
• 13:04
  Marcus Anderson: No, no, I agree.
• 13:05
  Tad Eggleston: It both, like, proves that, yep, he's Superman, you got me, and shows what an utter badass Lois is.
• 13:15
  Ted: Better!
• 13:15
  Marcus Anderson: She's also messy. Yeah, crazy and messy. Because I feel like there's way more functional ways…
• 13:22
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, you could get him…
• 13:24
  Ted: Crazy parentheses positive, but still crazy. Like, low…
• 13:27
  Marcus Anderson: What are you doing? I mean, that's pretty much like…
• 13:30
  Ted: I'm…
• 13:31
  Marcus Anderson: Put this gun to my head, and it's gonna take me less than a second to pull the trigger, but Superman, speed, you can stop me, like, you know what I mean? Like, that's crazy.
• 13:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I get it, I get it.
• 13:41
  Ted: But it…
• 13:42
  Tad Eggleston: But it's still pretty badass.
• 13:43
  Marcus Anderson: It is,
• 13:44
  Ted: Yeah, I haven't actually started watching this season of My Adventures of Superman yet, but I do love that.
• 13:49
  Marcus Anderson: There's…
• 13:49
  Ted: lowest, too.
• 13:50
  Marcus Anderson: They're actually… no, no, I do as well.
• 13:52
  Tad Eggleston: I need to watch more of that series.
• 13:53
  Ted: It's.
• 13:54
  Marcus Anderson: It's great, and actually, to your point, there is…
• 13:57
  Marcus Anderson: I watched a lot of it, but I'm pretty sure there is a version of that. I don't think she does exactly the same thing, but I think she does…
• 14:06
  Marcus Anderson: I think they do kind of revisit that.
• 14:09
  Ted: She knows by this season, right? I forget… well, whatever, we shouldn't spoil, but I thought.
• 14:13
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, are you on, like, season 2, or…
• 14:15
  Ted: When is Season 2? I can't remember, when did she figure it out?
• 14:18
  Marcus Anderson: I think, yeah, it's a… she does figure out, I feel like, mid-season 2, I think.
• 14:22
  Ted: Yeah, that sounds about right. I still, okay, my personal favorite version of the thing where it's like, you see right through it, it's not a good movie, but Green Lantern does have the bit where Ryan Reynolds shows up to, I forget who the actress is, and she's just like, how? He's like, how can you tell? And he's like, you're just wearing a mask, but you think.
• 14:38
  Marcus Anderson: Right, right.
• 14:38
  Ted: cheekbones? Like… That's my personal favorite version of it, but yeah.
• 14:43
  Marcus Anderson: You know what's interesting? Like, sorry, well, not what you can. We could talk about this stuff all day, because it's all good.
• 14:48
  Ted: We can, but yeah. The idea of what you can and can't hide with the domino mask is always slightly hilarious to me.
• 14:54
  Marcus Anderson: Dude.
• 14:55
  Ted: And that actually comes up in one of these episodes, I forgot about that.
• 14:59
  Ted: But yeah, so we've got these three episodes, we've got, let's see here, what are the titles? There's… Junior, Replay, and Tantrum.
• 15:07
  Ted: And I actually watched Junior for last time we recorded.
• 15:12
  Marcus Anderson: Me too, yeah.
• 15:12
  Ted: Yeah, I can remember which ones we were going through, and what order they were in, so, yeah. But yeah, Junior is, the first one, it uses the character who is, I think, unique to this adaptation, which is Edwin Alvin's son, who's Edwin Jr?
• 15:27
  Ted: I guess…
• 15:28
  Marcus Anderson: Crystal.
• 15:29
  Ted: He's just kind of a nerdy white kid who is resentful of the fact that his dad doesn't really show him any love, and also sort of apparently resents the fact that his dad is also
• 15:41
  Ted: ludicrously criminal, and doesn't, you know, doesn't shoot straight and everything, and acts out sort of to gain his dad's love, while conversely, of course.
• 15:51
  Ted: Virgil deals with his own dad, and… who's much more involved, and forgiving, and… and kind, and a much better father overall, because of course he is.
• 16:01
  Ted: This one, I don't know, it was okay. I didn't…
• 16:05
  Ted: I didn't love it. I'm… I'm interested that they gave…
• 16:09
  Ted: That they created the character of Edwin, I think, for this show.
• 16:14
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right. Although, I mean, he might have came in later, but I… no, I don't think he has a son, does he?
• 16:20
  Ted: Like, he hasn't… I don't remember him showing up at all. And also, I mean, this is more broad than just this episode, but I was thinking that, like, this version of Alva is different from the Alva from the comics, not in a bad way, but in a way that is just… it's different.
• 16:36
  Ted: Like, Edwin Alva in the comics is sort of… I mean, partly because he doesn't seem to have, like, a wife or kids or anything, as far as we know. He's a little bit kind of more…
• 16:48
  Ted: impish? I don't know, I always think of, like.
• 16:51
  Ted: There's a scene, again, the comics that I had, like, the random issues of Milestone that I had as a kid, one of the issues… there's an issue of hardware where he busts into…
• 17:00
  Ted: Alva's office, and, like, Alva's just sitting there, you know, sipping a glass of cognac or whatever, and listening to music, and he's just like, yeah, alright, there was a door, but whatever, and he's just totally unflappable. And I forget if we've gotten to that issue yet, I don't want to spoil anything.
• 17:14
  Marcus Anderson: I think we… I think we did. That sounds familiar.
• 17:16
  Ted: I think we did, too, because it's also… that's when it's revealed that he's listening to Charles Mingus, and he's like.
• 17:21
  Marcus Anderson: Yes, yeah, we did, we did get to that, yeah, yeah.
• 17:24
  Ted: Which is another little detail I love. But, like, Alvin in the comics is, I don't want to say chill, but he's more…
• 17:31
  Ted: Sort of… he… he's… he's… he's… he comes off as more laid back, or as more…
• 17:38
  Ted: I don't know how to put it exactly. He's got less…
• 17:40
  Marcus Anderson: I know what you mean.
• 17:42
  Ted: Yeah, he, he plays it.
• 17:44
  Marcus Anderson: He's dangerous, and he is… he's a bad dude, a bad, rich, powerful, dude who's ruining society. Yeah, yeah. But there is different…
• 17:55
  Ted: Yeah, and I don't… I don't dislike this version of Elba, but it… I mean, it's a change that they made, because it's, you know, it's a kid's show.
• 18:01
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. They made him, like, a cartoon villain, like, yeah.
• 18:05
  Ted: Yeah, and, you know, I get it, they have to.
• 18:08
  Marcus Anderson: But I feel like he carries some stuff over, but you're right, to your point, he is…
• 18:12
  Marcus Anderson: Like, I think it is largely the format, like, changes with the format, yeah.
• 18:17
  Ted: Well, and again, I mean, for an episode… to do an episode where it's like, here's Alvin… Alva as a dad, and here's Virgil's dad, like, that's great. You know, give him this character of his kid, who he's, you know, completely, hey, that…
• 18:31
  Ted: He, you know, he's like, why can't you, you know, get better grades? Well, what I also love is the inciting incident for this, which is that he's opening the new gymnasium
• 18:39
  Ted: And of course, the news is covering it, because Alva's wealthy beyond imagining.
• 18:44
  Ted: And Richie… no, not Richie, what is the kid… oh, it's Edwin Jr, right. Edwin is just sort of hanging out there because he can't talk to his dad, because his dad ignores him, and he's, like, futzing around in his PDA.
• 18:55
  Ted: And the reporter comes over and asks him about his dad, and without looking up to realize he's a reporter, he's like, yeah, this is way more interesting than the time that he lied in front of a grand jury, and all the conversation just cuts out immediately, and he looks up and he's like, oh shit, I was on TV. And that was great, like, that was a great little moment.
• 19:12
  Ted: Of him being like, oh, I've screwed things up royally.
• 19:17
  Ted: And I mean, it's, you know, again, it's sort of an obvious beat, but it's a good, obvious beat. I liked it a lot.
• 19:22
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 19:24
  Ted: And then, because he's also a science genius, though, he figures out how to make the Q… to manipulate the Q gas so he can use it to give himself temporary, specific superpowers, as opposed to just, like, taking a bath in it and hoping for the best. Which…
• 19:38
  Ted: I don't know, I mean, it's sort of a logical type of villain to bring in, I guess. Like, you know, of course, if you have the gas that gives people weird powers, you give… you have one character who can just give himself whatever powers he wants in the moment.
• 19:55
  Ted: I guess it also makes sense that, like, yeah, you've got this character of Alva's kid, who's trying to impress his dad, so of course he's gonna…
• 20:02
  Ted: You know, figure this out, and…
• 20:04
  Ted: used the device for himself, and that suit that looks like he's covered in bubble wrap.
• 20:09
  Ted: I don't know, it's… it's fine. It didn't…
• 20:12
  Ted: It didn't stun me. I am a little curious about the name Omniferious, like, is that really… does that really mean many forms? What's the… I don't… anyway.
• 20:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I think.
• 20:22
  Marcus Anderson: Or is it, or is it, like, really nefarious? Yeah, that's… Like, very nefarious?
• 20:27
  Ted: I'm super nefarious!
• 20:29
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, that's how I took it.
• 20:30
  Ted: Well, but he says, like, because Virgil at one point says, like, or he says it to Virgil, and he says it means city forms, yeah.
• 20:40
  Ted: Yeah.
