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Saga Book Club #4: Volume 4 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels and the fourth edition of the Saga Book Club. Matt and Belle and Marisol are here, along with writer Josh Iserreich.
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: How is everybody doing? Thanksgiving plans, that sort of thing?
• 0:20
  Matt & Belle: Doing great.
• 0:23
  Tad Eggleston: Of course you are, your daughter's home.
• 0:24
  Matt & Belle: Yup, and the other one will be home tomorrow.
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, hey, hey!
• 0:30
  Josh Eiserike: I'm great. We're driving up from LA to the Bay Area, so that'll be…
• 0:36
  Josh Eiserike: a lot of fun sitting in traffic. I can't wait.
• 0:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you know, I mean…
• 0:42
  Tad Eggleston: What was I seeing that was in the Bay Area? Oh! Now, do you have family in the Bay Area, or are you just going up there for…
• 0:48
  Josh Eiserike: My college roommate is…
• 0:53
  Josh Eiserike: It's a long story, I won't bore everybody, but my college roommate's there, and I never get to hang out with him.
• 0:58
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, cause on… Earlier this week, I talked to an actor from the Marin theater, because they're putting on
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: The gift of nothing.
• 1:08
  Tad Eggleston: Which is a play adapted from the Mutz book.
• 1:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh! That, that, that, Patrick… McDonald.
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: was also involved in writing the play, that sort of thing. And it actually sounds really cool, and it's all ages, and I know you have kids, but it doesn't start until December 13th, so unless you've got a.
• 1:28
  Josh Eiserike: another one.
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: Reason to go back up.
• 1:31
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:31
  Josh Eiserike: I mean, this is gonna be my first time out there since COVID, so…
• 1:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right, well, I mean, have a good time, and then decide that you have to go back to see Mutz. Yeah. Because it looks like… it looks like it will be, as Mark kept saying, a lovely production.
• 1:48
  Tad Eggleston: That's my jab to Mark, and we'll find out if he listens to the Saga Book Club, if he notices me, say lovely.
• 1:56
  Josh Eiserike: Can I, can I quickly plug my books at the top of the hour?
• 1:58
  Tad Eggleston: Please plug your books.
• 2:00
  Josh Eiserike: Awesome! So…
• 2:01
  Tad Eggleston: Where I was going next.
• 2:02
  Josh Eiserike: Thank you again for allowing me to run my mouth talking about my books. My name is Josh Isaac, I'm the writer of The Very Final Last Girls from Darby Pop Publishing. We're coming to the end of our print run, if you haven't read it yet, I'm very biased, it's very awesome. I also just started working on the sequel.
• 2:20
  Josh Eiserike: Which I'm super stoked about, and then, Charm City from… well, the first two issues from Scout Comics, and hopefully some news on that, and…
• 2:29
  Josh Eiserike: At some point in my life. And then I'm also, prepping a new book as well, but it's too soon to talk about that. So yeah, thank you for letting me plug my books. How are you, Mary?
• 2:40
  Tad Eggleston: That's work.
• 2:42
  Marisol: I'm doing good, getting ready to cook later this week. I'm gonna spend,
• 2:48
  Marisol: hefty amount of time tomorrow and Wednesday cleaning the apartment.
• 2:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that, that… Well, I'm not ready for that particular endeavor, but, you know, it needs to be done. We're actually doing a low-key Thanksgiving, just Kelly and I, this year.
• 3:06
  Tad Eggleston: So neat! After all the health stuff last month, it was just like, okay.
• 3:11
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: I just want time off.
• 3:13
  Marisol: Everything's chill.
• 3:16
  Marisol: Fair enough.
• 3:16
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, I should remember I don't do this often enough, and maybe we'll make it Josh's job.
• 3:24
  Tad Eggleston: To plug the 22 Panels Patreon, like, if you like listening to us, you're welcome to kick us a couple of bucks a month to, like, cover…
• 3:34
  Tad Eggleston: various…
• 3:36
  Tad Eggleston: stuff. I don't say that often enough, which is evidenced by the fact that my patrons are all family members and good friends.
• 3:48
  Tad Eggleston: So, Saga Volume 4.
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: Initial thoughts.
• 3:55
  Matt & Belle: Parts of this…
• 3:59
  Matt & Belle: trade paperback, this series of, you know, this part of the story, really upset me when I read it the first time.
• 4:06
  Matt & Belle: And did just as much of that when I did the second time.
• 4:09
  Tad Eggleston: I want to say this is actually the volume that
• 4:12
  Tad Eggleston: I forget if it was this volume or the next volume that my brother Adam quit reading.
• 4:16
  Matt & Belle: Yeah. I gotta say, this is the only one with the front… for the first, page, though, that rivals the first page of the entire comic series.
• 4:22
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 4:26
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 4:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, this is… this is…
• 4:34
  Tad Eggleston: This is one of the really hard volumes.
• 4:36
  Matt & Belle: Yep, it really was. I'm having a rough time, and I opened it up, and I was like, I don't know if I can get through this before book club tonight. I might owe off some knowledge from, like, last time I read it, because it's a lot.
• 4:47
  Josh Eiserike: So, I haven't read it, and again, I say this every time, I read them in floppies, and now I'm reading them in trades and floppies, I was…
• 4:56
  Josh Eiserike: a young man before being married and children with trades, it's hitting me in a totally different way.
• 5:04
  Josh Eiserike: I'm curious why this was a hard read for you all.
• 5:09
  Matt & Belle: Because I read it the first time when I had kids.
• 5:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 5:12
  Matt & Belle: That's…
• 5:13
  Tad Eggleston: Part of it.
• 5:14
  Matt & Belle: That illicit drugs thing just bothers me.
• 5:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 5:17
  Tad Eggleston: I think, also, like, This is the first time that… they have… Significant internal strife.
• 5:33
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 5:34
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense? Like, it's been them against the universe.
• 5:39
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 5:39
  Tad Eggleston: For the whole series.
• 5:43
  Tad Eggleston: But they were good.
• 5:47
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas… this volume… you know, Marco's having trouble having to hide out too much, and having trouble…
• 6:02
  Tad Eggleston: being away with Alana, working too much.
• 6:05
  Tad Eggleston: And, and has temptation from… From the dance teacher, and… .
• 6:14
  Matt & Belle: useful.
• 6:15
  Tad Eggleston: Alana falls into the drugs, and on top of all of that, you've got… Grandma, like… Morning…
• 6:25
  Tad Eggleston: both her husband and the man that briefly comforted her after her husband. Yup. You know, so, like, all of the adults…
• 6:37
  Tad Eggleston: Are in so much pain.
• 6:41
  Marisol: And not talking to each other.
• 6:43
  Tad Eggleston: And it's, well, a toddler is around that doesn't know any of these things, and it's just like, whoop!
• 6:50
  Matt & Belle: Everyone's…
• 6:50
  Marisol: I'm being a toddler.
• 6:53
  Marisol: It wasn't so much that it was…
• 6:56
  Marisol: A hard read, just that a lot of…
• 7:01
  Marisol: intense emotions were going on here. A lot of… really… difficult circumstances.
• 7:11
  Marisol: were happening. They're just like, oh, we are getting thrown in the deep end now.
• 7:18
  Matt & Belle: And the characters make sometimes the worst decision possible. Yes.
• 7:22
  Marisol: Because you see a choice they make, and you just kind of have to sit there with it, and just stare at the page, just… why?
• 7:30
  Tad Eggleston: Of all the choices to make, you made that one.
• 7:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right. On top of all of that, you're forced to feel, like, empathy for Prince Robot.
• 7:40
  Tad Eggleston: And… And the person who makes you feel empathy for Prince Robot?
• 7:48
  Matt & Belle: With the guy that kidnapped his kid.
• 7:50
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I'm saying.
• 7:52
  Matt & Belle: I mean, especially with today's politics going on, I mean, shit, the inequality really was highlighted in this issue.
• 7:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Oh, yeah. Like, this is the volume that just has all of the things… All of the time.
• 8:07
  Tad Eggleston: It felt as the…
• 8:08
  Josh Eiserike: Sorry, Chad.
• 8:09
  Tad Eggleston: Go ahead.
• 8:10
  Josh Eiserike: No, I was gonna say, to Belle's point, that part felt very ahead of its time.
• 8:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah Though not really.
• 8:20
  Josh Eiserike: there.
• 8:21
  Tad Eggleston: Been back for a long time.
• 8:24
  Josh Eiserike: Well, well, but, but now it's… It's so much more…
• 8:29
  Tad Eggleston: part of the national discourse than it was. Right, right, right. No, it's ahead of its time, the way comics are almost always ahead of the time, where they're writing about the shit that people haven't even realized is a big deal yet, because.
• 8:42
  Matt & Belle: Just half an hour.
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: Comics is always on the edge of it.
• 8:47
  Tad Eggleston: And then… and then 3 years later, they're writing the same thing, it's like, stop being political.
• 8:52
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 8:54
  Matt & Belle: Comics get woke.
• 8:55
  Josh Eiserike: I will say, maybe, maybe this one didn't hit me As hard as it did.
• 9:00
  Josh Eiserike: you all. This one didn't hit me, as hard, because… My kids are…
• 9:09
  Josh Eiserike: Close to still being toddlers, and having a toddler sucks.
• 9:14
  Tad Eggleston: Like… It does!
• 9:16
  Josh Eiserike: It's really, really hard. It is. And I'll share some personal stuff, like, when we had our… when we… when my wife had our second kid.
• 9:26
  Josh Eiserike: It was 2019, I was writing on a TV show.
• 9:30
  Josh Eiserike: And a year later, our roles were completely reversed.
• 9:35
  Josh Eiserike: she was the one now going out and making money. I lost my job when COVID hit, and I read this, and I was like, oh, this is science fiction, this is heightened, like, circumstances, but
• 9:49
  Josh Eiserike: this is all… I lived this, like, not to that extent, like, my wife wasn't off, like, you know, doing drugs, I wasn't, you know, flirting with the dance teacher, I hope.
• 10:00
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 10:03
  Josh Eiserike: But… but stuff like, you know, just thinking… thinking back to, like, how tough those times were, like, you know, I don't want to get political, but, like, I remember the night Trump got elected, the first.
• 10:16
  Tad Eggleston: God.
• 10:17
  Josh Eiserike: And I went, and my wife sent me out to Ralph's, which I don't know what the equivalent is in your part of the world, but grocery store.
• 10:27
  Josh Eiserike: And there was a run on ice cream. And booze.
• 10:30
  Josh Eiserike: And this is true all over the country, and, you know, with kids, it's like, well, we pick the ice cream, and you know, certainly that's not as immediately destructive as, you know, alcohol, but it's not the best choice every night.
• 10:46
  Josh Eiserike: Oh…
• 10:47
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, but, I mean, a pint of ice cream every night never killed anybody. Well, so all I'm… all I'm…
• 10:54
  Marisol: Who you ask.
• 10:55
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, I'm saying.
• 10:57
  Josh Eiserike: is the tension between these characters, who were rock solid, I mean…
• 11:04
  Josh Eiserike: I'm actually thinking of my roommate, who I'm going up to see in San Francisco, who just had a baby, and he wrote to us, he was like, I forgot what you said, but I remembered it, because when our kids are obviously older than his.
• 11:15
  Josh Eiserike: having… having a young child is like every day you're going to war. Not… not like war like Marco and Alana, you know, fought in, but, like, a metaphorical war. Yeah. And it's hard.
• 11:27
  Tad Eggleston: Way more war than going to work at the open circuit. Just to go back to that analogy.
