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Fourth World Book Club #10 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Morning, everybody! Welcome back to the 22 Panels Fourth World Book Club. I'm joined by Sean Hargow Road, currently star… er, is, is,
• 0:14
  Tad Eggleston: is… Is, misery done?
• 0:17
  Sean Harklerode: Misery is done.
• 0:21
  Sean Harklerode: headsets.
• 0:23
  Sean Harklerode: Recently in misery, coming up…
• 0:25
  Tad Eggleston: Presently in misery.
• 0:26
  Sean Harklerode: Holiday Spirits at the Driehaus Museum.
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay. Holiday Spirit at the Treehouse Museum, and Mark Pratt, who, you know, will get back to work one of these days.
• 0:36
  Mark Pracht: Someday, someday I'll want me… somebody will want… yeah, I have a project in cooking, but… Talk about it
• 0:44
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 0:46
  Tad Eggleston: issue 9 of… of…
• 0:51
  Tad Eggleston: Forever People, Mr. Miracle, and New Gods, issue 148 of Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen.
• 1:00
  Tad Eggleston: There's some great art.
• 1:03
  Tad Eggleston: I think 2 books that, like, I found almost unreadable with their great art, and 2 books that I thought were really fascinating, and had great art.
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: But, I'll let you guys take it off, cause you're, like…
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: way more Kirby aficionados than I am, so before I assume that I speak for the group…
• 1:23
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 1:24
  Sean Harklerode: I feel like, I think you said it pretty well there.
• 1:28
  Sean Harklerode: Two, two good issues.
• 1:31
  Sean Harklerode: I… I was telling Mark yesterday, sometimes I…
• 1:37
  Sean Harklerode: I find this a bit of a slog.
• 1:40
  Sean Harklerode: I love the art.
• 1:42
  Sean Harklerode: But I… And I love… Scott, Bree?
• 1:48
  Sean Harklerode: And BARDA?
• 1:51
  Sean Harklerode: But otherwise, just the characterizations, I… I don't… I'm not invested in these characters.
• 1:59
  Sean Harklerode: I appreciate the… the art.
• 2:02
  Sean Harklerode: and the scope And grandeur of the storytelling.
• 2:06
  Sean Harklerode: But… It's missing a lot of human element for me to really be… Invested and… and want…
• 2:16
  Sean Harklerode: To read these every month.
• 2:19
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 2:20
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, you know, the… famously, I've spoken about this, that the… when I was working on my Stan and Jack show.
• 2:28
  Mark Pracht: that I read all of these.
• 2:32
  Mark Pracht: in a flight from Chicago to London, we were going on vacation.
• 2:38
  Mark Pracht: And I thought I was gonna lose my mind.
• 2:42
  Mark Pracht: And I think that that really is why.
• 2:45
  Mark Pracht: that…
• 2:48
  Mark Pracht: you know, and to any Kirbyites out there, this is not me saying Jack sucks. Not at all. At all.
• 2:56
  Mark Pracht: But it is saying that I do think that Jack…
• 3:03
  Mark Pracht: the way these books play out, it feels like I'm throwing shit against the wall, I'm throwing shit against the wall, I'm throwing against shit against the wall, and then if something sticks.
• 3:14
  Mark Pracht: he doesn't stop, he just keeps throwing shit against the wall, right? And, you know,
• 3:26
  Mark Pracht: A line that some people had a problem with in my play, would be when Stan says to Jack, I gave you humanity.
• 3:35
  Mark Pracht: And I think… but I think that…
• 3:37
  Mark Pracht: you know, it's unfair. It's unfair to constantly bring up Stan, right? Right. But I do think that that partnership
• 3:47
  Mark Pracht: it's sort of like when you talk about Wings, or John Lennon's solo albums, or, like, it's all gotta go through the refraction of…
• 3:57
  Mark Pracht: the Beatles, right?
• 3:59
  Mark Pracht: So, like, so much of this goes through the reflection of early Marvel, and… that I think…
• 4:10
  Mark Pracht: Stan as an editor, Stan as a dialogist,
• 4:16
  Mark Pracht: would have told Jack to stop at some point.
• 4:20
  Mark Pracht: And, like, let's dig into this, right?
• 4:26
  Mark Pracht: that… That said, Because I don't want to turn this into the Stan and Jack conversation.
• 4:33
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 4:33
  Tad Eggleston: Well, like, I want to ask a question along those lines.
• 4:39
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Though…
• 4:40
  Tad Eggleston: But not really, Stan and Jack, and this is just… you guys are both much more versed in Kirby than I am.
• 4:49
  Tad Eggleston: Probably my favorite thing that Stan Lee ever wrote.
• 4:55
  Tad Eggleston: was Silver Circle Parable with Mobius, and I think it's because Mobius had the clout
• 5:04
  Tad Eggleston: to rain Stan Inn.
• 5:06
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and make him stay in his place, Make… not be…
• 5:14
  Tad Eggleston: Half-assed with any of the dialogue, and, and, like, not describe the picture.
• 5:19
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know.
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: And therefore, he was doing what he was best at, and allowing Mobius to do what he was best at. So, I'm using this to ask.
• 5:33
  Tad Eggleston: Is there any work where Jack worked with a talented writer?
• 5:38
  Tad Eggleston: That appreciated enough what he did that he was allowed to do what he did best, but still had
• 5:48
  Tad Eggleston: Somebody who did the writing better than he did.
• 5:51
  Mark Pracht: Look, man, you're gonna honestly ask me that question?
• 5:55
  Mark Pracht: It's early Fantastic Four.
• 5:58
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. I mean, I was trying to say other than Stan. Right, yeah, I… did he ever do it again?
• 6:06
  Mark Pracht: No, because, like, like, look, I've always said this, is that Jack's…
• 6:14
  Mark Pracht: the two great periods of Jack Kirby
• 6:17
  Mark Pracht: are the 40s, where he's working with Joe Simon.
• 6:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:21
  Mark Pracht: And the 60s, where he's working with Stan.
• 6:24
  Mark Pracht: So, I mean, I suppose, like, to answer your question, I would say that when he was working with Joe Simon.
• 6:29
  Tad Eggleston: Joe Simon, yeah.
• 6:30
  Mark Pracht: There was a great… pushback.
• 6:33
  Mark Pracht: But I think that once… For whatever reason, that… You know, cause…
• 6:44
  Mark Pracht: there's plenty of… there's plenty of anecdotal evidence, right? And part of the real problem of having these conversations is everything is anecdotal information. Oh, yeah. Because every time you asked Jack… Jack what happened, he was like, you know, and he, like, famously had a bad memory, just like Stan.
• 7:03
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean… Is that… but he clearly didn't sleep a lot, and, like, part of memory is, like, the first 4 hours that you sleep, your brain gets…
• 7:14
  Tad Eggleston: squeezed out, and the next 4 hours, that stuff gets organized into file cabinets. So, if you're not getting that 8 hours, you may actually just, like, lose stuff, and you'll certainly not have easy access to it.
• 7:30
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean…
• 7:33
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, and Sean should… but, I mean, that… for what you're asking outside of Stan, I think it would be Joe Simon.
• 7:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 7:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and I actually ask… I mean, I want to make it clear to anybody who might be listening who thinks otherwise, I ask out of reverence, because, like.
• 7:54
  Tad Eggleston: Almost no Kirby book, if I just ignore the words, isn't…
• 8:00
  Tad Eggleston: like, fantastic, and I can often, like, create a story in my head of what's going on, etc.
• 8:09
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think Stan always did him justice, even in the early Fantastic Four years. You and I disagree on some of that. I think they had some absolute moments where they were in sync. They're…
• 8:21
  Tad Eggleston: dozen or so Fantastic Four issues that I think are among the best comics ever done.
• 8:28
  Tad Eggleston: And there are a lot of them that I'm like.
• 8:32
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 8:33
  Tad Eggleston: they didn't… they weren't on the same page with each other. They're both doing good things, but not together, more like…
• 8:42
  Mark Pracht: But I also think that that's, the… the conflict
• 8:49
  Mark Pracht: the rubbing up against each other, and pushing each other in different directions is also part of the process, and part of why that stuff works so well. Certainly, if we want to talk about Stan and Steve Ditko.
• 9:01
  Mark Pracht: There was a lot of… Pushing against each other there.
• 9:06
  Mark Pracht: but also, you know.
• 9:11
  Tad Eggleston: DITCO, when asked, DITCO always maintained that it was a partnership with Stan.
• 9:18
  Mark Pracht: He wasn't always happy in that part.
• 9:19
  Tad Eggleston: That… I mean, it's funny that you bring that up, because I actually think a lot more of the…
• 9:28
  Tad Eggleston: Lee Ditko Spider-Man, and I haven't read enough of the Lee Ditko Doctor Strange to speak as…
• 9:36
  Tad Eggleston: Literally about it. Sure, I can see that they pushed up against each other, but they worked together.
• 9:42
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 9:42
  Tad Eggleston: sometimes with Stan and Jack, I don't feel like they pushed up against each other, I think… I feel like they ignored each other.
• 9:52
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I think that's part of what I'm talking about. Like, I think that… I think that a lot of the non-sequitur… okay.
• 9:59
  Mark Pracht: Let's get… let's get back to Fourth World. A lot of the non-sequitur stuff that we see.
• 10:04
  Mark Pracht: Or the, like…
• 10:06
  Mark Pracht: something will happen in one panel, and then the next panel, it seems like it's all resolved, and you haven't seen anything, you know? Like, that was the stuff that Stan would
• 10:16
  Mark Pracht: smooth out as best he could, right? Right. And that, to me, that's the conflict, that's the pressure of working against each other and trying to make it into something
• 10:26
  Mark Pracht: Plus, look, Jack Kirby… Jack Kirby's the king. He is the… he… he defined comic book artist… artistry.