• 20:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, what it is, is I think he's… he's… he's being too cute by half, because omniferance… Omniferous is.
• 20:53
  Ted: Yeah.
• 20:54
  Tad Eggleston: producing all types.
• 20:55
  Ted: Oh, yeah, of course, okay.
• 20:56
  Tad Eggleston: But he's, like…
• 20:58
  Ted: I'm also very…
• 20:59
  Tad Eggleston: nefarious. Which does, I feel like the.
• 21:01
  Ted: joke that then would static hears this, he's like, you're nefarious? He says, no.
• 21:05
  Marcus Anderson: I'm nefarious. That's actually pretty good. I think that's good, I like…
• 21:08
  Ted: It was, yeah, it was…
• 21:10
  Marcus Anderson: And also, he's a kid.
• 21:11
  Tad Eggleston: He's a teenager who thinks he's smarter.
• 21:13
  Ted: Good point.
• 21:14
  Tad Eggleston: I'm curious, is, is it, is actually a…
• 21:17
  Tad Eggleston: a acceptable spelling, as I look at it here.
• 21:20
  Ted: Oh, well, okay, alright.
• 21:21
  Marcus Anderson: Right, but phonetically… Yeah.
• 21:24
  Ted: Well…
• 21:25
  Marcus Anderson: I do like that it doubles phonetically.
• 21:27
  Tad Eggleston: All varieties, forms, and kinds.
• 21:30
  Ted: Yeah, okay, yeah, alright, well, sure, alright then, damn. And then I do also, like, static joke about, like, look, I'm in public school, Latin's an elective, you know.
• 21:37
  Marcus Anderson: Hmm.
• 21:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 21:39
  Ted: But yeah, that, you know, him being the kid who has every power, as opposed to Static, who's just got the one, him sort of getting drunk on the power, and, you know, taking down his dad's own
• 21:50
  Ted: businesses, it's a little bit, you know, hardware schtick, but through the eyes of the kid trying to impress his dad, or not impress his dad, but…
• 21:59
  Ted: get his dad's love.
• 22:02
  Ted: But yeah, I don't know, I mean, it was a… it was a fine episode, you got some cool little fight scenes. I did think it was weird that they kind of emphasized… so, eventually, Alva, like.
• 22:14
  Ted: he has his goons, you know, track down Omniferious, or they're attacking him or something, and he tries to order them to stop attacking, because Static says, hey, that's your kid. Or no.
• 22:24
  Ted: Yeah, Static… first of all, Static tells him that that's his kid. Right. Then, yeah, then he attacks… er, he… he comes by, and Alva tries to stop him by calling in his security forces.
• 22:36
  Ted: And then…
• 22:37
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 22:37
  Ted: And then they start attacking, Nefarious, and he's like, no, stop, that's my son, don't kill him. And they're like, no, man, it's him or us. And, like, I thought it was weird that they gave kind of a…
• 22:48
  Ted: that they gave a moment where Alvin is sort of impotent against his own security force. Like, it just seemed odd that it was, like, he can't even control his own, you know.
• 22:59
  Marcus Anderson: Well, it's interesting, because, I mean, I guess… I think the it's him or us thing is an interesting point, right? Because…
• 23:05
  Ted: Fair, yeah.
• 23:06
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, we are thinking about…
• 23:08
  Marcus Anderson: power, and obviously he wields power, like… like the other version of Elboy, he wields economic and…
• 23:14
  Marcus Anderson: social power over people. But yeah, I mean, I guess he's also not the one that's on the front lines, so…
• 23:20
  Ted: That's… yeah, that is, you know, there's that too, I guess. Yeah, I don't know, it was an interesting point, and it also… I guess it does kind of fit with the arc of him…
• 23:30
  Ted: you know, not having the control that he thought he did, and also not being as involved, I guess, as he thinks he is, in a way, where he doesn't realize until too late that, like, oh shit, I can't actually control as much as I thought I did.
• 23:43
  Ted: Yeah, no, I don't know, it was sort of interesting, but now it's kind of growing on me as a moment, to give him this moment of, like, I don't even know what's going on.
• 23:52
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 23:53
  Ted: But then all this, of course, contrasted with Virgil and his dad, because Virgil skips out on so many different events, and he's, you know, oh, he keeps showing up late to this and that, and his dad… eventually… I did really like the way they did that conversation, where eventually his dad is like, look, you don't have to explain yourself, man, like, I trust you, you're a good kid.
• 24:12
  Ted: you know, I don't worry about you, because you're my son, and I know I've raised you… you've been raised right, and you know right from wrong, and…
• 24:20
  Ted: yeah, it was really sweet. I don't know, I liked it a lot.
• 24:23
  Marcus Anderson: True.
• 24:23
  Ted: just as he's about to tell his dad, oh, hey, by the way, I'm static, then, you know, something blows up, and he has to go off of the costume, which, yeah.
• 24:30
  Ted: Yeah.
• 24:31
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, I mean, it was a sweet little episode. Like, you know, like Tad was saying, like, there's this… there is this thread in these episodes about…
• 24:40
  Ted: you know, responsibility, and parentship, parenthood, kids, et cetera, and how we were raised. Yeah, I…
• 24:48
  Ted: if this is the way you were gonna do it, obviously, I think this is a good way to do it. I,
• 24:53
  Ted: I do also love that it's like, oh yeah, let's turn him into a statue at the end, because then we can eventually bring it back if we really need to. And I'm sure they do, I haven't really looked it up, but, like, of course they're gonna bring it back somehow, but…
• 25:04
  Ted: But yeah, that was, that was, you know, given the little statue form, but his eyes are still glowing a little bit at the end, yeah.
• 25:13
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, it's okay, it's a fun one.
• 25:18
  Tad Eggleston: I… I think I… I appreciated most about this, something that I don't think has really been brought up.
• 25:24
  Tad Eggleston: But that… virtual… Even as horrible, as nefarious as behaving. Even as dangerous as it's behaving.
• 25:38
  Tad Eggleston: Has his first priority to be… To save the kid.
• 25:45
  Ted: Yeah.
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: There's a relationship between the kid and the father, even though he's not a big fan of the father.
• 25:50
  Ted: Yes.
• 25:51
  Ted: Even though we know.
• 25:52
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's not, I need to go… it's not, I need to go beat the shit out of you and throw you in jail. It's, oh, you're a kid, something's messed up.
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna try to help you.
• 26:05
  Marcus Anderson: I'm fighting?
• 26:06
  Tad Eggleston: But that says a lot about Virgil.
• 26:08
  Marcus Anderson: Right. Which, and, you know, I mean, to… and that's a great point in… in,
• 26:14
  Marcus Anderson: because if we're being real, like, superhero stories and, comics often do fall into propaganda, in the sense that it's like, oh, we gotta wrap this up, and the way we wrap this up is the police and arrests happening. But yeah, I think the idea of a superhero, given that, the idea of a superhero
• 26:34
  Marcus Anderson: considering, like, all the angles, you know what I mean, and finding an alternative solution.
• 26:39
  Marcus Anderson: is, it's… it's cool. It's good.
• 26:43
  Ted: Yeah.
• 26:44
  Ted: Yeah, it's… again, it's… Virgil is, you know, an easily distracted and kind of, you know…
• 26:52
  Ted: fun-loving kid until the chips are down, at which point, you know, he knows right from wrong, he knows what to do, he has the…
• 26:58
  Ted: Yeah, he's a hero. He knows what the right thing is to do, and I do…
• 27:03
  Ted: Yeah, I like him a lot. It's… it is very clear to me, the more we watch this, more and more, it's like, oh yeah, of course they're gonna make this into the kids' TV show. He is…
• 27:11
  Ted: He is the most…
• 27:13
  Ted: I don't want to make it like, oh, it's an easily sellable or toiletic thing, but it's like, yeah, of course they're gonna make him into a series. He is, like, like you keep saying, he ran… he walked so Miles Morales could run, you know, so… or at the very least, we don't get Miles Morales without him, yeah.
• 27:27
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I also noticed this time around, just, like, how much the… I mean, I rewatched Into the Spider-Verse with my granddaughter.
• 27:35
  Tad Eggleston: Last week.
• 27:37
  Tad Eggleston: And… and… it was watching the static here that I went, oh my god, they, like, totally got the costume.
• 27:44
  Ted: Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean…
• 27:47
  Tad Eggleston: The Into the Spider-Verse costume is so much the TV show Static Shock costume.
• 27:54
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know.
• 27:55
  Tad Eggleston: Where, where it's the… the super hit kid, rather than… yeah.
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair. Well, but, but, like, the t-shirts and the painted on, you know, rather than the big bodysuit and whatnot, it's like…
• 28:09
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna throw on a coat, and I've got a t-shirt, and…
• 28:12
  Ted: Yeah, oh…
• 28:13
  Tad Eggleston: It's got a more DIY, like…
• 28:16
  Ted: Sorry, I was thinking, like, what he had.
• 28:17
  Tad Eggleston: kid.
• 28:17
  Ted: Yeah, I was thinking more the other one, because that's, I mean, the more iconic thing for me with static is always the baseball cap and the big coat, and even sometimes the gloves, like, depending on the version. Yeah, that's… I was… sorry, I was thinking, across the… the second one, across… where it's just sort of the Spider-Man suit, but yeah. But yeah, no, that's a good point, I didn't think about that.