• 11:34
  Josh Eiserike: But she was under a lot of professional stress.
• 11:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 11:40
  Tad Eggleston: But she got upset with her coworkers for using war analogies, is what I meant.
• 11:44
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 11:45
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I wonder how much of that also had to do with, like, as much as the open circuit was… was…
• 11:51
  Tad Eggleston: hard. Going home to a toddler was just as hard.
• 11:55
  Tad Eggleston: Or harder, yeah. Right.
• 11:58
  Matt & Belle: experience to speak to this with, but, like, I hope I wasn't too much of a pain in the ass, Dad, because this seems like it sucks. You made it. You made it.
• 12:06
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, in general… in general, by the time… by the time kids are, like, 7 or 8, we've forgiven them for the… for the first 2 or 3 years.
• 12:16
  Matt & Belle: because they've committed so many other atrocities. But then in their teenage years, sometimes we suddenly remember again.
• 12:23
  Marisol: Oh, no.
• 12:24
  Tad Eggleston: So… But you're doing okay as a college kid, so…
• 12:28
  Marisol: I mean, in our defense, we were all once horrible people. Teenagers are terrible people.
• 12:34
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I, I,
• 12:36
  Marisol: teenagers are terrible people.
• 12:37
  Tad Eggleston: I spent my son's teenage years calling my parents and apologizing.
• 12:42
  Marisol: Oh my god.
• 12:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no. Oh, no.
• 12:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I even had the built-in time, because, like, it wasn't the custodial parent, so I would have a drive home after dropping him off on a weekend, or after having dinner with him on a Wednesday night, or whatever, and…
• 13:02
  Tad Eggleston: And the number of those times that were spent calling one or the other parent to apologize for something was…
• 13:09
  Tad Eggleston: really high.
• 13:11
  Josh Eiserike: Now I'm, like, terrified of, like, 6 years from now.
• 13:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes you get lucky, and… and before.
• 13:19
  Marisol: Before you get there, you get the.
• 13:20
  Matt & Belle: awesome years. The awesome years are…
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: From the time they start asking cool questions.
• 13:27
  Tad Eggleston: To the time they decide that you don't have the answer to anything.
• 13:31
  Tad Eggleston: Which…
• 13:32
  Josh Eiserike: with my jaw.
• 13:33
  Tad Eggleston: daughter…
• 13:34
  Tad Eggleston: was from, like, age 3 until age 12, and with my son, was from age 4 to age, like.
• 13:42
  Tad Eggleston: Five and a half or six?
• 13:47
  Tad Eggleston: He might have been 7 when he decided I didn't know anything.
• 13:51
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 13:52
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, when he had kids…
• 13:54
  Tad Eggleston: I knew a lot of things, again, really fast.
• 13:58
  Matt & Belle: Funny how that works.
• 14:00
  Tad Eggleston: Like, really, really fast.
• 14:06
  Tad Eggleston: I… it was shocking how… how fast…
• 14:09
  Matt & Belle: he decided I knew things again when he had his first kid.
• 14:14
  Tad Eggleston: I, I was… But… but yeah, no, I mean, that's… that… I mean, hard, it might… but, like…
• 14:24
  Tad Eggleston: This is the volume where it stops being… Strictly a space opera.
• 14:32
  Tad Eggleston: And starts being…
• 14:35
  Matt & Belle: a drone.
• 14:36
  Tad Eggleston: A very human drama.
• 14:38
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: It just happens to also involve a space opera.
• 14:44
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that was something we talked about in the first volume, but in the first volume, it was still way more space opera.
• 14:51
  Tad Eggleston: And way less human…
• 14:53
  Matt & Belle: Does that make sense.
• 14:53
  Tad Eggleston: sense.
• 14:54
  Matt & Belle: Oh, yeah, it does.
• 14:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there were, like, human scenes as early as the first volume.
• 15:00
  Matt & Belle: It was human scenes on the first two pages?
• 15:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right, that's my point. But then they… but then they would give way to blasters and magic.
• 15:08
  Matt & Belle: Exactly. Let's face Trump.
• 15:11
  Tad Eggleston: This volume is, like… It's almost a relief in the last issue, when you're back to, like.
• 15:22
  Matt & Belle: a heist, and… and… and…
• 15:25
  Tad Eggleston: And knowing that they have to go after dragon seamen to save the will?
• 15:30
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 15:31
  Tad Eggleston: You know, after, after all of this drama, hey, there's the action again!
• 15:40
  Tad Eggleston: And now to the side quest.
• 15:42
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, exactly. You got me a dragon seaman!
• 15:46
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, like, like, don't you wish you had a side quest like that, Josh?
• 15:53
  Tad Eggleston: kids this age now, don't you wish that you had some excuse to…
• 15:57
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, grandparents, watch the kids for weekend, we have to go find the Lost Ark.
• 16:03
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 16:04
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 16:06
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 16:08
  Josh Eiserike: the trip to the comic book store. Like, that's the side quest.
• 16:13
  Matt & Belle: Hi, buddy.
• 16:16
  Josh Eiserike: Or, you know, oh, I got a new video game, or whatever stupid thing. But no, I mean, to your, to your point, like…
• 16:26
  Josh Eiserike: It's not, like, they are no longer toddlers, which is great, but…
• 16:31
  Josh Eiserike: having a toddler is just hard. Like, I think it's harder than a newborn, and I think it's…
• 16:36
  Josh Eiserike: Harder than…
• 16:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, newborns are boring.
• 16:40
  Matt & Belle: Beautiful.
• 16:41
  Marisol: What is…
• 16:42
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, newborns are bored. Yes, yes. Like, how are these just chaotic evil? Do they only come in?
• 16:48
  Marisol: toddlers.
• 16:49
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, toddlers are more chaotic.
• 16:52
  Matt & Belle: Right.
• 16:52
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, like, hard chaotic.
• 16:54
  Matt & Belle: Yes, and they can go either way real quick.
• 16:57
  Marisol: Yeah. Right.
• 16:59
  Matt & Belle: Yes, I mean…
• 17:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, actually… I just understand, like, where you're coming from. He's like, I don't…
• 17:05
  Matt & Belle: Probably not my reaction, except for when I was a toddler.
• 17:07
  Tad Eggleston: Is there… is there a D&D class that's just bipolar?
• 17:12
  Matt & Belle: Never in the middle.
• 17:16
  Tad Eggleston: Because that's a toddler. Chaotic bite.
• 17:19
  Marisol: They are just tiny little rumblings running around causing chaos.
• 17:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 17:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right. And, and, and, like, I'm convinced that for at least the first 10 years, energy is inverse to height.
• 17:34
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 17:38
  Tad Eggleston: It has nothing to do with caloric intake, either. You can't starve them.
• 17:42
  Marisol: No, they just naturally all have the Zoom.
• 17:45
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't understand the people that are like, oh, they'll get so hyped up on sugar, I'm like, dude…
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: It can't get more hyped up than they are now. You're just wanting to blame something.
• 17:56
  Matt & Belle: That's right.
• 17:56
  Tad Eggleston: It's just toddler dough.
• 17:58
  Matt & Belle: They're just like, I'm burning the midnight oil at 11 a.m.
• 18:03
  Josh Eiserike: I will say this, though, back to the, you know, domestic drama. I didn't believe for a second that Marco would have ever done anything with, what was her name, Ginny, was it? I don't remember. Ginny.
• 18:15
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 18:16
  Tad Eggleston: He did it.
• 18:17
  Josh Eiserike: And he didn't, but then he was clear.
• 18:18
  Tad Eggleston: It's entirely uncomfortable.
• 18:20
  Josh Eiserike: He calls out his name in his sleep, which is like…
• 18:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, dreams are weird.
• 18:25
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, it's like, okay, but Atlanta's gonna give him shit for that? I don't know.
• 18:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, cause she's gotta distract from the drug use.
• 18:32
  Josh Eiserike: fair.
• 18:34
  Matt & Belle: He's a scapegoat.
• 18:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that argument… All about… No, no, no.
• 18:38
  Marisol: Let's not talk about.
• 18:39
  Tad Eggleston: about what I might be doing. We need to talk about what you're doing.
• 18:44
  Josh Eiserike: But what he's.
• 18:44
  Marisol: Clearly, your behavior is the problem, not me.
• 18:48
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but that's the other thing, I mean…
• 18:52
  Tad Eggleston: Even in good relationships, when the big fights happen, They become asymmetrical really fast.
• 19:02
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 19:03
  Tad Eggleston: If anybody feels like they're losing, then they're gonna find whatever… whatever thing they can latch onto and pretend it's as big.
• 19:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, we see this in politics all the time.
• 19:15
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 19:17
  Matt & Belle: Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, Trump's a liar, well, so is Hillary.
• 19:24
  Matt & Belle: unquote, yeah.
• 19:25
  Tad Eggleston: Here are the 5 lies that Hillary's told in the last 30 years, and here's the 5 lies that Trump told yesterday before lunch.
• 19:38
  Matt & Belle: emails.
• 19:39
  Tad Eggleston: It's such a human thing.
• 19:41
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 19:41
  Tad Eggleston: To, like, when…
• 19:43
  Tad Eggleston: rather than trying to defend your own actions, or, or, heaven forbid, not defend your own actions and apologize and ask for help, to instead
• 19:58
  Tad Eggleston: Look at anything that somebody else has done and gone, but they're bad, too.
• 20:07
  Tad Eggleston: And that's… I mean, that's just… it's something that Bendis does so well, is…
• 20:13
  Tad Eggleston: He gets those interactions. And yeah, when you're thinking rationally, you're sitting there going.
• 20:20
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, why are they even… Marco… Marco explained it's the dance teacher.
• 20:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Why aren't we moving on? And we're not moving on because Alana's not ready to talk about her fadeaway use.
• 20:32
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 20:35
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 20:38
  Tad Eggleston: And spoiler alerts, we should have said that up front. Yeah. But, like, it's not like this hasn't been out.
• 20:44
  Tad Eggleston: For a while.
• 20:45
  Josh Eiserike: I mean, I know we talk about this every time, too, but especially in the scenes between Marco and Ginny, Fiona Staples, like.
• 20:54
  Josh Eiserike: Acting, for lack of a better term.
• 20:56
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
• 20:57
  Josh Eiserike: design, like, just the body language between the two of them is just awesome.
• 21:01
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah. Awesome.
• 21:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, cause, cuz, I mean, it nails that, like… He's absolutely…
• 21:13
  Tad Eggleston: loyal to Alana, and therefore uncomfortable, but he's also, like… attracted to Ginny.
• 21:22
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 21:23
  Tad Eggleston: Like, in a way that if he wasn't married, might be a thing.
• 21:28
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 21:28
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, you somehow manage to see their attraction and his internal… struggle.
• 21:41
  Tad Eggleston: You know… and for that matter, I go back and forth…
• 21:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, and, and, and Hazel…
• 21:50
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there's the one point where Hazel says not everybody in…
• 21:58
  Tad Eggleston: in your life, or in their life, is actually trying to… to make things better with the… the implication that it's Ginny.
• 22:07
  Tad Eggleston: But I go back and forth on whether Ginny's
• 22:11
  Tad Eggleston: really trying to, like, full-on seduce Marco, or if she's just equally lonely…
• 22:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there is a significant level of awkwardness on both sides.
• 22:25
  Matt & Belle: Besides, 100% agreed.
• 22:27
  Tad Eggleston: Where it's like, we like each other.
• 22:30
  Tad Eggleston: And we like spending time with each other, and we don't get to see our spouses.