• 10:36
  Mark Pracht: for basically the entire industry. He defined how to draw a comic book in a dynamic and interesting style. He is a master of that.
• 10:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like I'm talking too much, but I'm gonna finish this thought process. Yeah. He is also,
• 10:52
  Mark Pracht: The greatest idea man?
• 10:55
  Mark Pracht: In comics history, Like, even this stuff, Like, look at how much.
• 11:01
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 11:01
  Mark Pracht: has mine from this. But, as I've said before, I think that other writers and artists who've taken this stuff and developed it
• 11:13
  Mark Pracht: Made it more interesting.
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 11:16
  Mark Pracht: But I think… Jack's… Story sense?
• 11:22
  Mark Pracht: Moving the story from panel to panel, page to page.
• 11:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 11:27
  Mark Pracht: Is… and it may be, like…
• 11:30
  Mark Pracht: theoretically, I could say it maybe is an ADHD sort of thing, or something like that, where it's just like, okay, now I'm bored with that, I'll go on to this next thing. And, but there's just so much of that. And there's so much of… because… because Jack is writing, he's drawing, he's editing, he's running the whole show, there's no one to say, hey, hold on a second.
• 11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 11:55
  Mark Pracht: This…
• 11:55
  Tad Eggleston: And I guess, I mean, as I think, as I listen to you, as I think about this, I think that when it strikes me the most.
• 12:04
  Tad Eggleston: is when I read his best work. Because, like, the Mr. Miracle and the New Gods issue that we read this month are really, really good, but they wouldn't take much to be absolutely legendary.
• 12:20
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 12:23
  Tad Eggleston: But the ingredient to make it absolutely legendary was just not part of Jack's… Toolbox.
• 12:32
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he didn't have that…
• 12:35
  Tad Eggleston: Ability to make slightly smoother dialogue, that ability to make certain that you follow along with
• 12:43
  Tad Eggleston: The grandeur in his head.
• 12:45
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 12:48
  Mark Pracht: Look, I'll read… like, I just told you guys, I've been reading this Marshall Rogers Brightest Days… Brightest Days and Darkest Nights book that Tomorrow's just put out, and in there, there is a interview, that John B. Cook did with Marshall Rogers in Jack Kirby Collector magazine.
• 13:06
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 13:10
  Mark Pracht: like, he has a lot to say about Jack, the obvious total reverence for Jack, but he's like,
• 13:17
  Mark Pracht: about the Fourth World stuff, did you like it?
• 13:21
  Mark Pracht: I thought it was interesting, but it wasn't Jack… but it wasn't.
• 13:26
  Mark Pracht: Jack is a great storyteller, but he's not a writer, and the team of Lee and Kirby was a good combination. I think Jack needed someone to write a little more depth into the dialogue between characters, because Jack's writing was more sort of stating of the obvious, rather than bringing out the deeper human element in his dialogue.
• 13:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 13:49
  Mark Pracht: So, yeah, I mean, like, and there's a whole bunch of little bon mods about… in that particular interview that I was like, oh yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 13:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 13:59
  Mark Pracht: But That said, I mean, like, if we want to get to…
• 14:06
  Mark Pracht: The actual books we're talking about.
• 14:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, let's do the quick thing. Does anybody want to say anything about Jimmy Olsen?
• 14:16
  Mark Pracht: I will say this, the digital version that I've been reading.
• 14:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 14:22
  Mark Pracht: At the end of that issue, they have a bunch of jacks, Pencil pages?
• 14:30
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 14:32
  Mark Pracht: From, you know.
• 14:35
  Mark Pracht: And let me tell you this.
• 14:39
  Mark Pracht: I had never really…
• 14:42
  Mark Pracht: most of the time, when I see somebody put up the pencil pages and talking about the redraw of Superman's head.
• 14:49
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, keeping it on model.
• 14:53
  Mark Pracht: I'm like, okay, yeah, that's Kirby, why are you changing Kirby?
• 14:59
  Mark Pracht: But then I look at these full pages, And…
• 15:04
  Mark Pracht: Here's some of the things that I would say.
• 15:06
  Mark Pracht: The head doesn't bother me. It looks like a Jack Kirby version of Superman.
• 15:12
  Mark Pracht: Jack Kirby, to save his life, could not draw the Superman emblem.
• 15:19
  Mark Pracht: I wish… I wish I could… I mean, I don't have a screen share for my Kindle that I'm looking at here.
• 15:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 15:25
  Mark Pracht: like, it… It is literally… I guess it's vaguely recognizable?
• 15:34
  Mark Pracht: But it is not… the… Superman emblem as… as… so…
• 15:44
  Mark Pracht: I guess what I'm saying is that, Carmine… Carmine Infantino may have had some…
• 15:51
  Mark Pracht: solid ground to stand on. But yeah, no, otherwise, that… the Jimmy Olsen, the… revisal of…
• 16:06
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, the guy… the… the… Volcanic whatever dude.
• 16:13
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it just felt like a warmed-over Doctor Doom shit.
• 16:16
  Mark Pracht: 100%.
• 16:17
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 16:22
  Tad Eggleston: I'm flipping through…
• 16:24
  Sean Harklerode: And I still think, Volcano looks a little like… Stay in.
• 16:32
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 16:33
  Mark Pracht: there's a definite element of that. It's not…
• 16:36
  Mark Pracht: It's certainly not as much of a character assassination as, funky Flashman, but it's… yeah.
• 16:46
  Sean Harklerode: I do… the one thing, and again, the art in this is great, and I mean, I really feel…
• 16:54
  Sean Harklerode: All four of the books the artwork… you know, Jack was…
• 17:02
  Sean Harklerode: You know, on top form, and really going into detail a lot.
• 17:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 17:07
  Sean Harklerode: books.
• 17:08
  Sean Harklerode: but I… I really loved the last panel.
• 17:15
  Sean Harklerode: Which has, you know, the end, right next to the 22, you know, which is…
• 17:23
  Mark Pracht: out.
• 17:24
  Sean Harklerode: You know, this is the end of… of… Jack's, Jim Eles.
• 17:30
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 17:31
  Sean Harklerode: So…
• 17:32
  Tad Eggleston: And I…
• 17:33
  Sean Harklerode: Well, that was a nice little touch.
• 17:35
  Tad Eggleston: I gotta say that as we were given the… as you were telling us about the…
• 17:41
  Tad Eggleston: pencil pages, I was… I was flipping through Forever People again, because, like, I love Dead Man, so, like, I wanted to like this, and I… I am aware that I read it late enough at night that maybe there was more to it than…
• 17:53
  Tad Eggleston: than… than I caught, so, like, you guys can tell me that. As I flip through this, I'm afraid to read it again, because…
• 18:03
  Tad Eggleston: Again, just visually, I love this story.
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and I pick up a lot of it, and the seance is great, and, like, you know, I mean, I…
• 18:15
  Tad Eggleston: feel like, And I love writers, Mark.
• 18:21
  Tad Eggleston: I love writers, the words matter a lot. That's actually my point.
• 18:27
  Tad Eggleston: But I feel like if I took all of the word balloons away, I would understand most of what was going on and love this story.
• 18:35
  Tad Eggleston: But I know I didn't feel like that when I was reading it last night.
• 18:39
  Sean Harklerode: Well…
• 18:39
  Mark Pracht: You know…
• 18:40
  Mark Pracht: To that Marshall Rogers interview, Marshall Rogers says that. He's like, you could take all the word balloons off basically any Kirby comic book and understand it.
• 18:50
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it's sort of like…
• 18:55
  Mark Pracht: you know, George Lucas has famously said that the Star Wars movies are essentially silent films, like.
• 19:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 19:01
  Mark Pracht: the dialogue is not the important thing, it's the… it's the images.
• 19:07
  Tad Eggleston: Bringing up Lucas is interesting, because that's the other person that I was thinking of when I was talking about Kirby, and… I mean, what frustrated me the most about the prequel trilogy is I felt like Lucas had learned
• 19:18
  Tad Eggleston: In the original trilogy, that, like, he… he was a producer of this type of film.
• 19:24
  Tad Eggleston: And that having… having a director and having a writer that weren't him
• 19:31
  Tad Eggleston: But that he worked closely with is what brought out the best movie. So, to 20 years later.
• 19:41
  Mark Pracht: Oh, you know.
• 19:42
  Tad Eggleston: do that.
• 19:43
  Tad Eggleston: Supposedly, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg talked him into doing it himself.
• 19:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, because he did offer it to other people.
• 19:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I thought he'd only offered it to them.
• 19:53
  Mark Pracht: I mean, he might… And, you know…
• 19:56
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, my thing is, I wish they'd said, hey, George, that's not our thing, but you understand that there's a whole generation of young filmmakers
• 20:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, really good, that would love to do this with you.
• 20:08
  Sean Harklerode: He offered… he offered Jedi to David Lynch.
• 20:12
  Sean Harklerode: And when he was going through
• 20:17
  Sean Harklerode: you know, the story, Lynch was like, you should direct this, this is your passion, you should…
• 20:23
  Tad Eggleston: He didn't.
• 20:24
  Tad Eggleston: I was directed by.
• 20:26
  Sean Harklerode: Richard Mark.
• 20:27
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 20:28
  Mark Pracht: apparently… well, Richard Marquand was so,
• 20:34
  Mark Pracht: overwhelmed that apparently most of that movie was directed by George Lucas.
• 20:40
  Sean Harklerode: But… Which brings me back, and this is kind of a tangent, but…
• 20:45
  Sean Harklerode: there's that sad, terribly sad moment in the People vs. George Lucas.
• 20:50
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 20:51
  Sean Harklerode: Where Francis Ford Coppola bemoans the fact that George became a businessman, you know, in the end. He just became a producer.
• 21:00
  Sean Harklerode: And… mourns the other George Lucas films we never got to see.