• 28:39
  Ted: But yeah, and actually, okay, this is actually kind of a good transition. Speaking of costume bits, there was a bit in the next episode that I was like, oh, they actually used his costume in a fun way, because the next episode.
• 28:49
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah.
• 28:49
  Ted: replay, which I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. I thought it was really funny and just, like, genuinely a great friggin' episode, and I didn't expect it to be.
• 29:02
  Ted: Just because I had sort of an immediate negative reaction, and then I started watching, like, oh, this is actually really funny.
• 29:10
  Ted: But yeah, this… so this also, incidentally, first of… I think this is sort of the beginning of the comeback of,
• 29:19
  Ted: Gilpatrick Harris.
• 29:21
  Ted: Oh, I think.
• 29:22
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 29:23
  Ted: Because he's… because, I mean, he's in Doogie House when he's a kid, obviously, and then later on, he starts getting roles in, like, How I Met Your Mother and other stuff, but I think this is one of the first…
• 29:33
  Ted: Moments where it's him You know, doing a new role.
• 29:37
  Ted: think. I do not know that for sure, I'd have to check the…
• 29:41
  Ted: the timing of it. And it's also a little bit, you know, stunt cast… not stunt casting, but it's alluding to his role, where it's… this is… he's playing a.
• 29:49
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 29:50
  Ted: was a child star who then got completely ignored. Yeah, okay, so…
• 29:56
  Marcus Anderson: Wait, quick question, quick question. Oh, good, well, you…
• 29:59
  Marcus Anderson: You go ahead, I don't… well, can I… let me ask you guys a question, because this was on my mind. I know you're about to get into the recap, and obviously one of the main plot points you were going to bring up is the duplication ability. Help me… help me remember… I was trying to remember, is it hardware, or…
• 30:18
  Marcus Anderson: Or was it static? Like, one… there was an early milestone issue where there was a duplicating villain.
• 30:25
  Ted: It was just hardware.
• 30:26
  Marcus Anderson: It's hardware.
• 30:27
  Ted: There's like a… there was, like, a beach episode.
• 30:29
  Marcus Anderson: Well, he is a different… oh, that's what… but that was… that character was coming back at that point, right? Because I feel like that character had been introduced pretty early. Okay, but it's not… it's not like a version of this… this kid is not a version of that character, right?
• 30:42
  Ted: Really new character as far as.
• 30:42
  Marcus Anderson: That's what I thought, okay, yeah.
• 30:44
  Ted: And I couldn't even remember the name, it's not… because it's not Replay, it's like… is it Rewind, or…
• 30:50
  Marcus Anderson: It's something.
• 30:50
  Ted: I don't remember what that character's name is, but no.
• 30:53
  Marcus Anderson: I'll look it up later. Oh, good.
• 30:54
  Ted: Yeah, same. And it also, he looked different, and I think his shtick was that, like, he was actually plucking different versions of himself from throughout, like, his personal timeline.
• 31:05
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, that's interesting.
• 31:06
  Ted: Well, and then I think what happens is, when he's fighting hardware, one of him gets killed, and then suddenly it's like, oh shit, whenever my timeline catches up with that dude, I'm gonna die.
• 31:15
  Marcus Anderson: What? See, that'.
• 31:16
  Ted: what it was, I don't remember for sure.
• 31:18
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I gotta go back and read that, that sounds dope.
• 31:20
  Ted: Yeah, I don't… yeah, I don't remember, unfortunately. I gotta… I gotta recheck it, because I was thinking the same thing. I was like, wait, who was… wasn't there a dude who kind of looked like this? Or who had similar powers? But, yeah, so the reason that I… that I mentioned kind of not liking it at first is because it opens…
• 31:35
  Ted: It… the way that it opened made it feel really clunky.
• 31:38
  Ted: Because it's, okay, we're at the mall, Static and Richie and Daisy are just hanging out at the mall, I do like that there's… one of the stories is just called The Gape, because I thought that was funny.
• 31:48
  Marcus Anderson: Boom.
• 31:48
  Ted: Yeah, and then, we get to a jewelry store, and some guy who's just, like, in a t-shirt walks in, and he's like, hey, I want to see this watch, and the guy's like, okay, yes, this is our fanciest watch. It has a built-in, you know, pager and, internet connection, and it's like, wow, fancy.
• 32:06
  Ted: And then… he's like, well, wait a minute, you're familiar. And he's like, yeah, I used to be, you know, this child star who's on the show called Johnny on the Spot, and I did, you know, blah blah blah, and I was… and then everyone forgot about me. And it's like, okay, he's just kind of spilling his whole motivation here, I guess. It felt very clunky in a weird way.
• 32:23
  Marcus Anderson: It is. It is a Saturday morning cartoon. We want to make sure the kids get it right away, yeah.
• 32:27
  Ted: But then that's the thing, is that then suddenly it's like…
• 32:30
  Ted: well, then I realized, oh, wait, that's kind of the point, because then what happens is two more of him show up, grab the jewelry guy by both arms, and then he just robs the dude, and like…
• 32:40
  Ted: it's very funny that it's just like, yeah, I'm just telling you all this just to kind of, you know, waste time, and then he shows up and starts robbing it. I thought… I don't know, for some reason, that really cracked me up. Like, it made me laugh, and it's like, oh, he's literally just started killing time to make this happen.
• 32:55
  Ted: And so, then, of course, 6 more of this guy show up, and they start robbing all the stores. Static runs off, he has to… this is the bit where he has to fake food poisoning, and, you know, to get away from Daisy.
• 33:06
  Ted: And then he starts fighting Replay, and I do like… I do like the gimmick that, like, Replay doesn't have any powers beyond being, you know, the duplication of things, he's just a normal guy, but there's still, like, 6 of him versus Static, so it's actually kind of a fair fight, and I thought that was…
• 33:20
  Marcus Anderson: Mmm.
• 33:20
  Ted: I don't know, I thought that was funny. Yeah. And at this point, this is another part where I'm like, okay, I kinda see what we're doing, it's like that episode of Batman the Animated Series with the…
• 33:29
  Ted: The woman who was, like, an actress who had a weird genetic thing that made it.
• 33:33
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah.
• 33:34
  Ted: Yeah, not Sweetie Bell.
• 33:36
  Marcus Anderson: Not too… oh, oh, oh, no, no! Wait, was that Batman… did you say Batman Beyond, or the animated series?
• 33:43
  Ted: Animated series.
• 33:43
  Marcus Anderson: It was an animation, I watched that recently, yeah, yes, Baby Doll? Baby Doll, Baby Doll, yeah, yeah.
• 33:48
  Ted: Yeah, where she, you know, she always looked like a kid, which meant she could only be cast as a kid, and she had this, you know, that's why she turned to crime. I thought they were gonna do a thing about him being, like, a washed-up child star, and he was sort of mad about that, but then, when he and Zedek are fighting in, like, the hall of mirrors in the abandoned amusement park, because she always had the abandoned amusement park.
• 34:05
  Ted: their powers, like, interact and cause a big explosion, and then suddenly, when Static wakes up, there's another static.
• 34:13
  Marcus Anderson: That was cool how they did that, because…
• 34:14
  Ted: Yes!
• 34:15
  Marcus Anderson: It was like, you could tell that the reflection wasn't matching, or they play it, like, like, because they're in a hall of mirrors, and they play it, like, static.
• 34:23
  Ted: Maybe.
• 34:24
  Marcus Anderson: and groggy. Yeah, yeah.
• 34:26
  Ted: reflection. But, like, the colors are a little desaturated.
• 34:29
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah. And the movements, the movements didn't match.
• 34:32
  Ted: Yes, and I… and then, of course, he runs off, and so he's like, oh, that was weird. And then we cut… and then it's like, oh no, this is actually a totally different story, because then we cut to, you know, Richie and Frida hanging out.
• 34:44
  Ted: Richie and Daisy. And they're like, hey, there's Static over there, you know, hey, Static, what's up? Except Static is zapping all the ATMs, so they start spitting money everywhere.
• 34:54
  Ted: Yeah. And Richie comes over, and he's like, hey, what's going on here, buddy? What are you doing? And static, just like…
• 35:01
  Ted: Zaps him to a billboard,
• 35:05
  Ted: And this is the other line that actually made me laugh out loud, where Richie's like, how could you do this to me? And then we cut to… and then, like, the camera zooms out, we see there's, like, 5 other people stuck to the billboard, and one of them just goes.
• 35:16
  Ted: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's had a lot of practice.
• 35:18
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 35:19
  Ted: That's a funny line, that's a…
• 35:20
  Marcus Anderson: No, there's a lot of… I like some of those little jokes and stuff.
• 35:23
  Ted: Yeah, like, this episode kind of surprised me, because I thought it was doing a simpler thing than it was, because then, yeah, of course, Bad Static teams up with
• 35:32
  Ted: Johnny… Johnny… Johnny Morrow is the character's name? Yeah.
• 35:37
  Ted: And, you know, they're robbing banks and stuff like that, but then, of course, his big plan is he's gonna destroy the TV station that fired him, or canceled his show way back when, and all that stuff.
• 35:47
  Ted: And… Of course, this sets up a big fight at the TV station.
• 35:52
  Ted: I do, I mean, the other bit is… then there's a bit in the middle where Static is trying to figure out what's going on,
• 36:00
  Ted: Yeah, that's right. Johnny finds the little communicator, the shock box, that he and Richie have, and he uses that to, like, call static.
• 36:09
  Ted: Oh.