• 22:36
  Matt & Belle: So should we… should we take this one step further?
• 22:41
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, I got… I got the sense, up until, like, the last beat of that story.
• 22:47
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, she wasn't, like…
• 22:49
  Josh Eiserike: set her sights on him at the park and was like, I'm gonna… I'm gonna have sex with that guy. Right. It was like, oh, here's another parent going through the, you know, forgive the war metaphor, going through the trenches like I am.
• 23:03
  Josh Eiserike: And we have stuff in common.
• 23:05
  Josh Eiserike: Great! I mean, you know, I… it's like, I'm sure you guys have this, like, just like…
• 23:10
  Josh Eiserike: made friends with some of the other parents of my kid's friends, some of whom I would have never spoken to outside of children, and… it's cool.
• 23:22
  Tad Eggleston: And, and other ones, like…
• 23:25
  Tad Eggleston: You never would have spoken, or you might not have met outside of children, but if you had met, you would have been, like, immediate, like.
• 23:32
  Tad Eggleston: Best friends, whatnot, and it's actually harder with the kids, because it's.
• 23:36
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 23:37
  Tad Eggleston: We can't have the conversations that we want to have, because we suddenly realize that there are kids in the room.
• 23:43
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 23:43
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 23:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, being a parent is weird. Meeting other parents is really weird.
• 23:54
  Matt & Belle: Yes, it is.
• 23:56
  Josh Eiserike: I… I felt the… I… so, I felt the Marco storyline felt very, very true, very good, you know, right for his character.
• 24:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 24:05
  Josh Eiserike: Alana's drug use didn't work as well for me.
• 24:14
  Josh Eiserike: How you guys felt about that?
• 24:16
  Tad Eggleston: I think what we're actually… the parts that we'd already seen from Alana that it made sense with.
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: We're… she's… she's definitely the person that wants to fit in.
• 24:31
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, but soon.
• 24:33
  Tad Eggleston: So, as she figures out everybody else is using the… like, I love the line, I'm susceptible to peer pressure.
• 24:42
  Tad Eggleston: But also, I think what we're… what we're learning is that Free.
• 24:52
  Tad Eggleston: nighttime smoke.
• 24:54
  Tad Eggleston: And we've had hints of this before, like the family photo where Alana's the punk kid, Mary, you know…
• 25:03
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 25:04
  Tad Eggleston: Next to the… next to her stepmom, who graduated with her, and…
• 25:09
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 25:10
  Tad Eggleston: Like… She's not new to the drug scene.
• 25:18
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 25:18
  Matt & Belle: Clearly.
• 25:19
  Tad Eggleston: So this is… this is… I mean, you have to… you have to think of this not as somebody going through a rough time and… and choosing drugs. It's somebody going through a rough time and relapsing.
• 25:31
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, little personal story, the 85 Mets ruined baseball for me.
• 25:41
  Matt & Belle: Okay, I was, like, 9 years old, Dwight Gooden, he's, like, shh, the doc, he's throwing fucking split-fingered fastballs, and then he's caught using cocaine, and then Hernandez is caught with cocaine, and then Carter's caught with cocaine, and then Strawberry's caught with cocaine. I was like, yeah, I'm caught.
• 25:55
  Tad Eggleston: Carter was never caught.
• 25:58
  Matt & Belle: Carter was the one straight arrow. Okay.
• 26:01
  Matt & Belle: But, you know what I'm saying, you know where.
• 26:03
  Tad Eggleston: No, I know.
• 26:03
  Matt & Belle: It was, like, the whole team. I was like, shit! So I stopped watching baseball, because I was like, that's not cool.
• 26:11
  Matt & Belle: At 9.
• 26:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that… that's a decent reason to stop watching baseball, though it makes me sad, because you could be part of our baseball roundtables if not for that.
• 26:21
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 26:25
  Tad Eggleston: But I think that's actually a better reason than people who bailed out on baseball because of steroids.
• 26:31
  Matt & Belle: Oh!
• 26:34
  Matt & Belle: That doesn't bother me at all, it's completely different.
• 26:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:36
  Josh Eiserike: I bailed because of Jeffrey Mayer, if that name means anything to either of you? Any of you?
• 26:41
  Tad Eggleston: It does, it does. He was the Yankee fan that stole the home run from the Orioles.
• 26:47
  Josh Eiserike: Yup.
• 26:48
  Tad Eggleston: And wound up on late-night TV because of it.
• 26:52
  Josh Eiserike: Yup, and likely cost the Orioles…
• 26:55
  Josh Eiserike: What might have been their best chance at the championship in my lifetime.
• 27:00
  Tad Eggleston: In… in many, many years.
• 27:02
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 27:04
  Josh Eiserike: That was it.
• 27:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 27:06
  Josh Eiserike: Stop, couldn't. Oh, you know, if the Dodgers were in the series, like, my kids get into it, fine, but, like, I used to follow it pretty obsessively.
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: Well, see, that… that's a shame. We gotta get you back on the… like, last year was the…
• 27:23
  Tad Eggleston: Was the, the, or last week, we had our, our… Baseball and Comics Roundtable.
• 27:30
  Josh Eiserike: So that's fine.
• 27:32
  Tad Eggleston: Which included, like, Dennis Kitchen, and Eric Reynolds, and James Sturm, and Mark Russell, and Heidi McDonald, and…
• 27:40
  Josh Eiserike: That's awesome. I'm forgetting names right… Ryan Brown…
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: From the baseball world, Rob Nyer and Derek Gold come.
• 27:49
  Matt & Belle: John Cena.
• 27:50
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, like, it's a legit, legit conversation with some kick-ass people. You could… you could network if you got back into baseball, Josh. That's all I'm saying.
• 28:03
  Josh Eiserike: It's funny you say that. When I first moved out to LA, I kept getting invited to these baseball things, because this guy, writer, knew I, you know, used to love the Orioles.
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 28:12
  Josh Eiserike: And I was like, I can't anymore, like, I don't know any of this anymore.
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: Huh? Yeah, yeah.
• 28:18
  Josh Eiserike: Are you still laughing?
• 28:18
  Tad Eggleston: We get Shohei in town now.
• 28:21
  Tad Eggleston: If Shohei can't make you love baseball again, then there's nothing that can.
• 28:26
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 28:27
  Tad Eggleston: But he is… because he's just joyous.
• 28:30
  Tad Eggleston: How much.
• 28:32
  Josh Eiserike: some of the World Series.
• 28:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. How about Prince Robot here, though? This is… I mean, both…
• 28:39
  Josh Eiserike: Steroids.
• 28:40
  Tad Eggleston: Falling off the… Face of the Earth on Sextillion.
• 28:49
  Tad Eggleston: And, and talk about, like, corporate…
• 28:53
  Tad Eggleston: whatever, with the, no, yes, he had a baby, that's why he's here. We have a strict policy, we don't bother them while their credit is so good, to, oh, his wife has been killed.
• 29:06
  Matt & Belle: hurt her.
• 29:07
  Tad Eggleston: How we should tell him, and bring the lawyer to.
• 29:10
  Marisol: Probably important.
• 29:12
  Matt & Belle: Yes, very, very corporate, very sleazy.
• 29:16
  Marisol: He's a child? No, no, he doesn't need to know about that.
• 29:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 29:20
  Matt & Belle: Not until his credits run out.
• 29:22
  Josh Eiserike: Did I… did I miss something? He was on sextillion because he failed in his previous assignment? Is that what we're asking?
• 29:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and remember…
• 29:29
  Matt & Belle: I got the head.
• 29:29
  Tad Eggleston: He got glitched.
• 29:31
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, he got, like, a head injury.
• 29:33
  Josh Eiserike: Hmm…
• 29:34
  Marisol: That's why he's…
• 29:35
  Tad Eggleston: He rebooted when he was at the… At the lighthouse.
• 29:40
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 29:42
  Tad Eggleston: So he's… he's not alright.
• 29:44
  Marisol: He's got a couple loose wires in there now.
• 29:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he already did because of the PTSD, but then he rebooted and didn't seem to reboot properly, and…
• 29:55
  Tad Eggleston: went after Sextillion, and…
• 29:58
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know why he imagined a needle through his eye, but that's one of the most disturbing images that…
• 30:04
  Tad Eggleston: Fiona has ever drawn.
• 30:07
  Tad Eggleston: I'm curtain.
• 30:11
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I remember seeing that the first time, I'm looking at it again now, and it never actually becomes anywhere near…
• 30:19
  Tad Eggleston: comfortable. It's just… just…
• 30:27
  Marisol: Yeah.
• 30:27
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know why, it's like, eye stuff is just super… Yeah.
• 30:31
  Marisol: And comfy, makes you squirm. It's like, ugh, no, thank you. None of that more. Go away.
• 30:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it is also so cool.
• 30:41
  Tad Eggleston: Just the way that, in general, with the robot kingdom, They use…
• 30:49
  Tad Eggleston: The… the screens as a way of… .
• 30:55
  Matt & Belle: defining class?
• 30:56
  Tad Eggleston: Well, well, defining class, but I was actually thinking, like, it's more specific blushing.
• 31:02
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 31:05
  Tad Eggleston: They're almost always, like, the thing that gives away, the thing that…
• 31:10
  Tad Eggleston: They don't want you to know.
• 31:14
  Josh Eiserike: Go back to that cover, that was, like, one of my favorite covers. But to your point, Tad, it's,
• 31:22
  Josh Eiserike: the robot, like, it's like the thought balloon I never saw, and once I saw it, I was like, that's brilliant.
• 31:31
  Josh Eiserike: And speaking of brilliant, this cover, holy shit, I love it.
• 31:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, talk about the druggie. Yeah. You wind up with the painting… painting…
• 31:44
  Matt & Belle: So you're saying surrealism is linked to drug use?
• 31:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 31:49
  Matt & Belle: Just kidding.
• 31:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, I'm saying that the particular painter that's making this surreal image.
• 31:58
  Matt & Belle: from a fictional standpoint, is the literal pusher in the story. Yes, very much so. 100%, agreed.
• 32:08
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this is a pretty brilliant… Painting.
• 32:12
  Tad Eggleston: cover.
• 32:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:16
  Tad Eggleston: I have this t-shirt. The Mystook t-shirt.
• 32:20
  Tad Eggleston: They have it up on their, on their threadless store.
• 32:23
  Josh Eiserike: That's pretty cool.
• 32:27
  Tad Eggleston: I had forgotten… I had forgotten that it was her… her t-shirt, because I think… I think the… the mistook come up again…
• 32:35
  Tad Eggleston: In Volume 10. I think that's when Hazel gets into them.
• 32:40
  Tad Eggleston: But, I can't remember for certain.
• 32:43
  Tad Eggleston: Because they're, like, a punk band in the… In the Saga universe.
• 32:52
  Matt & Belle: Every good universe needs one.
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that, that was… my… Favorite thing… about Volume 10.
• 33:05
  Tad Eggleston: the first… host big break.
• 33:09
  Tad Eggleston: is that, like, it heavily introduced music to the universe. And I'm like, oh yeah. This, like…
• 33:19
  Tad Eggleston: This universe was already way too real, and now it's… Totally real in…
• 33:29
  Tad Eggleston: All of the awesome ways, and all of the terrible ways.
• 33:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we got another completely typical house, though.
• 33:43
  Marisol: weird little tidbit that I just noticed zipping through, which… that's why you're seeing the roof of my living room, because I don't have enough fans.
• 33:55
  Marisol: Was it just weird to me, or why does King Robot occasionally refer to himself in the…
• 34:02
  Marisol: not third person, but as we. Is it, like, the royal we, or…
• 34:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 34:07
  Matt & Belle: Always the Royal Week.