• 21:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 21:08
  Sean Harklerode: And I agree with that. And, you know, I love Coppola, and…
• 21:14
  Sean Harklerode: George and that whole relationship, and .
• 21:20
  Mark Pracht: I, I tend to…
• 21:22
  Sean Harklerode: So, definite.
• 21:23
  Mark Pracht: I think, Tad, you're actually on the line with two people who are kind of prequel apologists.
• 21:30
  Tad Eggleston: I've become one.
• 21:33
  Mark Pracht: I mean.
• 21:33
  Tad Eggleston: But I still think… That like these comics, like, they wouldn't need apologists if they'd had a script doctor.
• 21:42
  Mark Pracht: He could have called Carrie Fisher.
• 21:45
  Mark Pracht: I think he did.
• 21:46
  Sean Harklerode: Stoppered.
• 21:47
  Mark Pracht: Tom Stoppard working on… Yep.
• 21:52
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and that's not, that's like Pulitzer Prize-winning play right there.
• 21:56
  Sean Harklerode: Alright.
• 21:58
  Mark Pracht: He's like, look, which…
• 21:59
  Sean Harklerode: I'll go to bed to say.
• 22:00
  Tad Eggleston: work on all of them?
• 22:01
  Sean Harklerode: Better than during the Jedi, so… I said it.
• 22:05
  Mark Pracht: You said Revenge of the Sith? It's better than Return of the Jedi.
• 22:09
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, in terms of pure quality, it might be, but, like, A, Return of the Jedi, I was 3, and there were Ewoks. B, Revenge of the Sith, my son was 5, and there was gore, and I couldn't take him to it.
• 22:26
  Mark Pracht: Wow!
• 22:27
  Mark Pracht: What?
• 22:28
  Mark Pracht: Look, I… I… I think that…
• 22:32
  Mark Pracht: the best parts of Return of the Jedi Are the best parts of… Pretty much the whole saga.
• 22:39
  Tad Eggleston: I agree.
• 22:40
  Sean Harklerode: Agreed.
• 22:40
  Tad Eggleston: I agree.
• 22:41
  Mark Pracht: but overall, like… Look, I can… I can quibble about…
• 22:50
  Mark Pracht: dialogue stuff all day with any Star Wars movie. But I mean, I also think that… that…
• 22:59
  Mark Pracht: And it's probably the same… it's a good comparison, because I think that probably Kirby thought the same thing.
• 23:06
  Mark Pracht: That, like, really, the dialogue was just a way to move from one image to the next. Right. Right?
• 23:14
  Sean Harklerode: So I think… I mean, and Lucas… but Lucas says it out loud. He's like, you know, it's not about the dialogue. It's about…
• 23:21
  Mark Pracht: It's… the music is more important than the dialogue, right?
• 23:25
  Mark Pracht: And you can see that all the way through those movies, especially in the prequels.
• 23:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean.
• 23:32
  Tad Eggleston: the…
• 23:34
  Mark Pracht: And.
• 23:35
  Tad Eggleston: Honestly, probably the three best soundtracks are the prequels. And, like, I say that adoring John Williams and all of his symphonies.
• 23:45
  Mark Pracht: But I mean, like, this is the…
• 23:46
  Tad Eggleston: The Phantom Menace soundtrack is…
• 23:49
  Mark Pracht: It's incredible.
• 23:50
  Sean Harklerode: The… but the…
• 23:53
  Mark Pracht: Like, here's… here's… I don't want this to turn into a George Lucas podcast, but.
• 23:58
  Tad Eggleston: No, but, like, here's… but, like.
• 23:59
  Mark Pracht: Here's mine.
• 24:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, synerg Star Wars comics at some point.
• 24:03
  Mark Pracht: Here's… here's my pushback to,
• 24:06
  Mark Pracht: I would love to revisit the whole original Marvel run of Star Wars comics, because they are a…
• 24:14
  Mark Pracht: Fucking fascinating. But,
• 24:22
  Mark Pracht: I think that if you gave
• 24:25
  Mark Pracht: those films, the prequels, I think the… I think the reason he went to people he knew is because…
• 24:32
  Mark Pracht: They would make… a movie about something instead of being about a Star Wars.
• 24:39
  Mark Pracht: Because I think that is the biggest problem with the sequel trilogy, ultimately, overall, other than not having
• 24:46
  Mark Pracht: A thematic point.
• 24:48
  Sean Harklerode: Right. That was aimed for.
• 24:50
  Mark Pracht: is that they're all about being about Star Wars. Like, they're all about how somebody feels about Star Wars, rather than
• 24:58
  Mark Pracht: Making a point about the world we live in, or teaching a valuable lesson about how…
• 25:06
  Mark Pracht: Democracy is supposed to work, or something like that, you know.
• 25:09
  Tad Eggleston: I somewhat agree.
• 25:12
  Tad Eggleston: But I also like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
• 25:19
  Mark Pracht: I mean, we can all love Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but I mean, it's like…
• 25:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I just… I mean, as you said that, I'm like, you're right, the new sequels are essentially the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back of the Star Wars universe. Some feel good about Star Wars.
• 25:38
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, or the J and Silent Bob reboot, which is… Yeah.
• 25:42
  Mark Pracht: like…
• 25:43
  Mark Pracht: Look, like, that goes into a whole conversation about Kevin Smith that we have not the time to get into, but,
• 25:51
  Mark Pracht: And, Kevin, if you're listening, I love you. I do.
• 25:54
  Tad Eggleston: I do too.
• 25:55
  Mark Pracht: I do too. You could do… you could do so much better.
• 25:59
  Tad Eggleston: And I'd love to see more comics. I like that.
• 26:01
  Sean Harklerode: You like comics again.
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: Kevin.
• 26:03
  Sean Harklerode: I could make the Francis Ford Coppola comment.
• 26:06
  Sean Harklerode: about… Except with… Kevin, I think he got off on weed for too long.
• 26:13
  Mark Pracht: Oh, 100%.
• 26:15
  Sean Harklerode: But he's so, so very talented, and I just… It… it…
• 26:20
  Sean Harklerode: Breaks my heart that he doesn't.
• 26:23
  Sean Harklerode: strive For something higher.
• 26:26
  Sean Harklerode: But he's doing what he enjoys, and if he hears this… God bless him, and… Yeah.
• 26:31
  Tad Eggleston: I love what you're doing, so…
• 26:33
  Sean Harklerode: I just feel like he could do better.
• 26:36
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like… Great to see more.
• 26:37
  Tad Eggleston: but what you're doing, if it makes you happy, Kevin.
• 26:40
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 26:41
  Tad Eggleston: God bless you, but…
• 26:42
  Sean Harklerode: I remember those days at DJ's Comics in Universal City, Kevin.
• 26:47
  Sean Harklerode: You're great.
• 26:50
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like, again, not to get off track too much, but, like, every time I watch Jersey Girl, and I do revisit that movie every once in a while.
• 27:00
  Tad Eggleston: I do too.
• 27:01
  Mark Pracht: I think…
• 27:01
  Tad Eggleston: That movie.
• 27:02
  Mark Pracht: I think there was the moment When he said, okay, It's time to…
• 27:10
  Mark Pracht: try a little bit more, and he just got spanked. He got spanked critically, his fans hated it for whatever reason, everybody was like, this is shit, I don't want to see this, and it's like… and he just retreated. He retreated into weed.
• 27:26
  Tad Eggleston: I also got… got caught in the Benefer.
• 27:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, sure.
• 27:31
  Mark Pracht: But that's part of the whole thing, but I mean, it's also, like…
• 27:36
  Tad Eggleston: But I loved that movie.
• 27:37
  Mark Pracht: I think that's…
• 27:38
  Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite movies of his.
• 27:40
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, that movie is not, like, earth-shaking masterpiece or anything like that, but it's what it is. For what it is, it's a very lovely, sweet little film about loving your daughter, you know? Right. And,
• 27:54
  Mark Pracht: God bless him, like, I would like him to do… and I mean, he… but…
• 27:59
  Tad Eggleston: 3 had a lot of that going on, too.
• 28:00
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 28:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 28:03
  Mark Pracht: Well, Clark's 3… Clark's 3 was actually a moment where I was like.
• 28:08
  Mark Pracht: Jesus, are you really doing this? This is… like…
• 28:12
  Mark Pracht: That was a moment of bravery in the middle of a lot of pablum he's been putting out lately. Right. Right?
• 28:18
  Mark Pracht: Because that was a brave choice, and an extreme choice, and it was…
• 28:25
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I still have quibbles with that movie, but…
• 28:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 28:28
  Mark Pracht: the choices he made there. Anyway, let's talk about Forever People, if we want to.
• 28:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was actually thinking that we might be moving on to the two that we love at this point.
• 28:42
  Mark Pracht: Well, I…
• 28:43
  Tad Eggleston: Unless you had more to say about Forever People, I kind of thought
• 28:46
  Tad Eggleston: That was all what spun out of Forever People.
• 28:48
  Mark Pracht: Well, it's… it's part of what's… but I mean, I do want to talk about this dead man thing.
• 28:53
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 28:55
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 28:55
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 29:01
  Mark Pracht: What we see here.
• 29:04
  Mark Pracht: And, I'm… I'm gonna… there's a… I'm going to… I'm gonna…
• 29:12
  Mark Pracht: We're getting to the point where I really have to kind of go head-to-head with some of the Kirby theories on life, or theories on these works, because, you know, there is this whole sort of attitude that, oh, these books were selling really well.
• 29:27
  Mark Pracht: You know, but… No one knew about it.
• 29:31
  Mark Pracht: Or, you know, that they were, you know, that they were tearing off the covers to list them as returns, and then they were selling like mad, right? Or if only if there had been a direct market. And I wouldn't argue with the direct market thing. If there had been a direct market, these might have been bigger hits, right? But there wasn't.