• 36:10
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 36:11
  Ted: And that's… I mean, there was another, like, clever line in here where he, when Static first picks up, he's like, rich? And he's like, no, I'm not rich, not yet.
• 36:16
  Marcus Anderson: You don't know yet.
• 36:18
  Ted: You know, again, it's like, oh, there's some clever little bits of writing in here I didn't expect. And the static figure asks Richie to help in tracking this down, and Richie still doesn't realize that there's two statics, and so he doesn't trust him, but he does trust him enough to kind of
• 36:34
  Ted: fiddle with the shock box to track the other guy down, even though he's like, man, I… you went crazy, you magnetized me to a billboard, what are you doing? And I like that there was sort of…
• 36:44
  Ted: A weird little tension with them in that scene, where he's like.
• 36:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 36:47
  Ted: about, but still, like, I don't know what you're doing, man, this is weird.
• 36:52
  Marcus Anderson: Which, which, real quick, I thought that was pretty cool, because on paper, you're like, you just want Richie to, like, trust him, but if you think about it,
• 37:00
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, like, these guys are, like, best friends, you trust them. And also.
• 37:05
  Marcus Anderson: If your best friend is a superhero and is, like, you know, so powerful they could probably kill you without thinking about it, and then all of a sudden, one day they go bad, you know, it is gonna be traumatic if you…
• 37:17
  Marcus Anderson: If you went through that, and they seem to be wearing your best friend's face.
• 37:20
  Ted: And also, he points out, like, hey, maybe every Bang Baby goes crazy, we don't know yet, this is completely new.
• 37:26
  Ted: maybe you're having amnesia or something, which is, again, kind of reasonable. It's like, yeah, that totally could be happening. We don't know what's going on. This is comic book science, man. But yeah, so Johnny and Bad Static go to the, TV studio, where all they do is break up the studio set, which I think is kind of funny that that's his big plan.
• 37:45
  Ted: Rich, Static comes after and starts fighting him. Richie also manages to sneak in and turn on the TV cameras to broadcast the fight, so everyone realizes, like, oh, Static isn't bad, it's this guy. And they catch, you know, Patrick Harris in the end and everything, and bad Static vanishes out of
• 38:03
  Ted: reality, and then everything is fine and dandy. So, yeah. I mean, again, there's, like, little clever bits of…
• 38:10
  Ted: You know, when Richie first turns on the cameras and tells Johnny that it's being broadcast everywhere, there's this moment where Johnny's like, I'm on TV again? And then he realizes, like, oh shit, wait, no, let's get out of here!
• 38:21
  Marcus Anderson: It is, like, I'm on TV.
• 38:22
  Ted: Yeah, he's like, oh, I get to be on TV? I go, oh, wait, crap, I'm trying to kill this guy. Which, you know, that's fun. And then, what was the other bit? There's, yeah, the bit where, like, when he has bad static just, like, hanging out in his apartment, and bad static never talks, like, presumably there's some sort of thing where he's not a full copy or whatever.
• 38:42
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:43
  Ted: Yeah, he takes off Static's mask.
• 38:45
  Ted: And underneath, it's just like… like, like TV static.
• 38:50
  Marcus Anderson: Alright.
• 38:50
  Ted: Yeah, like, it was… it was a weird little moment, and I… I don't know, it was a… it was a…
• 38:56
  Ted: It was a funky costume choice to be like, oh yeah, in addition to being evil, also his face doesn't show up normally, and it's just
• 39:04
  Ted: TV static? I… yeah.
• 39:07
  Ted: That was fun.
• 39:07
  Marcus Anderson: Well, yeah, because I guess it also calls to question, like, how… like, he did mention… he did describe how he duplicates himself. What did he say? They're, like, electromagnetic versions of me, or something like that? Something.
• 39:20
  Ted: He says something, and they are waiting.
• 39:22
  Ted: They're specifically, like, just sort of copies, like, he…
• 39:25
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it's finger.
• 39:26
  Ted: and they vanish, or you're proof into or out of existence. Yes.
• 39:30
  Marcus Anderson: So I think… so my interpretation was, in the logic of the show, and the science of the show.
• 39:35
  Marcus Anderson: like, he can duplicate maybe what he can see? I don't know. But then again, it's like, he also did have the device, so… but…
• 39:43
  Ted: Yeah, it's… I mean, you know, again, it's comic book science.
• 39:46
  Marcus Anderson: Great, bro.
• 39:46
  Ted: I like the way that his powers and statics interacted, and again, like, I thought this was sort of a smaller story than it ended up being. Like, I thought it was gonna be a story just about, you know, Patrick Harris' character, but no, it was… it was a… it was a…
• 40:00
  Ted: It was a funnier story, it was a wackier one, I like that a lot. Oh, that was… and then also, the thing about the costume, I remember I was gonna mention, the,
• 40:08
  Ted: they temporarily create the, like, anti-static task force, which he has to deal with at one point, very briefly and perfunctorily. And…
• 40:19
  Ted: they use, like, tear gas or something, and finally he actually puts on the goggles that he's had on his head, like, all season. Yeah. It's like, oh, shoot, he actually has this for a reason. Yeah, I had no idea.
• 40:29
  Marcus Anderson: Lives in the sewer, too.
• 40:31
  Ted: Oh yeah, that's… yeah, he's gotta escape through the sewer, riding a manhole by going through a manhole, yeah, that was… yeah, there were some fun… there were some fun bits in that one. I… this… this was… I didn't want to say my favorite episode, but this one was more entertaining than I expected, and I liked what they did with it, so… yeah.
• 40:49
  Ted: And then season finale, Tantrum. Yeah, this…
• 40:54
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, so this one… this one really… You know, they've referenced,
• 40:59
  Marcus Anderson: the fact that in this iteration of Static, you know, Virgil has lost his mom.
• 41:04
  Marcus Anderson: Which, you know, really kind of buzzed me out, because I had to look it up. I was like, well, let me, let me see if, like…
• 41:11
  Marcus Anderson: the creators, like, spoke about it, and I guess… and they… they're…
• 41:16
  Marcus Anderson: their reason, for this change of his mom being gone is that, you know, they wanted to, A, have,
• 41:23
  Marcus Anderson: you know, Superior Origin… tragedy that tied into the work they do, like, Uncle Ben…
• 41:31
  Marcus Anderson: Thomas and Martha Wayne, all of them.
• 41:35
  Marcus Anderson: But it's like, you know, it's hard for me because I think one of the things that I love about, like, Combo Static is that his family is important to it.
• 41:46
  Ted: Yes.
• 41:47
  Marcus Anderson: I mean, even to the extent in the… in…
• 41:50
  Marcus Anderson: the two seasons that DC did give us of the new static, where, I like the idea that his family just knows, and they even, like, kind of, like… well, they find out pretty early on, and they're.
• 42:02
  Ted: Yeah.
• 42:02
  Marcus Anderson: they just help him. Which actually kind of makes sense, because they are kind of like… they are a close-knit family, so you would think that,
• 42:11
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, they probably just figured out.
• 42:12
  Ted: We'll figure it out pretty quickly.
• 42:13
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, so I think… oh, just sorry, real quick, one other quick point is, like, for me, it's just, like, was also a positive… really positive seeing, like, an intact, you know, Black family, specifically, like, in the 90s, in a time where the narrative of, like, you know, broken Black families was.
• 42:33
  Ted: Yeah.
• 42:34
  Marcus Anderson: so rampant, and, you know, so it was, like, it was cool. And his mom was, like, a really important part of the book. His father was, too. And there's that issue that we read where his dad was injured really badly.
• 42:46
  Ted: Yeah!
• 42:48
  Marcus Anderson: But he didn't lose him. So anyway, I… I love what they do…
• 42:54
  Marcus Anderson: after having made this decision that in this version, he has lost his mom. And the reasons they gave was, A, the Uncle Ben thing, but also to kind of establish why he has such… so much of a problem with gun violence.
• 43:10
  Marcus Anderson: And, and gangs. That's okay. Yeah, which he did say, and I want to say it in the early episode, he kind of did pretty much just say that. You know what I mean?
• 43:19
  Ted: like, if they had talked about exactly how he lost his mom, because I was…
• 43:23
  Marcus Anderson: It was like a line of dialogue. I think he was talking about how his mom…
• 43:28
  Marcus Anderson: Was, you know, maybe killed by gangbangers when she was trying to help people.
• 43:34
  Ted: Okay.
• 43:34
  Marcus Anderson: So…
• 43:35
  Ted: That's… yeah, that was… That was quick.
• 43:37
  Ted: It's… it is interesting, because I was trying to remember, and also, it wasn't entirely clear to me… I was… I was curious when his mom died, because the fact that in this episode, they're like, oh, we're doing her memorial service, I wasn't clear, like, oh, did she die recently, or did… is it just like, oh.
• 43:55
  Marcus Anderson: Well, it might be… so, again, just because I just looked it up, recently, they said, I think it's been 5 years in the show, but I read it as, like, a memorial, you know, like, maybe not the memorial service, like, right when she passed, but maybe just something looking back, like, you know…
• 44:12
  Ted: Yeah.
• 44:13
  Marcus Anderson: But one… that's the thing that I think
• 44:16
  Marcus Anderson: really, this episode does really well, like, despite the fact that I'm kind of bummed out that
• 44:20
  Marcus Anderson: his mom's not in this story, at least as a living person. She is, in the sense that, like, you know, it's framed, even though, yes, he has, like, some super…
• 44:33
  Marcus Anderson: villain or, you know, or antagonist battles and hijinks at school. What this episode is really about is, like, him having
• 44:42
  Marcus Anderson: a conversation with his mom. But even more so than that, the central theme of this episode is grief.