• 34:10
  Marisol: Not none of these things.
• 34:14
  Marisol: I don't know if he was just… I don't know.
• 34:17
  Tad Eggleston: The first meeting of King Robot is just crazy, too.
• 34:22
  Marisol: Like, that first page of him, the first spread is like, Jesus Christ.
• 34:29
  Tad Eggleston: Where he's the big, widescreen, flat.
• 34:31
  Marisol: counting.
• 34:32
  Tad Eggleston: the…
• 34:33
  Marisol: This is behemoth.
• 34:35
  Tad Eggleston: And he's… he's so angry that he's got waterfalls coming down.
• 34:43
  Josh Eiserike: But, like, from a comic perspective, this is such a bold choice.
• 34:49
  Josh Eiserike: To say, like, we're gonna take 2 pages of our, what, like, 22, 24-page book?
• 34:54
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 34:54
  Josh Eiserike: And we're just gonna do it for this character reveal, and it's gonna be awesome.
• 34:59
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 35:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah! Like, it's a…
• 35:03
  Josh Eiserike: Huge amount of real estate for this guy.
• 35:06
  Matt & Belle: Speaking of real estate, you know what's funny? This is not a timeless character design.
• 35:11
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and 11 words.
• 35:14
  Matt & Belle: Yeah. Because if you look at the size of the bezel on the TV, Nowadays, that's unheard of.
• 35:20
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 35:23
  Matt & Belle: The universe is dated. It's funny.
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 35:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 35:28
  Tad Eggleston: But I also love that, like, he's… he's, like…
• 35:32
  Tad Eggleston: Almost got Kingpin's body underneath it.
• 35:35
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 35:39
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, it's just, like, classic king, it's great.
• 35:43
  Matt & Belle: It almost gives, if anyone's seen Disenchantment, it gives, King Zog a little bit.
• 35:48
  Matt & Belle: How do you have problems.
• 35:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 35:51
  Matt & Belle: Like, with the stock you build?
• 35:53
  Josh Eiserike: Sorry, was his scepter a remote control?
• 35:56
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 35:57
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, that's awesome.
• 35:58
  Matt & Belle: I remember noticing that detail my first way through, it's great. I love when Fiona does that stuff. She just adds these little details.
• 36:04
  Josh Eiserike: That's wonderful.
• 36:06
  Matt & Belle: The Bizabobs.
• 36:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 36:09
  Matt & Belle: I want to talk about, too, while we're on these, like, scenes where she's drawing tile, there's some good tile later on, too, there's even better tile later on. But I love how Fiona Staples draws tile, man.
• 36:21
  Matt & Belle: Oh my gosh. The best ones were, like, all green on the floor, and it's, like, way, way, way toward the end, but it's… Towards the end, yeah. It's so good.
• 36:29
  Matt & Belle: The way she gets the reflections, she captures it so perfectly.
• 36:32
  Matt & Belle: And you can almost, like, you can tell it's glass. The floor is almost rendered better than the characters. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, like, the floor looks ridiculous. Yeah, it's, it's, like, amazing.
• 36:49
  Tad Eggleston: doing this.
• 36:50
  Matt & Belle: It's this one, Tad.
• 36:55
  Tad Eggleston: So when he's mopping?
• 36:58
  Matt & Belle: No, no, no, no. It's after he's still… he's still squire. Yes. It's way after he's still squire.
• 37:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, I see it now.
• 37:04
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 37:05
  Tad Eggleston: That's, that's the, that's the rat guys.
• 37:09
  Matt & Belle: Right. Before the dragon. The rat guy's before the dragon, yes.
• 37:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 37:14
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, right there.
• 37:15
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yes!
• 37:16
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah…
• 37:18
  Matt & Belle: I love that tile floor, man. The floor is rendered better than the characters, and it's amazing.
• 37:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think she, like, for whatever… and it works so well, but it's like… They decided to…
• 37:33
  Tad Eggleston: have the focus be on the background, because, like, the file boxes are rendered
• 37:40
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's supposed to, like, trick your eye into… Feeling the tension.
• 37:49
  Matt & Belle: It's, like, scene setting. It's, like, masterful scene… Yeah, it's amazing. I just, I love the floor, it really caught my eye, and I think it's drawing attention to this awesome scene setting.
• 37:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 37:58
  Matt & Belle: It's… it's because… it's because…
• 38:01
  Matt & Belle: the environment is so much more… Interesting. …bigger and important and more interesting than what's going on.
• 38:09
  Matt & Belle: But it's, like, so cool, because that gives us another way to explore the world.
• 38:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's like the jump.
• 38:17
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 38:17
  Tad Eggleston: Because you were just…
• 38:19
  Matt & Belle: Unquietest.
• 38:20
  Tad Eggleston: Back on quietus.
• 38:22
  Matt & Belle: And there's no borders on that panel, either.
• 38:24
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 38:25
  Matt & Belle: So it's supposed to, like, draw you in.
• 38:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 38:29
  Tad Eggleston: It is totally mesmerizing.
• 38:32
  Matt & Belle: It's a fantastic one.
• 38:37
  Tad Eggleston: They're always great, great, great panels.
• 38:42
  Tad Eggleston: this actually…
• 38:45
  Tad Eggleston: Josh and I were talking a little bit about Birds of Prey, which was the book in the Bendis
• 38:53
  Tad Eggleston: Word Balloon podcast that was recorded last night, and now I want to actually go pull up a page from that. So keep talking about this, because…
• 39:04
  Tad Eggleston: I, I will take a moment to have to find it, but
• 39:09
  Tad Eggleston: Like, mastery of… of panels and… and using…
• 39:15
  Tad Eggleston: Book to tell the story is… Totally.
• 39:21
  Tad Eggleston: Underrated thing in comics.
• 39:27
  Matt & Belle: It's easy to not notice, too, on, like, a first read, you know what I mean? You see stuff for the first time, and you're like, alright, now I'm here, and you're just enveloped in the story, and it does a good job of drawing you in without ruining the continuity of the book. So it's cool on a second read to notice these types of details.
• 39:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and to a certain extent, they… I mean, this is actually…
• 39:47
  Tad Eggleston: one of the things I love about both book clubs and
• 39:53
  Tad Eggleston: how many writers and artists I now talk about, it's the type of thing
• 39:57
  Tad Eggleston: that I notice way, way, way more as… a podcaster…
• 40:11
  Tad Eggleston: as I've talked to more people about specifically how they lay their books.
• 40:18
  Tad Eggleston: out specifically about how they tell their stories than I did before.
• 40:24
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, even when I read them over and over again.
• 40:27
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I didn't necessarily notice some of those little things that I'm certain… would… would absolutely…
• 40:39
  Tad Eggleston: They, they absolutely affected… how I felt about the story, how…
• 40:46
  Tad Eggleston: How my read of the story went.
• 40:50
  Tad Eggleston: They just weren't… Things that would, like…
• 40:57
  Tad Eggleston: that I'd notice what they were and why they affected. Does that make sense?
• 41:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's like, I brought it up in the first episode. Like, it was probably my sixth or 7th reread of Saga that I realized that panels with violence were crooked.
• 41:19
  Tad Eggleston: That they were actually literally off-kilter.
• 41:22
  Tad Eggleston: But when I… when I realized it, it was like, oh my god, that… that has so… Certainly…
• 41:32
  Tad Eggleston: been a major… Factor on why this feels this way.
• 41:38
  Tad Eggleston: all along.
• 41:41
  Tad Eggleston: But it never… never clicked to me.
• 41:45
  Tad Eggleston: And Fiona's just a master of that.
• 41:49
  Tad Eggleston: You know, whether it's.
• 41:51
  Matt & Belle: Sometimes.
• 41:51
  Tad Eggleston: and that… Her focus, when she decides to go borderless, when she decides to drop backgrounds…
• 42:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this… I'm having to find this quick Birds of Prey thing just because I have… like, and even with the… all of the people involved last night, nobody could remember ever seeing it anywhere else. Here we are.
• 42:24
  Tad Eggleston: this particular… this is the first time in a long time that I saw not only a brilliant storytelling thing, but a brilliant storytelling thing that I don't think I'd ever seen before.
• 42:37
  Tad Eggleston: Take a look at How they had…
• 42:43
  Tad Eggleston: Harley asking questions in the middle of this page.
• 42:51
  Tad Eggleston: Which is counting off 1, 2, 3…
• 42:56
  Tad Eggleston: 4. And you actually… you literally have a panel that goes off the page.
• 43:02
  Tad Eggleston: And then the next line, the panel comes in.
• 43:05
  Tad Eggleston: From the side of the page, and she's going, eighth!
• 43:09
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that's cool.
• 43:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like the message being sent is, no, we don't actually need to know all of the questions that Harley's asking here, particularly after she goes past the third, what will we be wearing?
• 43:26
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 43:26
  Tad Eggleston: coordinated, because I kind of like to do my own thing. Fourth.
• 43:33
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 43:35
  Tad Eggleston: But, you know, I mean, how do you do that in any other medium?
• 43:42
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, and…
• 43:45
  Matt & Belle: Not anymore.
• 43:45
  Tad Eggleston: league.
• 43:47
  Tad Eggleston: similarly with Bell and the titles, like, the tiles, yes, are beautiful, but, like, the bigger point here is, like.
• 43:58
  Tad Eggleston: In jumping from page to page, you have a…
• 44:05
  Tad Eggleston: You are immediately drawn into how the setting is completely different, and then you have to pull yourself out to figure out the story going on.
• 44:14
  Tad Eggleston: And it's such, like, a,
• 44:20
  Tad Eggleston: It's like a crash fade in… a movie.
• 44:24
  Tad Eggleston: You know, sometimes in Star Wars, where it's going from, like, one place to another, it's just like, boom, rather than any sort of wipe or whatnot, to have you have that, oh my god, we're in the middle of it.
• 44:38
  Tad Eggleston: You know? And where do they start? They start with them getting caught, not with them going in.
• 44:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yep. It's like, we're skipping the whole, where are they, or how do they get in? We're going straight to, the heist just went sideways.
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: with beautiful titles.
• 45:02
  Tad Eggleston: And Belle just ran away.
• 45:04
  Matt & Belle: She let the dog out for me.
• 45:06
  Matt & Belle: I'm sorry, what are you saying? I'm trying to handle the dogs. 1G. 1G.
• 45:16
  Matt & Belle: Did I miss something?
• 45:17
  Tad Eggleston: Goose and his chopper.
• 45:19
  Tad Eggleston: Not really.
• 45:20
  Matt & Belle: Goose.
• 45:22
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I just wrapped up again with beautiful tiles, and then looked up and didn't see the…
• 45:27
  Matt & Belle: Good to see you.
• 45:28
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm like… I'm like… Belle can't… can't second that, because she's gone.
• 45:34
  Matt & Belle: No, because the tiles are so good, man! They are! They caught my eye.
• 45:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and what just caught my eye is, like, here, you've got a much more detailed background, but as you go up and then go down, the background is more…
• 45:51
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly the behind is more faded.
• 45:54
  Tad Eggleston: more… muddy.
• 45:57
  Matt & Belle: Non-distinct. Like, she's literally setting the scene. This is a perfect scene-setting transition.
• 46:01
  Tad Eggleston: So it's like… it's like… it's like you're supposed to read down the page, read down the page, to… to the…
• 46:10
  Tad Eggleston: you know…
• 46:11
  Tad Eggleston: bottom of the brand talking to Sweet Boy, and then you're not supposed to go to the top of the page. You're supposed to slam into the middle of the page, go, oh shit, and then kind of skip what they say.