• 29:51
  Mark Pracht: And the idea is… I'm gonna say this right now, the fact that
• 29:56
  Mark Pracht: Dead man is showing up in one of these books, strikes me as Kirby…
• 30:03
  Mark Pracht: is trying to drum up interest. I think he knows that the books are not selling the way he wants them to, and he's trying to bring things in. I think that…
• 30:19
  Mark Pracht: The other interesting thing about this book is that you see the synopsis prepared by Mark Ivanier and Steve Sherman.
• 30:26
  Mark Pracht: So… I think… I think…
• 30:34
  Mark Pracht: Again, going back to that Marshall Rogers book, Marshall Rogers had no good words for the other people. He was like, it's Kirby trying to do hippies, and he doesn't understand hippies at all.
• 30:45
  Mark Pracht: And so, I think he is, like.
• 30:49
  Mark Pracht: trying to… I think he knows that this book is on life support.
• 30:53
  Sean Harklerode: And he's trying to do something to…
• 30:57
  Mark Pracht: Turn that around.
• 30:58
  Mark Pracht: And it doesn't work, because Jack Kirby does not… I don't think Jack Kirby knows Dead Man, from Adam.
• 31:10
  Mark Pracht: Other than probably he knew that it was in our, Neil Adams thing, and he was buddies with Neil Adams, or at least friendly with Neil Adams, and thought, oh, if I've gotta… if I've gotta throw a DC character in here to try to goose sales, I'll use one of Neil's characters.
• 31:25
  Mark Pracht: You know.
• 31:28
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I… First of all, the art, the seance.
• 31:35
  Sean Harklerode: I'm playing a medium in my next show, so I'm thinking of,
• 31:39
  Sean Harklerode: Of this great panel on page 14.
• 31:43
  Sean Harklerode: with the curvy chemicals surrounding them, that… it's just a magnificent…
• 31:48
  Sean Harklerode: page, and I love that rendering on…
• 31:52
  Sean Harklerode: A at the bottom of 13, and B at the bottom of 14. I just love his rendering of Dead Man.
• 32:01
  Sean Harklerode: And for me, and then, of course, page 15, I mean, it's just a great scene.
• 32:06
  Tad Eggleston: Paddle, yeah.
• 32:11
  Sean Harklerode: for me, it strikes me as kind of a meta thing here. You know, Neil Adams has been doing the covers for a lot of these.
• 32:21
  Sean Harklerode: And… and now his character is… is pulling in, and it feels… feels like a natural mingling to me of…
• 32:32
  Sean Harklerode: Jack… and Neil, the old guard, and the new guard.
• 32:37
  Mark Pracht: coming together.
• 32:39
  Sean Harklerode: In this moment, and that's what I really appreciated about it, and thrilled to see that Dead Man will be back next month.
• 32:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 32:49
  Sean Harklerode: Because he's a character I care about.
• 32:52
  Sean Harklerode: And I… I just… it just struck me as… as a moment.
• 33:00
  Sean Harklerode: in comics history of Jack drawing Dead Man, which… Seemed insane to me.
• 33:08
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 33:09
  Mark Pracht: Because, I mean, but I would… and I agree with that. I think that that seance sequence is the best part of the whole book.
• 33:17
  Mark Pracht: the… Frankenstein riff.
• 33:21
  Mark Pracht: is… dull?
• 33:24
  Mark Pracht: But also, like… Do we really think that Dead Man was necessary for this plot?
• 33:38
  Mark Pracht: No.
• 33:40
  Mark Pracht: You know, it's just…
• 33:41
  Sean Harklerode: like…
• 33:44
  Mark Pracht: I don't know. And plus, I'm also… I will tell you this, I am really, the… I think that the powers of the forever people are woefully undefined and just…
• 33:59
  Sean Harklerode: sometime.
• 34:00
  Mark Pracht: what… what… what do they do? Who… who is this person? I mean, like, what… like, even with a power set that was interesting, but I mean, like, Seraphan…
• 34:10
  Sean Harklerode: Everybody has a different Sonic screwdriver.
• 34:12
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's exactly what it is. It's like, oh, okay, here… oh, you need this? Oh, well, I've got the little capsule for it, or whatever, you know, and it's like, what is this? And the thing is, is,
• 34:32
  Mark Pracht: I…
• 34:34
  Mark Pracht: I liked it better when they all just, with their powers combined, they brought Captain Planet to save the day. I liked that better, I thought that was a more, like…
• 34:43
  Mark Pracht: I… I… I would love it if the… if the… all of the Forever People just didn't really have any powers. They were, like, anything other than being new gods, and… and having… maybe being stronger, and…
• 34:55
  Mark Pracht: whatever, but then… but their power was that they could combine into the, I can't even remember the…
• 35:01
  Mark Pracht: The Omni-Man, yeah.
• 35:03
  Sean Harklerode: What a quiz.
• 35:03
  Mark Pracht: Where is the Omni-Man? What? That was the… that was the most interesting thing you had in the…
• 35:09
  Mark Pracht: I would have rather… I would have rather… I would have rather had all the forever people get thrown into the cosmic, trap thing, and the Omni-Man be tra… like… I… this… this book is so frustrating to me.
• 35:28
  Sean Harklerode: Infinity Man, I'm sorry.
• 35:30
  Mark Pracht: Affinity Man, sorry.
• 35:31
  Mark Pracht: Sorry. Look, it's been, what?
• 35:34
  Sean Harklerode: Go back to your domain, Infinity Man! Mantis is your master, too.
• 35:40
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 35:43
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know I should know the name of Infinity Man, but, like.
• 35:49
  Mark Pracht: Infinity Man hasn't been around for… What, we're in issue 9?
• 35:55
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 35:56
  Mark Pracht: Didn't he disappear in, like, Issue 3?
• 35:58
  Mark Pracht: Like, it's been a half a year!
• 36:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 36:02
  Sean Harklerode: And you just can't call the Infinity Man for anything.
• 36:07
  Sean Harklerode: Right?
• 36:09
  Mark Pracht: Well, isn't he infinite? I mean, like… You're on it.
• 36:13
  Sean Harklerode: understanding of infinity…
• 36:16
  Mark Pracht: Is limited? I don't know.
• 36:18
  Sean Harklerode: limited.
• 36:19
  Mark Pracht: Anyway… No, I… I think that… I just think…
• 36:25
  Mark Pracht: I, I don't… I don't… I, I…
• 36:27
  Mark Pracht: The one thing you can say about New Gods and Mr. Miracle is that there is a cohesive idea of what those books are about.
• 36:34
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 36:36
  Mark Pracht: It… he goes off on tangents, but, like, there is… a direct point.
• 36:43
  Mark Pracht: To… to what is happening, right?
• 36:48
  Mark Pracht: He never found this with Forever People.
• 36:51
  Mark Pracht: I don't know why… like… Every once in a while.
• 36:57
  Mark Pracht: Darkseid shows up and tries to tell… you know, it's almost like he's trying to recruit them to his side, and, like, that would… that would be an interesting fucking story of, like…
• 37:09
  Mark Pracht: like, why didn't you make this book about…
• 37:14
  Mark Pracht: Darkseid trying to corrupt the youth of New Genesis, you know?
• 37:20
  Mark Pracht: like, why don't you come over to my side, you know? Come to the dark side, we have cookies, you know? That kind of thing, right? Like, that would be an awesome series.
• 37:32
  Mark Pracht: Like, if somebody came to me and was like, hey, you want to revive Forever People? Hey, call me. But that's what I would do. I would be like, okay, here's the youth of New Genesis, and they're… they're struggling against, you know… that also would have made them more interesting characters if they were struggling against the idea of, like, oh, maybe this is better, you know?
• 37:51
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 37:54
  Mark Pracht: I think we can move on from that now.
• 37:58
  Mark Pracht: But I… I… I really… Quite honestly.
• 38:04
  Mark Pracht: as we read through these things… God, I talk too much.
• 38:09
  Tad Eggleston: No, you don't.
• 38:10
  Mark Pracht: As we read through these things, like.
• 38:13
  Mark Pracht: I found Jimmy Olson to just… if Jimmy Olson read, like, a work for hire, that he was like, okay, I'm doing this, so I might as well try to tie it into what I'm doing over here.
• 38:24
  Mark Pracht: You know? But it never made me angry.
• 38:28
  Mark Pracht: But sometimes Forever People makes me angry.
• 38:31
  Mark Pracht: Just because it doesn't feel like it has a point.
• 38:36
  Mark Pracht: I… except for, hey, man, I want to appeal to the kids, but… The fact that you called.
• 38:41
  Tad Eggleston: I'll take it a step further, is that it sometimes makes me angry, because not only does it not have a point.
• 38:50
  Tad Eggleston: But I feel like it's…
• 38:55
  Tad Eggleston: filled with great idea fragments that are such fragments that the forever people haven't really been picked up by other creators later on.
• 39:06
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there just wasn't quite enough to mine there.
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: And I almost wonder if, like, he'd let Mark Evanier write scripts that could have changed things, or, you know, had a kid just taking these cool things. I mean, he's gonna all but guaranteed the stories themselves came out of these kids that were…
• 39:28
  Tad Eggleston: Coming and hanging out with him.
• 39:30
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 39:31
  Sean Harklerode: Yep.
• 39:32
  Mark Pracht: Oh, the San Diego Sink String Mob was…
• 39:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right. For the 4 pages they were on, or 4 panels, you know?
• 39:39
  Mark Pracht: That was the San Diego kids. I, you know, I think… I just think that… It's so…
• 39:45
  Mark Pracht: It's so bad. I mean, like, I just…
• 39:51
  Mark Pracht: I can find something good to say about
• 39:54
  Mark Pracht: I can almost always find good things to say about new gods, aside from the art. Like, let's…
• 40:01
  Mark Pracht: baseline, we're talking about Jack Kirby book. That means the art's great.
• 40:05
  Sean Harklerode: Pretty much. Right.