• 44:48
  Marcus Anderson: And the different ways that
• 44:52
  Marcus Anderson: we experience it, even in the same family, you know, because, Sharon and Virgil's dad, they're really…
• 45:01
  Marcus Anderson: You know, they're, they're like, let's, you know, they're, they're feeling good, even though, obviously, they're sad and they got their own grief, but they, they are enjoying, like, looking back at these videos.
• 45:13
  Marcus Anderson: of their mom, as they're, like, putting together a reel, essentially, for her memorial service, and Virgil just, like, freaks out. In a way that's, like, totally relatable, you know, because I even think…
• 45:23
  Ted: It's very relatable. I like that a lot, yeah.
• 45:26
  Marcus Anderson: Dude.
• 45:27
  Ted: Sorry, I stepped on you, but, like.
• 45:28
  Marcus Anderson: No, no, no, it's all good. I mean, I just wanted… that's the main thing. I just wanted to kind of… I mean, you could totally just re… recap it, but I just wanted to, like, I really loved…
• 45:36
  Marcus Anderson: how they handle those themes, because that really is how it is, like, you know…
• 45:42
  Marcus Anderson: You know, you experience grief with your loved ones, and… but, like, yeah, not everybody experiences
• 45:47
  Marcus Anderson: The specific steps at the same time.
• 45:49
  Ted: Yeah.
• 45:50
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:51
  Ted: really good job with that. I think that's… this… this is a really solid episode. I also… I do… I'm a sucker for sort of a unconventional… not unconventional, I guess.
• 46:00
  Marcus Anderson: to move.
• 46:01
  Ted: I'm a sucker for anything out of the ordinary in terms of, like, how it's.
• 46:05
  Marcus Anderson: Narrative.
• 46:06
  Ted: Yeah, and the fact that it's a… they've got the framing device of him talking to his mom at her grave, I thought that was really good. Like, I thought… I liked that a lot, I liked it showing… and then, once you get to the end and you kind of recontextualize, oh, it's not just that he's talking to his mom, it's like, this is maybe the first time he's kind of talked to his mom like this.
• 46:24
  Marcus Anderson: True.
• 46:25
  Ted: in the time since she died, maybe. It's not super clear, but it is a thing where it's like, this is a new phase in his relationship, he's a little bit more…
• 46:33
  Ted: Able to understand and, and, you know, deal with things.
• 46:37
  Ted: And, yeah, I thought… I liked… I liked that element a lot. It is… again, like you say, it's a bummer that, yeah, his mom's dead in the show. It would have been an opportunity… it would have been a nice opportunity to have the complete family, but I think they did as good a job with it as you could…
• 46:53
  Ted: do? Yeah. Like, I think it… if you're gonna have the mom be dad, this is… this is the best way to do it.
• 47:01
  Ted: Oh.
• 47:02
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 47:02
  Ted: That's not… maybe that's not exactly what I mean to say, but, you know, it's like…
• 47:06
  Ted: They deal with it in a really interesting, mature way, and then also, you know, they manage to tie it in a little bit to the plot, but not in a way that feels sort of hammy or undeserved.
• 47:15
  Ted: Because, of course, watching this video with his mom gives Virgil the inspiration of how he should deal with this week's villain, in a way that feels, you know, normal and sort of earned and not, like.
• 47:27
  Ted: overwrought or anything, and… Yeah, I… it's a sweet episode, it's a good note to end the season on.
• 47:36
  Ted: I do, I mean, okay, the actual villain is… he shows up first as sort of a purple clo…
• 47:42
  Marcus Anderson: Beautiful.
• 47:42
  Ted: clone, who they just call Tant… I don't even think they actually call him Tantrum, but, like, that's…
• 47:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, let's name the episode. Yeah.
• 47:49
  Ted: But he, you know, he's tearing up a restaurant when we first see him, and Static has to stop him, but he just gets stronger and madder, and eventually just runs away.
• 47:59
  Ted: And then we get a little more context, we see one of Static's pre… and Richie's previously unseen, unnamed classmates named Thomas Kim, who, of course.
• 48:09
  Marcus Anderson: Wait, real quick, didn't he show up, though? I feel like…
• 48:12
  Ted: there was the… there was… okay, here's the thing, like, I was trying to remember… we… we haven't really gotten a whole lot about his classmates, I don't… I mean, besides, like, Daisy and Frida, obviously. But, like…
• 48:21
  Ted: there were the two… there were the twin Asian American boys in the.
• 48:27
  Marcus Anderson: Oh…
• 48:28
  Ted: Yeah, I was trying to remember this, and because… and I was thinking about this in that context, because I do… I mean, I do feel like…
• 48:37
  Ted: having it.
• 48:38
  Marcus Anderson: You can say it.
• 48:38
  Ted: encouraged me.
• 48:39
  Ted: Yeah, having it be the narrative that, like, oh, this is the Asian American kid whose parents are, like, determined that he has to get an A on every single thing is a little…
• 48:50
  Ted: like, did you really have to do that, guys? You know, it's… it's not great, but…
• 48:56
  Ted: Yeah. But yeah.
• 48:58
  Marcus Anderson: It's… it's… no, I had very much thought about that. It is a thing that has some grounding in reality, but it's also… I almost feel like, in a…
• 49:10
  Marcus Anderson: show where maybe, you've got multiple Asian characters. This being the case for one of them.
• 49:17
  Marcus Anderson: would be one thing, but, like, yeah, if it's, like, your Asian kid, and he's got, like, the classic…
• 49:22
  Ted: demanding, and, you know, he's like, who was, you know, what was the deciding event for World War I? He's like, well, the assassination of Archbishop First Man, what was the name of the assassin? It's like, Jesus Christ, guys, it's a little, it's a little much, you know? So,
• 49:36
  Ted: And I mean, who doesn't know Gavril or Prince Hip? Come on!
• 49:39
  Ted: That's… That's a joke, I…
• 49:42
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I got you.
• 49:43
  Ted: I actually… okay, I paused the episode, like, right after the dad asked that question, and I was going to the bathroom, and I was like, wait, what is the name of the… I remember reading it once.
• 49:52
  Marcus Anderson: Me too, but I couldn't… I couldn't pull up the name, I could not remember the name.
• 49:57
  Ted: I only remember because I also read, like, a short story
• 50:00
  Ted: I don't even remember who it was by, that was about, like.
• 50:03
  Ted: Gavriel Princip just before the assassination, like, getting his fortune read. Was it by Avram Davidson? I don't remember. Anyway,
• 50:10
  Ted: And so, like, I happened to remember the name, like, oh, that's right, Gavrilo Princess! So I felt very proud of myself for, you know, 20 seconds. But…
• 50:20
  Ted: But yeah, so… so the dad is a real hard-ass, he wants to make sure, you know, and Thomas is like, oh, I look at 99 out of 100.
• 50:28
  Ted: oh, crap, I messed up, my parents are gonna be so mad. And then, later that day, the teacher's leaving class, or leaving the school, and, you know, Tantrum shows up and smashes her car, and at that point, it's, you know, you can put two and two together.
• 50:40
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah.
• 50:41
  Ted: But they also find his test there in the parking lot afterwards, just to make sure we get it, yeah.
• 50:47
  Ted: Yeah, I mean… and then, of course, the revelation, or the idea that Static gets is like, oh, okay, he's having a tantrum, let him just kind of tire himself out, and then we can capture him without having to fight him or anything, and…
• 50:57
  Ted: You know, because that's what he saw on the tape with his mom, which, yeah, I mean, it's a… it's a cute little way to end it out. I think it… I think it worked for what it was trying to do, and I like that it gave us… it neatly tied together the thing of, like.
• 51:11
  Ted: Him… he's accepted the death of his mom enough that he can watch these tapes and sort of look back on her love and realize what she meant to him, and…
• 51:21
  Ted: Right. And then also, that just kind of gives him the… the… the spark, he's like, oh, yeah, that's what I can do. And then we end with that really lovely scene where we have the memorial service, and… Yeah.
• 51:31
  Marcus Anderson: In the credits.
• 51:32
  Ted: And the credits! And they're doing the, the, the, the, the choir rendition of my, of,
• 51:36
  Marcus Anderson: how I got over.
• 51:36
  Ted: how I get over it? Yeah! That was so… God, that was really good!
• 51:40
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah… no… yeah, go, no, you go ahead, sorry.
• 51:44
  Ted: No, I got nothing, I mean, this is…
• 51:45
  Marcus Anderson: No, all I was gonna say is…
• 51:48
  Marcus Anderson: it's really interesting, because everything you said is true, like, Tantrum as a villain is not, like, super compelling, but, like, I feel like this… but I can't remember what…
• 52:00
  Marcus Anderson: Issue of one of our milestone books we were talking about.