• 46:25
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 46:26
  Tad Eggleston: to read down.
• 46:28
  Tad Eggleston: But it doesn't matter if you skip what they say, because the only actual dialogue up top is the Oyu.
• 46:34
  Matt & Belle: I mean, I'd actually argue that you're supposed to see that page first when you flip. You're supposed to be like, oh, we're going somewhere new next. Alright, I gotta get locked in.
• 46:43
  Tad Eggleston: Possibly, yeah, I mean, that… that, where it's supposed to be… It's supposed to be, like…
• 46:50
  Tad Eggleston: Even as you have the page turning, you still have one page on quietus, you're drawn to…
• 46:59
  Tad Eggleston: This other place, and kind of have to… Pull yourself back.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: It's probably not an accident that it's similar colors to the picture that she shows.
• 47:12
  Josh Eiserike: I mean, this is… I don't know what the original intention was, and… seeing her…
• 47:21
  Josh Eiserike: Doesn't really take away from the scene with the brand.
• 47:25
  Josh Eiserike: to me, but, you know, I will sometimes just throw my hands up and be like, well, I can't get that on a page turn. It's gonna go there, and even though it's a big reveal or whatever, like, it screws up the rest of the issue, and you just gotta pick your battles.
• 47:41
  Josh Eiserike: It might be that, it might also be, to Bell's point, like, they want you to see it first.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 47:48
  Josh Eiserike: It is more eye-catching.
• 47:50
  Tad Eggleston: Cause, cause we… This is co… I mean, we'd met the brand.
• 47:57
  Tad Eggleston: But rather than, like, with your page turn.
• 48:02
  Tad Eggleston: Your eye is immediately drawn towards the next page, rather than finishing what you were reading.
• 48:09
  Matt & Belle: Yup, strategically placed red.
• 48:12
  Marisol: It feels easier, too, because that, second page with Gwendolyn, everything just looks that much sharper than on Quietus.
• 48:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well then, of course, like, when you get through the scene, The brand is meeting them.
• 48:33
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, in some ways, it's just… it's just the… the…
• 48:38
  Tad Eggleston: The tease that, like, 5 pages from here, they're all gonna be a team.
• 48:51
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
• 48:54
  Tad Eggleston: And I know Brian thinks next level on so many things, but I sometimes wonder how much of this is just that they're so good that they do this stuff without thinking about it, and how much of it is, like…
• 49:08
  Tad Eggleston: really specific thought.
• 49:10
  Matt & Belle: Yup. About how to put it together.
• 49:15
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, no, because it really.
• 49:16
  Tad Eggleston: Man, that looks painful.
• 49:18
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, oh my god.
• 49:20
  Matt & Belle: needle in the eyeball. A horse.
• 49:23
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, the next line after that is…
• 49:29
  Tad Eggleston: you're getting good with that Lance, or that… Thing.
• 49:32
  Tad Eggleston: It's like… No ouch, no… just… you're getting good with that thing.
• 49:39
  Tad Eggleston: Which is…
• 49:40
  Josh Eiserike: Well, so Sophie's really coming to her own at this point.
• 49:44
  Tad Eggleston: It is, but, like… the scene later, where it's like, I'll go, but without the kid, and she's like…
• 49:54
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not a kid, I'm 8.
• 49:57
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, exactly.
• 50:00
  Matt & Belle: You have natural authority, Josh.
• 50:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 50:05
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not a child, I'm almost 8.
• 50:08
  Marisol: Yup. Yup.
• 50:13
  Josh Eiserike: She's seen some shit, though. She has!
• 50:16
  Marisol: Air defense, she's seen some of the worst.
• 50:19
  Tad Eggleston: Of people. Absolutely. But it's still, like…
• 50:25
  Tad Eggleston: You have all this time where you're going, oh, oh, like…
• 50:29
  Tad Eggleston: Sophie's coming to her own, she's becoming a little bit of a badass herself, blah blah blah, and then suddenly she has you…
• 50:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, she's like.
• 50:41
  Tad Eggleston: forcing you to remember, even as she's not meaning it the way you're taking it, hey, I'm almost 8.
• 50:50
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 50:52
  Matt & Belle: Yup, there you go.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god. Yes, this is better than Slave Girl, but, like…
• 51:00
  Tad Eggleston: Can't we just get her a teddy bear?
• 51:02
  Matt & Belle: Hmm. Right.
• 51:03
  Tad Eggleston: Warm piece of apple pie.
• 51:07
  Matt & Belle: With ice cream. Alamo is always better.
• 51:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and maybe a cheeseburger. She's kind of skinny.
• 51:14
  Marisol: But who needs teddy bear when you've got Lion Cat and Sweet Boy right there?
• 51:17
  Matt & Belle: That's true.
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: There is truth to that.
• 51:24
  Marisol: I also just find it a little ridiculous, but amazing that Sweet Boy shoots darts out of his nose.
• 51:30
  Tad Eggleston: nose.
• 51:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like… It's delightful. I mean, we have the delightfulness of…
• 51:42
  Tad Eggleston: of Sweet Boy shooting darts out of his nose, and then we have the, okay, I guess we are gonna know what it's like for the will and the stock to… to have sex.
• 51:54
  Matt & Belle: Yeah.
• 51:55
  Tad Eggleston: We're gonna get to see the mechanics.
• 51:58
  Marisol: I never needed answered, but okay.
• 52:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That thing that is like, oh, that's your girlfriend? Great, that's all I need to know. Well, I guess it's not all I know.
• 52:09
  Matt & Belle: Visually, I didn't know what I needed in my life.
• 52:12
  Josh Eiserike: This is also why I… when I was rereading the first volume, I was like, wait, they killed the stock? I remember hers! I thought she was around much longer.
• 52:20
  Matt & Belle: This is why.
• 52:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 52:21
  Josh Eiserike: This is why.
• 52:23
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because the will had hallucinations for a long…
• 52:27
  Josh Eiserike: No, he loved her.
• 52:29
  Tad Eggleston: He did.
• 52:32
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like, spoiler alert for future episodes, but this is only the second most disturbing sex scene involving the will.
• 52:46
  Josh Eiserike: I got no problem with this one.
• 52:49
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have a problem with it, like…
• 52:51
  Tad Eggleston: On a character level, it's just…
• 52:54
  Matt & Belle: Consenting arachnids is not the problem with aliens.
• 52:58
  Marisol: And dig around it.
• 53:00
  Matt & Belle: But…
• 53:00
  Josh Eiserike: That's the book, I mean, they're all, like, animal people, I don't know, like…
• 53:06
  Matt & Belle: Oh.
• 53:06
  Josh Eiserike: He loves her.
• 53:07
  Marisol: The dance team here was a bat lady.
• 53:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:12
  Josh Eiserike: Marco's a ram, Alana's some sort of, like, dragonfly, I don't know.
• 53:16
  Matt & Belle: Wi-Fi.
• 53:19
  Josh Eiserike: There's a bear nurse for some reason. Yeah.
• 53:23
  Marisol: They're sentient.
• 53:24
  Matt & Belle: Boost?
• 53:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and you know…
• 53:27
  Matt & Belle: Where my nurse's bare.
• 53:30
  Tad Eggleston: That bear nur nurse looks a little like the bear in… in…
• 53:34
  Tad Eggleston: Beneath the trees where nobody sees, so, like, if we see any cut-up bears later on…
• 53:42
  Matt & Belle: Is that a real Care Bear?
• 53:44
  Matt & Belle: No.
• 53:47
  Matt & Belle: No? No. The bear does not care? No. Unfortunately.
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: And this final image with.
• 53:56
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, it's a badass image, man.
• 53:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 53:58
  Matt & Belle: It's rockin'.
• 54:00
  Marisol: I want this image just as a poster for my wall.
• 54:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Marco just… Marco's just full-on saying, you know…
• 54:09
  Tad Eggleston: my kid's been taken, I, like, no quarter.
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: Like, vow, what vow?
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 54:20
  Matt & Belle: What happened to my kid and fucking shit.
• 54:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't think we've seen Marco look that murderous.
• 54:25
  Josh Eiserike: Also, all the facial hair now.
• 54:28
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 54:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:31
  Marisol: In a minute.
• 54:32
  Tad Eggleston: That it's already been some time.
• 54:34
  Matt & Belle: Yep.
• 54:37
  Marisol: And I do love how expressive all the…
• 54:41
  Marisol: The robots are with their screens.
• 54:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 54:46
  Marisol: Especially all that we see from Prince Robot.
• 54:51
  Tad Eggleston: I realized… Go ahead.
• 54:55
  Matt & Belle: I just said they made good use of it, the screens.
• 54:57
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you. I was agreeing.
• 54:59
  Tad Eggleston: I, I realized… that… They occasionally do… like…
• 55:07
  Tad Eggleston: The… the nods to other comics.
• 55:10
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, I didn't notice it, like, the first time we had a birth, but, like, the second time that we had a birth here, I went, oh, this looks a lot like…
• 55:24
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm drawing a blank on who did the art right now, so give me a second. But Alan Moore, with the incredibly detailed birth scene.
• 55:34
  Matt & Belle: Any miracle, man?
• 55:35
  Tad Eggleston: Miracle Man.
• 55:36
  Matt & Belle: Knew you were going there.
• 55:42
  Tad Eggleston: I said it would have been, what,
• 55:48
  Tad Eggleston: Gary Leach, I think?
• 55:50
  Tad Eggleston: Possibly Alan Davis, depending on… when that… issue was.
• 56:01
  Matt & Belle: I don't remember what issue number off the top of my head, I'm sorry.
• 56:04
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, and I don't feel like going that far right now.
• 56:08
  Matt & Belle: But.
• 56:11
  Tad Eggleston: But what I really brought that up for is…
• 56:14
  Tad Eggleston: How much does that lightning look like?
• 56:18
  Josh Eiserike: Dark Knight.
• 56:19
  Tad Eggleston: See? I didn't even have to say it, and that's how… that's how I know that it actually does it.
• 56:24
  Josh Eiserike: It's embarrassing.
• 56:25
  Tad Eggleston: Dark Knight Returns Lightning Bolt.
• 56:27
  Matt & Belle: The crack is Batman.
• 56:29
  Josh Eiserike: Right. It's even, it's the same direction, everything. Here's my question, though.
• 56:35
  Josh Eiserike: Can you, can you go back to that image?
• 56:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:39
  Josh Eiserike: Now, I was gonna ask, should I be reading anything into the image on his shield?
• 56:45
  Matt & Belle: I got it.
• 56:46
  Josh Eiserike: It's a bat.
• 56:46
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
• 56:50
  Josh Eiserike: Is that a reference to…
• 56:52
  Josh Eiserike: Batman? Is that a reference to the woman he didn't almost have an affair with, or is that just because it looks cool.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, you know what? It might be the woman he didn't, because if I recall correctly… We will discover…
• 57:10
  Tad Eggleston: Way down the road.
• 57:13
  Tad Eggleston: That that's where he armed himself, he stole it from her.
• 57:17
  Josh Eiserike: Hmm.
• 57:21
  Josh Eiserike: So that's 100% intentional, Ben.
• 57:24
  Tad Eggleston: But, but I wanna say that's, like…
• 57:28
  Tad Eggleston: that's, like, a volume 10 or 11 thing, so we'll have to try to, like, throw that in the back of our head to try to remember for…
• 57:38
  Matt & Belle: I haven't read that.
• 57:39
  Tad Eggleston: from now.