• 40:07
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, I just… I don't… I mean, like, it…
• 40:16
  Mark Pracht: This whole book smacks of, hey, what's happening, fellow kids?
• 40:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know?
• 40:24
  Mark Pracht: And you just go, oh, okay.
• 40:27
  Mark Pracht: Whatever that is.
• 40:29
  Mark Pracht: I don't… I don't know.
• 40:32
  Mark Pracht: I just… I don't know.
• 40:34
  Mark Pracht: I'm done. I'm done ranting.
• 40:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, let's talk some new gods.
• 40:41
  Sean Harklerode: The new gods soon will be making a night.
• 40:45
  Mark Pracht: No, they're God.
• 40:49
  Sean Harklerode: Also, I guess this would be a good moment to say that,
• 40:54
  Sean Harklerode: DC is printing a facsimile edition of New Gods No. 1.
• 40:58
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's right.
• 40:59
  Sean Harklerode: The lists are out now for January.
• 41:04
  Mark Pracht: Wait, somebody's… they're issuing another, replica edition?
• 41:08
  Sean Harklerode: A facsimile of New Gods One.
• 41:11
  Mark Pracht: Wow, that's amazing! It's… I wish they would do more of those.
• 41:17
  Sean Harklerode: We were just talking about this in the comic shop Wednesday night.
• 41:23
  Mark Pracht: Sean and I ended up… Sean and I were having a gathering for a friend of ours, and
• 41:29
  Mark Pracht: ended up at Graham Cracker Comics in Andersonville, Before, and… I was sort of like.
• 41:38
  Mark Pracht: How many facsimile editions do you need to do? It seemed like the whole damn wall was, like, half the wall was facsimile editions.
• 41:45
  Tad Eggleston: I will say that as cool as it is that there's a New Gods Facile Edition, it makes it the fourth coolest facsimile edition coming out.
• 41:54
  Tad Eggleston: In.
• 41:56
  Tad Eggleston: January, because to celebrate Great. Man or month.
• 42:00
  Tad Eggleston: To celebrate their 50th anniversary,
• 42:07
  Tad Eggleston: Vanagraphics are starting what they're calling their Replicant editions, and they're only doing one a month. They're not gonna, like, overload us, overload us.
• 42:16
  Tad Eggleston: But they're starting out with Lovin' Rockets Volume 1, Number 1.
• 42:21
  Tad Eggleston: But also, C… They're actually doing…
• 42:27
  Mark Pracht: Treasury Edition Facimiles, so, you know, the bigger ones? Sure, yeah.
• 42:31
  Sean Harklerode: Yep.
• 42:32
  Tad Eggleston: of…
• 42:33
  Tad Eggleston: Superman vs. Spider-Man by Jerry Conway, Ross Andrew, Neil Adams, and John Ramita Sr, and Superman and Spider-Man from Marvel Treasury Edition number 28 from Jim Shooter and John Buschimo.
• 42:46
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 42:47
  Mark Pracht: I mean, look, I will say, I reserve my… I do love the Treasury Edition facsimiles.
• 42:55
  Mark Pracht: I just… I… Here… Here's part of what scares me about all of this, is that… I… often, like.
• 43:11
  Mark Pracht: with…
• 43:14
  Mark Pracht: Okay, with what it seems… with both of the major publishers right now being owned by large conglomerates, right?
• 43:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 43:22
  Mark Pracht: And basically, using the books as, like.
• 43:29
  Mark Pracht: Proof of concept for a movie or whatever, you know?
• 43:33
  Mark Pracht: Something they can exploit later in a more mainstream media, right?
• 43:38
  Mark Pracht: that…
• 43:41
  Mark Pracht: Like, ever since the 80s, there has been these whispers of, well, you know what we could do is we could just start
• 43:50
  Mark Pracht: Doing reprints all the time.
• 43:52
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 43:53
  Mark Pracht: And… I… I don't want that.
• 44:00
  Tad Eggleston: I don't either.
• 44:01
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I don't… I'm not excited by the 75 Batman books that are on the market right now, but I'm reading…
• 44:08
  Tad Eggleston: I don't actually think it's… it's likely, either. I… I do think that we…
• 44:15
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly as, I mean, I don't… Graphic novels eat up more and more of the market share, particularly young adult graphic novels and whatnot. I could see a…
• 44:28
  Tad Eggleston: A more select list of…
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: superhero comics coming out, you know, rather than the 7 Batman books, it's 4 Batman books, and…
• 44:40
  Tad Eggleston: and two Superman books and a bunch of miniseries. But…
• 44:48
  Tad Eggleston: I think, in a lot of ways, that will actually give more oxygen for…
• 44:54
  Tad Eggleston: people doing other things, so I don't know that I think it would actually wind up being bad for the market.
• 45:02
  Mark Pracht: I… I don't… I don't necessarily know, I think… Here's what I think.
• 45:08
  Mark Pracht: I don't think the medium is going anywhere.
• 45:12
  Mark Pracht: But I would… I would hazard to guess
• 45:16
  Mark Pracht: That if you asked most of the retailers.
• 45:20
  Mark Pracht: What… how their business would go if…
• 45:25
  Mark Pracht: Marvel and DC stopped generating new material.
• 45:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and again, like, if they completely stop generating new material, that's gonna be an issue.
• 45:34
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 45:36
  Mark Pracht: But I, like…
• 45:37
  Tad Eggleston: Stop taking up as much shelf space, that could… that's a different thing.
• 45:41
  Mark Pracht: I… look, I would be a big advocate for both of the big two.
• 45:46
  Mark Pracht: Cutting back.
• 45:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:49
  Mark Pracht: I mean, if you were… if you were looking at, like.
• 45:52
  Tad Eggleston: a dozen titles a month for Marvel and DC, rather than a dozen titles a week from Marvel and DC.
• 46:01
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think it would actually cut superhero sales as much as a lot of people think.
• 46:10
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, just make…
• 46:11
  Tad Eggleston: Those dozen… those dozen titles would sell better.
• 46:15
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 46:16
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, instead of having… if you… if you had… instead of having 12 Batman titles, or Batman-related titles, you had 2.
• 46:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, Batman and Detective.
• 46:27
  Mark Pracht: I would hazard to guess that there's quite a few people who are buying all of those books… Right. …who would just
• 46:36
  Mark Pracht: Dude.
• 46:37
  Mark Pracht: by…
• 46:38
  Tad Eggleston: Superman and Wonder Woman.
• 46:39
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 46:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and that's… that's, like, if I were the head of DC or Marvel, like, if I was the head of DC, you would have Batman and Detective, you would have…
• 46:51
  Tad Eggleston: Superman in action, you would have Wonder Woman, and you would have the Justice League. So you would have 6… 6 ongoing titles. And then I would put… put out 6 to 12
• 47:02
  Tad Eggleston: Limited series titles.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: A month, with no more… then one additional Batman, or one additional Superman, or one additional Wonder Woman…
• 47:14
  Tad Eggleston: Among those at any given time.
• 47:17
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 47:18
  Sean Harklerode: I, you know… I…
• 47:21
  Mark Pracht: Go ahead.
• 47:22
  Sean Harklerode: To me, I mean, this… this…
• 47:25
  Sean Harklerode: you know, conversation reminds me, I've been reading about, Hannah and Barbara.
• 47:31
  Sean Harklerode: And, you know, the decline in quality that went on as they went on.
• 47:38
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 47:39
  Sean Harklerode: Joe's insistence, he didn't wanna… he didn't want to fire people.
• 47:44
  Sean Harklerode: We wanted to keep people working.
• 47:46
  Sean Harklerode: Right?
• 47:47
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 47:49
  Sean Harklerode: You know, part of me thinks, well, they've reached this size.
• 47:54
  Sean Harklerode: as Jack never wanted to let anyone go, like, he didn't want to… Right.
• 47:59
  Sean Harklerode: You know, an inker go, because that guy has a family disease.
• 48:03
  Mark Pracht: That, guys.
• 48:04
  Sean Harklerode: you know, I mean, at some point, they've reached these levels.
• 48:09
  Sean Harklerode: There are people who, you know, need jobs.
• 48:12
  Sean Harklerode: In this industry. Now, do we think that the industry you know.
• 48:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that, that's… I mean, that's.
• 48:18
  Sean Harklerode: Unbelievable prayers, I think.
• 48:20
  Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, what I wonder is, again, like, I mean, first of all, it's work for hire, so, like, there are natural off points for any of these people. You don't necessarily just get rid of all the stuff at once.
• 48:33
  Tad Eggleston: And, and second, I am not certain at all that most shops wouldn't be able to support
• 48:43
  Tad Eggleston: the necessary… we'd just have more crime comics. We might have romance comics again. We'd have more horror comics. You know, it would give oxygen…
• 48:52
  Tad Eggleston: And shelf space to publishers that
• 48:55
  Tad Eggleston: don't get it right now, because there's so many stores that can't afford to gamble on not having shelf space for Marvel and DC.
• 49:05
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 49:07
  Mark Pracht: Well, look.
• 49:08
  Tad Eggleston: I think that… I think that…
• 49:12
  Mark Pracht: I think that… When you're talking about keeping people working.
• 49:17
  Mark Pracht: I mean, we all want that, right? But, I mean, we are talking about… a…
• 49:28
  Mark Pracht: Anytime you talk about things like art, right?
• 49:32
  Mark Pracht: that… Some art is gonna connect, some art is not gonna connect.
• 49:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:37
  Mark Pracht: And that… that… that is why…
• 49:40
  Mark Pracht: That is why, like, say, when you talk about actors, that at any given moment, 2% of the actors in this country are actually working.
• 49:50
  Mark Pracht: You know, the other 98% are not, right? And that's because there's…
• 49:57
  Mark Pracht: far more people who want to do this work than there are people… than there is work to be done. And that's… that's never gonna change, it's never gonna change, but the fact of the matter is, is like, if there's no market for it.