• 52:06
  Marcus Anderson: Where, to me, it kind of did a similar thing, in the sense that this was, like, one of my favorite episodes, even though, like, the villain…
• 52:14
  Marcus Anderson: and villain in quotes, right? Because, let's say antagonist. The antagonist was, you know, not super original or compelling, but it's one of my favorite episodes because, to me, I feel like this episode is more about
• 52:29
  Marcus Anderson: The grief, and… and him, like… like you mentioned, like, really…
• 52:35
  Marcus Anderson: Working through things enough to, like, get over that refusal
• 52:40
  Marcus Anderson: barrier that he was having, and actually, like, speak to his mom, you know? And so, it's kind of like, it's way more about that than even, like, who… you could have swapped in anybody, you could have swapped in Hot Streak or anything, but, like… but I think it was… it needed to be, like, somebody sympathetic,
• 53:00
  Marcus Anderson: you know… because, you know, Thomas is sympathetic, like, you know, as a character, like, he's not…
• 53:07
  Marcus Anderson: Going out and smashing stuff, and it even seems like he's not fully aware of what he does when he's in that other form.
• 53:13
  Ted: He doesn't… yeah, he doesn't really know what he's doing, it just…
• 53:16
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:16
  Ted: Wakes up, but yeah.
• 53:17
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, which actually is kind of tragic, yeah, I mean, it is the Hulk, it is the Hulk, essentially, but it's like, yeah, it's messed up.
• 53:25
  Ted: But yeah, it's… it is used to tell a really good story about that grief and about him. And there's also, I gotta say, I really like that bit in the middle where his dad is like, look.
• 53:34
  Ted: you don't have to grieve on our schedule, and I'm sorry that I didn't realize that you were still grieving in a way that I didn't, sort of.
• 53:42
  Ted: Notice? Not notice.
• 53:43
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 53:44
  Ted: But, like, I… I like that that was in there for his dad to be like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, that… I didn't… I didn't recognize what… what was going on here. And then at the end, he has kind of had a,
• 53:58
  Ted: A bit to… to not get over it, but… he's… he's… he's…
• 54:05
  Ted: he's in a better place, and I think that's really sweet, and… yeah, the Thomas stuff is there to kind of make it all hang together, but it's…
• 54:11
  Ted: It does a fine enough job of that, but also, like, it's really good for being a story about grief and working through things. And yeah, again, at the very end, it kind of recontextualizes, it's not just that he's talking to his mom, this is probably, like, the first time he's talked to his mom's grave in who knows, maybe ever.
• 54:28
  Ted: And it's, you know, a special little talk, and he's admitting everything to her, I mean, she's…
• 54:33
  Ted: You know, dead.
• 54:35
  Ted: But, like, yeah, it was a sweet little episode. It was a really great episode to end the season on. I think this is definitely one of the best of the season. I mean.
• 54:44
  Ted: For good reason. I was gonna look at who wrote this one, I totally blanked on that.
• 54:50
  Ted: I didn't sort of pay attention to who was writing which episodes, but it's…
• 54:56
  Ted: Yeah, this… this streak of three episodes was really solid. I don't know if I'd say they were my favorites, because I did really like the stuff with Eben.
• 55:04
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I've liked stuff throughout, so it is hard to… it is a little hard to say, which is…
• 55:09
  Ted: Yeah, I went to stuff with Ebb.
• 55:10
  Marcus Anderson: These are up there. These are up there, though, I think.
• 55:12
  Ted: Yes, like, especially the bit with his mom and his bed, and again, like, replay as an episode, I guess, isn't anything that special, it's just that it was sort of unexpectedly funny for me that made me kind of really get into it, so I don't know what it was. And also, again, I did look it up a little bit. This wasn't, like…
• 55:27
  Ted: It's not as though Neil Patrick Harris completely disappeared after doing Doogie Howser, but he definitely wasn't doing as much, and he was like.
• 55:34
  Ted: not… he was, like, you know, guest roles on TV series, and, you know, had a role on one season of a sitcom, and it got canceled, or whatever, but, like, this… this was a nice little nod to that, and then a few years, he started getting some actual bigger roles and doing more stuff, and I thought.
• 55:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I thought it… I thought it was Harold and Kumar that really started to…
• 55:50
  Ted: That's right, yes!
• 55:51
  Tad Eggleston: Passively launch his comeback.
• 55:54
  Ted: Yeah, especially because…
• 55:55
  Tad Eggleston: And then How I Met Your Mother.
• 55:58
  Ted: Yeah, okay, because it's all.
• 55:59
  Tad Eggleston: Though he did do some Broadway in there, too.
• 56:02
  Ted: Yes, his singing stuff started taking… not taking off, but the fact that he was, you know, doing more with music, I think, made him…
• 56:08
  Ted: you know, when he showed up as… this is much later, but, like, when he shows up in Batman Raven the Bold as the music meister, or things like that. Yeah, it's good to see him coming back. It reminded me.
• 56:18
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, interesting, John… sorry, John's show is Tantrum.
• 56:22
  Ted: Who? Oh, John Shaw!
• 56:24
  Marcus Anderson: Really? Yeah.
• 56:25
  Ted: Wow! That's cool! I mean, it's… I had no idea that… I wonder what else he had done.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: Harold and Kumar?
• 56:32
  Marcus Anderson: That's what I'm saying, you just brought that up, yeah.
• 56:33
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 56:35
  Ted: What's it? Then Kumilda Johnny is… no, I'm just… yeah.
• 56:38
  Ted: No, that's interesting. That's a wild coincidence. The, I… Excuse me.
• 56:45
  Marcus Anderson: Also, also, I mean…
• 56:47
  Marcus Anderson: you know, this might be more of a black fact, but, like, bernie Watson, who played Will's mom on The Fresh Prince, is, Virgil's… is Virgil's mom.
• 56:57
  Ted: Okay, yeah! I had forgotten to check on who played her, that's interesting. Oh, who played,
• 57:04
  Ted: Who played Daisy's… er, yeah, Daisy's sister, or… sister? Mom?
• 57:07
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, was there a mom? I, I thought it was a mom, but, hold on a second, that's a different episode, right?
• 57:13
  Ted: I remember thinking her design was sort of interestingly…
• 57:15
  Ted: I mean, it wasn't anything super complex, but they, you know, they put effort into her being sort of an interestingly visible character, and then I was like, she never showed up again after that, like, one scene.
• 57:25
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah…
• 57:26
  Ted: somehow, but .
• 57:27
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I mean, you would think they will, because they did kind of make a point. Yeah.
• 57:31
  Ted: I was just curious who voiced her. I'm gonna look that up real quick.
• 57:35
  Ted: Yeah, God, geez, John Cho.
• 57:37
  Ted: Mrs.
• 57:43
  Ted: Daisy Watkins…
• 57:47
  Marcus Anderson: I don't see more.
• 57:48
  Ted: I don't… Is nobody listed for her? That's weird.
• 57:53
  Ted: I don't actually see anyone listed as her actress.
• 57:56
  Marcus Anderson: Yes.
• 57:56
  Ted: Missed something.
• 57:58
  Ted: Oh, wow.
• 57:59
  Marcus Anderson: Alright, well, we'll… yeah.
• 58:00
  Ted: Yeah, Mystery of the Ages, or whatever. But yeah, that's… it's… it's…
• 58:06
  Ted: this is a really… yeah, again, I mean, we've said it several times, but, like, yeah, really good episode, really good end of the season.
• 58:13
  Ted: Yeah, I…
• 58:15
  Ted: I don't know, man. Seeing what they did here, it's not hard to see why Static was popular enough to last for these four seasons. I do…
• 58:24
  Ted: I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with more of it, especially because I do… like, I already went into it knowing that, like, Rubber Band Man shows up as a reformed… possibly not totally reformed, but possibly totally reformed, but as a character with a different, you know.
• 58:39
  Ted: Sort of take on the whole heroism thing.
• 58:42
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 58:43
  Ted: So I'm looking forward to seeing more of that stuff. I don't know what else…
• 58:48
  Ted: I'm trying to… I'm trying to think what else I had heard about static shock before I'd seen it.
• 58:54
  Ted: Because I hadn't actually heard that much about it as a series, and I'd never watched it when it was coming out.
• 59:00
  Ted: Like, I was kind of… not… I was kind of beyond cartoons at that point, but, like.
• 59:07
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it came out at a weird time for me, because it was also, like, it was early enough where you kind of had to be in front of the TV to see something, so I think whatever, like.
• 59:18
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I mean, I was… I was in my 20s, so it was like, you know, I wasn't…
• 59:23
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I just wasn't watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, and then on top of it, yeah, I just…
• 59:29
  Tad Eggleston: Was it a Saturday morning, or was it a…
• 59:31
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know, it might have been…
• 59:32
  Tad Eggleston: Weekday afternoon. I think it was.
• 59:34
  Marcus Anderson: That's a good question.
• 59:35
  Tad Eggleston: Only 13 episodes, that feels more likely to be a weekend.
• 59:40
  Marcus Anderson: It's the weekday.
• 59:41
  Tad Eggleston: Friday afternoons tended to have longer seasons, because they were doing 5 episodes a week.
• 59:46
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you would add more episodes, yeah.
• 59:49
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 59:51
  Ted: But yeah, it's… it's…
• 59:54
  Ted: it's really solid, I mean, it's building off of sort of the success of stuff like… building off the success of Batman,
• 1:00:02
  Ted: KidsWB programming block, that was… Saturday morning and weekday after school. It doesn't actually say specifically. Whatever.
• 1:00:12
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, well, it might have gotten syndicated.
• 1:00:14
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  Ted: Okay.
• 1:00:17
  Ted: And, okay, season 2 is when it starts being part of the DC Animated Universe, so…
• 1:00:23
  Ted: That'll be interesting to watch when that.