• 57:40
  Tad Eggleston: You haven't… you haven't read the new issues yet?
• 57:43
  Matt & Belle: No, I'm behind.
• 57:46
  Tad Eggleston: It's been so good, and I can't wait for them to come back again… I think… in…
• 57:53
  Tad Eggleston: February or March.
• 57:57
  Tad Eggleston: They're not… they're not solicited yet.
• 58:02
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm looking forward to it.
• 58:04
  Tad Eggleston: I actually… I was putting… we're putting together our year-end lists, and…
• 58:10
  Tad Eggleston: I laughed that my top 3 books right now are… are all… My top 3 ongoing series.
• 58:18
  Tad Eggleston: are all…
• 58:24
  Tad Eggleston: Old books that went away for… Differing amounts of time.
• 58:32
  Josh Eiserike: Are you willing to share what they are, or are you gonna wait.
• 58:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, why not? Why not? It's… it's Saga.
• 58:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's… it's Powers 25 and… and Lazarus Risen.
• 58:43
  Tad Eggleston: Are my top 3 ongoing series.
• 58:47
  Tad Eggleston: of the year.
• 58:48
  Matt & Belle: That does not surprise me in the slightest.
• 58:51
  Matt & Belle: All excellent choices.
• 58:53
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I feel bad to Kelly, because Birds of Prey has been great.
• 58:57
  Tad Eggleston: Absolute Wonderful Woman has been great. Tom King on Wonder Woman continues to be great. I mean, there's so many great ongoing series.
• 59:05
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, these 3 are, like, they're all old friends that continue to kill it.
• 59:11
  Josh Eiserike: I mean, I love Saga, I have a stack of unread issues, and at this point, it's the trades for this book club, so I… at some point, I will be seeing new stuff.
• 59:24
  Josh Eiserike: I am completely enamored with Rick Reminder's The Seasons. I don't know if any of the…
• 59:29
  Tad Eggleston: Great things. Is that… is that officially an ongoing, rather than a…
• 59:34
  Tad Eggleston: I thought that was gonna be 12.
• 59:36
  Josh Eiserike: It might, I don't know.
• 59:38
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 59:38
  Josh Eiserike: My… the guys in my comic store, I've asked, they were like, we think it's ongoing, we're not sure.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: I love it.
• 59:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I think you've mentioned that before, and it's, like, on my list of something that I need to go read and have it.
• 59:54
  Josh Eiserike: For sure, it feels like they could wrap it up in 12, but it also feels like it could be ongoing.
• 1:00:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, right now, it's…
• 1:00:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it doesn't say of 12 anywhere.
• 1:00:13
  Matt & Belle: Thank you.
• 1:00:14
  Tad Eggleston: So… cross our fingers, because I don't think we have enough…
• 1:00:21
  Tad Eggleston: ongoing. I miss having lots of ongoing series. That's… that's why… Like, the future is…
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: from Fred Van Lenti at RECA.
• 1:00:33
  Tad Eggleston: Is probably way up there in my ongoing, because, like, the fact that you have this… this…
• 1:00:46
  Tad Eggleston: cybersecurity firm that has enough ties to comic books that they decided, We're gonna make…
• 1:00:55
  Tad Eggleston: our own promotional comic book only, we're gonna make it good. And they started by calling in Joe Keating and… and…
• 1:01:04
  Tad Eggleston: Fred Bantlenty as the editor and the writer, but then they also said, and we're committing to 60 issues.
• 1:01:12
  Josh Eiserike: Wow.
• 1:01:13
  Tad Eggleston: So, it's like, they're 8 in, but they are absolutely committed to 60 issues, and, like.
• 1:01:19
  Tad Eggleston: They have the money that they can pay for it even if they don't self-sell it, so, like…
• 1:01:25
  Tad Eggleston: I hope that the sales… eventually come, and they've done some Kickstarters, That, that certainly…
• 1:01:32
  Tad Eggleston: You know, when they kickstart their hardcovers, they get lots of…
• 1:01:36
  Tad Eggleston: But, you know, it's a fantastic, like, hacker team book.
• 1:01:40
  Tad Eggleston: But I… but again, like…
• 1:01:43
  Tad Eggleston: It's just the fact that they committed to a long-term thing, where you're gonna get to really know characters made me…
• 1:01:50
  Tad Eggleston: Happy.
• 1:01:51
  Tad Eggleston: along the lines of one of the books that I'm most looking forward to next year is out in, like, March.
• 1:01:58
  Tad Eggleston: Because we, we get another… Another volume of Criminal.
• 1:02:03
  Tad Eggleston: We get another, lawless story.
• 1:02:07
  Tad Eggleston: You know?
• 1:02:11
  Josh Eiserike: I had a… I had a conversation with a creator who's got an ongoing book.
• 1:02:18
  Josh Eiserike: At Image, and we were just chatting, and I was like, God bless you, doing an ongoing gives me a panic attack.
• 1:02:26
  Josh Eiserike: Like, I don't know how somebody does that.
• 1:02:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think to a certain extent, I mean, like.
• 1:02:33
  Tad Eggleston: So, when we talked to Kieran Gillen, and we were talking about the power fantasy.
• 1:02:39
  Tad Eggleston: he's like, is it really an ongoing… Not really, because I can't really imagine it being… more than 36.
• 1:02:52
  Tad Eggleston: but, like… I also have a way to end it at, like… 16, if we have to.
• 1:03:03
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 1:03:04
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so we have to, like, look at the sales and decide whether or not…
• 1:03:10
  Tad Eggleston: Because that's really what it comes down to, and one of the reasons why people, like.
• 1:03:16
  Tad Eggleston: Brubaker and Phillips, who can get away with it, have just stopped doing the single issues.
• 1:03:20
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 1:03:21
  Tad Eggleston: Is… is their trades sell as well as the single issues, so it's like…
• 1:03:26
  Tad Eggleston: We're not gonna beat ourselves up and try to figure out how to make money on single issues when we know that if we just put out a trade.
• 1:03:35
  Tad Eggleston: We'll make the money we need to make.
• 1:03:37
  Josh Eiserike: So, the publisher I work with for Final Girls, which, you know, let's be clear, does…
• 1:03:43
  Josh Eiserike: a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of those numbers. Right. Same thing, like, won't do single issues anymore. And to the point of, you know, like, these, like, epic ongoing, like, when I originally pitched this, and I know I'm plugging my stuff, plug, plug, plug, I'm sorry. No!
• 1:04:00
  Tad Eggleston: Part of the reason you're here is you have, like, experience on the other side of the ball.
• 1:04:05
  Josh Eiserike: So, when I… when I pitched, the sequel, I… I pitched, I want to do volumes 2 and 3 back-to-back, and I want to do this huge Empire Strikes Back cliffhanger at the end of 2. And I knew what the cliffhanger was, and I'm like, it's gonna be awesome.
• 1:04:20
  Josh Eiserike: And then I sat down and started writing the thing, and I was like, okay, I got to the cliffhanger. I don't… I don't have 5 to 6 more chapters or issues worth of story. Like, I… I… I… I came to this great moment, that's the end of it. If it's 6 issues, that's the end of issue 5.
• 1:04:37
  Josh Eiserike: I'll take… I'll take one more to, you know, wrap it up and get myself out of the hole I've just written myself into. So, like… and, you know, if I ever do a third.
• 1:04:47
  Josh Eiserike: maybe, if there's an idea, but it's, like, like, again, like, it just, it just gives me anxiety to, to… God bless.
• 1:04:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and this is… This is actually why, like, even things that, like, would once have been ongoing.
• 1:05:02
  Tad Eggleston: are more ongoing… Graphic novel type stuff now.
• 1:05:07
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  Tad Eggleston: Dogman.
• 1:05:09
  Tad Eggleston: It's essentially an ongoing.
• 1:05:10
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 1:05:12
  Tad Eggleston: But he tells mostly self-contained stories in a graphic novel form.
• 1:05:17
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 1:05:18
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 1:05:20
  Josh Eiserike: Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
• 1:05:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:05:23
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah. But you're seeing, like, Mad Cave, Yeah.
• 1:05:27
  Tad Eggleston: Mad Cave, when… any Maverick book is going to be a graphic novel. They don't do YA comics. They've decided that it's not worth it.
• 1:05:34
  Josh Eiserike: Correct.
• 1:05:36
  Tad Eggleston: And… even if it's… even if it's Mad Cave.
• 1:05:40
  Tad Eggleston: We'll just call it Mad Cave Prime. Even if it's Mad Cave Prime.
• 1:05:45
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the first decision they make is, do we want to do issues with this, or do we want to just put out a graphic novel?
• 1:05:52
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:05:53
  Josh Eiserike: And I noticed that most people… And they're willing to do both.
• 1:05:55
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:05:56
  Josh Eiserike: And I noticed that most of their series only go up to, like, 4 issues.
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 1:06:02
  Josh Eiserike: I think it, I think it was Bendis who said whatever, like, from 4 to 5, there's a huge sale drop-off these days.
• 1:06:08
  Tad Eggleston: A lot of the time.
• 1:06:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 1:06:13
  Josh Eiserike: So my next series is gonna be four issues.
• 1:06:17
  Tad Eggleston: I… it's such a fickle market, and, like, I'm in… a friend of mine just bought a shop, so I've been helping him with… with…
• 1:06:26
  Tad Eggleston: Orders and whatnot, and… like… Actually, two friends of mine have just started shops. Like…
• 1:06:37
  Tad Eggleston: Figuring out how to take risks, figuring out what to… Pump.
• 1:06:44
  Tad Eggleston: Figuring out who your customer base is, or who your customer base can be, It's just…
• 1:06:51
  Tad Eggleston: A constantly fluid thing.
• 1:06:55
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not at all, because people are reading less comics. It's… it's… if anything, it's because they're reading more, but…
• 1:07:02
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 1:07:02
  Tad Eggleston: But they also have more places to get them.
• 1:07:05
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 1:07:07
  Tad Eggleston: Which is something that makes a book like Saga, I mean, like…
• 1:07:10
  Tad Eggleston: Taking 3 years off and coming back.
• 1:07:14
  Tad Eggleston: Where… where stores had midnight opening parties for you is, like, ridiculous.
• 1:07:21
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  Josh Eiserike: It's interesting, I asked,
• 1:07:25
  Josh Eiserike: this new friend of mine who's got this book at Image, I said, you know, his trade's coming out.
• 1:07:31
  Josh Eiserike: the first trade's coming out in March, and I was like, so which is, which is better for you, as a creator? Should I get it in my comic shop? Should I get it on Amazon? Should, like, should I, like, where should Barnes & Noble? Like, where should I get it? What's gonna be best for you? And he said, Amazon, which surprised me.
• 1:07:48
  Tad Eggleston: I would have thought.
• 1:07:51
  Josh Eiserike: Comic Shop.
• 1:07:53
  Tad Eggleston: I think there's debate on that.
• 1:07:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they get paid the same way?
• 1:07:58
  Tad Eggleston: But Amazon reviews are a big deal.
• 1:08:02
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 1:08:04
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, going and reviewing it on Amazon, whether you bought it or not, is… is… is valuable to them.
• 1:08:14
  Josh Eiserike: For sure that, but I would think And I don't have any…
• 1:08:18
  Josh Eiserike: extra knowledge on this, I would think that if I told my store, my local comic shop, hey, you know, there's this trade coming out, can you guys get me a copy?
• 1:08:29
  Josh Eiserike: I would think that that would be like, oh, there's this trade, maybe I should get a couple copies, versus Amazon is just gonna be like.