• 50:10
  Mark Pracht: then…
• 50:13
  Mark Pracht: Like, if the people who are putting money into this stuff determine there's no market for it, or there's no way for them to generate revenue with it…
• 50:23
  Mark Pracht: Like, there's no, like…
• 50:25
  Mark Pracht: I'm not… I'm not… I don't think that corporations need to make pro… like, make as much profit as they do, but they certainly need to make profit, otherwise… Right.
• 50:36
  Mark Pracht: there's no way to maintain it, right? And…
• 50:40
  Tad Eggleston: I would certainly love the, tax code to change in such a way where they have to make profit by making profit, rather than…
• 50:47
  Tad Eggleston: Going.
• 50:48
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm gonna shift this stuff around.
• 50:51
  Mark Pracht: Sure, absolutely. But, you know, like, I think that…
• 51:00
  Mark Pracht: I worry about this stuff all the time, because we've been…
• 51:06
  Mark Pracht: We've gotten into this point where
• 51:08
  Mark Pracht: You know, stuff isn't making money the way it used to, and… and yet…
• 51:14
  Mark Pracht: Or it is, but not for the people that it used to make the money for. Yeah, but I mean, like, even at, like, what… you know, like, I don't consider…
• 51:24
  Mark Pracht: Like, this idea of, like, a movie that makes a billion dollars, right?
• 51:30
  Mark Pracht: I don't think we're ever gonna see that again.
• 51:33
  Mark Pracht: Ever.
• 51:35
  Mark Pracht: I just think the market has changed, and I think that… The…
• 51:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I would actually argue that having the one movie that made a billion dollars, rather than, like, in the 90s, we had…
• 51:49
  Tad Eggleston: You know, 50 to 60 movies that he'd make 20 to 40 million dollars.
• 51:56
  Tad Eggleston: I think is healthier for the overall market.
• 52:00
  Mark Pracht: I 100% agree with that, but I would also say the market doesn't support that anymore.
• 52:08
  Mark Pracht: Like, people don't go out and see those movies.
• 52:11
  Mark Pracht: They just don't.
• 52:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, since theaters aren't the only source of revenue, and since the…
• 52:18
  Tad Eggleston: the studios have very much stepped away from trying. I don't know if I agree.
• 52:27
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I don't think… I don't think that streaming is…
• 52:33
  Mark Pracht: I don't think streaming is yet to be financially viable for anybody.
• 52:37
  Tad Eggleston: That I agree… I mean, that… that I… I… I don't completely disagree with, though I think it depends a lot on…
• 52:46
  Tad Eggleston: What your budget is.
• 52:49
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think… sorry, this is way off the Kirby discussion.
• 52:54
  Tad Eggleston: It is and it isn't. I mean.
• 52:56
  Mark Pracht: But I, like, let's bring it back to Kirby, because I think we could go down this rabbit hole. Because, like, I think both of us… I think all of us in this group would say, Jack.
• 53:08
  Mark Pracht: Don't do Jimmy Olsen.
• 53:10
  Mark Pracht: Don't do forever, people, and put more effort into doing new gods and Mr. Miracle.
• 53:18
  Mark Pracht: And you probably would have ended up with a better product.
• 53:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I would change that just a little bit and say, you know, keep forever people, but work with the kids on it, rather than having it be your own.
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: When they might wind up making the other books better, too.
• 53:36
  Tad Eggleston: Without actually having to have an editor and writers, you know, just the fact that you're doing that one gab session.
• 53:43
  Mark Pracht: I… I think the other thing that really needs to be talked about is, or considered, is that everybody says, like, even Iris said this, I think Steve Sherman has said this, I think a lot of people at DC have said this, is that Kirby's idea was that he was going to create all this stuff.
• 54:01
  Mark Pracht: And then turn it over to other people.
• 54:03
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:06
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 54:12
  Mark Pracht: Why? Why didn't that happen?
• 54:14
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 54:15
  Mark Pracht: like, I think… a… You know.
• 54:21
  Mark Pracht: if… if he'd given… I think if he'd given Forever People to, say, a Denny O'Neill, who we think of as an old… old man of comics, you know, before he passed, but…
• 54:33
  Mark Pracht: In 1970, he was, you know.
• 54:36
  Mark Pracht: like, can you imagine a Forever People coming from somebody who had the mindset of, the hard-traveling heroes?
• 54:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Danny O'Neil was, 31 in 1970.
• 54:52
  Mark Pracht: Still, still, still young enough to, to…
• 54:55
  Tad Eggleston: That's totally my point.
• 54:56
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 54:57
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, all I'm saying is I think that… that…
• 55:06
  Mark Pracht: I… you know, there was this… Jack needed to do so many pages, right?
• 55:12
  Mark Pracht: needed to turn in so many pages for DC, you know, that was the contract.
• 55:18
  Mark Pracht: And, he didn't… I just… I don't…
• 55:26
  Mark Pracht: Like, if he really wanted that to happen.
• 55:29
  Mark Pracht: I just don't see why he didn't start the process to do that, right?
• 55:35
  Mark Pracht: I mean… I… I… my personal.
• 55:41
  Sean Harklerode: I mean, he may have wanted it to happen, but I mean, was Carmine and the rest of the team behind that idea?
• 55:47
  Mark Pracht: Right. Well, he… and he certainly didn't… but he also didn't want anybody to come in and write.
• 55:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 55:55
  Mark Pracht: Like, we know that for a fact. Right. I mean, and the thing is, is like.
• 56:00
  Mark Pracht: the only, you know, the only person with any sort of plotting or writing credit on any of these is Mark Ivanier and Steve Sherman, who were…
• 56:10
  Mark Pracht: Jack's employees, right?
• 56:13
  Mark Pracht: Rather than… collaborators, you know? Like, collaborators in that sense of equal footing, right?
• 56:21
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, I mean, like, I just think…
• 56:24
  Mark Pracht: there's so much potential here, even for all that I poo-poo the forever people.
• 56:30
  Mark Pracht: and the Forever People just makes me angry. There was stuff there.
• 56:37
  Mark Pracht: like, there is… there is a… there is a platform there to tell some interesting stories, but those were not… like, Jack Kirby was not the person to make… tell those interesting stories.
• 56:50
  Mark Pracht: Anyway…
• 56:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:53
  Mark Pracht: Let's talk about Bug. I like Bug.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: Bug was fun.
• 57:01
  Mark Pracht: I… You know what I really admire about this issue of New Gods?
• 57:07
  Mark Pracht: is that… it… shows…
• 57:13
  Mark Pracht: That it really does delve into that idea that no matter how perfect you think your society is, somebody is getting the shit into the stick.
• 57:23
  Mark Pracht: Here's this perfect, perfect…
• 57:26
  Sean Harklerode: you know.
• 57:27
  Mark Pracht: New Genesis.
• 57:28
  Mark Pracht: Where everyone is happy, and everyone is beautiful, and everybody lives fully, and then, oh, except for these people who live in a big anthill.
• 57:37
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 57:40
  Mark Pracht: And, but…
• 57:46
  Mark Pracht: like, you also, you know, in… and this… this is not me dogging on Jack, but, you know, it's… we have, another white savior, narrative, essentially, even though they're all white, but, I mean, like, it's like, here's… here's Forager.
• 58:03
  Mark Pracht: Or… And, he's actually from New Genesis. He's not a bug.
• 58:12
  Mark Pracht: You know, and I'm like, okay.
• 58:14
  Mark Pracht: Alright.
• 58:17
  Mark Pracht: But… Yeah.
• 58:22
  Mark Pracht: I will say, let's see.
• 58:26
  Mark Pracht: basic thoughts. I love how… Ugh, oh, hold on.
• 58:48
  Mark Pracht: Eve Donner.
• 58:50
  Mark Pracht: writes her plays so she can pay for her fancy apartment. I'm like.
• 58:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 58:56
  Mark Pracht: I don't think that's ever happened, unless you're maybe, like, you know.
• 59:02
  Sean Harklerode: David Bamet, or, or, you know…
• 59:05
  Tad Eggleston: Simon.
• 59:05
  Mark Pracht: Neil Simon.
• 59:09
  Mark Pracht: It's yet another thing where I think Jack…
• 59:20
  Mark Pracht: you see Jack's perception of certain lives, That are not necessarily… you know.
• 59:29
  Mark Pracht: I don't think Jack ever thought he was living high on the hog, but…
• 59:35
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, he had a nice house in California with a pool, so I guess… I guess he thought that everybody…
• 59:40
  Mark Pracht: I don't know. I don't know.
• 59:45
  Mark Pracht: But no, I really like this story, I love, I love the, the,
• 59:53
  Mark Pracht: I liked seeing Mantis come back, in this environment.
• 59:59
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it sort of suggests that he's one of the bugs, but…
• 1:00:03
  Mark Pracht: Is he? I don't know. Is he just using that to manipulate people?
• 1:00:11
  Mark Pracht: I like the Prime… I like the hierarchy thing with Prime 1 and the Queen, and I… all of that was really cool. And it's actually…
• 1:00:21
  Mark Pracht: Part and parcel of the story.
• 1:00:23
  Mark Pracht: Rather than just being something that gets thrown at the wall, and then… okay.
• 1:00:27
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 1:00:33
  Mark Pracht: I don't know. Somebody else talk.
• 1:00:36
  Mark Pracht: I talked to him.
• 1:00:39
  Tad Eggleston: I think we might be… Reaching our…
• 1:00:44
  Tad Eggleston: Conclusion, though we should definitely get into…
• 1:00:47
  Sean Harklerode: Mr. Miracle Sum.
• 1:00:49
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I didn't, I didn't love, the story of the bug.
• 1:00:55
  Mark Pracht: You didn't?
• 1:00:56
  Sean Harklerode: I did not.
• 1:00:58
  Mark Pracht: But it did make you angry.