• 1:00:25
  Marcus Anderson: comes in. Yeah, it definitely crosses over with more… more things.
• 1:00:28
  Ted: And that's, like, I remember him… I mean, I remember him showing up in Justice League, you know, like an older static when they did the time travel episode, and maybe some other stuff? But, like, I don't remember… I didn't… yeah, I wasn't… yeah, like I said, I wasn't watching at the time, so… No, I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. I… I am looking… I'm glad to be getting back to the comics, but, like…
• 1:00:48
  Ted: this is a good adaptation, and it does a lot of good stuff, and I like that they had this opportunity to do…
• 1:00:56
  Ted: a slightly different version of Static that still had, you know, the same heart. So, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:01:04
  Ted: Yeah, anything else you wanna say, or are we just gonna move on to the.
• 1:01:08
  Marcus Anderson: No, I just… I just think it's interesting, I like… I kind of like jumping back and forth, because, like you said, I mean, I think you just put it really well, right? Like, it's…
• 1:01:16
  Marcus Anderson: it is still static at its heart, but it's like, I appreciate this for this lighter…
• 1:01:22
  Marcus Anderson: You know, version, but then it's like, when you go back to the comics, it's like…
• 1:01:27
  Marcus Anderson: He's like, oh, damn, Static is dark, you know?
• 1:01:29
  Ted: setting it's mature.
• 1:01:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I guess not unlike… not unlike me, you know, growing up on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and then reading Spider-Man comics and being like, holy shit, like… He's like, everything is happening in these comics, like…
• 1:01:46
  Ted: That's true, yeah, I remember I had a similar… I mean, for me, it was watching the X-Men cartoon, and then.
• 1:01:51
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:52
  Ted: friend comments to be like, man, I got no idea what's going on here!
• 1:01:56
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah. I think… Yeah, I'm… Oh, New York.
• 1:01:59
  Ted: No, I've talked to a friend about that, where it's like, some of the…
• 1:02:03
  Ted: like, the people I… a lot of people I know who love comics, like, their formative experience with comics was, like, picking up something we had no idea how to read, and it was, like, the middle of an event, or the middle of a storyline, or whatever, and we had, you know, no clue what was going on, but it was sort of compelling enough that we got with it.
• 1:02:19
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Ted: Maybe years later, we find out, like, oh, that was actually a really crappy, like, event, or like, oh, this all kind of sucked, this is a bad writer, or whatever, but still, somehow, it got… it got us hooked enough.
• 1:02:30
  Marcus Anderson: No, I feel really fortunate for when I came in, like, you know what I mean? Like, because I'm just old enough where,
• 1:02:39
  Marcus Anderson: Like, and I'm not being hipster about this, but just that we're, like…
• 1:02:43
  Marcus Anderson: It was… I got into X-Men before the anime series was even a thing, you know, because it was like…
• 1:02:50
  Marcus Anderson: 80-something… I was very young, but it was, like, Silvestri and Claremont, and that shit just blew my mind. And then I, you know, went back and would read
• 1:03:02
  Marcus Anderson: the older Claremont stuff, you know. So that's the reverse, whereas with Spider-Man, I came in with, like, kind of the campiest version of it, and then… and then I got the hardcore, you know.
• 1:03:16
  Marcus Anderson: Kraven ending himself, and oh, God! You started out, like, Kraven's Last Hunt? No, I didn't… no, no, when I… you know when I started… when I became a regular reader… no, I remember exactly when I became a regular reader. It was an issue…
• 1:03:31
  Marcus Anderson: Tom McFarlane was just starting. I had read stuff before that, but, like, this was me, because I had a subscription at this point, so I was getting every issue, and it was an issue where Venom does not appear, like, fully. But at the end, like, Mary Jane comes home, and she's like…
• 1:03:46
  Ted: Okay.
• 1:03:47
  Marcus Anderson: Hey, honey, blah blah blah, and then all of a sudden, like, you know, you just see this hulking, Spider-Man-looking figure, and she's just like…
• 1:03:57
  Marcus Anderson: Tetrified, and she's like.
• 1:03:59
  Ted: I can afford it.
• 1:03:59
  Marcus Anderson: room. Yeah, and that is, that is, like, shortly after the Kraven stuff, which I had read that too, yeah.
• 1:04:06
  Ted: Okay, that's fascinating. Yeah, it's… I mean, for me, it was… I picked up a random issue of X-Men, this would have been, like, the Jim Lee-drawn…
• 1:04:14
  Ted: Okay. Yes?
• 1:04:15
  Ted: Fabian de Chiesa? I actually don't remember who wrote that one.
• 1:04:19
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, okay, okay.
• 1:04:20
  Ted: But it was, like, in the mid… you know, it was the rewatched X-Men, it was the, you know, adjective was X-Men.
• 1:04:24
  Ted: And it was…
• 1:04:25
  Marcus Anderson: Right, right, right.
• 1:04:26
  Ted: She's in the middle of stuff about, like, Psylocke, and, like, her weird backstory, and…
• 1:04:31
  Ted: It's so much like, wow, this is a weird bit of continuity, you know?
• 1:04:35
  Marcus Anderson: It's funny you mention that, because even when I was a kid, like, I… I picked up…
• 1:04:40
  Marcus Anderson: most of the stuff, you know, I mean, obviously there's stuff I go back, and I get a little bit more out of it now as an adult, but I picked up most of it, but the Psylocke Siege Perilous thing, I was like, what? What the hell is… and I liked it! I was like, well, at least she's got a cool design and a sword, but like…
• 1:04:57
  Ted: Yeah, she's a ninja now, cool!
• 1:04:59
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, but the how we got there, like, I read it, but I was also like, what are you talking about? And I was like, I don't know this character that she's getting merged with, and I don't quite get how the merging works.
• 1:05:14
  Marcus Anderson: I actually saw a breakdown of that recently on a YouTube thing, and I was like, oh, that's what it was.
• 1:05:19
  Ted: I… I had an issue… I think the issue… one of the issues that I had was, like, Wolverine has a conversation with her at one point where it's like, yeah, it's weird how you got all mixed
• 1:05:30
  Ted: character, and she's like, you partly shared memories, but also partly swapped bodies. It's like, okay, I get it.
• 1:05:35
  Marcus Anderson: Very natural, very natural.
• 1:05:36
  Ted: 12-year-old me, I'm like, oh, sure.
• 1:05:40
  Marcus Anderson: No, man, comics…
• 1:05:42
  Ted: It's… comics is, like, the way that you get into it… a friend of mine, it's like, he also talks about, like, getting into pro wrestling, and it's a very similar thing, where you watch some random episode, and it's like, oh, I'm gonna get you back for what you did to me in SummerSlam, whatever, you know, and it's like, oh, it's just so… it's this massive soap opera, and it's so compelling, and it's like…
• 1:06:00
  Ted: Oh, it's almost complete nonsense that they're just making up as they go along.
• 1:06:05
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, but they also do, you know, they do really… they did really cool stuff. Like I said, I've been… I've been making my way slowly through the…
• 1:06:13
  Marcus Anderson: Claremont Run. Like, I'm reading the, like, full Claremont Run, because I've…
• 1:06:17
  Marcus Anderson: Never read the whole thing. Oh, wow. And it's… it's just… it's really good, like, what they were doing.
• 1:06:23
  Ted: It's, I mean, it's not quite the same thing, but it's similar, where I, a few years back, I sat down and read the entire Grant Morrison Batman run.
• 1:06:31
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I should do that too, yeah.
• 1:06:33
  Ted: Well, and Morrison, you know, does it through Batman, and then through Final Crisis, and Batman and Robin, and the return of Bruce Wayne, and, you know, like, 6 other series, and they're bringing in stuff from, you know, 8 different sort of continuities, and yeah, that's a…
• 1:06:45
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  Ted: That's sort of a whole other thing, but it's a similar idea, where it's, like, one person getting to do something for years, and build up this massive set of
• 1:06:55
  Ted: you know, continuity bits they can tie together. That's…
• 1:06:58
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, just out of curiosity, is Morrison Batman collected in volumes, or do you just have to kind of piece it.
• 1:07:05
  Ted: I want to say it's collected mostly in, like… because… okay, because they were doing main Batman, or Detective Comics, I guess, for a long time, so that's… and that's mostly collected as, like, you know, specifically Grant Morrison collections, because there are a few random issues in between it that are fill-ins by somebody else that, you know.
• 1:07:24
  Ted: They don't collect on those.
• 1:07:25
  Ted: And then they did a bunch of stuff that I guess is more like mini-series, like…
• 1:07:29
  Ted: you know, Batman and Robin, I think, is…
• 1:07:31
  Ted: 12 issues, or there's, like, 2 different 12-issue series? And then Return of Bruce Wayne is a limited series, and stuff like that. So, there's the main Batman series they do, which is mostly collected as itself.
• 1:07:43
  Ted: And then I think they did a bunch of mini-series, largely.
• 1:07:47
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 1:07:47
  Ted: They're then collected, again, as themselves.
• 1:07:49
  Marcus Anderson: Alright. Tad, if you were talking to us, we couldn't hear you.
• 1:07:54
  Ted: Oh god, his T had been…
• 1:07:54
  Marcus Anderson: She's on the phone, but maybe he's…
• 1:07:57
  Ted: I was wondering.
• 1:07:57
  Marcus Anderson: I think, I think, I think he's on the phone.
• 1:07:59
  Ted: Even for Ted, he's being kind of quiet tonight.