• 1:08:36
  Tad Eggleston: Short times?
• 1:08:38
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes, but also, the things that are best sellers… I mean, there are lots of shops that will look at category best sellers on Amazon, decide what to take risks on.
• 1:08:51
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so in some ways, being a bestseller on Amazon, is…
• 1:08:59
  Tad Eggleston: in and of itself an advertising thing. Again, I don't know that that's something that there's hard and fast numbers on.
• 1:09:07
  Josh Eiserike: Right.
• 1:09:08
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's more, like…
• 1:09:10
  Tad Eggleston: There are good enough arguments for a lot of different things that there's a real discussion going on.
• 1:09:17
  Josh Eiserike: I was…
• 1:09:18
  Josh Eiserike: I did a signing, down at a store, I forget the name of the store, it's killing me, in Long Beach, you know, it's about an hour from where I live.
• 1:09:27
  Josh Eiserike: And one of the… and it was a great store, and one of the things that really impressed me was not only are they plugged into all that, but they're also plugged into, like, what's on Kickstarter.
• 1:09:35
  Josh Eiserike: Yep. And they'll pick up some of those books, too, which I think is just awesome.
• 1:09:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, we got amazing comics and Cards, Pulp Fiction Comics, Metropolis comics…
• 1:09:46
  Josh Eiserike: Pulp Fiction, Pulp Fiction, there you go. Pulp Fiction.
• 1:09:48
  Josh Eiserike: Shout out to Pulp Fiction Comics, those guys are great. I'm sure the other stores are great, too, but I did my signing up for them.
• 1:09:53
  Tad Eggleston: I think I actually have people who have actually plugged Amazing Comics and Cards. Metropolis, I don't know, and that's actually in Bellflower, not Long Beach. But that's close enough that when I did Long Beach comic book stores, it came up.
• 1:10:07
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:10:08
  Tad Eggleston: 3rd.
• 1:10:08
  Josh Eiserike: It's a crucial.
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, actually, the thing in your area that I…
• 1:10:17
  Tad Eggleston: like, am just blown away by is the… the block party.
• 1:10:23
  Josh Eiserike: I was there.
• 1:10:24
  Tad Eggleston: Were you there this year?
• 1:10:26
  Josh Eiserike: I was there. It was…
• 1:10:28
  Josh Eiserike: the best comic book event, and I was there as a creator, and then I spent the rest of the day there.
• 1:10:35
  Josh Eiserike: as still with my creator wristband, but also just as a fan, it was the best comic book event I've ever been to.
• 1:10:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, my buddy Chris has been there all 3 years.
• 1:10:47
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, it just keeps getting… Bigger and bigger…
• 1:10:54
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, Zach was there this year, too. Oh, there's your name!
• 1:11:00
  Josh Eiserike: Zach as in Zach Kaplan?
• 1:11:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 1:11:02
  Josh Eiserike: Yup.
• 1:11:04
  Josh Eiserike: I like Tony.
• 1:11:04
  Tad Eggleston: Sleeks was there.
• 1:11:06
  Josh Eiserike: Yep.
• 1:11:07
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just going through and naming on… Adam Rose was there. I'm just tossing out guests that I have fun with.
• 1:11:15
  Tad Eggleston: Cantwell…
• 1:11:19
  Tad Eggleston: Kelly Sue was there, so we had a… Brian was there, too, so we had a contingent coming down for…
• 1:11:27
  Josh Eiserike: appearance from Ed Burbanker.
• 1:11:29
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, no, he was just there walking around, I heard.
• 1:11:32
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:11:33
  Tad Eggleston: Matt Rosenberg came out from New York.
• 1:11:36
  Josh Eiserike: So that was,
• 1:11:40
  Josh Eiserike: One of my pop culture holy grails is he did that book with those 7-inch records.
• 1:11:44
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:45
  Josh Eiserike: I've been… no.
• 1:11:46
  Tad Eggleston: I have moments.
• 1:11:47
  Josh Eiserike: Probably…
• 1:11:47
  Josh Eiserike: I probably could have just gone on his website and been like, oh, they have this, but the thought never occurred to me.
• 1:11:54
  Josh Eiserike: And I didn't… there was the… there was the Smashing Pumpkins cover, and I'm a huge Pumpkins fan.
• 1:11:59
  Josh Eiserike: And I go up to him, I'm like, listen, I've been trying to get this for years, like, where can I find it? And he's like, dude, they have some copies inside. And I'm just like.
• 1:12:06
  Tad Eggleston: Just kidding.
• 1:12:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It was great.
• 1:12:11
  Josh Eiserike: It was great. It was a wonderful show.
• 1:12:14
  Josh Eiserike: Pat Oswald was very, very gracious, and I'm so grateful that.
• 1:12:19
  Tad Eggleston: No, this is, like, literally officially on…
• 1:12:23
  Tad Eggleston: My bucket list to go out one year just for the… the…
• 1:12:28
  Tad Eggleston: thing, and I, like, as I'm involved with a comic shop that I think has the space that they could do something like this, I find myself going, how could we possibly manage to make this happen in…
• 1:12:42
  Tad Eggleston: Suburban Chicagoland.
• 1:12:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, but…
• 1:12:49
  Josh Eiserike: I mean, it's…
• 1:12:50
  Josh Eiserike: it's… it was free. Like, the whole thing was free. Like, I go to a convention, I'm like, alright, I have to make this much to make my table back. I'm like, well, if I sell one book, it's great.
• 1:13:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:13:02
  Josh Eiserike: Sorry, I am completely monopolizing the conversation.
• 1:13:05
  Tad Eggleston: No, you're not.
• 1:13:06
  Tad Eggleston: Among other things, you're often the guy on mute.
• 1:13:10
  Tad Eggleston: So, so we're happy to hear from you.
• 1:13:12
  Josh Eiserike: I have children who often scream in the background.
• 1:13:15
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 1:13:17
  Tad Eggleston: But it's getting late, we're rambling. Anything more about Saga for this month?
• 1:13:24
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody remember enough of Volume 5 that they want to say anything to tease it, or… talk about…
• 1:13:33
  Matt & Belle: Nope, not here.
• 1:13:34
  Tad Eggleston: Beers for next month.
• 1:13:39
  Matt & Belle: I got one small thing apropos of nothing.
• 1:13:42
  Tad Eggleston: What's that?
• 1:13:42
  Josh Eiserike: Gus, I know, or Goose Gus, Goose, Goose.
• 1:13:47
  Tad Eggleston: It's somewhere right between Gus and Goose, so it's like, goose.
• 1:13:52
  Matt & Belle: Goose, goose.
• 1:13:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oss.
• 1:13:54
  Josh Eiserike: I know this dude is a fan-favorite character. I do not remember much of… at all when I read this guy.
• 1:14:02
  Josh Eiserike: I hear butters from South Park in my head.
• 1:14:04
  Matt & Belle: Oh my god!
• 1:14:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, damn.
• 1:14:07
  Matt & Belle: Oh my god, that's so perfect!
• 1:14:09
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's brilliant. I, I do, I like that, I like that.
• 1:14:14
  Tad Eggleston: That's… that's some good… if we ever get the Saga cartoon, that's some good, good casting there.
• 1:14:21
  Marisol: Shockingly well, now that I think about it.
• 1:14:24
  Tad Eggleston: Which, honestly, I think we're way more likely to get…
• 1:14:28
  Tad Eggleston: Motion Saga, if… if adult cartoon… if, like, long-form adult cartoons become…
• 1:14:35
  Tad Eggleston: A big enough thing than anybody ever figuring out how to do it well on film.
• 1:14:42
  Matt & Belle: Cost-effectively to make a profit.
• 1:14:45
  Marisol: Right.
• 1:14:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well, doing the cartoon would be hard. I don't either. I don't either. In fact, I love… I mean, I know that they take meetings now, but, like, early on, they would talk about, our goal is to make it unadaptable.
• 1:15:01
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:15:03
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they take meetings, but, like, it's not money they're looking for in the meetings. If somebody ever convinces them that they can do something that will be worth the name, then maybe they'll talk.
• 1:15:15
  Tad Eggleston: Further than the meeting.
• 1:15:19
  Tad Eggleston: And there have been enough advances in animation and whatnot that, like, he doesn't… they don't seem to want to completely rule it out anymore?
• 1:15:26
  Tad Eggleston: But it's like… You know…
• 1:15:32
  Tad Eggleston: I get the feeling this is one of those cases where you don't necessarily have to be 100% true to…
• 1:15:39
  Tad Eggleston: The specific content of the book, but if you don't…
• 1:15:43
  Tad Eggleston: If you're not true to the characters and true to the just mind-blowingness of the book.
• 1:15:50
  Tad Eggleston: They're not gonna say no.
• 1:15:52
  Josh Eiserike: I will share… I will share one more thing. I mentioned at the top of this recording,
• 1:15:58
  Josh Eiserike: losing my job, on a TV show during COVID, and I went and wrote, something that actually wound up as the comic that I'm currently working on. And I pitched it, and before I made it a comic, I pitched it to my manager, and I'm like, you're gonna hate me, because you're never gonna be able to sell this as a show.
• 1:16:15
  Josh Eiserike: Ever. And he laughed, and he said, it's so common for writers, when they're coming off of a big TV job.
• 1:16:23
  Josh Eiserike: writing in somebody else's world, that they just write something completely unadaptable. Now, I can't put myself in Brian Kavon's psychology. Right. I know he didn't have the best experience on Under the Dome, or so, I've heard. Right.
• 1:16:37
  Josh Eiserike: And this was his big return to comics, and he made something. It's like, yeah, just try and adapt this. And I love that about this, and I… I don't need it adapted.
• 1:16:47
  Tad Eggleston: No. I mean, honestly, I am the guy that would rather see
• 1:16:54
  Tad Eggleston: More movies adapted to comics than the other way around.
• 1:16:58
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, interesting.
• 1:17:01
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, adapted, adapted. Not like, oh, let's make the comic… like, almost always, when they're adapted.
• 1:17:10
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, let's make you think about the movie, rather than let's take the guts of the movie and tell this story in a way that you can tell it with a comic book that you couldn't do with a movie. And I bring this up because I haven't seen Megalopolis yet.
• 1:17:27
  Tad Eggleston: And I only know one person who liked
• 1:17:30
  Tad Eggleston: Megalopolis, that managed to see it in the way that…
• 1:17:33
  Josh Eiserike: Was it Francis Fort Coppola?
• 1:17:35
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, actually.
• 1:17:39
  Tad Eggleston: But when we were talking about it, because I'd read the comic, but he hadn't yet.
• 1:17:45
  Tad Eggleston: he seems to be the one person on Earth that managed to see in the movie what I saw in the comic.
• 1:17:51
  Josh Eiserike: Hmm…
• 1:17:53
  Tad Eggleston: And it's brilliant on so many levels.
• 1:17:57
  Tad Eggleston: in the comic that Chris Ryle and… Jacob Phillips made.
• 1:18:04
  Tad Eggleston: And you can see how it couldn't possibly work as a movie. Or at least I immediately saw it. I'm like, I don't even know how you'd film this to make it work. And, like, and it's so…
• 1:18:18
  Tad Eggleston: fourth level on so much of it that, like, I know that 80% of the people who read this
• 1:18:25
  Tad Eggleston: the first time they read it are still gonna think it sucks. But, like, the 20% that get comics, or the people who trust the creators enough to go back and look again.
• 1:18:36
  Tad Eggleston: are gonna start seeing things and go, oh my god!
• 1:18:41
  Tad Eggleston: This is brilliant.