• 1:01:00
  Sean Harklerode: It did not make me angry.
• 1:01:01
  Mark Pracht: It's just there. I mean, I…
• 1:01:03
  Sean Harklerode: hold.
• 1:01:03
  Mark Pracht: Look, I do think… I do think that New Gods goes off on tangents a little too often. Like, I would rather they.
• 1:01:10
  Sean Harklerode: I have characters… But you don't show me the characters.
• 1:01:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:01:18
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean.
• 1:01:18
  Tad Eggleston: I felt like it was more a worldbuilding… issue.
• 1:01:22
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:01:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the great, great issue here is the Mr. Miracle, because it fleshes out both Scott and…
• 1:01:30
  Tad Eggleston: and Barda, and… and does worldbuilding, and… and introduces Hyman, and…
• 1:01:37
  Mark Pracht: or him on, I don't know. Like, I sort of take…
• 1:01:43
  Mark Pracht: I… I sort of am disturbed by the idea of a character named Hyman, but .
• 1:01:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, right around the time of The Godfather, Hyman Ross.
• 1:01:57
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah. I mean, although, you know.
• 1:02:01
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, that's what Mark was thinking.
• 1:02:03
  Tad Eggleston: I know it was.
• 1:02:06
  Mark Pracht: I do…
• 1:02:11
  Mark Pracht: I don't think I'm crazy in saying this is Kirby injecting himself into the narrative.
• 1:02:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Mark Pracht: Sure, looks like Kirby.
• 1:02:19
  Tad Eggleston: It really does, doesn't it?
• 1:02:21
  Mark Pracht: It… he… he seems to be the creator of everything.
• 1:02:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know?
• 1:02:28
  Tad Eggleston: But everybody else takes the credit, and then they kill him.
• 1:02:32
  Tad Eggleston: Over and over and over again.
• 1:02:34
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 1:02:38
  Tad Eggleston: Darkseid doesn't want him to exist.
• 1:02:43
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:02:45
  Mark Pracht: I do think… I mean, like, I think that this is a… this is a…
• 1:02:56
  Mark Pracht: I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like this character, like, again, this kind of goes back to how much was Jack really fleshing this stuff out? How much was he thinking about how this all fit together, or is it just stuff being thrown at the wall?
• 1:03:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, more and more, I… I think of…
• 1:03:17
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm just assuming that you did your research well enough that this is mostly true. I'm thinking of Jack…
• 1:03:23
  Tad Eggleston: Through the lens of… Family man all day, work all night, PTSD, sleep-deprived.
• 1:03:32
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that so much of this is, like, his… Trauma, fever dream.
• 1:03:39
  Mark Pracht: I think so, too. I think that there… I think, certainly, like, I think we can tell that whenever Jack deals with violence, or warfare, or…
• 1:03:50
  Mark Pracht: Action, as he called it. Like, it's part of his… War experience coming out.
• 1:03:57
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm also talking about the trauma of feeling like he…
• 1:04:02
  Tad Eggleston: had done all those things at Marvel, and the world had given Stan credit. You know, that's traumatic. That's…
• 1:04:08
  Mark Pracht: And I think…
• 1:04:10
  Tad Eggleston: I would… I would…
• 1:04:12
  Mark Pracht: I would love to see…
• 1:04:16
  Mark Pracht: I don't have this in front of me, but I… I would like to see…
• 1:04:21
  Tad Eggleston: time-wise, where this relates to the publication of Origins of Marvel Comics, because that would be kind of in the same area.
• 1:04:30
  Mark Pracht: I think…
• 1:04:32
  Tad Eggleston: How about draw comics the Marvel Way?
• 1:04:35
  Mark Pracht: What? I mean, yeah.
• 1:04:39
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, like… how to draw comics the Marvel way.
• 1:04:44
  Mark Pracht: that's an interesting conversation, right? Okay, because, like, how to draw comics the Marvel way is obviously based on the Kirby…
• 1:04:52
  Mark Pracht: style, right?
• 1:04:56
  Mark Pracht: Kirby style sets Marvel.
• 1:04:58
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 1:05:00
  Mark Pracht: And I would like to think that if Kirby was still working there, it would have been Stan Lee and Jack Kirby present how to draw comics the Marvel Way.
• 1:05:10
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:10
  Mark Pracht: But… did… did Jack… Have the technical drafting skill that Bushema did.
• 1:05:23
  Mark Pracht: to do that. Quite possibly.
• 1:05:24
  Tad Eggleston: I know. No, no, I understand, but I'm not… I'm not talking at all about whether anybody had wronged Jack. I'm talking about…
• 1:05:34
  Tad Eggleston: I'm playing armchair psychologist to… and to the fact that making these comics may have actually been very therapeutic for him. I mean, we've heard no indication that he wasn't a phenomenal father. We've heard no indication that he wasn't great to those kids that came and knocked on his door to…
• 1:05:52
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Tad Eggleston: To sit at the… like, so somehow, despite all of this trauma, all of this whatnot, he was a very…
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: Easy-going, jovial person during daytime hours, and then he drew all night.
• 1:06:06
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, look, I'm not… look, I… that actually… it just came out because I was thinking about it. I was thinking about the relationship of, you know, origins of Marvel Comics, which I do, I think, is…
• 1:06:19
  Mark Pracht: When you read that book,
• 1:06:22
  Mark Pracht: Stan always mentions the artist, but, you know, never… like, it's a whitewash. And it's a whitewash on a corporate level. It's… it's like, these are the… these… because I think…
• 1:06:38
  Mark Pracht: Stan… to, I guess, to Stan's credit, I think Stan always understood I don't own these characters.
• 1:06:47
  Mark Pracht: You know, they're not my characters, they belong to the company.
• 1:06:51
  Mark Pracht: He's a company man, so let's just… but…
• 1:06:55
  Tad Eggleston: Though on the flip side, he's also family. So, like, he might have had some idea that he…
• 1:07:02
  Tad Eggleston: may one day own the companies, or the characters. Well, I…
• 1:07:06
  Mark Pracht: You know.
• 1:07:07
  Tad Eggleston: It didn't entirely work out that way, but…
• 1:07:10
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think that, I think Martin Goodman was… I don't.
• 1:07:18
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely.
• 1:07:18
  Mark Pracht: I don't think…
• 1:07:19
  Mark Pracht: I don't think Martin Goodman cared much whether Stan was his cousin, nephew, whatever. I think that he found him useful.
• 1:07:29
  Tad Eggleston: For his business.
• 1:07:30
  Mark Pracht: But I… sorry, it just… when you brought up how to draw comics the Marvel way.
• 1:07:38
  Mark Pracht: It just made me think about that.
• 1:07:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I don't like… I don't know that… Jack would have been…
• 1:07:44
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like Jack is the guy that could have taught you by sitting next to you and working with you, but like…
• 1:07:50
  Tad Eggleston: Slowing down enough to put together the book in a way that was…
• 1:07:55
  Mark Pracht: Or, or, you know, talking about anatomy.
• 1:07:58
  Mark Pracht: In the way that Bushema does, or, you know.
• 1:08:01
  Tad Eggleston: No, he would have been, you just gotta do this, and you do this.
• 1:08:03
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:08:05
  Mark Pracht: No, and I mean, like, that's… that's Kirby's genius. I'm not trying to denigrate Kirby by saying that. Right, I'm not either. I'm just saying… but it's… it's, like, conveying on a technical level how to do what they did, and using…
• 1:08:19
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not even 100% certain Kirby understood what he did.
• 1:08:23
  Mark Pracht: Oh, I don't just did.
• 1:08:24
  Tad Eggleston: it.
• 1:08:24
  Mark Pracht: I think he just did… yeah, I think you're 100% right. But I think,
• 1:08:31
  Mark Pracht: But here's where I'm sort of leading up to, is that I think that Hyman.
• 1:08:39
  Mark Pracht: I'm just gonna say it's hymen.
• 1:08:42
  Mark Pracht: seems to me… Was part of the deal.
• 1:08:49
  Mark Pracht: that we've learned about in the pact.
• 1:08:55
  Mark Pracht: With the trading of the two sons.
• 1:08:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:08:58
  Mark Pracht: Right? It seems like… I don't know if it's said, but it seems like he was part of that.
• 1:09:04
  Tad Eggleston: Could be.
• 1:09:05
  Mark Pracht: And he wasn't in that story.
• 1:09:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:09:08
  Mark Pracht: At least by my memory, maybe he was, maybe there was a character that was there.
• 1:09:12
  Sean Harklerode: Not by name.
• 1:09:14
  Mark Pracht: Not by now.
• 1:09:14
  Tad Eggleston: Though with, with his,
• 1:09:17
  Tad Eggleston: with that last scene where he's telling Darkseid, here, you have your war, I wonder if he wasn't part of the deal as much as he was Darkseid's ace in the hole. I don't actually want peace, so I need to arrange for there not to be peace. How could I do that? Oh, I can have somebody train scot-free to escape.
• 1:09:35
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:09:36
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, and I also think, like,
• 1:09:43
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, it's so… like, how many…
• 1:09:46
  Mark Pracht: like… and again, I really like this issue. I like this issue a ton. I like… I like, it gives us an answer as to why BARDA
• 1:09:57
  Mark Pracht: and the Female Furies are not… are sort of their, like, part of the Dark Side Army, but yet they're not, you know? That we… I think last time we talked about that, like, what… what is the Female Furies position in…
• 1:10:12
  Mark Pracht: in, Apocalypse hierarchy, and this sort of gives us the sense that there's something personal that's causing Barda to do what she's doing.