• 1:08:03
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, nevermind.
• 1:08:03
  Ted: Yeah. He's gonna… Alright, he's good here. He's on the camera.
• 1:08:09
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 1:08:10
  Ted: Boom.
• 1:08:12
  Ted: But yeah, this is… this was fun. I'm glad we took this… I'm glad we took this opportunity to read the,
• 1:08:16
  Ted: read, to watch the static episodes, because that's… again, I didn't have the chance to see those. It's good to see a slightly different take on them.
• 1:08:23
  Tad Eggleston: Hear me now.
• 1:08:25
  Ted: Vietnam.
• 1:08:25
  Marcus Anderson: Period, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:26
  Ted: How you doing?
• 1:08:27
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know what happened there. No, what I was… what I was trying to say is there are actually 3 Batman by Grant Morrison omnibuses.
• 1:08:36
  Marcus Anderson: Low volume.
• 1:08:37
  Tad Eggleston: Hard cuts. Oh, okay.
• 1:08:38
  Ted: Oh, an omnibus, okay, alright, because.
• 1:08:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:08:40
  Ted: to the, like.
• 1:08:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the… They're also available as, like, the trades and stuff, but, like.
• 1:08:45
  Ted: Yeah. Yeah, I actually.
• 1:08:47
  Tad Eggleston: Similar to the omnibuses that we've been reading of Milestone only in hardcover, there are… our three… Morrison.
• 1:09:00
  Tad Eggleston: Batman.
• 1:09:02
  Ted: Alright, I might… oof, I'm about.
• 1:09:04
  Tad Eggleston: Omnibuy.
• 1:09:05
  Ted: Probably don't want to re… have to move that crap with me.
• 1:09:08
  Tad Eggleston: Now, you probably want to wait until after you.
• 1:09:10
  Ted: Yeah, after the movie.
• 1:09:11
  Tad Eggleston: Just a… just a recommendation here.
• 1:09:14
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  Ted: But yeah, this… I would look forward to getting to those as well. But, but yeah, this was… this was a fun little interlude. I'm glad that we did this. In between Milestone Volumes 5 and 6.
• 1:09:25
  Marcus Anderson: Dude.
• 1:09:25
  Ted: There is a… I don't actually know how far 5 goes. But if there is anything more, that would be another cool thing to do.
• 1:09:33
  Marcus Anderson: There's some stuff in 5 I'm really looking forward to reading.
• 1:09:36
  Ted: I flipped…
• 1:09:36
  Marcus Anderson: Through it, but ain't… yeah.
• 1:09:38
  Ted: It's on the table over there, and I don't want to have to walk over there with a busted ankle. But,
• 1:09:45
  Ted: I, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting back into the comics, and… yeah, maybe we'll hit Season 2 at some point, too.
• 1:09:50
  Ted: But yeah, so what's up next on the chopping block, as it were?
• 1:09:55
  Tad Eggleston: What is next is the mini-series.
• 1:10:00
  Tad Eggleston: My name is Holocaust.
• 1:10:02
  Ted: Oh, my…
• 1:10:03
  Tad Eggleston: By Ivan, Ivan Velez and, Tommy Lee Edwards.
• 1:10:09
  Ted: Nice. Alright.
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:10:11
  Ted: Wait, who did, jose Anderson did some miniseries. Was that the one about…
• 1:10:17
  Marcus Anderson: He did, no, no, he did, why, son?
• 1:10:20
  Ted: Okay, YSUN, that's right, okay, good.
• 1:10:22
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, wait, we didn't talk about that, did we? Because I read that in the last year, because I picked up the issues.
• 1:10:27
  Ted: Was it… wait, was it in that volume? Was it in that omnibus?
• 1:10:30
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know if it's.
• 1:10:31
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think we've done Wise… I don't think we've done Wise Sun yet.
• 1:10:34
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 1:10:34
  Tad Eggleston: I am looking through to see if it's in this current omnibus.
• 1:10:39
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I picked it up pretty affordably on eBay.
• 1:10:42
  Ted: Hmm. Yeah.
• 1:10:43
  Tad Eggleston: I'm betting that it's an Omnibus 5, because it is not an Omnibus 4.
• 1:10:49
  Ted: Wait, I thought this was odd, it was 5.
• 1:10:50
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, wait.
• 1:10:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, this is… we're… we're Compendium 4 is what we're about to start reading. 5 is coming out soon. What I sent you was 4.
• 1:10:59
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
• 1:11:00
  Ted: Listeners, I got a gigantic box of the mail a while back.
• 1:11:03
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:11:04
  Ted: Yeah, no, thank you so much, Ted, but good God.
• 1:11:07
  Tad Eggleston: Marcus, Marcus, you should, if you have it nearby, you should show… and, like…
• 1:11:12
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, it's.
• 1:11:13
  Tad Eggleston: Ted,
• 1:11:14
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry I didn't do something this cool for you, Ted, but I had to for Marcus. Marcus got a,
• 1:11:21
  Tad Eggleston: Hardware number one. Yeah, signed. Well, signed, signed and remarked.
• 1:11:28
  Ted: Quite dinner.
• 1:11:29
  Tad Eggleston: scowing.
• 1:11:30
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm always gonna keep it.
• 1:11:33
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because Dennis… Dennis was at, C2e2. So…
• 1:11:44
  Ted: Cool.
• 1:11:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, Wise Sun the White Wolf is part of Omnibus number 5. Omnibus 5…
• 1:11:51
  Tad Eggleston: will be in stores on July 21st.
• 1:11:55
  Ted: Okay.
• 1:11:56
  Tad Eggleston: So, while we will…
• 1:11:58
  Ted: I want to say that might be the last one, because I get the feeling…
• 1:12:01
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, because it also has some stuff never, never, published, including the Zombie Hanukkah Special.
• 1:12:09
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 1:12:10
  Ted: Oh, wow, that sounds wild.
• 1:12:12
  Ted: I'm.
• 1:12:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:12:13
  Ted: to that.
• 1:12:14
  Marcus Anderson: It's interesting, because the White Wolf definitely go… it was almost like the Vertigo to DC, you know? Like, they… they did and said more in that than they even did in the regular Milestone. And regular Milestone, like, went places.
• 1:12:29
  Marcus Anderson: But it was just a little bit more violent and a little bit more… like, the content was a little bit more explicit.
• 1:12:34
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think it was after the regular milestone, because… because the order that it puts it for in the listing for Volume 5 is Bloodsy at 33-35, Hardware 39-50, Heroes 1-6.
• 1:12:49
  Ted: Right, which is the miniseries that took over after Shadow Cabinet.
• 1:12:52
  Tad Eggleston: Icons 38 to 42, and then Milestone Forever 1 and 2, Static 32 to 45, and then Static Shock, Rebirth of the Cool, 1 to 4. Static Shock Special, number 1. And then Wise Sun, the White Wolf.
• 1:13:10
  Tad Eggleston: numbers 1 to 4. So I think, remember there was, like, early 2000s, right around the static miniseries, they did a hand…
• 1:13:18
  Ted: first rebirth of Milestone.
• 1:13:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:13:21
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, so that will be included in…
• 1:13:24
  Tad Eggleston: in Volume 5. But we're just about to start Volume 4.
• 1:13:30
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, Rebirth of the Cool is in there, too, you said?
• 1:13:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah. Okay.
• 1:13:34
  Ted: I wonder, how many times has Milestone been brought back, quote-unquote? Is it more?
• 1:13:38
  Marcus Anderson: Well…
• 1:13:39
  Ted: Futurama.
• 1:13:41
  Marcus Anderson: I would say probably less, only because they were, like, we've just been clamoring for it, fans have, and then…
• 1:13:49
  Marcus Anderson: You know, there just was so much right stuff to get…
• 1:13:53
  Marcus Anderson: to get worked out. That was a big thing. And then, you know, McDuffie passed.
• 1:13:58
  Marcus Anderson: Obviously, he was still around to do, do, Milestone Forever.
• 1:14:05
  Marcus Anderson: No.
• 1:14:06
  Ted: wrap up, but yeah.
• 1:14:08
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I think it was a wrap-up because we weren't…
• 1:14:13
  Marcus Anderson: Necessarily… there wasn't really a lot of hope of us get it, like, revitalized, so…
• 1:14:20
  Marcus Anderson: And at the time, I really, I really enjoyed it. Actually, I'm gonna go back and read it, now that I'm.
• 1:14:24
  Ted: I need to go back and read it, too. I… I don't remember anything about… much of anything. But yeah, so next time we start in on what's the… what's the next actual chunk we're reading from, Volume 4?
• 1:14:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's what I said, the, the… my name is… Oh, my name.
• 1:14:41
  Marcus Anderson: Coaster, rollercoaster.
• 1:14:42
  Ted: Okay, cool, cool, cool.
• 1:14:43
  Marcus Anderson: forget it.
• 1:14:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we went off on a tangent from there, but…
• 1:14:46
  Ted: Unsurprising. Unsurprising.
• 1:14:49
  Tad Eggleston: No, totally unsurprising, but…
• 1:14:53
  Ted: Well, cool, alright, well then, yeah, that's.
• 1:14:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the next one.
• 1:14:55
  Ted: on the… on the block, I guess. Nice.
• 1:14:57
  Tad Eggleston: All right. So, alrighty, for the Brothers Anderson No Relation, this has been 22 Panels on the Milestone Book Club. We will see you after the next page.