• 1:18:43
  Josh Eiserike: I gotta check that out. Am I making it up, or was Southland Tales a comic, too?
• 1:18:48
  Tad Eggleston: Southland Tales…
• 1:18:49
  Josh Eiserike: The Richard Kelly film that I think I was the… I think I was the one guy who liked that movie.
• 1:18:55
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know that one.
• 1:18:56
  Josh Eiserike: It's what he did after Donnie Darko that only I liked.
• 1:19:02
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't seen it…
• 1:19:08
  Josh Eiserike: Well, I think it's awesome everybody else hated it.
• 1:19:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are lots of things that I think are good that other people don't like, so I might have to go…
• 1:19:19
  Tad Eggleston: go watch it at some point, but I'm not seeing specific reference to…
• 1:19:27
  Tad Eggleston: A comma, because he wrote and directed it.
• 1:19:31
  Tad Eggleston: And it doesn't say he adapted it from something.
• 1:19:34
  Josh Eiserike: Well, no, no, no, no, I think he made a… I think he also made a comic, and this is, like, 25 years ago, so I don't really remember.
• 1:19:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:19:45
  Josh Eiserike: But anyway, that… I love the idea of truly adapting movies to comics.
• 1:19:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:19:51
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's great. I mean, I actually… I love that we're finally getting more literary adaptions.
• 1:19:58
  Josh Eiserike: I think literary adaptions…
• 1:20:00
  Tad Eggleston: To comic books make more sense than liberatory adaptions to… to film.
• 1:20:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to me… Looks like there was a prequel saga.
• 1:20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Southland Tales, the prequel Saga.
• 1:20:22
  Tad Eggleston: Collection of 3 graphic novels.
• 1:20:26
  Tad Eggleston: To accompany the 2006 feature film. Now I'm really interested.
• 1:20:34
  Josh Eiserike: read the comments.
• 1:20:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but I, like, I…
• 1:20:39
  Josh Eiserike: The movie.
• 1:20:40
  Tad Eggleston: There aren't enough things that, like, truly go multimedia. There's a British like…
• 1:20:51
  Tad Eggleston: modern fantasy detective series called The Rivers of London.
• 1:20:56
  Tad Eggleston: That also has comics?
• 1:20:59
  Josh Eiserike: I have a colleague who's super into that.
• 1:21:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Ben Aronovich is the writer, and there's, like, I think 9 or 10 novels now, and 8…
• 1:21:08
  Tad Eggleston: to 12.
• 1:21:09
  Tad Eggleston: comic miniseries?
• 1:21:11
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:21:12
  Tad Eggleston: So it, like, lives in both worlds, and I love that.
• 1:21:17
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, when I see that there are 3 prequel graphic novels, not the one Marvel prequel comic that we get so often…
• 1:21:27
  Josh Eiserike: Boy, did I learn lessons buying those books.
• 1:21:32
  Tad Eggleston: Do I want to know what lessons.
• 1:21:34
  Josh Eiserike: That they don't care about the comics as much as they did about the movies, and it was a cash-in.
• 1:21:40
  Tad Eggleston: Bright.
• 1:21:44
  Josh Eiserike: and yet I bought them.
• 1:21:46
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like, comics is…
• 1:21:51
  Tad Eggleston: I like things that bring people to comics, first of all, but second of all, I just…
• 1:21:57
  Tad Eggleston: I will fight to the end.
• 1:21:59
  Tad Eggleston: The idea that comics is the most flexible medium.
• 1:22:04
  Tad Eggleston: You can adapt something from any other medium and be additive by making it a comic, whereas…
• 1:22:13
  Tad Eggleston: Pretty much anything else adapting between mediums requires some level of reduction.
• 1:22:21
  Tad Eggleston: And you might try to balance that by adding the parts that are… like, a lot of times when you have a novelization of a movie, like, because you have to reduce so much of the visual element, they'll try to…
• 1:22:35
  Tad Eggleston: Balance that by adding more of the… Perspective element, the thought element.
• 1:22:43
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:22:44
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:22:47
  Tad Eggleston: But that just makes it a completely different thing. And sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't, but
• 1:22:56
  Tad Eggleston: But in comics, you can keep the visual element AND add.
• 1:23:02
  Tad Eggleston: You know, if you take a movie and adapt it to a comic, you can keep the visual element and add
• 1:23:09
  Tad Eggleston: the internal monologue element. If… you're adapting…
• 1:23:15
  Tad Eggleston: Books, you can keep the internal monologue element and, you know, the distinctly word element, and add visuals.
• 1:23:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there's nothing that you have to reduce in comics. While at the same time, like, there… how many of you know the novel Speak?
• 1:23:37
  Tad Eggleston: Bell, did you have to read that in school?
• 1:23:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, Bell's probably just…
• 1:23:43
  Matt & Belle: did not.
• 1:23:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, then it probably got… started getting taught on a regular basis right after you.
• 1:23:51
  Tad Eggleston: would have read it. Fantastic young adult novel.
• 1:23:56
  Tad Eggleston: That deals with some really tough stuff.
• 1:23:59
  Tad Eggleston: That there's also a fantastic graphic novel adaptation, so as my… as I've had students reading it, I've been reading back and forth.
• 1:24:07
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and, like, just taking in how much…
• 1:24:15
  Tad Eggleston: How little is left out.
• 1:24:17
  Tad Eggleston: In the graphic novel.
• 1:24:19
  Tad Eggleston: And how much is added?
• 1:24:22
  Tad Eggleston: Because you can feel it in a whole different level because of the art done.
• 1:24:28
  Tad Eggleston: And now, this is not to say that every graphic novel… I mean, God knows, there are plenty of classics illustrated that, like, butcher whatever they're doing. Like, like, quality still matters.
• 1:24:42
  Tad Eggleston: You know, but yeah.
• 1:24:44
  Tad Eggleston: That's… that's whole other discussions.
• 1:24:47
  Tad Eggleston: Though… Yeah, like, if we go way back, one of our first roundtables is we did a…
• 1:24:55
  Tad Eggleston: A parker across mediums.
• 1:24:57
  Tad Eggleston: Where I had… where I had,
• 1:25:00
  Tad Eggleston: Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips, and… God.
• 1:25:08
  Tad Eggleston: Why can't I remember his name right now? He's the guy that does the artist's editions.
• 1:25:14
  Tad Eggleston: Somebody help me out, Matt.
• 1:25:16
  Tad Eggleston: Josh.
• 1:25:21
  Tad Eggleston: I feel terrible now. He wins Eisner Awards because he edits the artist editions.
• 1:25:27
  Tad Eggleston: But we took Parker, and we talked about the novels, and the movies that have been made out of it, and… Scott Dunbier.
• 1:25:36
  Tad Eggleston: We took the, you know, the fantastic Darwin Cook comics.
• 1:25:45
  Tad Eggleston: They come directly from fantastic Richard Stark novels.
• 1:25:50
  Tad Eggleston: And also, there have been a number of fantastic
• 1:25:54
  Tad Eggleston: adaptations, though none… Donald Westlake was happy enough that he was able… that he was willing to allow…
• 1:26:00
  Tad Eggleston: the character to remain named Parker.
• 1:26:04
  Tad Eggleston: The first one that Parker got to keep his name was actually, I think, the first one that was made after Westlake had passed away.
• 1:26:13
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, we're rambling.
• 1:26:17
  Tad Eggleston: Or I'm rambling. Not even we're rambling anymore. I'm rambling. Somebody say something about Saga, and then we'll wrap it up. And Matt's the one that needs to wrap it up, so how about Belle say something about Saga, and then Matt take us out.
• 1:26:30
  Matt & Belle: Who knows?
• 1:26:31
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, well, stop rambling.
• 1:26:32
  Matt & Belle: You know, Tad, I really just wish the dogs behaved, because I was excited for the podcast, and I couldn't even talk about Saga, and I missed half my tile scene, because these assholes were being dicks, so…
• 1:26:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, how about this? I'm gonna take us back to tiles, and…
• 1:26:46
  Matt & Belle: Hell yeah!
• 1:26:47
  Tad Eggleston: Talk about tiles, and then Matt, take us out when Bell's done.
• 1:26:51
  Matt & Belle: Let's go!
• 1:26:53
  Matt & Belle: No, no, no. I'm gonna talk about tiles.
• 1:26:55
  Tad Eggleston: stop for a second before the tiles, because right before we get back to the tiles, I loved this…
• 1:27:02
  Matt & Belle: Boom.
• 1:27:04
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because that was the response to, what did he say?
• 1:27:11
  Tad Eggleston: Don't fret, Moppit, after I'm done with your friend, I'll still have plenty left for you.
• 1:27:22
  Tad Eggleston: Lying.
• 1:27:24
  Matt & Belle: Yay.
• 1:27:25
  Josh Eiserike: Also, those rats are coded Nazis, which I…
• 1:27:28
  Tad Eggleston: Of course they are.
• 1:27:30
  Josh Eiserike: Great, though.
• 1:27:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:34
  Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
• 1:27:37
  Tad Eggleston: But here. Oh, look at that. The tile… the tiles are pretty good in the… in the…
• 1:27:42
  Tad Eggleston: Kicking scene, too.
• 1:27:44
  Matt & Belle: They're just always good. I just, I don't know, I love all the details. She, like, added so much. Like, I don't even know what freaking program she must have done that in. Like, does she do that in the program she draws in?
• 1:27:54
  Tad Eggleston: I think she works almost exclusively digitally.
• 1:27:58
  Matt & Belle: I mean, that would make sense, but, like, I'm wondering if she uses, like, multiple digital platforms.
• 1:28:04
  Matt & Belle: Warden's Friday.
• 1:28:05
  Tad Eggleston: Possibly, but, I mean, there's really a good chance that essentially she… Did the background layer separately.
• 1:28:13
  Matt & Belle: Yeah, true, true.
• 1:28:14
  Josh Eiserike: That's what it looks like.
• 1:28:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:28:17
  Tad Eggleston: So she created the environment, and then she put the characters in it, and then she decided how to focus it.
• 1:28:23
  Matt & Belle: Yo.
• 1:28:24
  Tad Eggleston: But, trust me, she's on the bucket list. If she comes, I'll let you.
• 1:28:29
  Matt & Belle: Yay.
• 1:28:29
  Tad Eggleston: Come ask her all of these questions.
• 1:28:31
  Matt & Belle: I would… I would be so honored.
• 1:28:33
  Tad Eggleston: One of my goals for either Thanksgiving or Christmas is to dust off the manual typewriter.
• 1:28:40
  Tad Eggleston: and type a letter to Brian and Fiona, since they prefer standard mail, and I figure I'm gonna, like, make it cooler to invite them onto the show, and see.
• 1:28:51
  Matt & Belle: Yes.
• 1:28:51
  Tad Eggleston: of having, like, the classic 1928 typewriter.
• 1:28:56
  Tad Eggleston: Whoa.
• 1:28:58
  Matt & Belle: I think they'd appreciate it, if nothing else. Do you want a character sketch to include?
• 1:29:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'm down with that, and for that matter, like, I know that he already likes that my dog is named Potato, because we did trade that message on the tower at one point.
• 1:29:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, like… Maybe you can do a sketch of Potato reading a saga comic. Or chewing a saga.
• 1:29:26
  Matt & Belle: Gone.
• 1:29:29
  Tad Eggleston: We'll make this a team effort.
• 1:29:32
  Matt & Belle: Yup.
• 1:29:35
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, Matt, take us out.
• 1:29:38
  Matt & Belle: We'll continue after the next page.