• 1:10:21
  Mark Pracht: I think that there's all sorts of really interesting things going on. I just…
• 1:10:27
  Mark Pracht: I also… at one point, I was like, how many… How many people…
• 1:10:34
  Mark Pracht: Like, how many escape artists were… Like…
• 1:10:38
  Mark Pracht: like, okay, so he met the original Mr. Miracle and learned escape artistry from him, but then he also learned it from Hyman, and it's like, okay, I mean, like, and I, you know…
• 1:10:48
  Tad Eggleston: There's a whole crew of other ones that we're learning from Hyman that, like.
• 1:10:52
  Tad Eggleston: Together, and taught each other, and…
• 1:10:55
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, this…
• 1:10:57
  Tad Eggleston: How many origin stories do we need?
• 1:11:00
  Sean Harklerode: every… every character, you know, has their unique little universe, right? Right. This reminds me, and I know this is out there, but…
• 1:11:10
  Sean Harklerode: Mr. Miracle kind of reminds me of the Cars universe.
• 1:11:15
  Mark Pracht: Where… huh.
• 1:11:17
  Sean Harklerode: Everyone… their cars, Right? Right. I mean, are you familiar with that concept? I mean.
• 1:11:23
  Tad Eggleston: I am.
• 1:11:23
  Sean Harklerode: Everyone in cars is cars, there's no drive.
• 1:11:26
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:11:27
  Sean Harklerode: In… in Mr. Miracle World, Everything is an escape trap. Everything is a magician's trick.
• 1:11:34
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:11:36
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:36
  Sean Harklerode: It's just… Who knew this world existed, where everything was about, you know, like, being an.
• 1:11:44
  Mark Pracht: You're…
• 1:11:44
  Sean Harklerode: an escapist.
• 1:11:45
  Mark Pracht: And every time, every time somebody catches Scott, instead of just, like, shooting him.
• 1:11:51
  Sean Harklerode: Right. They're like, okay, we're gonna put you in this thing. Exactly!
• 1:11:55
  Mark Pracht: This is what I do! What do you…
• 1:11:59
  Mark Pracht: It's… it's… it's funny, because it's… there… you know, like, you know, obviously we know that there's a Steranko influence here, and… but I mean, like.
• 1:12:09
  Mark Pracht: There's also, clearly, Jack must have watched the Batman TV show.
• 1:12:17
  Mark Pracht: Because it's always the same fucking thing. Right. Okay, here's this crazy-ass construction, we're gonna put… you know, and… and…
• 1:12:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, his kids would have been the right age.
• 1:12:28
  Sean Harklerode: I would… I mean, I would like… I mean, I do like Mr. Miracle. Don't get me wrong, I love Mr. Miracle and Barbie.
• 1:12:35
  Mark Pracht: best of these books. Period.
• 1:12:36
  Sean Harklerode: but I would like it more.
• 1:12:40
  Sean Harklerode: if… there were… if I could feel like I was learning escape artistry, Right?
• 1:12:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:12:48
  Sean Harklerode: if… if I could see, oh, he did this, he did that, instead of usually, oh, it's some gadget.
• 1:12:55
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, or the mother box.
• 1:12:56
  Sean Harklerode: There's a mother box.
• 1:12:58
  Sean Harklerode: You know, I feel like that would.
• 1:13:00
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:13:00
  Sean Harklerode: That would imp… that would… Be a better choice.
• 1:13:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:13:05
  Sean Harklerode: For me.
• 1:13:06
  Mark Pracht: I mean, that's… but that's, like… like…
• 1:13:10
  Mark Pracht: If… like, what would be awesome, right, in my mind, is if… Kirby…
• 1:13:17
  Mark Pracht: Got this idea, did a couple of issues, and then turned it over to Steranko.
• 1:13:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:13:24
  Mark Pracht: because then, like, Steranko could have been, like… I mean, and, you know, it's probably a lot of the, you know, the magician, don't reveal your tricks thing, but…
• 1:13:34
  Mark Pracht: But the idea… like, I would love to see something where, you know, Scott is trussed up.
• 1:13:41
  Mark Pracht: They're gonna kill him, he doesn't have the mother box, he doesn't have any of his gear, and he has to, like, dislocate his own shoulder to get out of a straitjacket, or whatever it is, you know, like, those things that… that… like, that is… I think that is sort of what…
• 1:13:56
  Mark Pracht: I… Sean hits the nail on the head, like, I would really love to see that. I would love to see the actual discipline is required to be an escape artist.
• 1:14:06
  Mark Pracht: And then we can, you know, we can fancy it up with all sorts of stuff, you know? But I mean, it's like, I remember that thing where it was,
• 1:14:14
  Mark Pracht: Oh, what was it? He was trapped in that building, and they put him in, like, the car wash thing.
• 1:14:20
  Mark Pracht: Where it moved in through, and it's like, oh, how did you get out? It's like, well, my shoes had laser beams in them, you know, and it's like…
• 1:14:28
  Mark Pracht: What? Why didn't… Like, and they never check him.
• 1:14:33
  Mark Pracht: They never check him for stuff.
• 1:14:36
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:14:37
  Mark Pracht: I don't… it's, like, you know, in a way, it's a great point. In another way, it's sort of like, yeah, but it's comic book Hokum, you know? Right.
• 1:14:49
  Mark Pracht: you know, I don't know.
• 1:14:52
  Mark Pracht: But yes, I… I feel that… I feel that criticism, I feel that idea of, like.
• 1:14:58
  Mark Pracht: It would be really cool to learn something about
• 1:15:03
  Mark Pracht: Escape artistry. But I mean, like, I think we all know the answer is, like, Jack didn't know anything about being an escape artist.
• 1:15:10
  Mark Pracht: He just knew that that was an interesting idea, you know?
• 1:15:13
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:15:14
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 1:15:15
  Mark Pracht: But, I, I actually, you know, I love this book. I actually like Hyman as a character.
• 1:15:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right, too.
• 1:15:27
  Mark Pracht: It's.
• 1:15:29
  Tad Eggleston: Though I'm also wondering if he's as good as we think he is.
• 1:15:35
  Mark Pracht: You mean in terms of, like, where the plot goes?
• 1:15:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  Mark Pracht: No comment.
• 1:15:40
  Tad Eggleston: Meh.
• 1:15:40
  Mark Pracht: I'm not gonna blow it, you've never read these.
• 1:15:43
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 1:15:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I do sort of… That ending scene was a real twist.
• 1:15:50
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:15:59
  Mark Pracht: the… I had a point I was gonna make.
• 1:16:03
  Mark Pracht: I do… I would… I kind of think there was a missed opportunity, like, I want, at some point, for Oberon and Hyman to meet.
• 1:16:16
  Sean Harklerode: I can't…
• 1:16:17
  Mark Pracht: Can't remember if that happens, but…
• 1:16:23
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know, looking at page 10, The middle panel?
• 1:16:33
  Sean Harklerode: as, BARDA, Breaks through the… through the… the wall.
• 1:16:41
  Sean Harklerode: It's not exact.
• 1:16:43
  Sean Harklerode: But that really reminds me of Jack's cover for Incredible Hulk number 5.
• 1:16:51
  Sean Harklerode: which I'll…
• 1:16:53
  Mark Pracht: So that keeps you guys on screen.
• 1:16:56
  Mark Pracht: You know, it's not exact.
• 1:16:58
  Sean Harklerode: You know, the arms, but it's definitely the same energy.
• 1:17:03
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. I mean, it's the same artist, no surprise, but I just remember reading it and going, this looks really…
• 1:17:11
  Sean Harklerode: familiar.
• 1:17:12
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:17:13
  Sean Harklerode: And it, it just… I just thought that was an interesting parallel.
• 1:17:18
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I think that, you know, there's a lot of times
• 1:17:23
  Mark Pracht: Jack uses… Jack does use some, like, the same kind of posing and stuff.
• 1:17:29
  Mark Pracht: Certainly, like, with, the panel layout, and how he puts action in panels.
• 1:17:37
  Mark Pracht: I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a very similar sort of layout to this in 6 other books he did, you know?
• 1:17:44
  Mark Pracht: With somebody busting through a wall in that big panel in the middle.
• 1:17:47
  Sean Harklerode: Right. But it just, you know, this is in no ways a criticism. This is a really cool thing that as soon as I saw it, I was like, that's the Hulk bursting out of…
• 1:17:59
  Sean Harklerode: You know, after Tiffinus, I think.
• 1:18:02
  Sean Harklerode: Anyway.
• 1:18:05
  Mark Pracht: I, I also love… In a way,
• 1:18:12
  Mark Pracht: In the same way that in the New Gods, we got to see that there's this sort of, like, oppressed underclass on…
• 1:18:19
  Mark Pracht: New Genesis.
• 1:18:22
  Mark Pracht: that, you know, the people of Apocalypse While not necessarily… by… while… Are… are sort of, like.
• 1:18:34
  Mark Pracht: in for penny, in for a pound, with being part of the dark side… you know.
• 1:18:41
  Mark Pracht: Even though they're an oppressed underclass, they're just as, you know, they're absolutely willing to jump in and grab somebody if they need to, you know?
• 1:18:50
  Tad Eggleston: True believers.
• 1:18:53
  Mark Pracht: Yep.
• 1:18:56
  Mark Pracht: But anyway…
• 1:18:57
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
• 1:18:58
  Mark Pracht: I thought, I thought… It was a good issue.
• 1:19:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it was.
• 1:19:03
  Tad Eggleston: We should wrap it up, cause I need to… Go out to…
• 1:19:09
  Tad Eggleston: to Dr. Ramos' new comic shop.
• 1:19:13
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, hey! My role's gonna be.
• 1:19:16
  Mark Pracht: Nice.
• 1:19:17
  Tad Eggleston: But.
• 1:19:19
  Mark Pracht: And I'.
• 1:19:19
  Tad Eggleston: for…
• 1:19:21
  Mark Pracht: Sorry I'm late, I was sorry I was late.
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's completely okay. For Mark Pratt and Sean Hoggerwood, this has been the Fourth World Book Club on 22 panels, and we will see you after the next page.